//------------------------------//
// Memorance 
// Story: My Little Fortress: Friendship for the Blood God 
// by jaked122 
//------------------------------//

        It was not typical. There was just something inexplicably wrong about it. Something that turned the entire experience of playing Twister as a pony back upon itself, making it worthless to recall. Something about it screamed at the former dwarf that there was something too unwholesome to merit explanation. It was terrifying. As useful as it was for learning how to control his body again, it was like the half remembered dream of witchcraft or nightmares. This, as it were, did not originate with "Nightmare Moon". 
        An awful realization covered Tholumom; given what he was, the last link to his past had been cut entirely. Nothing could ever pull him back there save the inquisitive sparkle in Twilight's eyes. The brightness with which they regarded the world of waking was as though it were a dream too vivid to forget. And yet he knew that there could not be peace. He knew that there would never be a time which he could look upon his action and say without a question that he had completed his duty to the fullest, and thus had no point but to serve his own ends. Like some child spun off into a cognate world of its own, simply through his own miswanderings. And yet, throughout all his questionings, there could be no inquiry into which the nature of his time here might be made clear, simply through the virtue of the impossibility of proving that what must be taken as an assumption be true. There was no way for him to prove to himself that he had ever been a dwarf. Sometimes, even memories seemed to have been altered. His wife was never the one which he had known before, simply another pony. Somepony whose name eluded him. Just as the life as a dwarf had eluded him as he tried to remember.  He knew those memories were false. Twilight Sparkle assured him that they were. What reasons could he have not to trust his own daughter? But then she isn't his daughter, is she? No, another memory spun by the spell to encourage him to take the new form with grace and acceptance.
        Tholumom looked at the lavender pony. She might as well be his daughter. That would be losing the truth. Just because there is not a reason why something can't be a certain way does not mean that it must be that way. Ultimately, he knew that there were no reasons that he could not simply forget about his previous life. But then what? A narrative half remembered would scream at him to run, and then he would die by the fiery breath of a dragon. Something that he would have used in order to save himself and others would be lost. Why? Why though? It would be no better than acting as though he had been a pony for his entire life. No. that can't be the answer.  That must never be the answer. There is no reason which it should be the answer to adversity. The simple seduction of the lotus eater, which sought to draw him into a blind which there would be no recovery from, had caught him. A binding would appear around his wrists (now only recalled to illustrate a metaphor), and tie him to a pole. Goblins would throw fruit at him. It would be among the most awful times which he could ever know. At last, there would be a change. But into what?
What thought would save him from these fears? Nothing. 
        Save for getting on with his life, taking both lives into account and acknowledging both would yield life experience that he could not have otherwise. Safety in dualism of thought. Dreams of dwarves and ponies both, turned to flesh and made alive. And yet inside this would be a dichotomy of nature, which would take the kindness and natural gentleness of the pony and corrupt it with the angst that a dwarf must feel in order to accept the life which they lead for themselves. That in this, there might be some glint of hope with which to change the tide for him. But in the end, there would be nothing save the dream of a better day. Nothing more or less. 
But would that dream of sleep and peace endure for him? 
        A greater urge pushed him away from these thoughts. Hunger. It was not hard to imagine the hunger that a horse would feel, especially given that he was one, a great gnawing in his stomach. "Twilight, would it be possible to get something to eat?" The words emerged with a confidence that was kinder to him than his own mind was. It was absurd. 
        "Sure Tholumom, I'll get started with Spike to get some lunch made. It's an important day for you. Though, now I must ask you to seek residence with some pony else. I'm sorry, but I don't want to give other ponies the wrong impression about our relationship. They are quite gossipy after all."
Tholumom's face burned. "Why would they think that?"
        "Mostly because the best which they can conceive of includes producing a new variant of the ubiquitous romance story which stars me and my brother. All false of course, but there are ponies out there that like to write things without thinking about them very much." Twilight's expression became dour as she said that. 
