Patchwork

by ObabScribbler

Rating: teen
Tags: Dark, Zecora, Sad, Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Cutie Mark Crusaders, Mayor Mare, Other, Adventure
Length: 20956

When something in the Everfree Forest starts preying on the citizens of Ponyville, the ponies must decide where the line is between pony and monster while also confronting a question they don't know how to answer: what makes a good mother?

When something in the Everfree Forest starts preying on the citizens of Ponyville, the ponies must decide where the line is between pony and monster and how far they are willing to go to protect those they love. Applejack and Rarity feel especially strongly when Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle are caught up in the problem. Twilight seeks advice from Zecora but her friends are left to decide amongst themselves when the two go missing in the Everfree.

Meanwhile, Mayor Mare faces an attack of a different kind when a pony who would like to replace her accuses her of not protecting the citizens well enough, Scootaloo comes to terms with her own limitations and the ponies confront a question that forces them to face up to some home truths about their own lives and histories. What DOES make a good mother?

Published 2013-02-13 17:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-03-31 20:43:43 UTC

Prologue: Twilight Sparkle

Disclaimer: The words are mine, the characters are not. I write because I love.

A/N: I started this last October when I first saw this picture by Dr.Javi and the image wouldn’t leave my mind for days. I kept wondering what could have led up to it and what the creature was, which prompted me to do research, which I always love. ^_^ It turns out the picture spawned research, the research spawned an idea and the idea spawned a fic. This will be a pretty long one, so buckle up and bring a sandwich, everyone!

Patchwork

© Scribbler, 2013.

‘A mother's heart is a patchwork of love.’ – Welsh Proverb

Prologue: Twilight Sparkle

Twilight trotted behind Princess Celestia. She had to hurry to keep up with the Princess’s long stride but it was a small price to pay for more time with her. When they came to a stop she tried not to make it too obvious she was breathing hard. They had been walking for what felt like hours, although it was probably no more than thirty minutes.

“Princess?”

Celestia stepped aside, allowing Twilight to see a pair of thick doors inlaid with gilt metal that swooped and curved in such elaborate shapes it wasn’t immediately obvious it was a lock. Even from where she was standing Twilight could feel the pulse of protection spells. One of the first things Celestia had taught her was a catch-all ‘undo’ invocation for her own magic and basic protective spells. She wasn’t as good at creating shields as Shining Armour; making even small ones sapped her energy and tired her out quickly. Wards, on the other hand, she couldn’t do at all yet, though she could tell where somepony else had laid one. These doors had wards dripping off them.

Celestia noticed Twilight’s hesitancy. “Are you frightened?” she asked kindly.

Twilight drew herself up to her full height – which wasn’t actually very tall. She barely reached Celestia’s knees. “Of course not. You said you have something important to show me so I’m … I’m ...” She searched her mind for a more impressive word than ‘excited’. “Galvanised.”

Celestia raised one eyebrow, the corner of her mouth quirking like she was holding in a smile. “Galvanised?”

Twilight’s ears flattened in embarrassment. “Did I … misuse the word?”

The smile turned into a chuckle. “No, Twilight Sparkle, and I commend you on your efforts to use a wider vocabulary. Self-improvement is never a bad thing.”

Twilight swelled with pride. It seeped away as she looked again on the doors. “Why are we here, Princess? Why did you bring me down into the mountain? Why is the mountain hollowed out here like this? Did you do it? Did the ponies from Canterlot dig this? And where is here? Have you –”

Celestia laughed and held up a hoof. “So many questions! One at a time, remember?”

“Sorry.” Twilight pawed the dirt. “I just … I’m just so …” She searched for the right words to communicate her excitement, but none came. “Sorry. I’m just … galvanised.”

Celestia touched her horn to the lock, which furled back in filaments like ribbons spontaneously rolling into tight little spirals. The doors swung open and she led Twilight through to another corridor. This one smelled like compost, salt and something sweet Twilight couldn’t identify.

“We’re here because I want to show you something. This part of the mountain is spacious and secure. It’s lined with enchantments to strengthen the walls, so it won’t collapse even though it’s bigger than most natural caves. The caves were here before there ever was an Equestria. These mountains are full of naturally-occurring passageways that go right through the rock. Nopony, not even me, knows where they all are, though I’ve had a long time to explore a lot of them. This cave we’re going to now was made a long time ago by a dragon looking to take its Century Sleep. Afterwards it was used by ponies as a place to protect themselves during conflict, and eventually Canterlot was built on top of it. Right now you’re walking where your distant ancestors walked.”

Twilight’s eyes rounded. “Conflict? You mean war? This was a war shelter?” There had been several small wars in Equestria’s history, but certainly none she knew of that would have necessitated a shelter of this calibre. And what made this one so special Celestia would build the country’s capital on top of it?

“It has been many things and had many uses,” Celestia replied. “Now, however, it is a home for the Menagerie.”

“Menagerie?” Twilight heard the capital letter as if it had been drawn in the air with a sparkler. They had reached the end of the corridor, which opened out into a wide space like a viewing platform. She was about to ask more but stopped to gape at the scene laid out before her.

All this had existed beneath her hooves?

Dozens of pink domes sprawled throughout a massive cavern, far bigger than anything she could have imagined. The word ‘cave’ barely described this place. It was an underground palace, studded with stalactites that hung from the ceiling and stalagmites jutting up from the floor. Floating lights illuminated everything so well you could easily think you were still aboveground in the sun. Several stalagmites had what looked like doors and windows in their sides.

The domes effervesced, signifying they were made from magical energy. As Twilight watched, a unicorn the colour of melting butter came out of a stalagmite and went over to one of the domes. He wore a uniform and had his mane tied back so it didn’t fall into his face as he bent his head to examine where the dome met the stone floor. Frowning, he touched his horn to one spot and then another. The surface turned a brief, roiling purple where he had touched it before settling back to even brighter pink. He turned and called something to a pale blue pegasus in a similar uniform who had exited the stalagmite behind him. The pegasus grabbed the unicorn around the waist and lifted him up to touch his horn to other places farther up the dome.

“Custodians,” said Celestia. “They maintain the spells while I’m not around and keep everything ticking over.”

“Did they make all these?” Twilight asked, gesturing to the domes. What WERE they?

“No,” said Celestia. “It would take more power than they have. Each one of these is not a single piece of magic, but a collection of interlocking spells, enchantments and glamours criss-crossed into a unique pattern. Think of them like giant patchwork quilts – the same basic design, but each one individual. Your mother makes patchwork quilts, doesn’t she?”

Twilight wrinkled her nose. Her mother had tried to get her interested in sewing quilts as practise in how to use her magic for delicate tasks, but Twilight had found it boring. She was much more interested in reading about Equestrian history and the obscure magics that had been lost to time and dusty libraries.

“Did you make these things, Princess?”

Celestia nodded and descended the narrow staircase cut into the rocks. Twilight trotted after her, eager to see such extraordinary magic up close, but intimidated too. The amount of power needed to create something so huge was mind-boggling. Just one dome was bigger than the whole house she shared with her father, mother and brother. As she got closer, the roots of her mane prickled and her horn started to hurt, like somepony was twanging it with a rubber band.

“Are you all right?” Celestia asked, seeing her wince.

“It’s … it’s like static,” Twilight explained. “Or when your ears need to pop.”

Celestia understood immediately and stopped. Twilight came to stand beside her, grateful they wouldn’t be getting any closer. The dome was beautiful but painful. “You’re still new to your magic. When you’ve been at school for a while and have gotten used to casting spells beyond those you use every day, you’ll develop a resistance. At the moment you’re still very sensitive to the fluctuations of magic around you.”

“Can’t you feel that?”

“I can, but it doesn’t bother me so much.”

“Really?” Even though they had gone no closer, the backs of Twilight’s eyes were starting to ache. She tried to blink the feeling away, but it did no good.

“Someday you’ll be the same,” Celestia assured her.

“You think so?”

“I know so. You’re a very special filly, Twilight Sparkle. With your natural aptitude for magic, you’ll be able to do a great many things most ponies could never dream about.”

Twilight forced herself to be worthy of her teacher’s confidence. She stopped blinking, even though it left her eyeballs feeling gritty and dry. Instead, she pointed at the dome. “What is that thing, Princess?”

“That’s a Reality Bubble.”

“A what?”

Celestia smiled. “A pocket of space both bigger and smaller than our own. Imagine a bolt of cloth drawn tight and straight, but with a small portion twisted up and fastened at the bottom with a tie so that it is at once part of the cloth, and yet separate from it. That twist is a Reality Bubble. It can exist only within the magical barrier you see here. If the reality inside the barrier and outside of it, here with us, were to touch, then the magic would be broken and what is inside would be catapulted back into the world. Each Bubble is enchanted to be bigger on the inside than the outside, and to contain things that could not exist out here.”

Twilight gaped up at the dome. It was already huge. “Why would it need to be?”

“It needs to include an entire territory, which, can be anything up to fifty miles in diameter and might include such things as a lake, a forest, cliffs, a lagoon or even part of an ocean, along with animals and plants that stopped existing in our reality centuries ago.”

“Why?”

“Twilight Sparkle, do you know what a menagerie is?”

Twilight searched her memory. She had read about them before, but they had always sounded like zoos. “It’s a place to keep exotic animals in captivity.”

“Well this menagerie has one difference: all the creatures in it can no longer live in the outside world.” Her expression became sad. She stared up at the dome and around at the others as if she almost wished they weren’t there at all. “They’re the last of their kind; the ones whose territories don’t exist anymore, or who hibernated while the world changed around them and they no longer have any place in it. Outside this place they’re hunted or reviled because of what they are. They have no peace, no more of their kind, no family …” She trailed off, lost in thoughts Twilight couldn’t guess at.

“So you put them in here?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“The first time, because he asked. The second because he could not ask and I could not watch him die a stranger in his own territory. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth …” She trailed off. “Sometimes I could ask permission. Sometimes the creatures here were able to tell me they wanted a false reality instead of the true one. Sometimes, however, it was to protect my land and those living in it.”

“Protect us?”

“Before I created this place, Twilight Sparkle, I thought the ends justified any means. If it would protect the ponies of Equestria I was willing to use magic in ways I hate to remember now.”

Twilight remembered reading an old lyrical poem, written hundreds of years ago, which made reference to ‘spells of stone’ and ‘the mare of the sun’. She wondered whether that was what Celestia was talking about.

“Then something happened that made me rethink the way I protected this land. Destruction no longer seemed a defendable act, even if it was keeping Equestria from harm. I instead chose to contain a terrible threat, and it is a decision I have repeated ever since.”

Twilight wondered what kind of terrible creatures would merit such elaborate magic from the princess. Her left hind leg edged backwards until she reminded herself that she was being brave. She brought all four legs together so sharply she nearly toppled over, and covered the stumble with a question. “Why would you keep dangerous animals?”

“Every creature has a right to life, Twilight Sparkle. It’s not for you or me, or anypony else to decide whether something should exist or not simply because we’re frightened of it.”

“But if it’s evil–”

“Dangerous doesn’t mean the same as evil,” Celestia said sharply. When Twilight recoiled at her unexpected tone she softened it. “Dark creatures have a right to life, the same as we do. What if something more powerful than us suddenly decided we have no right to live and wiped us out? Would that be fair?”

“Nothing could ever do something that terrible with you around to protect us, Princess,” Twilight said staunchly.

Celestia chuckled. “My little stalwart student.”

Twilight thought hard; stalwart meant loyal, didn’t it? She swelled with so much pride so thought she might burst.

Celestia looked back at the dome. “The day I changed my ways I was given the advice to kill something dark. The ponies who told me to do it were convinced it was the only way to deal with it and save everypony. They were frightened of what it could do to them. I couldn’t do what they asked then and I can’t do it now. Killing isn’t the only or even the best way, Twilight Sparkle. It should never be anything but a last resort. Remember, as with all things, it isn’t committing an act that will linger but the consequences and the memories of committing it. If you kill any creature, ‘good’ or ‘evil, ‘light’ or ‘dark’, you must live with the consequences and regrets that come after, and those are far worse than fear. You have a good heart and a pure soul, so for you the consequences would ring far deeper and echo far longer.”

“P-Princess?” Twilight gawped up at her mentor. Maybe it was a reflection from the magic of the dome, but Celestia’s eyes looked shiny, as if they were filled with tears. “Are you okay?”

Celestia opened her mouth to reply, but something buzzed up behind them. Both of them turned to see a ball of floating white light heading unerringly in their direction from the mouth of the corridor. It halted in front of them and hovered, shining even more as a voice emanated from it.

“Princess Celestia!”

“Grimoire?” Celestia said in surprise. “I told you I wasn’t to be disturbed this afternoon.”

“Princess, we need you in the University Archive.”

“Right this moment?” Celestia glanced at Twilight. “Can’t it wait?”

