The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Twenty-Five: Everdazzle

The End of Ponies
by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Twenty-Five – Everdazzle

Special thanks to Vimbert for Editing

Extra Special Thanks to Valhalla-Studios for Cover Art

It was on a green velvety chair in the front room of Fluttershy's cottage that Harmony laid the dainty pegasus down. The sleeping mare barely stirred, mumbling a day's worth of Capricorn worry through her porcelain lips. The last pony had no doubt then and there that Fluttershy was capable of sleeping through a sonic rainboom.

“Bet her parents had it easy,” Harmony dryly murmured.

In an insomniac gait, she trotted her Entropan body towards the reading seat beside a pair of double windows. With a gentle hoof, she lightly tapped one of the window panes. The thing swung open on a squeaking hinge, bathing half of the room in the soft chirps of eternal crickets. The purple night twinkled in starry bedazzlement beyond.

The last pony's amber eyes narrowed. The soonest she inhaled the cold night air wafting in, she found her body riddled with the queer sensation that something was wrong. The stillness wasn't right. She was waiting for something: what, she didn't know. A throng of ghostly pelting noises flickered through her ears. Instantly, Harmony flashed a look towards the bushes outside the window. The dark leaves glistened and danced, reflecting a gray sky of an afternoon's thunderstorm. In a panicked breath, she glanced down at the plush velvet of the reading seat and saw orange hooves toying in the shadows of rainwater misting inward from the refracting haze outside.

Hissing, Harmony stumbled back, almost knocking into the chair where her anchor was sleeping. With a toss of her black mane, Harmony squinted fearfully at the window once more. The starry night had fallen back into place. There was no hint of rainwater anywhere. The cottage was a lonely wooden cave looking out into the dense treeline of Everfree. Everything was painted with the hues of the past, and yet it wasn't the past... and yet it was.

“Get a hold of yourself. What friggin' gives?” Harmony hoarsely murmured.

She glanced halfway towards the kitchen, where she knew a bucket and a mop waited beyond sight with all of the haunting gravity of ten million campfire stories clawing at her eardrums. This was a hovel of happy memories, of warm golden conversations piled up on top of each other like silken bedsheets. Still, for yet another heart-stopping moment in a great blistering sea of shivers, Harmony stumbled to find peace here. It was, without a doubt, the most quaint and innocent setting from her foalhood, and yet it was piercing her more coldly than the bone-chilling hollow of an Everbriar full of monsters.

The thorn-encrusted future awaited her green-flaming self at the end of all this pointless floundering, and yet she somehow looked forward to it more than this. A part of her begged for the red-glistening trees of Sweet Apple Acres once again; that place had a certain alien enchantment to her foalish memories. But here, in the warm and toasty womb of Fluttershy's cottage, Harmony could barely stand straight, as if a good chunk of her had been mysteriously and secretly foaled there.

Biting her lip, Harmony glanced over her copper shoulder. With great hesitance, the time traveler looked at the wooden staircase for the first time since she arrived. She imagined, against her better judgment, an orange shadow slowly creaking its way down the stairs, and with each hooftrot the shade made towards the velvety green chair upon which Fluttershy slumbered, Scootaloo felt her heart about to explode in cold ice.

With a pale shudder, the last pony flung herself back towards the windows, drowning herself once more in the starry haze, trying to imagine the twinkling cosmos being replaced with endless twilight... as if it could paradoxically ease the survivor's trembling soul.

“Like a fish out of water,” Harmony mumbled. For a brief moment, she couldn't decide if she was talking about herself or a certain Capricorn that the two pegasi had failed to find. She settled for the latter, wracking her brain over the infinite reasons for why the cosmic creature had remained annoyingly elusive. “Maybe it died,” she grunted. “And then space ants carried it away in a million pieces.”

With a sighing slump, she rested her Entropan body across the lengths of the reading seat and stared with greater intensity at the stars. She briefly wondered if the cosmic trails of Epona's Exodus would ever give up trying to pierce the ashen horizons of future Equestria. The last pony had only made three and a half trips back into the past, and somehow the staleness of a world where most of the Goddesses had left for the stars felt just as cold as the Age where two of them had died.

“Maybe this Capricorn is a friggin'' pet of Epona,” the cynic inside her projected soul-self murmured. “It explains why it's nowhere to be found.”

A cloud of guilt settled around Harmony, reminding her of a certain “Canterlotlian Clerk” that had shriveled under the explosive ire of Fluttershy after Dinky and Derpy Hooves' departure that afternoon. She gazed over at Fluttershy with a deathly exhale of worry. In a sickly sensation, she imagined an off-ruby Cloudsdalian Captain leering over the sleeping pegasus, impaling the angelic filly with phalanx after phalanx of razor-speared words—deplorable words—all of which were punctuated by sarcasm and sighs. For the life of her, Harmony couldn't imagine the gall of a pony—anypony—that could actually get a winged rise out of grilling Fluttershy like some worthless piece of meat.

“If the captain wants the Capricorn that badly, she should have just speared it out of the sky—“ Harmony blinked, stopping in mid-monologue. She glanced a curious gaze up to the stars once more. Her lips murmured: “'If we only had enough starlight',” she quoted a melodic voice, not even trying to emulate the satin tone of it. “Starlight...” The last pony scrunched her copper brow. Suddenly, on a rising current of spontaneous euphoria, a thought blossomed forth forth from the deep soul of the runescaping, moonrock forging, and flame-bottling scavenger. “Of course!”

She giggled—foalishly energized with a sudden crusade—and soon Harmony found herself excitedly pacing counter-clockwise circles around the room like an inverse Redgale.

“I just need two mana stones and a telescope. But where could I get them? This is Fluttershy's home, not Twilight Sparkle's... or Rarity's for that matter.” She paused. She tapped a copper hoof to her chin. She gazed, gazed, gazed—then froze as her face fell upon a simple wooden writing desk standing against the wall across a space of wooden floorboards where a blue table once resided. “Ah-Ha!”

Scampering on light hooves, Harmony shuffled up to the table and opened its wooden lid. Immediately there lay before her a plethora of parchment, scroll bindings, envelopes, and ornate Cloudsdalian stationary.

“Hmmm... Lemme see... Lemme see... Lemme see...”

Tonguing the corners of her mouth, the last pony went to work. She unrolled a scroll of parchment, clasped a pen in her jaws, and neatly wrote with the aid of years upon years of calligraphy practice inside the Harmony's lonely cabin. After a very proper letter was written, she held the document up to her squinting perusal and muttered to herself: “Hmmm... Something's missing. This is coming clear out of the blue, and I need a silver bullet.” Her amber eyes brightened. She glanced down at the cutie mark on her flank, then at one of her hooves. “It's so stupid, it has to work.”

With a grin, she slid out a pad of ink, glanced over her shoulder at the slumbering Fluttershy, then quietly lowered the lid of the desk shut. As she did so, a frowning white face with pointed ears stared fluffily into her vision.