        "I see your point Twilight." That does, in fact, seem unreasonable to me.
        It really didn't. Why would they make up such saucy rumors? Unless of course it was to placate the pointless guile that must exist I the mind of the gossip. The loss of the truth is a more damaging effect than any goblin invasion.
"Thanks for the validation Tholumom. I doubt that you could understand fully, but I do really appreciate what you've done for me." the dwarf wondered whether Twilight could appreciate what she had done for him. Giving him a new life is impressive.
        And it shall never come to pass again. A voice whispered in his head. It doesn't matter. There are more significant problems in store for him, ones that he can deal with more effectively than he did in his last life. At what cost. Emotional pain could justify a little bit of peace, but it could never buy it for a permanent time. The implausibility of continuation becomes apparent as one is aware of their own limitations in the realms of reality, and thus in the realms of spirit and mind. All things descend from reality, spirit from mind, and mind from body. There is nothing to the body save for the chemistry there, and thus the same is true for the mind. Just because there are layers of abstraction which allow the mind to be placed in a separate realm than the body, does not preclude or distance one from the fact that there is nothing more to the mind than what is in nature, a large vat of complex chemistries. All of which tend to decay into entropy.
        This fact was, of course, lost to the dwarf as he considered the whole situation.  "Okay Twilight."
        "I'll bring you some oats. Others had reported that oats had become more pleasant to them as they changed, so we'll see if that is true."
        "Twilight..." The thought died on his lips like so many others did in the fortress: with a twang of bitterness. So he was just an experiment for her now. He understood the kindness which those words covered up, that it was just another fact. It made no difference to him. Good intentions or not, the words were no less toxic than they would have been if they had been spoken by any scientist studying a statistical set of data.
        "Twilight, I just have to make sure that you aren't using me in an experiment of any kind right?"
        "Well... Tholumom, I really didn't want to think about it that way, but after this whole experience, you are the only source of data that has remained so open to anypony in this position before, so yeah, you weren't an experiment before. Now I would like to ask a few questions, you know, see how you adjust after a few days." 
        The former dwarf scowled. A mixture of defeat and a type of understanding filled him. It made sense for what Twilight wanted to do, but at the same time, it provoked a deep distrust in him, as though it were a personal threat.  "You know Twilight, I'm not quite sure that I'm okay with that arrangement."
        "I understand Tholumom, you feel used if you end up doing this. I wouldn't want to feel that way either, so I understand completely."
        "But can I trust you?"
        "What would cause you to question whether or not I've betrayed you?"
        "Because I wanted to escape from a life full of pain. The pain is there, just confused. It is even worse, as I must contemplate what this actually means for me."
        "You expected that to result from this? This can only complicate your life, learning everything you need to survive in that body will be painful." Her voice was too calm.
        "Why didn't you clarify that then?"
        "Because, the way this works, you can't actually use magic on you to alter anything for the next three years, otherwise there could be nasty interference, and if that happens... Well you certainly couldn't know. Besides, I haven’t had a good magical challenge in far too long."
        The former dwarf scowled. Deception. It worms its way into ignorance and plants a seed that grows into a thorn bush. Impossible to excise. Impossible to amend. The world is of concrete things when only anger exists. Nothing is abstract enough to merit explanation. Regardless of the mental pricks he had to endure, he needed to get through it. The situation was his fault. The thorn bush blossomed. “Twilight, I need to leave.”
        “But Thol-“
        “But nothing Twilight. I need to go right now.” The lavender unicorn blocked the door. “I can’t let you do that.”
        Tholumom felt a pressure build into the back of his skull. Anger and fury welled up in him visibly. His horn burbled with a viscous magic error. Green flashing red. His vision turned red as it became too much to bear.
        “Tholumom, no!”
        Light blasted from Tholumom’s horn, striking Twilight with a sickly aura. She faded away as all else did.