The light ball dimmed and dropped a little, as if whatever magic kept it afloat had also lessened. It returned to full brightness a few moments later. “Not really, your majesty. One of the enchanted collections is loose and causing havoc. Apparently the hinges on the book cage had rusted through and nopony noticed until it was only hanging on by its lock. Oof! Ow!”

“Grimoire? Are you all right?”

“Yes, your majesty, one of them just knocked my hat off and gave my ears a few paper cuts. Princess, close to a hundred enchanted books are free. Not all of them had been catalogued yet, so we’re not sure what they can do or whether they’re capable of getting off campus entirely. Our unicorn professors are trying their best, but – ow! OW! Darn it, that one broke my reading glasses!”

Celestia’s brows drew together in a frown. She glanced down. “I’m sorry, Twilight Sparkle, but it seems we’ll have to cut our visit short today.”

“It’s … it’s okay.” Twilight tried hard to keep the disappointment from her voice. It wasn’t easy. She knew she had failed when Celestia bent to nudge her side gently.

“I promise we’ll resume this another day. You know I look forward to our time together.”

Twilight wondered whether they would resume it. Magic School was tough and far more demanding than any of her brother’s stories had prepared her for. All summer Shining Armour had liked to talk about all the cool things she would learn once she started, like energy-bolt archery classes and knockback spells that could flip a full-grown pony on its rump with just a flick of your horn. He had neglected to tell her about the long hours of homework or number of times she would have to recite the same elementary incantations over and over before her teachers said they were right. Twilight was a perfectionist and a natural scholar, but even she had her limits on how many times she could bespell a toilet to self-clean before she wanted to drown herself in it. She lived for the time Princess Celestia could spend with her and the promise that, if she did well in school and got into Canterlot University, Celestia truly would be her teacher. Until then, these unofficial, impromptu lessons were the bright spots that got her through the slog.

“Princess!” the voice from the light ball wailed.

“What is it, Grimoire?” Celestia raised her head to concentrate fully. “What’s happening?”

“Your majesty, the escaped books are … they’re …”

“What? What are they doing?”

“They’re EATING my manuscript!”

“Excuse me?”

“My opera! My magnum opus! They’re tearing it to pieces and eating it like a … a pack of flying wild dogs!”

“Are they all in one place?”

“Yes. They seem to like the taste of my genius. Ooh, get off, you horrid, horrid things!”

“Listen carefully; I’m going to tell you a binding spell to secure them until I get there…”

Twilight shuffled her hooves. She wanted to listen to Celestia’s instructions so she had a new spell in her repertoire, but her ears flicked as something else caught her attention. She turned her head, keeping one eye on the princess but listening for the noise again.

“Stop that!” yelped the light ball. “Leave my precious work alone, you ruffian reading material!”

There it was again; a thin sound that slipped into Twilight’s ear like silk sliding over steel. She turned towards it, tilting her ears. Was somepony else down here? Could it be one of the custodians? Something about it made her feel sad and want to comfort whoever was making it. She looked back to Celestia just as the princess stamped a hoof against the floor.

“Grimoire! Ignore them and listen to me.”

She was so busy calming down the bawling Grimoire that Twilight didn’t feel able to ask her to identify the sound. Celestia clearly had other, more important things to think about right now. Even so, guilt gnawed at Twilight when she considered ignoring the noise. Thought she couldn’t tell what it was, it definitely wasn’t good. Maybe somepony was hurt and calling for help. Maybe she should investigate and come back to fetch Celestia if it was important enough.

It was easy to slip off unnoticed. Part of her knew it was wrong and that she should wait by Celestia’s side, but the noise drew her. She had to stop a few times to figure out which way to go next as she walked between the domes. There was nopony else about; even the two custodians she had seen initially were nowhere in sight. The domes themselves were opaque, probably to maintain the creatures’ privacy. Thought Celestia had called it a menagerie, this place was clearly not meant for ponies’ gawking like a regular zoo. The care that had been taken made Twilight feel bad about ever visiting a regular zoo. How did the animals there feel about her staring at them like they only existed for her entertainment? How did the familiars at school feel when they were left in the Crèche where everypony could see them? She resolved to fetch Spike out and take him someplace nice as soon as she could. He was just a baby dragon, after all.

The noise grew clearer as she walked. Eventually it resolved itself into a series of notes strung together in an endlessly repeating pattern. There were no words and it wasn’t quite a melody but there was something hypnotic about it anyway. Twilight trotted from dome to dome until her horn fizzed in response and she could hear the sound louder than ever. She looked up at the pink expanse and took several steps nearer until the pain became too much. Ambient magic rubbed against her senses like a cheese grater, forcing her to stop.

She should go back to Celestia, she thought, but her hooves didn’t move. She couldn’t go back; not yet. She wanted to know what was making that sound. No, she NEEDED to know. What could produce something so hauntingly beautiful? She never usually cared about music, but right now it filled her up like an overflowing cup of syrup.

She took a step forward. Pain jabbed until she backed off again. Sitting to catch her breath, she was irritated that she couldn’t just go up, find out what was inside and be done with it. She was good at finding things out and answering questions. How dare this answer not be available to her – and for such a silly reason! She just had to suck it up and push through the pain. That was what Shining Armour said when he was running laps to be as fast as the earth ponies in military school. You reached your limits only if you accepted they were your limits.

Twilight took a breath to compensate for the pain and started forward again, gritting her teeth. Every root of every hair burned dully, like toothache that had spread beyond her mouth. She hesitated, but the sound undulated and rose in volume. It was so gorgeous she could barely breathe; or maybe that was the magic affecting her. She panted with effort but gamely took another few steps. It was like trying to break through a wall of flypaper. She actually felt the magic sticking to her, tensile strength pushing her back. She shoved against it with her horn. She needed to see what was making that beautiful sound. She NEEDED it more than the breath in her lungs!

Her horn glowed briefly in response to her need. She recognised the wash of her own magical energy from long hours’ practising for school, but the sensation of it getting out of her control took her back to her entrance exam. Celestia had taught her a simple reversal spell that day, the first of many things she had shared with her youngest student. The princess’s face flared in Twilight’s mind, but more pressing was the raw power exploding from her horn as her magic carried her through the final steps to touch the surface of the dome.

The pink rolled aside like mist across the sea. The dome’s surface grew mushy and transparent, allowing her horn to sink in like a hot knife through butter. Through it she could water stretching far in every direction – much farther than the back of the cave. It should have been touching Twilight’s hooves, but the softening surface of the dome kept it contained. A cluster of rocks sat a dozen feet away, tiny wavelets sending up spray each time they ran up against them. Atop the rocks sat a pony with such a long mane it almost completely obscured its body. Twilight only recognised it as a pony when it twisted to face her.

She almost gasped; she had never seen a pony so beautiful in all her life. Even Celestia could come only a poor second. This pony’s features were both soft and sharp, the muzzle too delicate to be a stallion but the lower jaw too deep for a mare. Its mane shimmered when it moved, as if every strand was a different shade of green, blue or gold. Hair cascaded like a waterfall onto the rocks, tangled and damp but looking more stylish than any of the rich fillies at school who frequented hairdressers every other day. It reminded Twilight of seaweed, if seaweed could be so beautiful it made your breath catch.

For a moment Twilight met the strange pony’s gaze. The pony looked startled, gold eyes widening. The beautiful sound stopped as it closed its mouth and stared left and right, which would have been comical if somepony else had done it. When it looked back at Twilight it tilted its head to one side, which made its face shift colours too: blue to purple to green. When it slid off the rocks and swam towards her, Twilight could see this was because it had scales, not fur. Its neck and chest flashed and winked under the water, almost as captivating as the song it started singing again when its face broke the surface.

She was rooted to the spot as the strange pony powered through the water. Twilight had never tried swimming herself, but she was sure nopony could swim that well or that fast. Moments later she spotted the long, sinuous fish-tail working behind the strange pony. A tiny voice inside whispered that she should run away, but it was so quiet and the song so wonderful.

“Come to me,” it sang without words. “Come to me … come to me … come to me …”

“I … I …” Twilight blinked. A bead of water ran down her horn. Could she smell sea-salt? Had she been able to smell that before? It ran into her eye and the stinging brought her back to herself for a second.

She should get away. She should RUN away. Why weren’t her hooves moving? Why was she just standing here, waiting for the pony to rise out of the water in front of her. For a moment the fish-pony just stared and sang right at her, like a snake charmer with a cobra. Twilight got a good look at the gills on its neck and the webbed protrusions that fanned out around its face in place of ears. Then it bared sharp silver teeth at her and lunged towards the barrier.

“TWILIGHT!”

Blinding white light consumed everything. The song ended in a shriek that made Twilight’s head reel. Her world dissolved into snatches of images and sound: Celestia’s golden shoes hitting the ground in front of her; the sweep of the princess’s wings; being yanked her away from the dome; the pink magic sucking at her, trying to keep hold; somepony calling her name as she fainted.

She woke to find herself in her own bed, staring at her own ceiling, with her own duvet wrapped around her. For a moment she wondered whether it had all been a dream. She would have liked the scary-beautiful fish-pony to be a nightmare. Her horn was still cold and felt damp, even though it was dry when she touched it with her hoof. When she sniffed her hoof, she smelled saltwater. Not a dream, then.

Twilight pushed back the covers and sat up, stopping only when the room spun. She waited until it had stopped and then gingerly rolled out of bed. Her hooves made no sound on the carpet as she crept to the door and eased the handle down. The moment it was ajar she could hear voices coming from downstairs. She considered going down, but when she realised who was talking and what they were saying, she crouched to listen.

“… didn’t realise it would be so hazardous.”

Twilight’s ears perked. That was Princess Celestia’s voice. The princess was here, in her house? She had never been to visit before. It had been at the entrance exam when she first asked to take Twilight on outings and give her the odd lesson, and had spoken to her parents only once since then to Twilight’s knowledge – at a school function when Celestia was the guest of honour and all the little First Year unicorns had to send up sprays of confetti with their levitation magic.

“Well what did you expect? I can’t believe anyone would be so … so stupid!” Twilight gaped at her mother’s tone. This had to be a dream. Nopony ever spoke to the princess like that! Evidently her mother realised this at the same time, because she followed the outburst with a much softer: “I’m sorry, your majesty. I didn’t mean to–”

“No, no,” said Celestia. “You’re quite right to be angry. I should have kept a better eye on her. You entrusted her safety to me and I let you down. It is me who should be apologising to you.”

Twilight’s mother made a grunty noise; the kind she usually made when biting down on harsh words. She was generally an even-tempered pony, but with a son like Shining Armour and a daughter like Twilight, even she sometimes lost her cool. All through colthood Shining Armour had loved to play at knights and princesses and cast his adoring little sister as the damsel in distress. Twilight would do anything he asked, which sometimes meant letting him project a magical shield around them both while his friends pelted them with mud-balls, and sometimes meant letting him levitate her up a tree for him to rescue. More than once he had thought up a rescue so daring and heroic it put premature white streaks in their mother’s purple mane and tail.

“Twilight Velvet?” Celestia said cautiously. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Twilight’s mother said tightly.

“I think that’s an untruth.”

“Forgive me, princess, but when you brought her home today and she was so still … I thought the worst and it just about stopped my heart.”

“From the bottom of my own heart, I am sorry. Will you accept my apology?”

“How can I not? You’re the princess, after all.”

“Being the princess does not mean I should be automatically forgiven when I make mistakes.”

More grunty noises.

“You have something you wish to say.”

“You’ve been incredibly kind, taking my daughter under your wing – uh, so to speak – since she started her scholarship. As you know, I went to Magic Academy as a filly too, so I understand what a privilege it is for you to provide her with the experiences and opportunities that you have. We’re not …” Twilight’s mother paused, as if she didn’t want to say what she did next. “We’re not a wealthy family, as you know, so her schooling alone was a blessing, and on top of that you’ve been so kind to her, and to us.”

“I think you agreeing to let Cadence babysit for you is a fair exchange. It gets lonely for her in the castle while I’m working and she gets bored easily.”

Twilight remembered the pretty pink pony who babysat for her each summer when she came home. Cadence spent a lot of time away from Canterlot, sometimes attending schools in other parts of Equestria, sometimes on special functions she groaned about when Twilight asked her to describe them. This year Twilight would have marvellous stories of her own to share and was looking forward to seeing Cadence again, even though she didn’t really need a babysitter anymore.

“We enjoy having Cadence over,” said Twilight’s mother. “She’s a lovely girl and both Shining Armour and Twilight Sparkle adore her.”

“What else did you want to say, Twilight Velvet?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m not sure the benefits of my daughter spending time with you outweigh the costs. The field trips, the advanced spells before she’s even mastered the basics in school – did you know she injured herself trying to spindle too much magic on her horn after you showed her how?”

“She was having difficulty with the basic spell-casting her teachers set. Your daughter is a very gifted filly. Where most young unicorns have trouble summoning their magic to their horns at all, her trouble is that she can summon it easily but not control it once it is there. I was only trying to show her how to keep it around her horn and readied for a spell without letting it leak out.”

“Yes, and that worked SO well today.”