Harmony did a double-take. With a raised eyebrow, she smirked at the disapproving rabbit. “Look, it's not stealing. It's for a good cause. Besides, if she needs more parchment that bad, I'm sure I can buy her more.... Mmmm... S-somehow.”

The ivory bunny rabbit folded its arms. The glaring frown intensified.

“Oh, like you're such a saint.” Harmony rolled her eyes. She placed the ink pad and paper side by side on the desktop. “If I find your ashes in the future, I'm giving them to Spike so that he can clear his sinuses.”

Angel Bunny upturned a haughty chin and raised its left arm towards the pegasus at an offensive angle.

“Yeah... uh... I think you need five paw pads for that gesture to work. Now scram, furball.” Harmony concentrated hard as she lightly planted the whole of her hoof against the blackening pad of ink. Afterward, she carefully... carefully pressed the end of her limb to the parchment. With gentle pressure, she was able to create a faint circle. Gracefully, she brought the pen back to her lips and drew a solid “infinity” symbol in the center of this crest. Smirking at her efforts, she added the finishing touches with several “celestial” squiggly lines emblazoned around the circumference of the hoofmark...

---

“Well, it m-m-m-m-most definitely looks like a Royal Seal!” Derpy Hooves blinked, both of her yellow eyes aimed decidedly away from the scroll being held directly in front of her.

Harmony grumbled. It was the next morning, the sun was shining, and she was practically shoving the letter into the mailmare's grasp. “That's because it is a royal seal, Miss Hooves!” She stood in the grassy front yard of Fluttershy's cottage under the dew-laden haze of sunrise. “It's imperative that you deliver this parchment immediately! The Royal Court of Canterlot depends on the speed and swiftness of this order!”

“And the Royal Court wants it sent to the Novelty Shop of downtown Ponyville?” The wall-eyed pegasus briefly chuckled as she snatched the scroll from Harmony's hoof and shoved it with more or less grace into her cluttered mailbag. “Well, who am I to question Her Majesty's servants?”

“Who indeed?” Harmony's amber eyes flared above a plastic smile.

“I thought you and Miss Fluttershy were looking for a C-C-C-C-Capricot.”

“'Capricorn,' Miss Hooves. And, no, we haven't found it yet.” Harmony pointed with a copper hoof. “But what I've requested in this letter should help us. If you care at all for the well-being of Fluttershy's job here as Ponyville's lead animal trainer, you'll make sure the items I've requested get here as soon as possible!”

“You can count on me!” Derpy's hoof saluted half a meter away from her forehead as she stood on wobbly hindquarters. “Anything for Miss Fluttershy! Dinky would hate me forever if I let her babysitter lose her job!”

“Glad that we're seeing eye to eye—” Harmony's smile fell under a self-imposed grimace halfway through that train wreck of an utterance. “Erm... Eheh... Y'know what I mean.”

“I sure don't!” Derpy grinned gleefully. “Good luck, Mister Squirrel!” She flew away in an upside-down gray blur.

Harmony blinked. She glanced sideways into her reflection in the cottage windows, shuffled up to examine her profile, flicked her amber-streaked tail, but ultimately gave up with a rolling of her amber eyes. She trotted around and waltzed in through the front doorway of the cottage, instantly assaulted with the delightful aroma of vegetable soup wafting over from the far kitchen of the place.

“Do you need help with that, Miss Fluttershy?” Dinky called across the cottage, her horned head hovering over a splayed-open astronomy book twice the size of the petite foal's body.

“Oh no!” A melodic voice rang from beyond the nearby door-frame. “It is far too messy in here! I would rather nopony see my kitchen unless it was an absolute emergency!”

“Don't take it personally, kid,” Harmony said with a devilish smirk. “Miss Fluttershy just doesn't want you to see what she puts into her cupcake mix.” She made a melodramatic expression with two hooves pressing her facial muscles into a goblinesque grimace as she leered above the little child. “Or who! OoOoOoOoooh!”

Dinky stared up at the copper pegasus with dull yellow eyes. “Your joke escapes me.”

“Yeah, well, that's why I'm a clerk and not a bard.”

“Are you attempting more humor, Miss Harmony, or should I be legitimately concerned?”

“'Yes' and 'no' to both questions,” Harmony's voice returned to the kitchen. “Miss Hooves just left, by the way. Wanna bet twenty silver strips she'll knock loose a few bird's nests on the way to Ponyville?”

“Silver strips?” Dinky blinked up at the time traveler yet again. “I didn't know that Canterlot was acquainted with the economic system of Mount Ogreton!”

The time traveler faltered in mid-step. “Er... Yeah. Well, I wouldn't—uh—bet golden bits against your mom, kid. That'd just turn a tease into an insult.”

“I'll have you know that my mother flies at an altitude that completely avoids any and all bird's nests.”

“Oh yeah? Since when?”

“Since the summer that she had to stay at home because a quintuplet of severely endangered Equestrian Falcon chicks had imprinted upon her forehead. The Hooves Family's hereditary mane hair is coarse enough to resemble the tail feathers of most birds of prey.”

“Guess that explains why your head always looks windblown, kid.” Harmony winked. “I figured it was just because of your brain flying around at four hundred kilometers per hour.”

“Did you know that the average Equestrian Falcon ingests enough meat in the course of a year to reconstruct an entire herd of buffalo?”

“I rest my case.”

“As a matter of fact, if you disemboweled no more than ten falcons and stretched their unraveled intestines from end to end you could easily surround the circumference of the Great Wall of Stalliongrad—“

“Did I or did I not just say I rest my case?”

Fluttershy trotted in from the kitchen with a tray of smoking soup bowls balanced on her dainty yellow head. “Brunch is served! I... uhm... I do hope you are fans of tomato broth.”

“Finally. It's about time something more than statistics filled this kid's mouth.”

“Your labors are much appreciated, Miss Fluttershy,” Dinky said with a cute smile. “It smells good.”

“Does it? I'm rather proud of it myself. Oh, I know that I sound positively boastful... But I cannot help it. I feel so well-rested this morning for some reason.”

“Heh...” Harmony smirked towards a white fluffy shape in the corner of the room. “I wonder why that could be?” Her skull vibrated upon impact with a thrown sofa cushion. Her frown was ever so briefly outshone by a raspberry retort.

“Dinky, how are you enjoying that new book that your mother got you?” Fluttershy asked, laying the tray down on a nearby stool in the center of the atrium.

“Oh, I finished it already.”

Harmony and Fluttershy blinked simultaneously.

“You did?” the caretaker murmured towards the tiny unicorn. “That's... erm... That is most—”

“Freaky?” Harmony filled in the blank, only to have her copper face filled with a silencing fan of pink tail hairs.

“It is exceptional for a foal of your age to have digested so much text in such little time.” Fluttershy smiled sweetly as her silken voice continued, “Would you care to share with us some of the things that you learned?”

The time traveler stifled a moan and smiled plastically upon the crest of the incoming dictation.