        The dwarf awoke and shot up in his bed. He wiped his head in the darkness of his bedroom, his brow was covered in a cold sweat.
        A body lay next to him, breathing comfortably. She stirred softly and her eyes opened wearily to look into the darkness of the room, she rose as well. “Are you okay Tholumom?” 
        He sighed. “I’m okay, it was just a nightmare, go back to sleep Totmondur. I love you.”
        “I love you too Tholumom.”
        The sound of his wife’s gentle breathing began again. He shook his head and lied down again. Such colorful ponies, what a silly idea.


 
        Tholumom Lathonudlerned has been content recently. He has awoken from an unpleasant dream, but taken solace in the presence of a loved one. He is disappointed that his friends did not actually exist. He did not know what to make of his experience as a pony. 
        Tholumom is very healthy. He has enjoyed good mead recently. 
        He is not convinced of the authenticity of the reality which he finds himself within.



        The morning bell failed to ring, mostly due to the lack of any agreed upon time to wake up at. In this regard, a dwarven fortress was very lenient. Nobody would fault each other if they slept in, missed their guard duty, and allowed goblins to ransack the fortress. 
        This was, fortunately enough, almost unheard of. Goblins liked to sneak around, and, as it happens, are not good at it. They do not notice the dwarves, or other creatures ahead of them until they bump into them, at which point, the farmer or lumberjack which they have bumped into is quite likely to die by their superior fighting ability (if only because dwarves do not like to have to defend themselves unless they are soldiers).
        None of this was of concern to Tholumom. Too much occurred for a single night of rest to produce. Dreams that spanned months, personalities that seemed too independent to have in basis in reality. It did not deter him from his task, clearing away a bit more stone to expand the stockpiles. Expanding them for the good of dwarvenkind. Famine would not be what struck the Ideas of Mourning out of existence. It would simply have to be something else. That is, naturally, all well and good. The limestone was hard, but not particularly difficult to remove with the skill which he possessed after a few months of working at it constantly. This was not the worst thing that the dwarf could imagine. Sure the dreams were more colorful, darker, and generally more real, but still, who could ever blame them, they were dreams, of course they were more real than the average day. 



"Sometimes I wonder, do we really have the best culture? Sometimes I think that the dwarves have got it right." A goblin, with mace in a scabbard, said. This was one of the common hobbies of the ambushers, musing about the state of their culture in relationships to other ones. 
"Hey! Shut up! If they find us they'll-" A crossbow rested on the back of the goblin who countermanded the other one. He was interrupted, because, as, most new ambushers found out, this was the only way to distract themselves from the constant danger which they are placed in on a daily basis.
"Yeah, we know, kill us all on sight, without mercy or consideration. It's what you get for 'having slaves' in an unusually liberal society."
"Shut up. If the Law-Giver heard you, you would be-" The same crossbow-goblin responded, assuming that mentioning that the demonic leader would not approve would stop the political discourse. Of course, he was wrong.
"Dead. I know. It really does pay to have a Demon at the head of your civilization." The Segway was used on virtually all of the newbies, it worked on nearly every single one, and shifted the focus of the conversation into the benefits and downfalls that come from living in a civilization based on the induction of other cultures into one, which happens to be lead by a demon. Generally regarded by other civilizations as being an anomaly, but for the goblins, they knew that they would survive just as long as any other civilization could.
        After around twenty more of these exchanges, the opinion solidified: Goblins are simply better. They are better at keeping their citizens working, better at keeping them in line, and even better at assimilating children into their culture. At least they would not be kept in mines until the very sight of the sun forced them to vomit in an unnatural adaptation to having useless eyes in the darkness. The debate continued and eventually, the goblin ambush party agreed: The dwarven hammerer is the byproduct of a monocultural nihilism that separates dwarves from the more reasonable races, such as humans, or Goblins. Naturally, however they also conceded that sometimes, possessing a legal system which only occasionally kills the criminal is beneficial when the populace is depleted in whatever projects that the dwarves deem necessary. Such as a giant, magma-shooting statue that towers nearly a mile tall. 
        The typical Goblin speed at a good sneak (about a mile an hour) was not exceeded as they approached the fortress. This fortress was not particularly well established. There were only around thirty dwarves in the fortress, not all that many, but enough to be at the point where they start making mugs. Also children. Children started being born as the population reached this point. The goblins mused about the coincidence, but came to the conclusion that there was not enough of a connection.
        Unfortunately for the Goblins, this point in the fortresses’ life was also when guards started to be placed on duty, trained, and equipped with effective weaponry (not that the woodcutter’s axe lacked such effectiveness). Often they were set to patrol the exterior of the fortress. 
        “You know, sometimes I think that the Goblins have the best government.”
        “Yeah, but they can’t debate about that can they?”
        “I wonder what it is like being led by a fearsome demon into battle instead of an overfed king?”
        “Probably pretty nice.”
        The Goblins listened in on the conversation that eventually led the two guards to the same conclusion as the goblins, that the Goblin society was probably superior, but that the dwarven hammerer is an absurd remnant of a monocultural nihilism, and of course, there are too many damned cheese makers in the fortress. The Goblin ambush party waited until the guards left, then proceeded into the fortress: It was only a matter of time. 