“Are you saying you no longer wish for me to tutor her?”

“I … I … yes, I think that is what I’m saying. It’s not that we don’t appreciate what you’ve done for her, princess, but Twiley … she doesn’t need the kind of help that puts her in harm’s way.”

Twilight’s whole body went cold. Before she could react, however, Celestia was speaking again.

“Twilight Velvet, please understand that putting her in harm’s way was never my intention.”

“You took her to your menagerie, where you keep dangerous creatures. You didn’t NEED to take her there, you CHOSE to. If that’s not putting her in harm’s way, I don’t know what is! If you WEREN’T putting her in harm’s way, how did she nearly get eaten alive by a SIREN?”

When Celestia finally answered, her voice was subdued. Twilight had never heard her sound that way before. It was even scarier than the thought of never being taught by her again. To her mind, Princess Celestia was the most intelligent, most talented, most amazing pony in all of Equestria. Intelligent, talented, amazing ponies didn’t sound like fillies being told off by their kindergarten teacher.

“I am sorry, Twilight Velvet. I only wanted her to understand something it took me much longer to grasp.”

“And what’s that?” By contrast, Twilight’s mother sounded angry and a little tearful. “That evil exists in the world? That magic is delicate and messing around with it can be fatal? That–”

“That dark things deserve protection too.”

“Why?”

“It is not for us to decide whether something lives or dies–”

“Ponyfeathers! Excuse me, your majesty, but when something is threatening my foal it most certainly IS for me to decide whether it lives or dies. If the choice is Twiley or a one-of-a-kind monster, I pick Twiley. Maybe most of the time what you believe is true, and I admire you for wanting to preserve every life you can, no matter who or what that life belongs to, but I’m not you.”

“Twilight Velvet–”

“The world can’t exist in perfect harmony all the time, princess. Bad things happen and nopony is perfect. That causes conflict and disharmony. I understand that dark things aren’t necessarily evil, but that doesn’t mean they’re good, either, and it definitely doesn’t mean they should be anywhere near my daughter. Sometimes you have to make choices you don’t want to make, and sometimes those choices are between the worst things in the world, but you still have to make them and you have to live with the consequences anyway, because the consequences of NOT choosing are even worse. Yes, dark things deserve protection too, but I’ll hold up my hooves and admit I’m a hypocrite, because if one of those dark things threatens my loved ones I’d do whatever it took to stop it. I’d die to protect my children, princess, and I … I’d kill to protect them too. I’d do it because I love them and love is the most wonderful thing in the world, but it’s not perfect either. Nothing is. Even love means making sacrifices. Everything has a price and a cost, and the one I would have to pay in exchange for you teaching my daughter and perhaps not getting there to save her in time next time is just … too high.”

By the end of her speech, Twilight’s mother was breathing hard. Silence reigned for several minutes; the kind that in nature usually came right before a thunderstorm.

“You make several good points, Twilight Velvet.” Celestia was so quiet Twilight could barely make out her words. “I admit, I have clung to my ideals with a resolve other might call stubbornness. It has been … a long time since anypony spoke to me the way you just have.”

“I’d understand if you … want to rescind her scholarship to the academy.”

“Her place there was not contingent on lessons with me. Will you tell Twilight Sparkle of this, or should I –?”

“Nopony has to tell me anything!” Twilight shouldered opened her bedroom door and skidded to the top of the stairs. At the bottom, both having leapt from their chairs in the living room, her mother and Princess Celestia looked up at her in surprise.

“Twilight Sparkle!” Celestia sounded shocked to see her.

“But … I enchanted your sleep so you’d get some rest,” stuttered her mother. “You shouldn’t be awake for another two hours.”

Twilight cantered down the stairs, which was a bad idea as they were too steep for her short legs. She tripped over herself at the bottom and cannoned into the back of the sofa, skidding it forward a few inches to leave grooves in the carpet. Righting herself, she stalked towards her mother, filled with righteous indignation. “You can’t make the princess stop teaching me!”

“Twiley–”

“I love my lessons with her! I love them even more than regular school!”

“But you’ve always loved school,” her mother protested.

She was right, but Twilight was in no mood to admit it. Instead, she gabbled: “All we do there is boring stuff over and over. I actually LEARN things with Princess Celestia. You can’t take that away from me; you just can’t!”

“Twiley, please listen–”

“I’ve listened to you enough! I heard everything you said. You were really rude, Mom. You shouldn’t talk to the princess like that! Do you know all she’s done for Equestria? She’s really, really, really, REALLY important and she picked ME to be her student. She isn’t mentoring anyone else at school.”

“Twi–”

“If she doesn’t want to teach me anymore because you were mean to her, I’ll hate you forever!”

It was a stupid, hurtful thing to say. Twilight knew it and regretted her words the moment they passed her lips and her mother’s face crumpled.

“Twilight Sparkle,” said Celestia. “That’s enough.”

Twilight stared up at her. Celestia’s mane and tail flowed just as they always had, but at that moment there was something extra regal about her bearing. She was every inch the royal pony; a powerful alicorn whose magic was far more potent than anypony in Equestria, if not the whole world, truly knew. Under her scrutiny Twilight’s fury withered away.

“Princess, I-I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

Celestia shook her head, causing her mane to flutter above the mantelpiece and the selection of trophies and other commemorative items her mother had put there. “It is not me you should apologise to.”

Twilight looked at her mother. “But she was trying to make you not come to see me anymore. I couldn’t bear that, princess. I love our lessons.”

“As do I, but the fact remains that she is your mother and she has your best interests at heart. I may be princess, Twilight Sparkle, but I will not deny her wishes in this matter. She is your mother and I will not cause her distress to fulfil my own interests. Our lessons can resume when you are older and less …” She seemed to be searching for the right word, eventually settling on, “fragile.”

Twilight’s tail drooped. Misery made her tummy hurt. No more lessons with Celestia? It had only been a few months, but they had been the most wonderful months of her life. The idea of going back to the way things used to be before her exam brought them together was inconceivable. “Mom?” When her mother didn’t answer, her head drooped too. “Please?”

“It’s too dangerous, Twiley.” her mother said regretfully. “If anything were to happen to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ll be more careful in future, I promise. The thing with the fish-pony, it was my fault, not Princess Celestia’s. Please don’t do this. I’ll do better, I swear. I’ll study every day and make sure I’m perfect so nothing like today ever happens again.” She blinked. “Uh … what did happen today?”

“Apparently your special talent for magic is so strong that you heard the cry of the siren through its barrier,” Celestia explained. “When you spindled your own magic in your horn and touched it to my spell, you actually managed to cancel out a portion for a time and almost broke through the barrier. If I had not interrupted, you would have dispersed my magic entirely in that spot and the reality inside the Bubble would have merged with ours.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Do not apologise. You were under the siren’s spell and not acting rationally. I have to say that I was astonished at what you accomplished in such a short space of time. I’ve rarely seen a unicorn with so much raw talent–” Celestia glanced at Twilight’s mother and looked awkwardly away, as if her words hadn’t come out right. Her regal bearing wavered but did not crumble. She raised her head and fixed Twilight with a stern eye. “Talent that you should use in your school studies. You shall remain an academy student, Twilight Sparkle, and you will use your time there wisely.”

“But you won’t be coming to visit me?” Twilight asked in a small voice.

“No.”

“Don’t you like me anymore?”

Celestia blinked at her. “Oh, Twilight Sparkle,” she sighed. “You are a prodigy among ponies; so much so that I sometimes forget how young you actually are. Of course I like you. You are a very special little filly and you are destined for a great many special things.”

“Can’t you teach them to me?”

“I shall, when you are older. For now, there are other things you must learn.”

“Why can’t you teach them to me now?” Twilight’s question took on a whiny, nasal quality. She was a heartbeat away from stamping her hoof in a tantrum. She restrained herself in front of the princess, but frustration clogged her throat and made her eyes burn with hot, angry tears.

“Now you need to make some friends and become the pony you are meant to be, in safety.”

Twilight sniffed. “But I want to be with youuuuu–”

Her mother stepped forward. “I think it’s time for you to go, your majesty.”

“I think so too.” Celestia nodded at them and turned to leave. “I shall see myself out. Thank you, Twilight Velvet. Study hard, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Princess Celestia! Princess, wait!” Twilight broke from her mother’s restraining hoof to run after her. “Don’t go!”

“Twiley!” her mother yelped.

“Goodbye for now, Twilight Sparkle.” Celestia ducked her head under their low doorframe and closed the door behind her.

Twilight whirled on her mother. “How could you?” she demanded.

“Twiley–”

“You spoiled everything!”

Her mother stood a little taller. “Young lady, go to your room. You can stay there until you’ve calmed down,”

“Fine! I will!” She ran for the stairs, but paused at the bottom. Resentment burned inside her in a way it never had before. Just like her magic, it blazed up and she couldn’t control it once it reached the surface. “I wish Princess Celestia was my mom instead of you!”

She didn’t see her mother’s face as she ran upstairs and slammed her bedroom door.

Someone opened the door and closed it behind them. Twilight recognised her brother’s hoofbeats but didn’t turn over.

“Hey, Twiley.”

“Hmmf.”

“Aren’t you going to come down to dinner?”

“I’m not hungry.” Of course, her stomach chose that moment to growl. She shoved her hoof into her torso to make it stop. She was ravenous, but no way was she going downstairs.

“Well if you’re not hungry, I guess you won’t want this slice of carrot cake I brought up.”

She spun to see he was carrying a plate on one upturned hoof. On it was a slice of cake the size of her head. It made the fork sticking out of it look tiny in comparison. Shining Armour grinned at her wide-eyed wonder.

“Hey, if you don’t want it, can I eat it? I already had my share but I could manage another–”

“Give it here!” Twilight reached out greedily.

“Nu-uh.” He held it away from her. “Use your magic. Levitate it to yourself, and then you can have some.”

She frowned at him. “You know I’m not supposed to.” It was a school rule: no unauthorised use of magic outside school until you had at least an elementary certificate. It cut down on collateral damage and injuries to have students practise only on school grounds, where protective wards and charms prevented too much of either, or under the watchful eye of a teacher off-campus. The penalties for being caught breaking school rules severe unless you had a really good excuse – like taking extracurricular lessons from somepony other than an academy teacher.

“I won’t tell if you won’t.” It was such a Shining Armour thing to say. “I’ll even get you started. See?” His horn glowed and he deftly forked up a chunk of cake, which he brought to his mouth, all the while keeping his gaze on her.

Twilight puffed out her cheeks and concentrated. Her horn tingled as magic flowed into it. She tried to remember what she had been taught about winding the raw energy around her horn like a spinning wheel’s spindle and using only a thread from that instead of the full amount she had summoned. The forkful of cake spangled purple and turned in her direction, but turned back again when Shining Armour willed it.

“C’mon, is that all you got?” He actually took a bite of her cake and smacked his lips theatrically. “Yum yum.”

Twilight unspindled more magic and flung it around the fork like a lasso. She jerked it towards herself and then had to duck as it flew past and buried itself, prong-first, in the wall above her bed. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the point of impact. They both looked at the juddering cutlery in alarm.

“Wow,” said Shining Armour. “Mom and Dad are gonna kill you.”

Remembering the reason she was in her room at nowhere-close-to-bedtime, Twilight slumped down on her mattress and flung back her head. “So what?”

He gave her a funny look. “You’re still mad at Mom, huh?”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“She did what she thought was best, Twiley.”

“How is not letting me see my teacher ‘for the best’?”

“She’s just worried about you.”

“Well she shouldn’t be. I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah.” Shining Armour cast a meaningful look at the fork. “It shows. How close were you to being eaten alive today?”

“That was different.”

“No, Twiley, it wasn’t. Princess Celestia has all these wonderful plans for stuff she wants to teach and share with you, but Mom’s right. You’re trying to run before you can walk. You need to learn the stuff they teach you at school first; make friends with colts and fillies your own age and have some fun before you get bogged down in studying all the time.”

“I don’t want to make friends with the colts and fillies at school.” Twilight pulled the pillow over her head and shouted through it. “I want to have my lessons with Princess Celestia!”

“Man, Twiley, if the ponies at school hear you talking like that they’ll call you a nerd for sure. Not to mention they’ll get offended if you reject them right out of the gate without giving them a chance.”

“I don’t care if they think I’m a nerd. In fact, I hope they do think I’m a nerd. That way they’ll leave me alone so I can study in peace and ace every stupid test those stupid teachers come up with so they can’t make me do it again ten stupid times when I know I got it right on the first try.”

“That’s pretty short-sighted.”

“I don’t care.”

“That’s obvious.”

“Well I don’t!”

Her brother fell silent. After a while Twilight pulled the pillow away enough to peer at him. He wore a trouble expression and sighed as he sat down next to her bed.

“Twiley, you’ve got to be reasonable. Mom’s just looking out for you. Yeah, your feelings are hurt and you’re upset, but don’t get ths out of proportion. It’s not like you’ll NEVER see Princess Celestia again. Didn’t she say she’d be your tutor when you graduate?”