“Actually, it's all stuff that I've learned before—mostly—either from what Miss Sparkle has shared with me or some of the things I perused at the astronomy section of the library. Are you familiar with the Soul Sundering of Consus?”

“Oh, who isn't familiar with that age-old tale, Dinky? For better or for worse, it's what absolutely defines ponydom.”

“Well, A Young Unicorn's Guide for Astronomy suggests that the constellations as we know them today are shaped entirely by Epona's exodus to the stars when she flew to the heavens immediately after the Sundering.”

“Mmmmhmmm. That's right, my little pony. When the world experienced its first death with the passing of Consus, life as we knew it was forever changed. Even the Great Goddess herself couldn't reverse the damage that had been done. Her grief was so great that there was no room on the planet for her tears. So, for fear of flooding all creation, she flew to the heavens where her sobs formed the stardust that would ultimately become the stars that twinkle at us at night.”

“Didn't she know that she would be abandoning her Six Alicorn Daughters?”

“Five.”

“Hmmm?”

“There were only Five Alicorn Daughters at the time, Dinky. And there have been many scholarly ponies throughout the history of Equestrian civilization who have endeavored to answer your question. Quite frankly, Consus' and Epona's daughters were centuries old at the time of the Sundering. It wasn't like the Great Goddess had left infants alone to deal with the weight of Creation. The Alicorns' Mother had taught them well, and they were ready for the tasks at hand. The Sundering of Consus, for all of its tragedy, had hardened them, so that they were more than well-equipped to engineer the Elements of Harmony during the Chaos Wars that followed.”

“Is that what you believe, Miss Fluttershy?” Dinky asked as she shuffled up to her bowl of soup, inhaling its rich smell. “Do you really think it was Epona's sorrow that made her leave Equestria?”

“I think what she did was brave,” Fluttershy said with a tranquil smile. Settling down on silken haunches, she leaned forward and murmured across the warmth of the room, “A mother's love is everlasting, even if her presence isn't. She loved her daughters so much that she didn't dare think of endangering their lives on Earth by staying. Epona knew that the same taint that sundered Consus' soul could eventually infect her, and for the sake of her children—and all of Creation—she made her exodus. You see, a mother really is willing to give up all for the ones she loves. The innate devotion that exists inside ponies today owes itself to the spirit of the Goddess who made everything to begin with.”

Dinky sipped briefly from the crimson broth, hummed at the deliciousness, and smiled up at the “Canterlotlian Clerk.” She asked, “What about you, Miss Harmony? What do you think on the subject?”

Harmony blinked, jerked out of a lonesome bubble of thought. “Uhm... Eheh—Seriously, kid, you don't wanna know what I think about it all.”

“Oh please, Miss Harmony, you are as much a guest as Derpy's brilliant offspring here.” Fluttershy winked in the buzzing spirit of company. “Your thoughts are just as significant as ours; we would enjoy hearing them!”

“Really... Eh heh... I-I've got nothing to add to the conversation. At least nothing fruitful.”

“It's quite alright, Miss Harmony,” Dinky said with a creepily knowing smile. “Lots of ponies these days are agnostic, even the ones who serve in Canterlot.”

“What—?” Harmony blinked until she suddenly had Derpy's eyes. “Snkkt—No! That's not... ! Kid, have you ever thought of lending your horn to the Equestrian Energy Commission? I'm pretty sure it alone could provide power to all of Manehattan for a month.”

“Don't press the issue, Dinky.” Fluttershy gently chided the foal. “Not everypony is comfortable discussing topics of Creation and the Sundering so intimately.”

“It's not that... It's just...” Harmony stumbled upon a knot in her tongue.

She sighed, then squatted down on Entropan knees, tapping her own bowl of soup with eternal indifference. A cloud of gray apathy wafted over her copper features as she stared into the blood-colored broth that reflected a future of endless chaos and destruction.

“What I think—what I really believe—is that everything has an end, even long before all matter was ever purposed into beginning. I'm sure even Epona and Consus knew that the divine nature of their union—simply by existing—invited the possibility of someday not existing. Everypony talks about the Sundering being the reason for death first tainting the Creation of Equestria, but I think reality is a lot colder than that.”

She stumbled briefly upon the deep bass voice of a purple dragon haunting her from twenty-five years in the future.

“Death encompasses life,” Harmony said. “Epona and Consus were as wise as they were audacious to think that their breaths could outlast the absolute zero within which the first flame was ever kindled. Sometimes, kid, the things we love leave us—by death or by Exodus—not because it's noble, but because it's natural. Don't be surprised if, in the future, the world follows this natural instinct, something that transcends immortal Creators, so that even the Sun and Moon will get tired of the whole friggin' race. I mean... I mean it's just as if we're all waiting for something to—”

She glanced up from the soup bowl and froze, her expression immediately wincing.

Ms. Cheerilee's students had blanched in horror, and it was a pale thing. The Apple Family dinner table had frozen in perplexity, and it was also cold and pallid. But this, this pair of uncomfortably shifting bodies, this featherlight frame of crumbling spirits that deflated across the cottage atrium before her: it sunk deeper than any black briar in the womb of a bitterly familiar world, so that Harmony wondered if she was the one—and not the Cataclysm—to have blasted all fertile soil from the face of the planet, to have dredged all that was good from the world as she had once again, with such bitter repetition, sucked all the life from the room simply by being herself, simply by being honest, simply by being the end of ponies.

Spike's words once again spun around the infinite swirls of time to bite her through her immutable copper skin. She more deeply dreaded seeing his purple scaled face than she did the blue glistening maw of a ravenous Ursa Major that undoubtedly awaited her return. The last pony wondered if she had purposefully ignored all of Fluttershy's cyclical dissertations on Kindness, or if perhaps there was a naturally invisible fishnet of titanium encapsulating her soul and preventing all manner of good fruit from entering her system.

Perhaps she was the last pony by habit as much as by incident. Upon again remembering so many self-imposed foaldays of starving across the shadowed hovels of Ponyville with nothing more than a scooter for a friend, the pegasus solidly believed that to be the case.

She muttered something unintelligble to the dried-up corners of the room and leaned over to take a brave sip of her soup, hoping that the warm texture of the past could wake her back up to the noble venture at hoof. However, as soon as the vegetable broth entered her mouth, a haunting shadow reclaimed the breadths of the room, so that her amber eyes twitched frightfully towards the wooden stairs in the far corner of the place. Instead of a petite orange shadow, there descended a melodic voice.

“Is there something wrong with the taste?”

Harmony turned her head...

---

...and tilted her young chin up, blinking. “Huh?”

“It's not bitter or sour, is it?” Fluttershy bit her lip pensively as she stood above the young foal in the gray shadows of a rainy afternoon drizzling just beyond the windows. “I'm out of practice when it comes to using herbs in a soup, on account that I'm almost always making food just for my animals. Ohhhhh I do hope it doesn't taste stale!”