        Totmondur held her daughter. She carried the child everywhere, doing everything with the small child, really only an infant. The child had just learned how to speak. “Mommy, where are we going now?” 
        “Well Ingtak Kebul, we’re going to bring back in some wood from the tree mommy just cut down.”
        “Why do you cut down trees momma?” 
        “Because we use their bodies to build things out of, like that bed, sweetie.”
        The best part of this job was taking the wood to the stockpile. Well, today it was, Igntak would be able to see her father doing his job as he expanded the stockpile as well. She would ask questions and Tholumom would be able to answer whatever her questions were, even satisfying them.
        They reached the stockpile. It was a huge room, not tall, but wide. The entire bounty of the fortress contained within it. It was empty. It was not often that dwarves came down here; it was desolate and relatively poorly lit, lonely even with a friend. The sound of a pickaxe ringing as it struck at the rock echoed in the chamber irregularly, giving the impression that there might be an army of dwarves digging away the limestone. There wasn’t. The only one in here was Tholumom.



        It did not take the Goblins long to figure out where the stockpile was, whether it was because of their rumored ability to sniff out the most valuable things in the fortress, or the relatively easily read maps available to anyone at the fortress’ entrance, no one could say. The goblin detested the darkness that seeped with the emulsions of the ground itself. 
        Whether or not a demon with many tentacles stalked the similarly darkened halls of their fortresses were in fact (as a few human cultures believed) in the habit of raping unsuspecting females. It wasn’t true, and considering what the Law-giver could do to the unsuspecting wanderer, that would almost be a mercy.
        The goblins were not in such a mood for that.



        “Tholumom?” Totmondur yelled into the darkness of the stockpile room. It echoed for a moment, joining the army of dwarves striking the rock with picks, and then the pick silenced.
        “Totmondur?”        The reply returned. The male dwarf slunk out of the darkness and approached the pair. “It’s nice to see you two.”
        “Daddy, why are you expanding the stockpiles?”
        “Ingtak, the stockpiles are where we keep products of our fortress, such as food. If the stockpiles are larger, then we can store more food for things like drought or goblin sieges.”
        “Why would Goblins siege us?”
        “Well… I’m not really sure. I think it has something to do with spreading their superior social constructs over us. Honestly though, I don’t know.”
        “Bingo!”
        “Who said that?”
        The goblins melted out of the darkness. “Hi. We’re going to ‘Spread’-” the goblin made a strange motion with his middle and index fingers on both hands, “our culture here. Hand us the child!”
        “How ‘bout no!” Totmondur put down the child and took the battleax which she generally used in order to cut down trees. 
        “How ‘bout yes?” The goblin in front which had spoken moved out of the way and a spear wielding goblin stabbed her in the chest. She dropped the battleax, a gesture generally agreed to mean “Damn! my lungs have been punctured by your skill”. The goblins grabbed the child and ran. Tholumom could do nothing, he was paralyzed by fear. He got on his knees to examine his wife. His wife coughed. “Why are you tending to me? Go get your daughter. She's the one you want to save.”
The world faded again.