“But that’s YEARS away,” Twilight whined.

“So? It’ll be worth it when you get there. In the meantime, you have to make the best of your time at school and not cut off your nose to spite your face.”

She frowned. “What’s that mean?”

“It means don’t do something that’ll hurt you more than anypony else.”

Her frown deepened. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does if you think about it.”

“I am thinking about it. It still doesn’t make sense.”

He tutted. “Twiley, forget that part. Concentrate on having fun and enjoying school. Make the most of your time there.”

Twilight’s eyes narrowed. Thoughts that had been niggling around the edges of her mind like tadpoles started to form into a larger, more solid idea. It hopped into the centre of her mind and ribbeted insistently as she worked out what she was going to do. “Okay.”

Shining Armour blinked in surprise. “Okay?”

“Uh-huh.” She tucked the pillow back into place and sat up. “I’ll do that.”

“Cool!” He beamed. “You’ll see; school is best when you have friends to share it with. Heck, ANYTHING is better when you have friends.”

Yet Twilight shook her head. “Oh, no, I don’t mean that.”

“You don’t?” His happy expression faltered.

“Nope.” She tossed her mane, jumped off the bed and went over to her desk. When she passed the Academy entrance exam their father had proudly outfitted it with a reading lamp, a fiddly set of drawers for keeping stationary, an enchanted automatic quill-sharpener and an inkwell built into the corner. Twilight planted her rump and levitated her homework out of her saddlebags. “I’m going to make the most of my time at school.”

“Um … okay?” Shining Armour came and peered over her shoulder as she dipped her quill and started to write.

“I’m going to be the best student they’ve ever had, so that I can get into Canterlot University and Princess Celestia can be my teacher again.” She burned with this promise and the hope that lay at the end of it.

“Twiley, that’s not what I meant–”

“Thanks for the cake, but I have work to do.”

Shining Armour backed away, clearly disappointed, but just as clearly recognising the steel in his little sister’s voice. “What about Mom?”

“What about her?”

“She wants you to come downstairs.”

Resentment sizzled in Twilight’s belly. It hadn’t gone away. Instead, it had pushed itself into a perfectly formed niche inside her, where it would fester and grow for a long time. What could have been just a childish tantrum took shape into a grudge. Though she didn’t know it, if she went downstairs now she could have fought against it, but she was too consumed by the anger that her mother had presented her with a portal to wonderful things by letting her take the entrance exam and bringing Princess Celestia into her life, onto to snatch it away again and expect her not to care. She took a quick breath. “Tell her I’m studying.”

“Twiley–”

She stabbed the quill against the paper so hard it left a blot. Grunting in irritation, she had to put it back in the pot and levitate blotting paper from the roll on her windowsill, since she couldn’t yet levitate more than one thing at once with pinpoint accuracy. she promised herself that soon she would be able to do all that and more; she just had to study hard and devote herself to her magic.

She didn’t look up as Shining Armour opened the door, paused as if waiting for her to say something else, and then closed it behind him.

1. If You Go Down to the Woods Today ...

1. If You Go Down to the Woods Today …

Twinkle flipped back the covers and eased out of bed. Hooves and bare floorboards weren’t a good mix if you were sneaking around, so she had to go slowly and remember where the creaky bits were. She passed by her signed poster of Rainbow Dash, pushed open her door and snuck down to the kitchen.

“Sadie?”

Her whisper received no answering whine. Shafts of moonlight just missed the basket in the corner, so she had to get close to confirm her suspicions: it was still empty.

“Sadie.” Her head drooped. She had been hoping the dog would come home when it got dark.

It wasn’t fair! Mom and Dad had insisted she go to bed instead of sit by the window keeping watch, which was really mean of them. When she had said so, however, Mom had got that stern look she always did right before she got mad. Mom got mad a lot, usually when she had one of her headaches, but it was a quiet sort of mad. She never raised her voice or stomped around the cottage, but Twinkle could tell when she had done something wrong and scurried off to her room until Dad could calm everything down. She assumed Mom was mad this time because she had lost Sadie, so she had gone to bed, but stretched out restlessly beneath the covers.

Eventually Mom and Dad went to bed, but they didn’t come in to tell her Sadie was home and safe and everything was okay now. So, of course, when the clock struck three Twinkle had to go see for herself if the bowl of food had tempted her home.

It hadn’t. Tears welled in Twinkle’s eyes. Sadie had been with her for as long as she could remember. Life without her seemed impossible. Who would greet her with a big licky tongue when she got home from school? Who would chase the sticks she threw? Who would play hide and seek with her around Dad’s drum-kit? What would be the point in going for walks without a dog?

Mom and Dad didn’t seem to care. Twinkle screwed up her face, resentment rising inside her. When Mom got mad at her and she hid in her room off, Sadie was the only one who knew to check under the bed and would wiggle in beside her. When Twinkle pretended to be Rainbow Dash and jumped off the bed flapping her forelegs, Sadie always yipped encouragement and then bounced around until she picked herself up again. If Mom and Dad had their way, Sadie would stay lost forever and it would be Twinkle’s own stupid fault for not taking better care of her pet.

“No!” Twinkle whispered fiercely.

Opening the back door of the cottage without making a noise was harder than getting her bedroom door open. It creaked once you opened it past a certain point, so she had to squeeze through the gap. She nearly knocked over a trombone Dad had left in pieces on the floor, but stopped it with one hoof before it could crash into the tuba next to it. In the morning Mom would probably yell at him for making a mess and not clearing it up before bed. Twinkle left the door ajar so she could get back inside without waking anyone and get yelled at too.

Outside was sharp and cool for a midsummer night. She shivered, but didn’t falter as she set off into the woods where she had seen Sadie last.

She quickly found that searching by night was not as simple as she thought. All the determination in the world couldn’t make the path before her brighter. She wished she had a horn like a unicorn, so she could light her way. Familiar pathways became alien in the dark and everything around her took on a threatening appearance. Just like everypony else, she had heard about the adventures of the Elements of Harmony and how, when they were off defeating Nightmare Moon, the Element of Laughter had banished the shadows frightening her friends. Pinkie Pie had even come into school to talk to them about it. She was just an earth pony too. Twinkle wished she could be more like her or Rainbow Dash and less like a scaredy baby. Hearing about it and doing it herself, however, were two very different things.

She cleared her throat. “S … Sadie?” Her voice sounded tiny. She imagined Sadie, lost and alone, and called louder. “Sadie? Come here, girl. Sadie! Sadiiiie!”

Something flew up out of the branches overhead. Twinkle cowered, realising seconds later it was a flock of pigeons she had disturbed. Breathing a sigh of relief, she picked herself up and carried on. She was pretty sure this was the path she had taken with the dog. It was full of rabbits and things, which Sadie had bounded off to chase. She often went off on her own, but before now she had always came back before it was time to go home.

What if something awful had happened to her? What if she had got her leg caught in a rabbit hole, or fallen in a gully, or eaten something she shouldn’t? Terrible images flooded Twinkle’s mind, spurring her to shout louder and louder. The sound of her voice echoed off the trees, bringing life to the night quiet.

Something shot across the path in front of her. It was the right size and had a fluffy tail. Twinkle ran after it.

“Sadie, come back! Sadie! Please! It’s me, don’t be afraid. It’s only – whoa!” She skidded to a halt when the creature turned in a patch of moonlight, revealing a triangular face wreathed in fur the colour of rust. The fox eyed her balefully before skittering away into the dark.

Twinkle nearly sat down and cried right there. She had been so hopeful. She swivelled to return to the path, only to realise she had turned herself completely around. The way behind her was choked with undergrowth. Had she run through that? It didn’t look like it had been disturbed. Which way led back to the path, then? She turned several times, looking for something she recognised to guide her. Cold fear washed through her as she comprehended what she had done: she was lost. Great gulping sobs caught in her throat. Mom was going to be so mad; and worst of all, she still hadn’t found Sadie. She would have to wait until the sun came up to find her way home, or wait for somepony to come find her. Then she would be in trouble and probably be grounded, so she wouldn’t get to look for Sadie then either, and if Sadie didn’t come home tonight or tomorrow she would be hungry or maybe it meant something had happened –

Twigs snapped behind her. She whirled, but there was nothing there. “Hello? Is … is somepony there? Hello?”

“Hello,” mimicked a voice. “Hello! Hello! Hello!”

“Who is that?”

“Who is that?” it called back.

“I’m Twinkle.”

“I’m Twinkle,” it said in perfect imitation of her voice.

Twinkle paused. Parrots could do that, but they lived in jungles, not woods like these, right? “My name is Twinkle. I was looking for my dog and I got lost. Can you help me?”

“Lost!” it cried. “Lost! Lost! Lostlostlostlost!”

Something about the voice creeped her out. She started to back away but stopped when she got one hind hoof caught in brambles. She shook her leg, but they clung and their tiny thorns dug in painfully.

“Lostlostlostlostlostlostlostlost!” the voice continued to caterwaul. “Lostlostlostlostlostlostlostlost!”

“Stop it!” Twinkle cried. “That’s not funny.” She kicked and finally bucked until the brambles came loose. She stumbled forward, thrown off balance. Something wet and slimy plipped onto her back. She turned her face up and her mouth opened wide with horror.

“All lost,” said the creature crouched in the branches above her. It dropped like a cat on an unsuspecting mouse.

There was no scream. She didn’t have time. Seconds later all that was left of Twinkle or the creature was a swaying bramble vine stained with fresh blood.

2. The Calm Before the Storm

2. The Calm Before the Storm

Twilight concentrated so hard her eyeballs started to hurt. Slowly, like treacle dripping off a cold spoon, the air in front of her started to shimmer. She strained, leaning towards it until she realised she was about to topple over and righted herself. The air rippled the way deep water did after somepony threw in a pebble, radiating outwards from a central point that had her horn glowing bright purple.

“C’mon,” she muttered. “I know this is possible.”

The ripples sped up; she felt more than saw the tiny change. It galvanised her to push even harder, the tendons in her neck standing out as she balanced between using too much magic and too little. Too little and the experiment wouldn’t work at all; too much and she might accidentally wreck everything in her immediate area. At least, that was one possibility. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure what would happen if she used too much magic, but given the unknown nature of leylines, she wasn’t keen to find out. She had built up to using this much by a process of careful, consistent tests, always stopping before she went too far and noting her progress so she could go a little bit further next time.

Finally, when the air vibrated like a plucked cello string and her horn began to hurt in earnest, she gave up. Letting go of her hold on the line was easier than taking hold in the first place, and soon she sat on the grass, breathing hard but pleased with herself.

“How much was that?” Spike stood ready with a quill and paper.

“Sixteen units.”

“That’s four more than last time.”

She nodded. “What can I say? I was feeling daring. Rainbow Dash must be rubbing off on me.”

“I don’t think this is her sort of daring. She’s more into dangerous stunts with storm clouds and stuff like that.”

Twilight pouted just a little. Maybe her sort of daring wasn’t as entertaining as Rainbow Dash’s, but it was still pretty gutsy. “Investigating leylines is dangerous too.”

“Not if you do it right – which is why, if anypony was gonna do these experiments, I’m glad it’s you. You don’t get impatient and take stupid risks.”

“What would be the point? You can’t learn anything from being impatient.”

“Tell that to Rainbow Dash.” Spike scratched away at their notes, but looked up to give her a knowing look. “I don’t think she’d be very interested in this sort of thing. Sitting still isn’t really her specialty.”

“I guess not.” Twilight looked at the spot she had been working on. It looked perfectly normal now; not even a flicker to indicate the magical channel that ran there, invisible to the naked eye and impermeable to anyone who wasn’t specifically trying to access it. Her brows pulled together in a worried expression. “Do you think anypony other than me would find this interesting?”

“Princess Celestia?” Spike offered. “Or Princess Luna.”

“Other than them.” Celestia’s letter had been encouraging when Twilight wrote to tell her about her plans to map and then research the usability of leyline magic as a side-project to her regular studies. It stood to reason that her sister would be interested too, given all the other progress in magical research that had happened during her long absence. Luna sometimes wrote to Twilight asking questions about things that Twilight, as a student of the history of magical arts, was only too pleased to answer. Ever since Nightmare Night they had kept up a sporadic correspondence on things ranging from friendship to transubstantiation spells, although Luna had yet to take up Twilight’s offer to visit Ponyville again. “Do you think my work is … boring?”

“No!” Spike said emphatically, although he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t. You don’t, either, which is the most important thing, right?”

She smiled at his attempt to reassure her without admitting that her love of careful study and the paperwork that went with it was dull. “Right.”

Spike’s stomach rumbled. “But interesting as this is, could we break and go back to town for lunch now?”

Twilight got up and turned to look down on the town. This hillock was perfect for her needs and also offered a wonderful view of Ponyville and its inhabitants that reminded her why she was glad to have moved here, even if she had resisted it at first. “Deal.”

“Now are you gals are sure you’ll be all right?”