Scootaloo's stomach was a pit that grumbled at the merest sight of discarded crumbs on the grass bordering many a Ponyvillean restaurant outdoors. Her violet eyes had retained their pigment from staring whole-heartedly—night after night—into the darklit windows of Sugarcube Corner after it had been closed for business. So many ravishing feasts had clattered uselessly against the glass walls of her soul, and for once in as many moons as the filly could count, she was ingesting something that wasn't unsavorably fished out of the refuse of a world that was barred from her nomadic loneliness. The foal didn't have the strength to imply that she deserved it, but she did have the polite breath to be thankful for it. She made swift with her reply, so that the fire in her belly might overcome any tears in her eyes.

“It's the best soup I've ever tasted.” Scootaloo grinned a crescent moon. “I only wished you had let me into the kitchen to lend a hoof!”

“Oh no. It's too terribly dirty in there. There are some things even I'm too embarrassed to share with my friends.”

“I don't see why. Your bathroom is cleaner than the one in Carousel Boutique. And that's saying a lot.”

“But the soup isn't too cold?”

“It's just fine, Miss Fluttershy.”

“The vegetables aren't clumping it up terribly?”

“It's fine, Fluttershy.”

“What about the herbs? Did I sprinkle too many or—?”

“Hold on one second!” Scootaloo took a deep breath. Like a deep sea diver, or a living cannonball, the hungry foal scarfed the entirety of the bowl's crimson broth with one sputtering swoop. Gulping massively, she smiled with a dribble of the stuff down her chin and playfully winked. “It's good enough for seconds... that is, if you made more than enough for the two of us to enjoy.”

Fluttershy blinked. With a joyful breath, she giggled gleefully and dashed back into the kitchen. “Just a moment!” she sing-songed and made a wispy canter for the opposite room.

Scootaloo smiled, but as soon as the yellow pegasus had disappeared, she habitually lurched towards the floorboard with a nervous hoof clamped over her tummy. With half-a-wretch, she boldly stomached the enriching broth back down her bubbling esophagus. Proud for having lived up to her audacious gulp, Scootaloo sat with a relaxing breath, watching the endless curtain of rain beyond the windowpanes.

She wondered if this was how Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle regularly lived out their daily lies. The rainy afternoon hadn't been luxurious half as much as it had been simply clean. Life didn't have to have frills or flashing lights. So long as there was a roof, a floor, and soup, Scootaloo couldn't imagine a homelier heaven.

In the many fitful nights of trying to pretend she was a normal filly during random Cutie Mark Crusader sleepovers, Scootaloo had been too frazzled to take notice of all the blessing commodities briefly donated to her. But here, in the placid tranquility of Fluttershy's lone hovel, time slowed down to a meditative glide, so that she could spot for once the crystal clean joy that the usually icy world brought a shine to in the absence of her bitter pangs of desperation.

Scootaloo decided that this was all a preview, a sign of all the things that could be made available to her for when the bright day would come that she would earn such fabulous and wholesome benefits, not through the lure of friendship but through the fruits of strong and hard work. Her tiny wings twitched uselessly in the toasty air, reminding her of the whole weight of the atmosphere that still pressed down on her, so much height to climb with so few years left to scale it.

For the briefest of seconds, the future didn't look so lonesome. Scootaloo had to remind herself that it was all because the present, however transiently, had been filled for once by a voice that wasn't her shriveling own. Something melodic had touched her fitful ears again, and on silk-striding hooves that voice came drifting back with two more bowls of soup in tow.

“I added a touch of cinnamon this time. Pinkie Pie says that a pony should engage the sweet-tooth as much as the stomach. She hasn't done me wrong yet...”

“You're... uhm... You're going to eat too, right, Fluttershy?”

“Mmmmm-But of course. If you're so eager to devour what I've prepared, then it would be a crime not to taste some of it myself.”

“Now that's what I like to hear!” Scootaloo winked and gladly shuffled up to a second bowl being laid down in front of her. “Ponyville's chief animal tamer is proud of herself for once!”

Fluttershy blushed rosily, but she amazingly didn't silence herself, instead exclaiming, “Maybe after the meal, you would care to play a game of 'Go Filly?' I bought a new deck the last time I visited the toy shop in downtown Ponyville.”

“Erm... Apple Bloom's the one who's good at card games, not me.” Scootaloo took barely a quarter of a glance at Fluttershy's joyous features and in a fitful breath sought to immortally preserve them. “But I'm willing to learn! I wouldn't mind showing her a trick or two the next time we hang out!”

“Hehehe—I don't know many tricks, necessarily...” Fluttershy nervously tip-toed around the bubbly recesses of her soul. “But I would be glad to share some of my expertise. Angel isn't exactly a cheerful opponent to bounce strategies against.”

“Heh, I imagine not—Whoah!” The orange foal ducked yet another miscellaneous projectile and barked, “Not now! Your mommy's made soup, ya fuzzhead!”

“And then maybe we could—” Fluttershy paused in mid-grin. Her yellow features suddenly and frighteningly sunk into a wretch of dismay. With flicking ears, she spun a worried look over her shoulder and gazed into the gray miasma of rain outside the cottage.

“Mmmm?” Scootaloo hummed while sipping more broth. She gulped and sat up straight. “Miss Fluttershy? What's the matter?”

“I thought I heard... I thought...” A flurry of hooves: Fluttershy shuffled up to the windowpanes, squinting out into the downpour with hard blue eyes.

“Fluttershy... ?”

She gasped. The windows were slammed shut in a blink. Spinning about, the pegasus spoke in a suddenly thick voice: “Scootaloo, stay inside. Do not come out until I tell you to.”

“Why? What's the matter?” Scootaloo hopped breathlessly up on all fours, blinking rapidly. “Is it a flood or something? A tornado?”

“No. None of those. I... I just need to go check on my storehouse really quick.”

“You have a storehouse?” Scootaloo started to trot forward—

“Stay put, Scootaloo!” Fluttershy half-hissed, a shade of the “stare master” bubbling up through her vocal cords. “I assure you that this is no joke. I... I-I will be back shortly. Wait for me.”

“But Fluttershy—?!”

“Wait for me.” Fluttershy flung the door open. With a deep breath, she scampered out into the wetness of the darkening afternoon. The door floated shut with an eerie creak, and suddenly the soaked world beyond crackled with an infernal gaggle of curious sounds, all of which had been a harmless hum just a few naked minutes before the cartaker galloped out with sudden and alarming fright.

Scootaloo became aware of a sudden pounding to the world. It took her a few hobbling seconds to realize it was her lonesome heartbeat. A sour smell filled the quiet reaches of the cottage, like a rotting barn in the middle of a forest. With a forlorn gaze that became clearer the closer Scootaloo trotted towards a reflective windowpane, the little filly stared out into the billowing world, searching for a single golden shade of her temporary guardian. All she was awarded with was emptiness, like something hollow in the earth, begging for white stone.

“Please...” Something eight years old but eight thousand years true murmured out from her inexplicably shuddering lips. “Don't leave me.” A gulp. “Not you too.”