        “Tholumom? Are you alright?” 
        The former dwarf took a long time to respond. "Twilight. What just happened?" 
        "You experienced one of your many tragic moments, I would guess. All that hateful magic conflicted with the general formula required for the spell I used to be successful. So, instead of leaving you in a disfigured, half-dwarf half-pony state, it simply put you out and reminded you of what you were trying to escape from."
        Tholumom once again, took a long time to respond to the purple unicorn. "Is there any way to get through these memories faster?"
        Not that I would recommend, it doesn't matter anyway: You would still have the unpleasant three year recovery time. Most magic will be fine, just so long as it does not stimulate passion. Or utilize passion. Either of which would cause unpleasant side effects. Mostly including various mutations, possible instantaneous changelings transformation, or potentially godhood. Which, trust me, is not very much fun either."
"So, nothing that I could ever potentially want?"
"That is precisely what I just said."
"Nice."
"Is that sarcasm I hear?"
"Yes. Twilight, in fact it is."
"Why did you use sarcasm? Doesn't that just negate the point altogether?"
"Twilight, sometimes I love you." The dwarf responded to the pointless logical construct.
"What about the rest of the time?" 
The former dwarf did not reply. There could be nothing so careless as a response to that kind of question. "I like you Twilight. You remind me of my daughter. That's why I like you. You are very much like her, that is what I mean."
        "Why would you say that?" 
        "Because it... I can't say yet. Memories too long repressed allow even the names or natures pass through into the grate which belies the endless pits." 
        "It doesn't really matter." Her face seemed to contradict what she said. 
"Twilight. I will tell you when you are ready, and I am certain that what I must say contains no lies which the omission of memories can deceive into truth."
        "What happened to you Tholumom? What is it that you relived?" Her voice contained more concern than anything else. Kind of her, really.
        "I cannot really say. Suspicions arise out of the dust of the dead. Some of what I believed dead may have returned after all. If it is true..." Tholumom's voice trailed off. "Needless to say, my suspicions have an unbelievably low chance of turning out to be true." He left something unsaid, For the sake of what is her past, if true, will change my relationship in ways that I can't imagine.
        The dwarf realized that there was nothing that could be done to change the past. Nothing worthwhile at least. The past remained fixed in a way that would only lead to the current situation if he tried to change it. It would be more beneficial, he thought, to remember the past. It is only possible to change the perception of the past, resolution of the situation is the only beneficial one that can be achieved in a satisfactory way. 
        "I can't imagine what your motivation is here. I'm not your daughter. I can't be."
        "Memories seem to postulate that you are far more like her than you would guess. The first evidence of this is the meaning of her name. Ingtak Kebul, was her name. Twilight Sparkle is its translation."  
        "No, what I mean is that your daughter, family, and then civilization died around you. I cannot be her."
        The former dwarf shifted uncomfortably. "I very much doubt that there is a coincidence here. All of my friends made fun of me for giving my child that name. She did not die when my wife did, nor was she around for the death of the Ideas of Mourning. She was taken by the goblin ambushers who took my wife from me. As far as I know, she was not killed in their escape attempt."
        "That still does not change the fact that your daughter was a dwarf, whereas, I am a pony."
        "Obviously not. That would require exactly the same amount of effort that you put into me."
        The eyes of the lavender unicorn twitched. She said nothing anyway. She walked away, back into the kitchen. There was a banging of pots and pans before Spike walked out of the kitchen briskly, rather incensed. 
        "Dude? What did you say to her?"
        "Spike. I don't want to hurt that girl."
        "Then don't." His eyes narrowed at the dead-sea colored pony in front of him. There was something familiar about him. The dragon's anger faded as he drew more blanks. 
        "Who are you anyway?"
        "Think about it Spike. Those tea-kettles certainly must have been annoying to clean up. I certainly couldn't blame you for harboring a strong distrust of me after that."
        There was a silence that hung in the air longer than it should have. "Oh. Hi Tholumom. You still suck."
        "I know."
        "Have you considered trying your luck as a vacuum cleaner?"
        "What?"
        "It's a cleaning machine used to remove dirt from the floor using suction."
        "Oh, so, since I suck, I should try being a "vacuum cleaner" because, due to my natural suction, I would be exceptional at it."
        "Wow. Most people and ponies lack the density required to miss that joke."
        "So, I'm sufficiently not-dense enough to understand your joke."
        "Yes. That is the point."
        "Wow, you must really suck at making jokes."
        "No, you're just good at ruining them."
        "I guess that my skill must be better."
        The dragon whispered that he thought otherwise and then walked off back into the kitchen, where the disturbed lavender unicorn attempted to beat the food into being cooked. Tholumom began wonder whether sharing his uncomfortable revelations was the right thing to do in the moment. It was clearly not, but for what purpose would regret serve? Obviously it would not serve much of one.
        The sounds of a frantic stirring continued. Clangs began to emerge from the kitchen. Questioning somepony's life story seems to be among the list of customs which are commonly referred to as taboo. Not so much because of their potential to offend, but that attempting to insert oneself as a parental figure for someone who already has one, and, is, by their parent's testimony, not adopted. Especially if the claim is then backed by obscure and arcane reasoning(which happens to be the best kind of reasoning in general), then there is an instantaneous identity conflict which emerges out of the necessity to accept what is said as fact while also clinging to an identity which is rapidly evaporating around them. The former dwarf knew this from experience, children in the fortress tended to be rather cruel. Needless to say, even mentioning his theorizing is an understandable enough reason for Twilight to develop a well deserved resentment of his presence.
        Spike, having not accepted his place as a slave in this society was hardly a better to turn to for this kind of support. All caused by simply opening his mouth.
        He decided that eating wasn't worth it. He was not appreciated here, and it would be a disservice to Twilight and Spike to stay. He thought things like, At least when I have some proof, I'll be set.