Rarity resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Honestly, Mother, you fuss too much. We’ll be perfectly fine.”

Her mother remained unconvinced. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Sure as sugar?”

“Mo-ther!”

“Humour me, honey.”

“Yes, Mother, I’m sure as sugar.”

“Sure as shadberries?”

“Sure as shadberries.”

“Sure as sheepdogs?”

“Sure as sheepdogs.”

“Sure as shuffleboard?”

“Mother! I’m sure we’ll be fine!” Rarity’s molars ground together. She loved her parents to pieces, honest she did, but the fact remained that they were a collection of quirks wrapped in tactlessness that she often found hard to stomach. Did her mother think she was still a little filly who enjoyed these kinds of word-games?

Sweetie Belle stepped in before her sister did something drastic. Their mother’s lower lip already looked wobbly. “We’ll have the bestest best time ever, Mom. You don’t need to worry about a thing. I love staying with Rarity!”

“You certainly camp out at her place often enough,” said their father. He turned to his wife. “C’mon, honeybunch, the train’s about to leave. If we don’t get on now, our luggage will get to your mother’s without us.”

“Bye, girls.” Their mother pulled each of them close to plant a wet kiss on the tips of their horns. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

The display of affection softened Rarity towards her mother’s annoying habits, even if it did leave spit on her horn. She showed great affection herself by not immediately summoning a hand kerchief to wipe it away. “Take care, Mother. You too, Father.”

He shook his head. “Mother? Father? When did plain old Mom and Dad get so unfashionable?”

“Bye, Daddy!” Sweetie Belle jumped around Rarity like Opal with a mousetrap on her tail. Excitement crackled like electricity around her. “Don’t worry about a thing. Give our love to Grandma!”

Their father’s smile turned watery. He and his mother-in-law had never quite seen eye-to-eye. “Will do, dumpling.”

“Daddy! I’m not a dumpling!”

“Sure thing, dumpling.”

Rarity breathed a sigh of relief as the train finally pulled away. Moving out and starting her own business had been hard, but she never regretted the decision. Standing up, she allowed Sweetie Belle to bounce around her once more. Then she descended the steps of the platform with all the grace and dignity she had cultivated since getting out from under her mother’s loving but tasteless influence.

“Hey, Rarity.”

“Yes, uh –” She looked around. Sweetie Belle had apparently not followed her off the platform. She turned to see her little sister standing pensively at the top. “Yes, Sweetie Belle?”

“This isn’t gonna be like the last time Mom and Daddy left me to stay with you, is it?”

“Why, whatever do you mean?” She feigned innocence, even though she knew precisely what Sweetie Belle was referring to.

“You’re not gonna go all mean because you’re stressed about your work, or yell at me, or pack me off to stay with some other pony while you sew, are you?”

“Of course not. I said we’d spend the week together, so spend the week together we shall.”

“Promise?”

“Well … I do have some work to do.”

Sweetie Belle’s face fell.

“But I can do that while you’re at school.”

“Oh!” She brightened. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Plus, I’m sure you’ll want to spend time with your friends as well.”

“I guess so.”

“Good.” Rarity nodded in the opposite direction. “Because they’re standing right over there and I think they want your attention.

“Really?” Sweetie Belle bounded down the steps so fast she nearly tumbled over herself.

Rarity steadied her and brushed dust off her white coat. Really, Sweetie Belle’s pastel colour scheme was striking when one thought about it. Not as beautiful as her own, of course, but then few ponies had such a fine balance between light and dark without going totally monochrome. When she grew up, Sweetie Belle had the potential to be a truly stunning mare.

“Just be home for dinner,” she said, tucking one pink curl behind her sister’s ear before releasing her. “And try not to get dirty. Or break anything expensive. Or get into trouble. Or cause chaos in the name of finding your cutie mark. Or –”

“Relax, Rarity.” Sweetie Belle gave her a smile as bright as the sun itself. “I’ll be fine.” She winked. “Sure as sugar.”

Rarity groaned. “Don’t start that again.”

“You worry too much. You’ll see; nothing bad is going to happen. This is going to be the bestest best week ever!”

“Cupcakes! So sweet and tasty! Cupcakes! Don’t be too hasty! Cupcakes! So sweet and tasty! Cupcakes! Don’t be too hasty! Cupcakes! So sweet and–”

Mr. Cake swiped a hoof across his brow, knocking his hat askew. “Pinkie Pie, you have a lovely voice, but do you mind singing a little softer? I’ve counted this bill three times because I keep getting it wrong.” He indicated the pair of ponies engaged in conversation on the shop floor. They clearly weren’t paying attention to him; hence his mistakes had gone unnoticed.

Pinkie Pie was unabashed. “Okey dokey lokey!” she warbled. “Sorry, Mr. Cake.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine, I guess I’m just getting old. I used to be able to add two sets of six digit numbers together in my head in a snap.” He tapped his front hooves together to indicate how quickly his maths skills used to be. “I think one too many sleepless nights with the twins is making me fuggier than I thought. It’s a good thing you were available to help out with this order. Thanks again, by the way.”

“No problem,” Pinkie beamed. “You and Mrs. Cake are my friends, so of course I always have time for you. Besides,” she giggled, “I get make cupcakes! With words on them! Can you believe it? Words on cupcakes! Like a book you can eat, only shorter and tastier. It’s ingenious!”

Mr. Cake smiled indulgently, although his gaze kept flicking back to the earth pony and unicorn whose money he had yet to take. The earth pony was an eyeball-scorching shade of orange, in complete contrast to her companion’s slate grey coat and black mane. His horn glowed as he levitated a pencil and notepad, furiously scribbling down everything she said.

“Hey, Mr. Cake?”

“Yes, Pinkie Pie?”

“I made a baker’s dozen on each batch, so I have loads left over.”

“That’s fine; if you haven’t written on them yet we’ll just put them in the display case for somepony else to buy.”

“Not this one.” Proudly she presented him with a perfectly decorated cupcake. The soft pink sponge had risen to just the right height inside the paper case and she had topped it with vanilla icing in an equally perfect swirl. Nobody in all of Ponyville could beat Pinkie Pie’s perfect cupcake skills. On top of this one, however, she had painstakingly spelled out a message in vermicelli pieces: MR. CAKE CAN REALLY BAKE!

Mr. Cake’s expression softened as much as the pat of butter he had mistakenly left out earlier. Pinkie had replaced it in the refrigerator before the summer sun shining through the shop window could turn it into a big drippy, gloopy, messy mess. Thanks to the big ovens in back, the shop was rarely cool despite the fans constantly being switched on.

“Pinkie Pie … this is really very sweet of you,” said Mr. Cake. “Usually I can’t stand to even look at sweet treats by the time I’ve closed the shop each day, but I can never resist your cupcakes.”

“I made one for Mrs. Cake and Pound and Pumpkin too,” Pinkie smiled. “For when they get home from playgroup. Did you get that thing sorted with the little blue unicorn and Pumpkin?”

Mr. Cake winced. He often did when recalling his prodigy twins and their escapades. “His mother was willing to forget the damages to the stroller if we gave her a complimentary birthday cake for her other son.”

“Damages?” Pinkie stuck out her tongue and blew a huge raspberry. “It was more than damages. Pumpkin totally mangled that thing when the other foal stole her toy. It was amazing!” She caught Mr. Cake’s expression and straightened. “Um, but bad. Really, really bad. And inappropriate. And wicked.” She dropped her forelegs into a crouch, wiggling her tail in the air with repressed glee. “But so totally amazingly awesomely cool to see!”

“Yes, well …” Mr. Cake trailed off as the two customers’ voices increased in volume. At least, the orange pony’s voice got louder. The grey pony kept on writing without looking up.

“This is taking forever. This cupcake idea, whose was it?”

The grey unicorn flipped back a few pages. “That would be Songbird, ma’am. She felt it would strengthen your image to have ponies associate you with something sweet.”

“I understand the thinking behind it, Grey Cloud,” the orange pony snapped. “Who’s Songbird?”

“PR unicorn.” At her blank expression the grey stallion went on, “Yellow coat, variegated green mane and tail, cutie mark of a, uh, songbird.”

She rolled her eyes. “Set up a meeting with her. If this goes well during door-to-door canvassing, I want her to come up with something similar for the next public debate. We need to show up the competition and really get my image front and centre.” She stamped a hoof for emphasis.

The grey unicorn nodded and scribbled. “Right away, ma’am.”

“What is TAKING so long? They’re just CUPCAKES, for pity’s sake. How hard can it be to get them ready before everypony dies of old age?” She sighed and came towards the counter. With each step her scowl melted away and an innocent smile took its place. It was about as real as Pinkie Pie’s chicken wings had been on Nightmare Night. “Hi there. Are my cupcakes ready yet? My secretary called in the order quite a while ago.”

“He did indeed, ma’am,” agreed Mr. Cake. “But it was a pretty big order on pretty short notice and, as you can see, we’re running on a skeleton staff today.”

“Silly!” Pinkie called from her work station. “Skeletons can’t run! If they did I’d be all ‘aaaah, a skeleton!’ and they’d be all ‘ooga-booga, I’m a skeleton’ and I’d be all ‘hey, how are you moving when you don’t have any muscles or anything?’ and they’d be all–”

“So it’ll be done soon?” the orange pony interrupted, pointedly not looking in Pinkie’s direction.

Pinkie jutted her lower lip. “Rude much? Oh well. Cupcakes! So sweet and tasty! Cupcakes! Don’t be too hasty – whoops! Sorry.” She continued in a whisper: “Cupcakes! So sweet and tasty! Cupcakes! Don’t be too hasty!”

“Real soon, ma’am,” promised Mr. Cake. “Baked and boxed and beautiful, just like the sign says.” He gestured to a rectangle of card on which the slogan had been lovingly hoof-written by Mrs. Cake. Earth ponies weren’t skilful at writing, so it had taken her several laborious hours to get the calligraphy just right.

The orange mare barely glanced at the sign. “I’m handing them out to ponies, you see, so each one needs to be perfect. You did spell my name right, didn’t you?”

“I have your note right here!” Pinkie waved aloft the paper. “‘Vote for Foxhound’, right?”

The orange pony turned a shade lighter. “FoxGLOVE! Vote for FoxGLOVE!”

“Oops. I guess I’ll have to start all these over again.” Pinkie winked melodramatically at the trio of aghast faces. “Kidding! Man, did the heat melt your sense of humour or something?”

Mr. Cake breathed an audible sigh of relief. The order had consisted of nearly a hundred cupcakes in boxes of twelve, each box comprising a different combination of sponge, icing and writing method. Personally, Pinkie thought the strawberry sponge with raspberry icing and pink sugar strand words was best, but she had done her darndest to make all the other combinations perfect too. She had even mixed up a special batch of orange sponge and citrus icing, even though the balance of sweet to sour was really difficult to pull off, and had spelled out the orange pony’s message in slivers of candied orange peel.

She bounced over and presented both customers with spares destined for her friends and neighbours. Mr. and Mrs. Cake always let her take home surplus stock they couldn’t sell, and since the message was so specific they wouldn’t be able to just plonk these in the display cabinet.

“Here you go,” she trilled. “Complimentary samples. Orange for you, Miss Foxglove, and white for you, Mr. Grey Cloud.”

“Uh, thank you,” he muttered, accepting it like it was one of Pound’s nasty diapers.

“I had to give you white icing instead of grey to match your coat,” Pinkie explained. “I tried to make grey icing once and it turned out so totally yuck-a-roony that not even I wanted to eat it – and that’s really saying something because I really, really, REALLY like cupcakes. I even invented a special breakfast cupcake so ponies who like cupcakes as much as me can eat them in the morning as well as any other time of the day. It’s always a good time to eat cupcakes, I always say. Don’t I always say that? Mr. Cake?”

The orange pony looked meaningfully at him too. “Is she always like this?”

“Like what?” Pinkie stepped between them and rested her elbows on the countertop. Her front hooves were still smeared with different coloured icing, which got on her face as she rested her chin on them and leaned forward. “Smiling and happy? Because if that was what you were asking, then yes! Hey, how come you want ponies to vote for you? Is it a beauty pageant? My friend Rarity was talking about one for the Midsummer Fete – are you entering?” She gasped and jiggled from hoof to hoof. “Ooh! Ooh! You two should totally meet if you are! She’d love to come up with an outfit for a colour like yours! And she could make your mane really, really, REALLY pretty! She’s always trying to convince me to let her brush my mane, but I can never keep still long enough, and besides, my hair tends to eat hairbrushes and stuff like that. I once lost three pairs of scissors when I was trying to cut gum out of it!”

“Eh-heh.” The orange pony backed away, cupcake in one hoof, the other foreleg wrapped protectively around her long brown mane like she was frightened Pinkie would magically summon the lost scissors and vault the counter to use them on her. “We’ll come back in about an hour. Will the order be ready by then?”