It was then that a gurgling thunder filled the air surrounding the cottage. Scootaloo explosively shrieked—violet eyes twitching—for she knew that it wasn't the storm that had erupted just then. It was a growl.

She mewled with a pathetic weakness that stabbed herself deeply to hear it. “Fl-Fluttershy?!”

---

She spun around. “Yes, Harmony?” She blinked and looked down at what was being held before her. “Uhm... What is that?”

The time traveler beamed, grasping a telescope and two crystalline rocks in her grasp. “This is our Capricorn, Miss Fluttershy!”

“Erm... It... It doesn't exactly look like a Capricorn, Miss Harmony.”

Harmony blushed slightly, but did not lose her proud smile. “I guess what I mean to say is that it's our ticket to finding the Capricorn! Tonight is not going to be another fruitless night of searching, Miss Fluttershy; I can promise you that. I can promise Colonel Rutgut that too, if she weren't so friggin' busy getting high off the sound of her own voice.”

“'Captain Redgale,'” Fluttershy meekly corrected for the infinitieth time. “J-just how did you come upon acquiring these... erm... contraptions? I haven't seen you leave the cottage all day.”

“Glad to be of service, M-M-M-Miss Fluttershy!” Derpy Hooves' voice chimed to the roof and floor of the afternoon-lit cottage. She smiled as she teetered to a stop before the caretaker while shouldering an emptied mailbag. “And you don't have to sweat anything! Miss Bon Bon was more than happy to get these things off her hooves as soon as I told her it was for a Royal Rescue Mission!”

“Rescue Mission?” Fluttershy's face twisted and twisted. She turned and looked helplessly at her “royal” assistant. “I don't remember ever ordering anything from Bon Bon's store. Will the Canterlotlian Clerk reimburse her for these things?”

“Yeah, sure, why not.” Harmony was busily adjusting the metallic sliders of the telescope, disassembling it with a flurry of expert engineering hooves. She tongued the corner of her lips as she tinkered, fumbled, and mercilessly manipulated the equipment in her lone corner of the cottage. “I just gotta put the finishing touches on all this stuff, and then we'll have our key to finding the friggin' star creature that's been hiding from us—Come on, you dang little—” She smacked the telescope until a glassy lens fell offensively to the floor. “Ha! There ya go. Now to shove you in there...” She stiffly crammed one of the crystal rocks into the hollow of the copper mechanism.

Fluttershy bit her lip under half-a-dozen forming sweat bulbs. A pale hoof patted her on her shoulder.

“You're lucky to g-g-g-g-get such regal assistance from Her Majesty!” Derpy chirped. “Why, if I had a Canterlotlian squirrel of my own to follow me around, I'd get my deliveries to Trottingham done in half the time!”

“Yes, well, I suppose some of us are blessed half of the time—” Fluttershy paused in mid-speech, blinking. “A Canterlotlian what, Miss Hooves?”

“Muffin!” Derpy suddenly beamed as she trotted across the homely interior towards a little unicorn on the plush reading seat. “Why is it every time I so much as look at my pride and joy, she's got her nose stuck in a b-b-b-book? It's like the pages will sprout flowers any second! Heeheehee! Mommy made another funny!”

“Yes, Mother,” Dinky murmured with a thinly shadowed gaze. After sighing, she further droned, “You made another funny.”

“If you would excuse me, Miss Hooves, I'm late with chopping Angel some fresh carrots.” Fluttershy excused herself and shuffled into the nearby kitchen. “I'll be right back.”

Even if the mailpony's eyes could look at Fluttershy, she didn't bother aiming them her way. With a half-hearted nod, Derpy sunk down on blistered knees beside the reading seat and placed a gentle hoof on her daughter's shoulder. “What's eating at my Muffin, today? Just last night, you were so excited to get Twilight Sparkle's new book. What's the matter? Is it full of astro... astron-n-n...full of space stuff you already know? I swear, your Mommy's always making that mistake. I'd buy you a whole library if I could make things easier. Heheheh...”

“I love the book, Mother,” Dinky said with a passing smile. With another cold breath, she gazed into the golden afternoon as if it could die under a wall of rain any second. “It's a very helpful almanac of all things celestial, and it serves as a good history primer to boot.”

“Then perhaps my Muffin has a fever?” Derpy exclaimed with a mock gasp. Eyeing opposite edges of the window frame, she sat up and felt the unicorn's blunt horn. With a pivoting smile, she uttered, “Certainly feels like the compass needle is pointed north! Drink a glass of milk and call Doctor Derpy when it p-p-p-p-points south. Heeheehee!”

Dinky's lips curved slightly, but a stone weight was pulling the edges of them down. “Did you know that, since the initial Celestial Exodus at the end of the First Age, the cosmic trail of Epona's spirit has spun the constellations around the Equestrian Solar System an estimated five hundred times over the last several millennia?”

“I... erm... eheh... Wow! For once, something is flying over Mommy's head and not the other way around!”

“Some scientists say that at least two dozen stars have died out in the last three hundred years alone. In a bold astronomical study started in Canterlot, several ponies are claiming that they can predict the lifespans of the stars that make up the trailing end of the Northern Eponal Band. For the first time in recorded histories, scholars of pondyom are claiming to track the death of a Goddess.”

“That's... erm... huh... That's awfully d-d-d-d-depressing stuff for a book about stars and planets. You mean to say that this is the stuff Twilight gave you to read?”

“So many ponies in the scientific community were quick to angrily discount these scientists,” Dinky said in a learned voice, mumbling. “It's amazing that, even to this day, an equine's instinct is to defend Goddess Epona, even though she left the planet. She left all of us. Do you think that's why it's always the mothers of a household that feel compelled to take care of the family...” She gazed up with twin yellow eyes suddenly quivering in an undiscovered childishness. “...while it's always the fathers who leave?”

Harmony looked up from the suddenly unimportant task in her hooves. Her lips parted as a gray-hued monologue from earlier sparked a fiery guilt that compelled her to watch... and listen.

Derpy's eyes pivoted further away from each other under sickly lids. The pale mare bit her lip, gulped, and tried smiling as she said, “Oh, Muffin, it isn't always the d-d-d-daddies, it's—” She winced, hissed, and shut her eyes. A grumbling hum was missiled into her insides. The gray pegasus smacked the dense skin of her own forehead with a frustrated hoof before forcefully summoning clearer words from her desperate lungs: “I give you those books to learn, Dinky, to get smart... to be a smart pony. And I know you can be smart, Muffin, in so many ways that your Mommy c-c-c-can't. But...Nnngh...” A hint of a snarl: the mailpony clamped her hooves briefly over her forehead, hissed through the next few half-thoughts painfully, then calmly produced: “But even being the sm-sm-smartest pony can't give you all the answers. Mommy knows that...”

“Sometimes, Mother, I wouldn't mind being dumb, if only it would mean I could know those things,” Dinky murmured.

“Who told you that? Who—nnghh—who told you to think someth-th-th-thing like that?”