        Tholumom is a unicorn: An industrious magic user. He has been confused recently. His anger as of late has become a concern recently. He is not certain what to make of his experience so far. 
        He is very strong. He has no magical talent whatsoever, but he plans on working on that. He lacks any real kinesthetic sense with his body. He is sensitive, and finds himself speaking with an unusual articulation as of late.
        He has no musical skill whatsoever.



A  strange stallion stalked the underused streets of Ponyville, not that there was such a thing: The town was simply too small for any particular road to remain in existence if it was not used fairly often. 
        It was, in other words, not a fortress with hundreds of dwarves whose skills were so tied up in maintaining the flow of material to a few master craftsdwarves whose production was so fast that the rest of the fortress typically got little work done. Thus, it seemed as though it was just the right size for the strange stallion. His dark blue coat lacked any shine, his eyes were half opened: as though recovering from a long bout of sleep.
        Nonetheless, his eyes still showed through with incredible intensity. In my mind, nothing could escape his gaze. In reality, however, I saw that his eyes barely shifted, their blue irises never moving, showing absolute concentration on some point in front of him. His flank had a depiction of a pickaxe striking a stone. Something about his mark seemed wrong, as though it was dissolving. He was losing his talent. Whatever it was, he could no longer do it. Something must have changed in his heart, a hole opened by some mechanism of wayward emotional instability. 
"Scootaloo, what the hay are you writing?" The clacking of a typewriter stopped suddenly. The voice seemed to have silenced the machine. The orange Pegasus stared at it blankly, as though her ability to use the machine, much like the stallion's cutie mark, evaporated with the words. 
        Her silent spell was broken by the glacial realization in her rear brain that there was something to become mad about here. The anger advised her frontal lobes to inform the offender that they should back away and return to their territory. The frontal lobes, knowing that would sound unusual, pinpointed the reason, but her speech center missed the point and decided to inform the interrupter that she should go back to what she was doing and let her be. 
        "Sweetie Belle, get back to being the dictionary, or whatever it was that you were trying out."
        "Scoots, why would I be a dictionary?" The orange Pegasus stared long into the green eyes of the interrupter: There was some coyness in her words. As though the joke between her friends was lost upon her. It was amazing that she hadn't already made a chicken joke to compensate for such imbalance. "Come on you Dodo, you know that this isn't your special skill." Naturally it had come to this, and the rear brain screamed at the frontal lobe to kill the offender, but the frontal lobe decided to ignore both the information from the auditory system as well as the absurdity that was inherent in the general premise as well.  The speech center fell back on another joke. One that the offender would not understand. 
"Why would you be a giraffe?" The words came out, causing a large amount of confusion in the Pegasus' frontal lobe, where all of the available connections to memory were used for a single moment to determine where the impulse had come from. There was none.
"You don't make any sense." The orange Pegasus quietly agreed. It was time to state the intent, the frontal lobe decided.
"Never mind, I'm being an author." The frontal lobe was not pleased with the effect. It was inarticulate, but the speech center was so unpredictable today that it did not desire to risk another run-in with it. So it simply allowed that to slide.
"What are you writing about then?" Finally, the frontal lobe acquired the proper mode of attention, inquisitiveness, it was a pleasant topic. Now how to describe it?
"That strange looking pony over there." Good enough, short enough that it might be enough to pique the former offender/interrupter's(downgraded from current state of either due to following the proper conversational path) curiosity in a positive way.
"You mean the one with the 'dissolving cutie mark'?" The frontal lobe decided that it had probably not intended for this to occur, and quietly cursed the visual lobe of the offender/interrupter(upgraded once again after missing out on the intended conversational path). The frontal lobe felt like making the offender/interrupter feel foolish and communicated this to the speech center, whose response, required no particular precision.
"Yes Sweetie-belle. Who else could it be?" The speech center was obviously affected by the rear-brain's irritation at the unicorn. The frontal lobe determined that it would try to force the speech center to actually consider more eloquent options, rather than what it had tried before. The Pegasus as a whole decided to pursue this further, because, even the speech center was aware of its own weakness.
 "Geez, at least I'm not probably in the process of writing bad romance stories." The rear-brain of the Pegasus decided that this was the final straw and attempted to override the control of the frontal lobe and strangle the dual offender/interrupter/insulter. The visual lobe of the Pegasus, consulted the memory store, and upon finding the offender/interrupter/insulter in memory delegated the task of handling adjustments made to muscle action to the hippocampus, which upon receiving the information, found itself wondering whether or not to actually allow this to go through to the cerebellum, or to send an interrupt to the rear brain so as to make the Pegasus merely grimace, rather than strangle her and/or rip her throat out. The frontal lobe was also satisfied with this arrangement and added a few words to the marshmallow-like unicorn. Who reacted in horror, and the rear-brain in the unicorn must have found justification to strangle the orange Pegasus. 