“Oh sure,” Pinkie replied before Mr. Cake could. “Baked and boxed and beautiful. You should go and visit Rarity at the Carousel Boutique in the meantime. You–” She stopped when the shop doorbell tinkled, signalling the two ponies’ departure. “Rude much times two?”

“Uh, Pinkie?”

“Yes, Mr. Cake?”

He looked down into her shining, eager face and sighed. “Nothing. We’d better get this order filled out.”

“Wrong! I’ll get the order filled; you get the bill sorted, remember?”

“Oh. Yes. Of course.”

Pinkie blew a lock of wild pink mane from her face. “Baby brain. Honestly, Mr. Cake, what would you do without me around to look after you?”

3. Filly Missing

3. Filly Missing

‘VOTE FOXGLOVE FOR MAYOR!’ blared the placard.

Twilight stared at it and tilted her head to one side. Even sideways on, the image of an orange pony kissing a foal looked cheesy. Maybe it was because Canterlot didn’t have a mayor and so she had never encountered a mayoral race before, but the campaigns in Ponyville were getting underway and she was intrigued by the whole process.

On her back, Spike stuck out his tongue. “Another one?”

“Now Spike, everypony is entitled to their own opinion.”

“Yeah, but … seriously? That’s like the tenth sign we’ve seen. Do all ponies have to put one of those in their yard?” He glanced down the street, where several houses had peppered themselves with placards, posters and banners. Some praised the current Mayor, while others proclaimed her opponent the better candidate. “Do we?”

“I think it’s a personal choice.”

“Can we choose to ignore the whole thing and go get lunch?” He leaned forward so she could better see his pleading expression.

Twilight laughed and trotted on, leaving behind town politics in favour of a full tummy. After several days of hard study, she and Spike deserved a treat. Owlowiscious had opted for a good day’s rest after a meal caught for himself in the early hours of the morning. Given what he preferred to eat, she figured he wouldn’t mind them going without him.

The café was packed. She and Spike squeezed onto a table in the corner when another pair of ponies left. There was the traditional exchange of gems versus pastries before they told the waiter what they wanted. He struggled back to the kitchen with his order pad and they settled in for what would probably be a long wait, given the number of ponies to be served before them.

Spike yawned, covering his mouth a little too late. A tiny burp escaped his throat. “Whoops. ‘Scuse me.”

“You’re excused.” Twilight pulled her notebook, quill and transportable-ink from her satchel with her magic and flipped to the last page she had written on. Removing the extra-tight lid from the ink, she began to scribble what looked like algebra. Spike watched her and couldn’t help groaning.

“More work? Seriously?”

“I had an idea,” she said by way of explanation and apology. “If I didn’t write it down, I might have forgotten it.”

He sighed. “What idea?”

Her eyes brightened. She loved talking shop and Spike was one of the few creatures in Ponyville who could understand her when she got going on her favourite subjects. Sometimes even he had a hard time keeping up when her brain really took hold of an idea, but at least she didn’t have to simplify herself too much, or keep explaining the basics the way she often had to with her friends. She frequently worried she was boring them when she waxed lyrical about magical theory, so she didn’t do it very often. It would have been like the time Rarity tried to explain the intricacies of advanced needlework, or when Applejack tried to show her some of the more technical aspects of working on a farm. Twilight understood up a point, but beyond that it was all nodding, smiling and hoping she didn’t get quizzed at the end. She didn’t want to offend her friends by admitting she couldn’t maintain the same loving interest they could in their activities and was acutely aware she might be causing the same reaction in them when it came to magic.

“Well,” she said, rotating the notebook to show Spike the hastily drawn diagram. “It’s about leylines and their possible application as diametric pathways if we can overcome the problem of fluctuating magical fields on either end of the line – the exploding apple test being a primes example of how NOT to do it.”

“Um …”

“Come on, Spike, I explained this to you just yesterday.”

“Was this when I was reshelving the almanacs or writing a list of all the overdue library books you need to collect?”

“Neither; it was when you were making dinner.”

“Oh. Then, um, I probably wasn’t concentrating very well. I was using some pretty sharp knives, after all.”

Twilight leaned forward to explain once again. “Ponies trying to transport things down the lines usually test their theories with an apple, but it explodes when it gets to the other end, so they can’t even think about sending a pony until they can get an apple safely through them first. They’ve always used well-known entry points to the lines and I’m wondering whether this is the problem. It’s like water rushing out of the mouth of a river – great for when you need to use it to generate some raw power, like a water wheel, but too powerful to harness properly for delicate things. My experiments are partly to see whether breaking into the lines at a midpoint would make travelling along them possible without becoming, well, applesauce at the other end.”

“Did somepony say applesauce?”

As if on cue, a familiar face nosed through the crowd to their table.

“Applejack, hi!” Twilight self-consciously shut the notebook and replaced both it and her writing equipment in her satchel. She nodded at the third unused chair beside them. “Take a seat.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Applejack let out a whoosh of air as she all but collapsed into it. She lifted off her hat and wafted her face with it, revealing a mass of sweaty blonde tangles that would have given Rarity apoplexy. “I’m pooped.”

“Busy day?”

“You might say that. We got a grickle infestation in the hayloft. I spent the whole day gatherin’ up the brutes an’ takin’ ‘em off someplace else to let go. Can’t have those critters makin’ Sweet Apple Acres their nestin’ spot or we’d never be rid of ‘em.”

“Uh, what are grickles?” Twilight felt her face flush at her own ignorance.

Applejack hovered her hoof a few inches off the tabletop. “Lizard-birds about yea tall. Meaner than rattle-snakes and twice as territorial. Fast, too. You gotta wear special protective gear if you're gonna round ‘em up, an’ in this here heat that ain’t no joke. Darn stuff must weight a hundred pounds an’ I still got scratched. Now I’m sore an’ drier than a cactus in the desert.”

“Actually,” Twilight couldn’t help correcting, “cacti are full of water. If you were in the desert, puncturing a cactus would be the best way to keep hydrated.”

Instead of being annoyed, Applejack smiled. “Gosh darn it, if you don’t know everythin’. I’ll remember that next time I go visit Braeburn. Say, you wouldn’t mind if I swipe some of your drink when it arrives, would you? You did order a drink, right?”

Twilight nodded. “By all means, help yourself.”

“I’m mighty grateful, sugarcube. Whoo-wee, this heat is sumthin’ else, don’t you think?”

“It certainly is hot.”

“I joked to Big Macintosh that we should try fryin’ eggs on the metal of the plough, right before those grickles took our attention. Not that you’d know it’s so hot from the way Apple Bloom keeps runnin’ around. She makes me tired just watchin’ her. Always getting’ into some scrape or other.” She shook her head.

“Weren’t you like that when you were her age?” Spike asked, pulling one of the sugar sachets from the bowl in the centre of the table and tearing it open. He emptied the brown granules into the centre of his palm. Then he licked a claw on his other hand, dabbed the sugar and slurped off whatever stuck.

“Spike!” Twilight cried. “That’s revolting!”

Applejack, however, laughed at the question. “Are you kiddin’? I was worse. I had Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie as friends, remember? Apple Bloom, Scootaloo an’ Sweetie-Belle have got a long way to go before they match even half of our escapades.”

Twilight’s ears twitched. Her friends rarely talked about their foalhood, excepting times they had learned lessons they wished to pass on, or were talking about how they got their cutie marks. “What kind of escapades? And Spike, quit that; it’s unhygienic.”

“But I’m hungry!” Spike said plaintively, voice bordering on a whine.

“You’ll make your fangs rot and drop out if you eat too much sugar,” she warned. “You know I always have to remind you about brushing them before bed.”

He folded his arms and slumped back in his seat. “Spoilsport.”

“I just bought you two whole pastries! Grande sized!”

“Well … yeah,” he conceded. “Thanks, but still, they’re not here and my belly is.” It rumbled loudly. “See?”

“Sounds to me like someone else has been workin’ hard today.” Applejack glanced between the two of them. “Is this why I haven’t seen y’all since Thursday?”

“Twilight’s been working on a research paper,” said Spike.

“Oh?” Applejack looked at her expectantly.

Twilight drew small circles on the table with the tip of her hoof. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just some stuff. Magical stuff. Boring stuff. Y’know how it is.”

“How do you know I’d find it borin’? What sorta magical stuff?”

“Leylines,” Spike replied.

“Say what?”

“Mystical channels of magical power.”

Applejack blinked at him and then looked at Twilight. “Nope, grickles must’ve run off with my brain. I’m gonna need more than that, I’m afraid.”

“They’re lines of natural energy that run across the land,” Twilight said diffidently. “Usually they connect powerful magically-charged places to other similarly empowered places, but there are offshoots and subsidiary lines too. It’s like a big invisible river system of wild magic, with streams and brooks and stuff like that too. Nopony is quite sure how many there are or where they all are, so I was trying to pull together all the evidence on record in the library into one single document so we know where the information gaps are that need to be filled.”

“Sounds like a mighty tough task.”

“It is,” Spike agreed. “It’s been her pet project all month. She’s even been doing experiments.”

“Experiments?” Applejack echoed.

“Just a few little ones,” Twilight demurred. “I haven’t tried transporting anything yet. I just … tried to access the lines and make the energy a bit more visible, like when the dentist makes you chew those tablets to make all the plaque on your teeth turn purple so they can prove you’ve not been brushing properly.”

Applejack pulled a face. “Dentists do that kinda thing?”

“In Canterlot they did.”

“Sounds a mite cruel to me.”

Their conversation was precluded by the arrival of the waiter with their order. His unicorn horn glowed with the effort of transporting two plates piled high with food, plus two tall brimming glasses. He was less than pleased when Twilight asked for a third drink and pastry.

“Here you go,” she said, pushing the two plates towards Spike and Applejack. “You’ve earned it.”

“Thanks, Twilight!” Spike tucked in. “You’re the best!” he added through a spray of crumbs.

Applejack frowned slightly. “That’s real kind of you, sugarcube, but I can’t eat what was meant to be yours.”

“It’s fine. You deserve it after a day like you described.” Twilight pushed her own two strudels even further towards her friend, so she could inhale the sweet scent and be tempted. “You can take the second back for Big Macintosh.”

“I guess he’d like that,” Applejack admitted reluctantly. “It was his idea I come into town to cool off; said I looked fit to burst after stressin’ so much. I tried to make him come with me, but he said he’d rather stay put an’ keep watch for any grickles who tried to come back.” She let out a long breath. “He works too hard.”

“So says the pony who once bucked herself into medical exhaustion,” Twilight pointed out.

“Point taken.” Applejack smiled. “Thanks, Twilight. Hey, are these apple strudels?”

“Yes.”

“Ha! Betcha I bucked the ones this here fine eatin’ is made from.” She lifted the pastry and opened her mouth to take a big bite.

She never got the chance, however. At that moment, a ripple went through the crowd in the café. Almost as one, everypony turned towards the door and the susurrus of murmuring rose to worried chatter. A few took steps towards the exit, but most stayed put. Bobbing heads and concerned expressions made both Twilight and Applejack pay attention.

“What’s going on?” The changed atmosphere made the base of Twilight’s mane prickle with unease. It was nothing big, but it was enough to make her get to her feet and ask the nearest pony.

“I’m not sure,” the stallion replied. “Something about a missing filly?”

Twilight frowned. “Who?”

“I’m not sure. Apparently it’s all going down outside.”

Applejack appeared at Twilight’s shoulder. “Reckon we oughta get involved?”

“If somepony’s gone missing, everypony should get involved,” Twilight replied.

“Thought you might say that. C’mon.” Applejack nosed her way through, apologising but not stopping or slowing her pace as she came up against unmoving ponies who were content to stand and gossip rather than do anything constructive.

“Spike?” Twilight swivelled her head back to their table, where Spike was morosely staring at his second pastry. It was a pain-au-chocolat nearly as big as his head, leaking warm chocolate sauce from its sides. “Are you coming?”

He sighed and abandoned it to clamber onto her back. “Sure.”

The street wasn’t quite bedlam, but it was getting there. In the middle of the chaos two white ponies cantered to and fro, stopping random passers-by with increasing desperation. The stallion kept planting both front hooves down with such force it was a wonder he hadn’t cracked the cobblestones, while the mare swished her cyan tail and pawed the ground in nervous agitation.

“Have you seen Twinkle?” she asked one pony.

“Our daughter, a filly about this big,” he added, holding a hoof not very far off the ground to indicate height.

“A white coat like ours –”

“– Yellow mane and tail –”

“– Blue eyes –”

“Have you seen her?”

The pony they had stopped shook her head, eyes darting between their faces with a mixture of pity and alarm. They were an intimidating pair. “No. I’m sorry, I haven’t?”

Without a word the white ponies ran to another pony, and then another, and then another, each time asking the same questions.

“Have you seen Twinkle?”

“Have you seen her?”

“Have you seen our baby?”

Applejack pushed through the crowd with a small huff of exertion. She took in the scene and advanced without hesitation, Twilight and Spike only a few seconds behind her. The ponies gathered at the café door murmured behind them, but no-one else followed their lead.