“Nopony! Mother, I was just—”

“Oh Muffin... My Muffin...” The gray pegasus hooked a forelimb around the petite unicorn's body and nuzzled her cheek against her side. “There are so many mean ponies in this world that will say bad things, because they don't know who you are. They don't know how precious and special you can be. That's why I bought you all those books, so you can show the likes of them that you're b-b-b-better than what they think of you, what they think of us.”

“And I appreciate that, Mother! What I meant was that I only wished to—”

“You're so precious to me. You're my precious M-M-M-Muffin. When you're my age, I don't want you to be like me. I don't want you to feel like you're lonely and d-d-d-dumb, just because the world makes you think that. You deserve so much more, Dinky. You're the target of my ador... adora... adora-ra-ra...”

“'Adoration,' Mother.” Dinky murmured in a soft, melancholic smile. She softly nuzzled the space between the mare's eyes with a dainty horn. “It's 'adoration.'”

“Mmm... Yes,” Derpy murmured. She kissed the unicorn's forehead and nestled her child in the crook of her shoulder as she gazed off into infinite shadows. “Yes it is...” Her eyes were crooked, but a pair of blossoming tears aimed true towards the ground.

The two ponies formed a heart-shaped splotch of gray against the warmth of the cottage atrium, like a bubble of ashen clouds. Briefly, Harmony's gaze flew through the horizons of the two, until all too swiftly Derpy coughed away the billowing mists of somberness and hoisted the blonde unicorn in her forelimbs.

“What say Mommy flies us both to Sugarcube Corner? Let's see what Auntie Pinkie Pie has baked today! You can't get sweets from books, can you, Muffin?”

“Heeheehee...” Dinky dangled and smiled placidly. Her voice was a placating song at the end of a nameless funeral. “Okay, mother. Okay.”

“Heeeeeheee...” Derpy inhaled a deep giggle and planted the little foal into her mailbag before prancing out of the cottage with the unicorn in tow. “Good luck with the Capricorn, Mister Squirrel!” She nodded towards the last pony. “See you bright and early in the m-m-m-m-morning!”

“Yeah,” Harmony murmured after them. “Sure thing.” She watched forlornly as Dinky's dangling eyes passed beyond view of the cottage door, like blistering yellow headlights of a gray airship passing through the fog, and then was swallowed up into dismal thought. For a moment, she wondered if Capricorns were the only unlucky creatures to have fallen from the night's sky.

It took Fluttershy's dainty presence to once more summon warmth into the empty room. “Huh?” She wilted and breathed. “Did they leave already? Oh, how I do hate missing good-byes.”

“You can say 'hello' to somepony forever and still never get to know them.”

“What do you mean by that, Miss Harmony?”

“Nnngh... Nothing. Just briefly... briefly distracted,” Harmony said with a cough. Shuffling on re-energized limbs, she motioned towards the manual construction of the telescope-to-rock abomination in her lap. “I'll have this thing whipped together in a jiffy. Then we can see about accomplishing the task that last night lost to us.”

“Uhhm... Okay...” Fluttershy gulped. “Might I be so bold to ask just what this 'thing' is, and how a 'jiffy' will inspire us to find the Capricorn?”

“It was something you said that gave me an epiphany, Miss Fluttershy.”

The caretaker's blue eyes blinked. “It was?”

“The creature feeds off of starlight, right?”

“Yes, I do suppose I implied that.”

“Then I've got just the thing to lure the creature out of hiding.”

“If you insist.” Fluttershy limped towards the doorframe. “I suppose we must make haste, then—”

“No ma'am.”

Fluttershy nearly tripped on her pink mane. “No?”

“We wait...” Harmony glanced up with sharp amber eyes as she slapped the finishing touches onto the roughly augmented telescope. “...until dark.”

Fluttershy's yellow coat paled. She hissed through chattering teeth: “D-dark?”

“What? You thought stars come out in the daytime now?” Harmony slung the telescope over her shoulder and stood up on four limbs. “I mean—where have you been, girl?”

---

“I... uhm... I just had to go and check on something.” Fluttershy smiled sheepishly, all the while dripping a fresh puddle of rainwater as she stood in the cottage door. “Please forgive me for the brief interlude.”

“Brief?!” Scootaloo barked, her violet eyes bright and her features incredulous. “You were gone for half-an-hour! I was almost scared you drowned in all that rain or something!”

“Nonsense!” Fluttershy summoned a contrived giggle. “I most certainly would not have... h-have... haaa-haaaa—” She sneezed like a wet firecracker into the muted air half a centimeter before her. She produced a shuddering breath, a sniffle, and then once more bore a plastic grin as she slogged her way towards the warming fireplace. “I was in no danger of drowning, Scootaloo, I assure you—”

“Then just what were you doing?” Scootaloo scampered breathlessly across the cottage after her. “One second you ran out into the storm, and then I hear this growling noise, and then it's like the world is ending cuz I haven't heard a peep from you and I dunno if I have to call the weather flier team to come clear the stormfront just so Ponyville can conduct a search for their suddenly missing animal tamer and—and—and—“

“Oh Scootaloo, your concern is most endearing, but I was fine.” Fluttershy tried in vain to stifle her shivers as she held her hooves before the fire, breathing deeper and deeper into the warm glow of the hearth. “I simply had to go check on the storehouse. I thought there might be—”

“What? What's so important about the storehouse that you had to go give yourself a Mule's Shower?”

“Scootaloo, what have we talked about rude stereotypes?”

Scootaloo sighed. “You worried me, is all, Fluttershy. Could you at least... I dunno... explain what's so important about the storehouse?”

The yellow pegasus took a deep breath and glanced forlornly across the amber blazes before her. “It's not just the cute creatures that I take care of here, Scootaloo. A lot of Cloudsdalian Animal Tamers rely on my services for when they need special materials for wildlife taming across the rest of the Equestrian Valley. To that extent, I've had a wooden shack built here that acts as a supply house for oats, animal feed, frozen fish, and several other things other animal tamers come for from far and wide to acquire at random moments. Lately... uhm... I've had something or some things exiting the edge of the Everfree forest that... well... that are taking a severe interest in the contents of my storehouse. It's nothing dangerous, really—I just would hate myself if I let anything unnecessary happen to the stuff that the other local animal tamers so desperately need.”

“If it's nothing dangerous, how come you had me promise to stay inside like some horrible tornado was about to hit us!”

“Just a precaution, Scootaloo. I take babysitting as seriously as I take the feeding and care of my precious animal friends.”

“So that's what this afternoon has been?” Scootaloo blinked with sudden haughtiness. “An exercise in babysitting?”

“Uhm... Er...” Fluttershy bit her lip with a slight blush. “I would like to think that after all of these months, I've grown beyond the need of 'exercising' in that department.” Her eyes flickered. “Eeep! But I didn't mean to insist that—”

It was too late; the damage had been done. In a fuming gait, Scootaloo marched firmly towards the rain-drenched doorway of the cottage where her scooter was lying, glistening, waiting for its homeless soul to take arms again.