         He felt his identity slipping away, memories remained, but the skill, for example, for mining, seemed to suddenly leave his body. Something was taking it.
        Tholumom realized that it would probably be a good idea to find something to do, something to become, because, he knows that work is the only way to avoid the melancholy of contemplation. Sweat on the brow, as it seeps into the eyes, purifies the mind. It also stings.
        Besides, there seemed, even in this small town, to be enough nobles and similarly inclined ponies, any of whom might have some needless work to do. 
        From the budding industrialists, to the economic majors, even Ponyville contained the necessary investors to improve upon his ideas, to pay him, or simply to contract him for whatever work they could endorse. All of these positives evaporated when his stomach once again reminded him what it felt like to be a starving horse. The appropriate response, he decided, was to barter with the nearest purveyor of foodstuffs which he could locate. Perhaps he could find some work there. 



        After a considerable delay(of nearly forty-five minutes), the clanging of the pots and pans stopped in the Library's kitchen. The purple and green dragon strolled out holding a large pot of oatmeal, the traditional breakfast food in Equestria since the time of the three tribes. "Twilight, I hope that we weren't too harsh with him, he looked like he could lose it any minute."
        "Tholumom is a perfectly reasonable pony, I'm sure that he took it well, and accepted it as a de-facto rebuttal to his claims."
        "Well, where is he then?"
        The next half hour was spent looking for the unicorn, whose whereabouts seemed to lack the attribute of being included in the general area which was designated as "the library".
        "Spike, I'm not sure that he is stable. We need to find him, if he lapses again, outside, nopony will know what to do." 
        "What would that even be, Twilight?"
        "Get him to the hospital. The momentary lapses could eventually continue into a longer, less stable flashback which would represent an intersection of reality and his traumatizing memories. He might think that, for example, Bon-bon was his mother or something."
        "But she's not into-" 
        Twilight's interruption was sudden, and frantic: the concern of somepony who felt genuinely responsible for somepony else. "That's why it could go wrong."
        "I wouldn't wish that on anyone!"
        They both went out into the wider world to find the wayward unicorn. The oatmeal slowly solidified onto the pot, creating a buildup of crust which, any reasonable being would wish to avoid.