“Hold on there, sir.” Applejack stepped into the stallion’s path. “Did I hear you say your daughter’s missin’?”

He barely glanced at her, but nodded frantically, yellow mane bouncing with the agitated movement. His gaze locked over her shoulder on the crowd. It was clear he wanted to go and question them too, but Applejack moved her head into his line of sight so he was forced to meet her eyes. She used a polite but firm tone, claiming more of his attention.

“Yes,” he replied.

“A filly by the name of Twinkle?” Applejack pressed.

“Yes.” More frantic nodding.

“Where did you see her last?” She was operating on the assumption that their daughter had come with them on a shopping trip and wandered away. It wouldn’t have been the first time a little one scared their parents half to death that way. When Apple Bloom was just a foal Big Macintosh had taken both his sisters to Ponyville’s annual Summer Fair. He had treated them to a stick of candyfloss each, but Apple Bloom had moseyed behind the candyfloss stand in search of more and left Applejack and Big Macintosh apoplectic with terror until the vendor plunked a fluffy pink giggling bundle on the counter and asked them if it was theirs. This situation was probably something similar, Applejack reasoned, already thinking about which stores were closest and which ponies ran them.

The stallion’s reply, however, knocked that idea right out of her head.

“She went out looking for our dog last night and never came back.”

The mare came to stand beside him. “Sadie ran off while they were out yesterday. When we woke up this morning the back door was open. Twinkle must have gone after her. We went looking, of course, but we couldn’t find any sign of either of them.”

Applejack’s heart sank. This was more serious than she had thought. “Whereabouts did y’all look?”

“We live right on the edge of town.” The stallion gestured behind him. “She could have left town completely or come this way.”

“We already checked around our house,” the mare added. “But we couldn’t find them, so we came here instead.”

Privately Applejack thought grabbing random ponies off the street wasn’t the best way to find a missing filly, but they were obviously almost hysterical with worry. That kind of emotion made ponies irrational. She nodded, hoping she looked confident and trustworthy.

“All righty then; we’ll help y’all look for her.”

Twilight edged forward, nodding her agreement. “Um, excuse me, but what are your names?” She had that apologetic tone she sometimes fell into when she thought she was overstepping some bounds to which only she knew the limits. It amazed Applejack that a pony as intelligent and powerful as Twilight could act so shy and unsure of herself.

The stallion focussed on Twilight as if seeing her for the first time. Maybe he was. When Applejack was searching for Apple Bloom she hadn’t seen much except the empty space where her little sister should have been. “Uh, Metronome,” he replied. “And this is my wife, Glimmer. Are you … you’re Twilight Sparkle, aren’t you?”

“Uh, yes, I am.” Twilight sounded even more apologetic.

“You can use all sorts of magic, right?” His blue eyes glittered like sunlight on seawater, if seawater could look manic. “You can use your magic to look for Twinkle!”

“Uh …” Twilight hesitated. “It’s … not that simple, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?” the mare, now identified as Glimmer, demanded. She took a step towards Twilight, leaning her neck forward almost as if she was about to charge her. “What good is your magic if you can’t use it for something useful?”

Twilight’s ears flicked back and her shoulders hunched. She took a step away.

Applejack decided to intervene before her friend could be cowed anyone. “Ma’am, you have my solemn oath we’ll do everythin’ we can to try to find your daughter.”

Glimmer’s gaze shifted to her. Applejack had never seen such pale eyes before. The irises looked like someone had washed the colour right out of them, leaving only a vestige of pink that almost disappeared depending on how she held her head. The effect was unnerving when coupled with her white mane, white coat and wide-eyed, unshakeable stare.

“Everything?”

Applejack nodded. “Everythin’. Y’all have my word.”

Glimmer narrowed her strange eyes, as if she didn’t quite believe her. It took Applejack several seconds to realise the other pony was watching her mouth as she spoke and narrowing her eyes to concentrate. She broke her gaze only when her husband nosed her side.

“Honey?”

“Okay,” she agreed. “But I want to keep looking too. We have to find her! She’s probably frightened and hungry and –”

“Don’t think like that. We have help now. We’ll find her; don’t you worry.”

“How can I not be worried?” Glimmer started to cry. “She’s barely old enough to have her cutie mark! How can I not worry that I don’t know where she is or what’s happened to her?”

Applejack wasn’t good with crying. She glanced at Twilight, before loosing a breath and going for her tried and true method of dealing with crises: calm determination. “Ma’am, don’t you worry. We’ll find her. Won’t we, Twilight?”

“Yes.” Twilight clearly sensed this was not the time to let brutal truthfulness intrude on reassurances. The truth was that they couldn’t guarantee they would find the missing filly; but that wouldn’t be helpful right now. “If you’ll just talk us through what you did and where you went when you discovered her note …”

4. Filly Found

4. Filly Found

Apple Bloom pressed her forelegs down and straightened her hind legs as much as possible, wiggling her tail in the air.

“Ready?” Scootaloo called.

“Ready!” she replied.

Sweetie Belle looked from one to the other with a worried expression. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Sure I’m sure.” Apple Bloom straightened a little to lean her head over the edge of the flooring that extended just beyond the clubhouse walls. “Applejack an’ Rainbow Dash do this all the time.”

“From that high up?”

“Uh, sure.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“Helloooo!” Scootaloo waved her forelegs in the air to get their attention. “She’s wearing my spare helmet, isn’t she? It’s fine; she’s safe. We’re burning daylight here.”

“There’s enough to burn,” Sweetie Belle remarked as she picked up the fan she had made from a sheet of folded card and wafted herself. The edge was embossed with silvery writing that the folds obscured, but those who knew Rarity’s logo would have recognised one of her flyers. It was testament to the heat that Sweetie Belle had surrendered and used one of her sister’s adverts to keep herself cool. “How the heck are you two so full of energy on a day like this?”

“We’re powered by dreams of tomorrow!” Scootaloo pumped one hoof in the air. “Yeah!”

“Yeah!” Apple Bloom copied the move. She dropped to her ready stance and wiggled her tail in readiness.

“Three!” Scootaloo intoned.

“Two!” Apple Bloom yelled.

“One!”

“Geronimo!”

She pushed off with her powerful hind legs and leapt into empty space. Below, she caught sight of Sweetie Belle dropping the paper fan to cover her face, but she only had a millisecond before aiming for the empty end of the seesaw took up her whole attention. She brought all four hooves in close under her body as she had seen Applejack do many times. Even though she bent her joints for impact, the landing jolted through her entire body and made every scrap of breath shoot up and out through her mouth and nose. An unsightly bit of spittle shot out, but she barely noticed. She was too taken with the sight of Scootaloo rocketing up and over her head.

“Use your wings! Use your wings!” she shouted.

“I’m trying! I’m trying!” Scootaloo yelped back. Her orange feathers were a blur as she buzzed the same way she did when powering along on her scooter. It was clear before she reached the apex of her jump that this wasn’t going to work.

“Slower!” Apple Bloom called. “Flap slower!”

No dice. Scootaloo just couldn’t help herself. Even as she began her descent, she flapped furiously, but to no avail. She crash landed in the pile of cushions they had dragged outside for the experiment. The flapping did slow her so she didn’t break any bones, but she still rolled end over end and came to rest upside-down against the tree trunk.

“Phoo!” She spat out a mouthful of her own tail and scowled in frustration. “Not even close.”

“I don’t know.” Sweetie Belle trotted over and offered a hoof to help her up. “I think you got higher that time.”

“Higher isn’t any good if it only lasts a few seconds.” Scootaloo brushed herself off and removed her helmet. She stared at it for a moment, as if it held the answers to all her questions. When it refused to give them up – out of spite or a lack of mouth – she tucked it under one foreleg and made her way back to the seesaw. “Thanks anyway, Apple Bloom.”

“We could try again,” Apple Bloom suggested. “This time I could carry sumthin’ real heavy to get you some great lift.”

“The problem isn’t how heavy you are,” said Scootaloo. “It’s me.”

“You could, uh, try flappin’ those wings a mite slower?” Apple Bloom was aware she was an earth pony giving flying advice to a pegasus and the total irony of that. Even so, Scootaloo’s continued inability to fly was her biggest bugbear after not having her cutie mark. Since she lived in Ponyville she didn’t really get on with the other pegasi fillies in Cloudsdale – it was difficult to make play-dates with ponies who thought storm-ball was the best game in the world and laughed at anypony who couldn’t dodge a lightning bolt to sink a basket. The Cutie Mark Crusaders were dedicated to helping each other discover their special talents, so it was only natural they would want to help each other in other things, too.

Scootaloo winced. “You reckon?”

“Might help.”

She flapped experimentally. “Flapping hard always helps me go faster on my scooter.”

“Yeah, but then you’re goin’ sideways.” Apple Bloom moved her hoof in a straight line from left to right. “Horizontal, right? Vertical’s gotta be different.”

“Not to mention diagonal,” added Sweetie Belle. “Once you get into the air you don’t just go up and down or left and right, right?”

“Right,” Scootaloo nodded.

“Rainbow Dash goes all over the place.”

“Right.” Scootaloo puffed out her chest. As if mentioning her idol’s name was some sort of magic spell, she jammed her helmet back on. “Apple Bloom, what’s the heaviest thing we’ve got in the clubhouse that you can use to weigh yourself down?”

“I’m sorry, Scootaloo.”

“It’s okay.” Scootaloo winced as she tried to put her hoof down. “It’s not your fault.”

“I jumped on the other end of the teeter-totter holdin’ a bag of rocks. That kinda defines ‘my fault’.”

“I asked you to do it.” She tried again. Pain shot up her leg and seemed to burrow into her shoulder. “Owie …”

Sweetie Belle leaned in to sniff experimentally, like she was some kind of doctor instead of a filly who had run around in circles shrieking when Scootaloo cannoned headfirst into a tree and knocked herself out since she had been unconscious when she fell to earth she didn’t know how bad the fall had been, but both Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom assured her it was a nasty one. The gigantic cut on her leg and variously other bruises agreed with them

“Would you like some more bandages?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Uh, no, I’m good.”

She had bound them so tightly the first time Scootaloo hadn’t been able to bend her leg at all and Sweetie Belle had been forced to unwrap the cut again and rebind it. Apple Bloom probably knew more about first aid from working around heavy machinery on the farm, but Sweetie Belle had produced a pair of scissors and cut their clubhouse curtains into strips to use as bandages, so she was in charge of triage. Unfortunately none of her help was making Scootaloo feel any less rotten.

Apple Bloom tilted her head to one side, scrutinising. “You don’t look good. Not one bit. I reckon we oughta get you checked out by some sorta medical pony.”

“Nice.” Scootaloo’s shoulders sank. “Let’s broadcast my embarrassment to the whole of Ponyville: Scootaloo, the fearless filly who took on a tree and lost.”

“Hey, trees are tough. I should know. Every time I try to buck one that’s too big for me I darn near break my legs.”

The information was cold comfort. Nevertheless, Scootaloo couldn’t deny she still felt woozy. Her helmet had protected her skull from breaking, but hitting it from the inside had left a bump the size of a duck egg on her head.

“Can you walk, Scootaloo?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Sure I can walk.” She tried to prove it, but stumbled after a few steps. “That doesn’t count! The ground’s all bumpy.”

Apple Bloom looked down. “This here ground’s smoother than polished glass.”

“We should definitely get you checked out,” said Sweetie Belle. “C’mon, we’d better head back to town.”

“Uh, question?” Apple Bloom raised her hoof as if she was still in class. “How is Scootaloo supposed to get back to town? She can’t walk with that leg and I wouldn’t trust her to go in a straight line on her scooter.”

“We can hook up the wagon and she can ride in it while we take turns on the scooter,” Sweetie Belle replied, not bothering to ask whether this was okay first.

Scootaloo bristled out of habit. Nopony could touch her scooter but her! Then she grabbed hold of her temper and wrestled in back into place. She had no right to get mad. This wasn’t like at home; she could trust Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom not to wreck her precious scooter for kicks and giggles. She was more than a little protective of it, but reminded herself that they had shared all sorts of things with her since they became friends. Apple Bloom had even shared her brother when they tried to find Cheerilee a sweetheart!

Sweetie Belle Dashed off to fetch the wagon and dragged it back in double-quick time. Her eagerness to try out the scooter was almost palpable. She had never been permitted to ride as more than a passenger before and watching Scootaloo whizz about had obviously cultivated a longing she had never voiced. Scootaloo settled into the wagon alongside Apple Bloom and told herself this eagerness meant Sweetie Belle would be extra specially careful with it.

“Be extra specially careful with it,” she couldn’t help saying anyway.

Sweetie Belle balanced her front hooves on the handlebars and pushed tentatively against the ground with one hind hoof. “I will. Are you both ready?”

“Yup,” Apple Bloom answered.

“Uh, yeah,” Scootaloo replied with less enthusiasm.

Sweetie Belle shoved off. They moved three inches. She shoved again. Five inches this time. “You guys are heavy.”