“It's okay, Miss Fluttershy. I get it. I'm tiny and frail. I don't have the strength to look out after myself, never mind the fact that I can burn circles across Ponyville faster than any other pegasus my age, flightless or not, under rain or shine!”

“Oh Scootaloo! Please, don't go! I didn't mean to suggest that—”

“Don't get me wrong, Fluttershy. I'm more than thankful for having had a shelter from the rain and for being given your delicious soup. But if this is all because you think I'm not able to handle the storm on my own, then don't let me burden you and take advantage of your kindness.”

“It's no burden at all, Scootaloo!” Fluttershy left the delightful warmth of the fireplace to scamper wetly after the foal. “Please—I just wanted to give you a warm and pleasant afternoon! I mean, with your parents gone for the weekend, it was the least I could do—”

The orange foal's wings coiled tight. Scootaloo didn't entirely mean to snarl. Regardless, the front half of the cottage rattled from her voice as she spun and said, “Miss Fluttershy, I would have been fine on my own! I'm sure my parents know that! Don't you see, not everypony is weak and helpless!”

The rattling stopped, and once more the rain's hissing roar drifted into the cottage, filling the empty home with a wave of shadows that the foal hadn't realized were always there until now... now that Fluttershy's face had melted, now that her pink mane fell around her like a wet veil, now that her body pivoted about in a sullen trot that dragged her back towards the suddenly dim fireplace.

“Oh... Well... I understand that, I do suppose,” Fluttershy murmured in a voice that had somehow lost its melody. “You're right, Scootaloo. You're not weak and helpless. You've very strong, and I should have known better than to question that. I... I'm sorry...”

Scootaloo stood halfway out the door to a very cold place, familiar in its destitution. She lifted a pair of shivering hooves from the frigid surface of her scooter's handles, staring at her forelimbs as if they had been stained in blood. She bit her lip and glanced at her anorexic reflection in the rain-slicked metal body of the mechanism, the one thing she afforded herself to hug in the dank dark nights of her foalhood, until her body secretly wished she could fold the wheeled thing inside her orange self and become one with the strong yet mindless machine that could effortlessly whisk her flightless wings away from every setting sun that bit her with lonely, starving shadows. Suddenly, being strong didn't seem so rewarding, not in a world that also paid sweet and fragile souls with the same degree of apathy and desolation.

Fluttershy had descended into a fragile slump beside the fireplace. She was navigating the fathoms of her third or fourth sigh by the time that a tiny orange shell sauntered up and plopped down beside her. Blinking, the caretaker glanced over with curious blue eyes. “Scootaloo...?”

“Meh...” The girl folded her limbs and frowned into the ashen corners of the hearth. “It's too friggin' wet out there. I don't want to get mud on my scooter.”

Fluttershy's smile was crooked in all the right places. “You've been dirtied before.”

“Yeah, well, I don't feel like being dirty tonight.”

“You're more than welcome to wait the storm out until morning, Scootaloo.”

“I know, Fluttershy.” Scootaloo choked on something. Whatever it was, she didn't pretend to know. There was the sound of something sniffling, and she gazed further away from the caretaker. “I know.”

Fluttershy smiled. Over the few next minutes when she gently nuzzled Scootaloo, the orange foal didn't budge. The mare couldn't have been more thankful.

---

“Miss Harmony, may I ask you something?”

“Have at it.”

Fluttershy gazed demurely upwards from the dark floor of Everfree as the two traversed the bowels of the forest under nightfall. “Why are you going so far to help me?”

“Uhhh...” The time traveler carried the telescope and rocks over her shoulders. She playfully navigated the crest of a wry smirk and simply replied, “Because it's my duty?”

The caretaker's hooves dug into the earth as they strolled further through the dark foliage. “I've never known the Court to care this much for the welfare of a mere animal tamer. The Princess is a fabulously generous pony, but even she can't afford to pay so much attention to an individual citizen at the extent to which you've been assisting me.”

“Yeah, well, last time I checked, the Princess wasn't here. You and I are here. And you know what else isn't here?—The Capricorn, that's what. But I think we're about to solve that little conundrum, huh?”

“Miss Harmony...”

“We just need a break in the trees. C'monnnnn Starlight!”

“Miss Harmony, please, do tell me why you are doing this.”

“There once was a pony who told me something...” Harmony tongued the insides of her cheek as she scanned the forested ceiling with twitching amber eyes. “It had to do with the spirit of something that worked in a circle...”

“Uhhm... Wait, are you insisting that—?”

“There we go!” Harmony grinned devilishly and squatted beneath a purplish splotch of Equestrian starlight shining on the grassy floor. “Time to make or break this night.” She rolled the telescope over her neck and tossed it Fluttershy's way. “Here, hold this.”

“Eeep!” The yellow pegasus nervously flinched, juggled the instrument, and then held it in shaking hooves. Before she could so much as spot her reflection in the metallic finish, a crystalline rock was being held directly in front of her face, similar to the one that had been lodged in the fat end of the telescope.

“Ever seen one of these before?” Harmony asked, waving the twinkling gem before the caretaker's face.

“It's a star prism,” Fluttershy said with a nod. “According to legend, they're constructed from nothing else but the actual tears of Goddess Epona.”

“Mmmmhmmmm.” Harmony nodded. “Brave pegasi explorers forged these from crystalline dust found floating at the distant north pole of the earth, close towards the cloudless break in the atmosphere which Canterlotlians like to call the 'Point of Exodus.' It's believed that Epona's essence left these behind when she departed from Equestria—and the whole world for that matter—after the Sundering of Consus.”

“So it was a star prism that you had Miss Hooves procure from Bon Bon's novelty shop?”

“Yup.” Harmony nodded. “I dunno about you, but I can't help but stop and marvel at the beautiful silliness of it all. The world is covered with the remnants and fossils of Gods and Goddesses that once walked among us.” She turned the rock around in her grasp. “There may come a time in the future when all that was once sacred in this world will be gone.” A deep breath. “But no. That's not this time...a time when you can pick a piece of the magic of Creation up off a shelf and carry it in your hoof like a loaf of bread. A wise pony once told me 'It's a wonder to be alive.' With each passing minute in this place, I can't help but believe her.” She turned and smiled at Fluttershy. “So do forgive me if I'm so bent on helping you, Miss Fluttershy. It's all I can do to keep myself from screaming in delightful hysterics.”

“If that is a star prism in your grasp, Miss Harmony, then suddenly I think we have the edge we need in our search,” Fluttershy said with a gentle smile. An optimistic hope was already rising toastily through her yellow cheeks. “If I am not mistaken.”

“You bet your silken mane, girl! Watch in awe!”