“Are not!” Apple Bloom protested.

“You’re not doing it right,” said Scootaloo. “You don’t stamp the ground; you push against it so you send the scooter forward. Here, let me –”

“No way!” Apple Bloom pushed her gently back, looking and sounding a lot like her sister in that moment. “You just sit back an’ relax; we’ll do all the hard work. We’ll be back in Ponyville in no time.”

Scootaloo made a noise caught somewhere between agreement and aggression as Sweetie Belle tried twice more and they made little progress. While the scooter and wagon did move, their momentum was sluggish. She was panting before they had even passed the treeline.

“This is … harder than it … looks,” she said between pushes.

“You want me to try?” offered Apple Bloom.

“Not yet. I can do it.”

Five pushes later she conceded the point and they switched places. Sweetie Belle panted and fanned herself as Apple Bloom’s strong, farm-strengthened legs shoved them forward at a much faster clip. She had more stamina too and quickly figured out how to get the maximum movement from each push.

“This is fun!” she declared. “Lookit how fast I can make us go!”

“Not as fast as me,” Scootaloo muttered.

“What?” Apple Bloom looked over her shoulder. “Did you say sumthin’?”

“Nope.” Scootaloo shook her head. “Just watch out for sticky-uppy tree roots. Last time I went over one of them too fast I had to stick three wheels back on and got covered in oil. I had to take a bath.” She stuck out her tongue. Bathwater and feathers did not get along.

“Will do! Whee!” Apple Bloom gave an especially powerful shove and threw back her head, ribbon fluttering in the breeze. “I can see why you like this thing so much, Scootaloo.”

The speed wasn’t the only reason, but Scootaloo didn’t feel like sharing the others. Some other time she might have told her friends that riding her scooter was like flying close to the ground, or that she loved it especially because Rainbow Dash had given it to her. The other fillies and colts had been picking on her even more than usual, but the blow was softened when they all went to watch a special acrobatics display performed by Rainbow Dash and several handpicked pegasi in the park. The pegasi had bitten down on canisters of coloured gas and made vapour trails in the shape of words and pictures across the sky. It was the single greatest thing Scootaloo had ever seen, eclipsed only when Rainbow Dash herself brought down a cloud and they bucked out synchronised lightning bolts for her to dodge.

Afterwards, Scootaloo had waited in line to get a picture taken with her hero and the other pegasi. She had asked for flying advice and Rainbow Dash herself had answered, citing wing strength and ‘stick-to-it-tive-ness’, which Scootaloo wasn’t sure was even a word, but sounded awesome anyway. From that day forward nothing could have convinced her Rainbow Dash was anything less than awesomeness incarnate and she had saved every bit of pocket money to buy the scooter to help strengthen her wings.

Scootaloo was jolted out of her thoughts by a sudden bump that made her leg hurt. “Hey, watch it!”

“Sorry!” Apple Bloom sounded apologetic, but mostly gleeful. “This is just so much fun!” She shoved again, shaking her head so the cool breeze ran through her sweaty mane.

Sweetie Belle pointed and shrieked, “Look out!”

“What?”

“There! There! Watch out!”

Apple Bloom leaned to compensate for something she hadn’t yet seen herself. It was the worst thing she could have done. Her weight shifted and the scooter tilted. She threw herself back the other way, but that sent it off the path and into the undergrowth. The rabbit they had been avoiding shot off in the other direction.

All three fillies yelled as they shot through low-hanging branches. A rock caught on the wagon’s left back wheel, sending it into the air like a bucking bronco. The uneven ground tore the scooter handle from Apple Bloom’s grasp and she fell off, rolling alongside and then behind her friends as they carried on their madcap rush without her. A ditch finally put an end to their journey, tipping both Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo into the air.

This is getting embarrassing, Scootaloo thought as she picked herself up and tried not to cry out at the fresh pain in her leg and head. Crash landing this badly twice in one day? Thank Celestia nopony was around to see this one.

“Sweetie Belle?”

“Over here.” A white head popped up from a thorn bush, wincing at the barbs caught in her mane. “Are you okay?”

“Okay-ish,” Scootaloo replied. Her leg hurt even more than ever. “How about you?”

“Fine. Apple Bloom?” she raised her voice to call.

“Here!” She came cantering up to stand at the edge of their ditch. “I think I broke my butt when I landed on it, but I ain’t hurt really.” She wrinkled her nose. “Phew-wee, what’s that smell? Did y’all land in a sewage pit or sumthin’? It smells like a manticore’s toilet.”

“Oh, ew!” Sweetie Belle pranced in place. Fluttershy was an expert in animals and had told them manticores were like cats in that they were very clean and made their bathrooms in one spot away from their feeding ground. “I hope it’s not really some animal’s toilet! Rarity will kill me if I come home smelling of that!”

It did smell bad. The heat had called flies to the smell and they were testing out Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo as new targets too. Scootaloo tossed her head and immediately regretted it. She wobbled and tipped sideways with a short groan.

Okay, not doing that again.

“Scootaloo?” Concern coated Apple Bloom’s voice like caramel on a red delicious. “Hold on, I’ll be right down there. Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh – I’m so sorry! I never meant to get you hurt more!” She skidded down the side of the ditch and landed in bushes much less spiky than Sweetie Belle’s. Her head came up and she started to come towards them but stopped. Raising her foot to study it, she turned in a small circle and then backed towards them so fast she nearly fell over herself.

“What is it?” Sweetie Belle asked. “What’s wrong?”

Apple Bloom’s face had gone slack with an emotion Scootaloo didn’t recognise. She raised her hoof and pointed to where she had landed, right under the biggest cloud of flies. The tip of her hoof was stained with something sticky that had picked up thorns and bits of dirt.

With a sinking feeling, Scootaloo started forward, brushing off Sweetie Belle’s protest to stay still and rest her leg. She nosed aside the bushes to reveal a mass of tangled yellow hair. She couldn’t tell whether it was mane or tail, since it was attached to a pile that alternated between pale coat, red meat and chalky white bone. Only one intact hoof confirmed that the pile had once been a pony.

Scootaloo’s mouth tasted sour. Her insides twisted. She felt like she was going to throw up, and not just from the awful stink of a dead body left out in the heat of the day.

“What is it?” Sweetie Belle appeared at her shoulder.

“No, don’t look –”

Too late. Sweetie Belle was helplessly squeamish. When she caught sight of the remains, her horrified scream echoed throughout almost the entire the Everfree Forest.

....

Applejack raised her head. “What in tarnation–?”

“That sounded like a scream.” Metronome took off before she could stop him, crashing through the undergrowth at a stumbling canter. “Twinkle! Twinkle, where are you?”

“Hold on there!” Applejack chased after him. “Wait!”

The search party had split into two pairs to canvass the area around Metronome and Glimmer’s house. Spike, of course, had gone with Twilight. The white ponies had a cottage so far on the edge of town it almost wasn’t in Ponyville at all, surrounded on three sides by woodland. The perimeter of Sweet Apple Acres wasn’t far, so she had been surprised to realise she was actually helping her own neighbours. It did, however, mean she could call home and fetch Winona to help in the search. Twilight and Applejack had agreed that sending the distraught parents off together would be counter-productive. Instead, they had each taken one and chosen a direction to scout.

“Gosh darn it,” Applejack grunted as she was forced to leap a fallen tree trunk covered in mushrooms. Her hind hoof caught one, sending up a spray of white chunks. “Metronome, wait!”

The scream came again. Something about it sounded too familiar for comfort. Winona picked up speed, barking frantically. She recognised it as well.

“Twinkle! Twinkle!” Metronome shoved aside a branch that snapped back in Applejack’s face.

“Ow!” She stumbled, glanced off the bark of the trunk and wiggled her face to make sure it wasn’t broken. Her cheek burned where the branch had caught her.

The screaming grew louder. As it got closer, Applejack realised it was not just one voice. The noise finally culminated in three small bodies crashing through the underbrush. They ran blindly towards her. She recognised them, skidded to a halt and stuck out a foreleg in a clothesline manoeuvre to stop them in their tracks.

“Apple Bloom!” she yelled over the screams.

Her little sister looked up at her with a tearstained face. “A-Applejack?”

“What in tarnation is goin’ on?”

“Applejack!” Apple Bloom threw herself at her and sobbed. Behind her, Sweetie Belle also cried. Scootaloo looked wan and shaken, balancing on three legs while holding the bandaged fourth off the ground. Her little orange body shook, tail tucked between her legs. They were all terrified.

“Did somepony hurt you?” Applejack knelt to cradle her sister. Apple Bloom shook her head and buried her face in her shoulder.

“It was horrible,” Sweetie Belle wept. “Just … just lying there … a-and all that … all that …”

Applejack opened her hug to the other two fillies, but only Sweetie Belle rushed to be embraced. Scootaloo stayed where she was, her reaction to whatever had happened more subdued than her friends’.

“Scootaloo,” Applejack tried. “What’s goin’ on?”

“We found … a body,” Scootaloo said haltingly. “Or what was left of one. Apple Bloom walked in it before she realised what it was.”

Applejack’s stomach sank to her hooves. No wonder Apple Bloom was almost hysterical. “What do you mean ‘a body’? Do you mean a rabbit? Or a deer maybe? Did you find a meal some animal left behind?” she asked hopefully.

Scootaloo shook her head, Dashing Applejack’s hopes. “It was a meal, all right, but it wasn’t some animal the way you’re thinking. It was a pony.” She looked nauseous. “There were … teeth marks, like on Winona’s chew toys … on the bones.”

“All that blood,” Sweetie Belle whimpered. “It was all over the g-ground.”

“An’ on my hooves,” Apple Bloom added. “I stepped in it, Applejack! I stepped right in it! I didn’t mean to, honest. I didn’t know it was there, an’ I walked right into it –”

A fresh scream rang out. This one was deeper, but the anguish in it was no less heart-wrenching. Winona ran rings around the little group of ponies, barking to protect them from the noise-maker and whatever other unseen evil she sensed. Applejack barely recognised Metronome’s voice, but she could make out the word buried in the shriek: No.

Any hope she might have had that the three fillies had been mistaken vanished, as did any hope of finding Twinkle alive.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” she soothed. “Y’all are safe now. I won’t let nopony hurt you.”

“It wasn’t any pony that did that,” Scootaloo said dully. “Nopony could do that. It was all … ripped to shreds.”

“Regardless, I’m here now an’ I’ll protect you.”

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle pressed tight to her, the way Apple Bloom used to when she was a foal and had a nightmare – before she was too old for cuddles or sneaking into her big sister’s bed to make the night-terrors stay away.

Applejack was unsure what to do: she wanted to stay with the fillies but Metronome’s screams had subsided and she needed to know why. Moreover, she needed to apprise herself of the situation first-hand. She had promised to help find Twinkle but had not anticipated anything like this. Still, she felt duty-bound to see her promise through to its end.

Her quandary was solved when two sets of hoofbeats signalled the arrival of Twilight and Glimmer. Applejack leapt up and spun to face them, planting her body in their path. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle clung to her hind legs.

“We heard screaming,” Twilight said breathlessly. “What happened?”

“It sounded like Metronome,” said Glimmer.

“Uh …” Applejack couldn’t meet Glimmer’s pale eyes. How did you tell a mare something like this? All she could think was that Glimmer could not go and see what no mother ever should.

“Apple Bloom?” Spike spotted her hiding. “Sweetie Belle? Scootaloo? What are you guys doing out here?”

Glimmer peered around Applejack. “Those are Twinkle’s classmates. What happened to them?”

Scootaloo looked up sharply, aghast as several things clicked together in her mind. “That was Twinkle?”

“What was Twinkle?” Glimmer demanded. She took a step towards them but Applejack barred her way. “Move aside. What do they know about my daughter? Do they know where she is? They have to tell me! They have to … to …” She looked Applejack and registered her distress. Her face crumpled. “Oh no. No!”

“I’m sorry –”

“You’re wrong! You’re … she’s not … we have to keep looking! We have to find her! She could be anywhere! She could be … she’s probably hurt, or lost, or … or … out of my way!” With surprising strength, she shouldered Applejack aside, jumped over the crying fillies and ran into the undergrowth, following the trail of broken branches and fronds. “Metronome! Metronome, where are you?”

“Applejack?” Twilight said softly. “Are you sure–?”

“Wait here,” Applejack ordered. “I’m fast enough to catch her. Winona!” Figuring Twilight’s magic was enough protection for herself and the others, Applejack summoned the dog to accompany her.

The ditch wasn’t very far away. Applejack caught up enough to see Glimmer disappear over the edge and to hear her anguished cries. She crested the edge to find Metronome had trampled and kicked aside the greenery to reveal their daughter’s remains. The word ‘body’ didn’t aptly describe the collection of bloody chunks and other things. Applejack’s gorge rose. Beside her, Winona growled at the scent of rotting meat and whatever else her sensitive nose could pick up.

Metronome and Glimmer hugged each other as she watched; unable to do anything except let them cry themselves out.