The scavenger from the future flew up to the fractured edge of the Everfree forest canopy. She raised the gem into the purple haze from Epona's shimmering Exodus beyond. For a dozen seconds, it appeared as if nothing was happening. Then—in an exponential increase of bedazzlement—the gemstone fluctuated from deep within. Sparkling bolts of energy danced all around it, as if the distant stars had fired a volley of fireflies downward from the heavens, all of them collecting within this tiny jewel in the pegasus' hovering grasp. Soon enough, the thing pulsed like a living lantern, strobing softly and casting kaleidoscopic bands of multi-colored light across the many tree trunks and leaves of the otherwise darkly shrouded Everfree.

“It's... It's beautiful,” Fluttershy obligatorily murmured.

“I would hope so,” Harmony wryly returned, twirling the now-glowing prism in her grasp.

“Now that you have captured the starlight, what is your plan?”

Harmony floated down and gestured with her black mane. “Hold the telescope out if you will.”

Fluttershy obliged, positioning the cosmic spyglass horizontally.

“Mmmmm... Andddddd... Now to line it up just riiiiiight...” Harmony pivoted the small end of the instrument towards her and slowly... slowly brought the pulsating rock towards it. “Eh... Eh-yeah... aaaand...”

The star prism flickered suddenly, and a beam of light was sucked through the telescope and drawn into the identical rock wedged into the fatter side. The thing suddenly became an illuminated spyglass, casting a wide swathing beam of stardust across the black lengths of the Everfree Forest.

“Voila!” Harmony grinned proudly. “We have ourselves portable starlight!” She emitted a girlish giggle. “Ohhhhh Nebula, I love stupid things that work!”

“It's... It's certainly quite the spectacle,” Fluttershy murmured, watching with mesmerized blue eyes as a purple halo of light danced across the forest, turning the black shrubbery into cosmic radiance with a divine contrast that rivaled day and night. “Could this really be enough concentrated starlight to coax the Capricorn out of hiding?“

“There's only one way to find out, Miss Ponyvillean Animal Tamer,” Harmony said with a proud wink.

Fluttershy stared back at her. Instead of wilting or blushing or demurely deflating in any fashion whatsoever, she stood up straight and took charge of the situation. Her yellow features furrowed into a concentrated squint. “Follow me.”

Harmony obeyed her anchor, pivoting her end of the glowing ensemble as Fluttershy navigated the womb of Everfree with renewed determination. The two pegasi lit the forest floor up before them, forcing various dark and chirping things to scurry away as they burned a cosmic path deeper and deeper, tracking Fluttershy's professional instinct. All fears and trepidation about the dark and misty place melted under their firm hoofsteps as they fought to outrun the limited illumination available to their rock-laden instrument.

Soon, even the crickets' song dissipated as all things daring to live through the night bowed down to their mutual crusade. With Fluttershy leading, the two waved the effluent shades of Epona across the untouched wilderness, rejoining the breath of a Goddess with a landscape left to the devices forever and cyclically emulating her.

It was barely a naked thirty minutes into this trek when Fluttershy suddenly halted the progression. “Wait!”

Harmony breathlessly skidded to a halt on copper hooves. She blinked over the twinkling aura in their grasp. “What is it?”

“Do... Do you see it?” Fluttershy murmured in a hoarse voice.

“See what?”

“Right in front of us, Harmony.” The yellow pegasus pointed to a dark impression alongside a beaten path of bent grass blades. “Besides the bushes and the hollow log.”

“But... Miss Fluttershy, I'm pretty sure we passed by that place two or three times yesterday.”

“Nevertheless...” The caretaker's blue eyes narrowed. She motioned back with her pink mane. “Harmony, let us aim the light this way.”

The last pony nodded. Rotating the rock and the looking-end of the telescope, she hinged sideways from behind Fluttershy's flank.

Fluttershy stayed put, allowing the illuminated part of the spyglass to swivel towards the left. The grass turned purple as the swath of starlight burned over it. As soon as the dusty, cosmic aura settled upon the dark impression in the earth, a twitching thing materialized into view. Like an inside-out effigy burning into existence, a skeletal structure illuminated via frothing red bands, then ballooned outward into translucent flesh before finally coalescing into a weakly breathing hide made of fur, scales, and an endless fountain of bleeding stardust. With a sickly bleating sound, the Capricorn's face came into view. A pair of pearlescent teeth gnashed in the night, then fell under a weighted snout towards the ground, kicking up dead leaves as a pair of ivory-bright eyes teared with lonely nausea and agony.

In a burst of magic, the two rocks on either end of the telescope shattered. All of the starlight that had been pulsing through them had shot like a bullet into the hungry frame of the limply sprawled creature. A pale blue glow fell about the landscape as Harmony nervously brushed the ashes and chunks of prism pieces off of her.

Fluttershy, however, did anything but stand gawking in one place. “Oh my... Oh my Oh my Oh my Oh my!”

She galloped forward and slid to a stop on her knees, cradling the twitching neck of the large, limp creature. The cosmic entity groaned and bleated deathily as the pegasus turned its pale head gently about, her expert eyes examining the shredded ends of its white coat and the two twinkling horns upon its crown. A pair of cloven hooves—bleeding white comet trails—painfully kneaded at the ground beside Fluttershy as the specimen stirred pitifully under her featherlight ministrations.

“This is so horrible! You poor thing! You have suffered for so long! If only we had found you sooner! Don't worry, we're going to take care of you! We're going to make sure you get the rest and nourishment that you deserve!”

The creature bleated again. Its glowing eyes blinked slowly like burning bubbles of lava. Every other second, the creature's brow furrowed painfully as bolts of energy did a lightning dance between its two pristine horns. With a pained groan, the thing's lower half thrashed and slapped at the loose soil in the form of a thickly scaled fishtail.

Fluttershy couldn't help it. Her eyes watered. With a sniffling shudder, she pressed her forehead to the end of the creature's snout. Somehow, the gesture temporarily soothed the convulsions of the groaning beast, far more than any words in the Celestial Tongue ever could. With a stronger breath, Fluttershy stood up and murmured across the blue haze of the forest clearing. “Miss Harmony, we must be quick. This noble animal must be taken back to the edge of Everfree now, while it's still nighttime.”

Silence.

Fluttershy blinked. She turned about, gulping. “M-Miss Harmony?”

Harmony was staring. She thought that this would be the first time she'd be staring at a Capricon. She was wrong; she had seen it before, this cosmic and starlit creature—brimming with magic—that possessed the upper torso of a goat and the lower body of a fish. She had seen this, lost in the deepest and blackest pit of the Wastelands, where black vines of horrifically barbed thorns had crucified it to a granite wall... along with the corpse of Fluttershy. Fluttershy's dead body was strung up next to this pathetically absurd thing, and here the time traveler had just helped the innocent caretaker of Ponyville waltz right into the forest to find it. The blue aura dancing around the whimpering creature even mimicked the pallid light wafting out from the gaping maw of a giant angry bear. The Wasteland Survivor would gladly have given her pitiable flesh to the consuming jaws of timberwolves and the burning flame of phoenixes if it simply meant avoiding this—

“Harmony!”

Harmony jumped in place, glancing across the suddenly frightening forest with the amber imitation of a nerve-wracked foal.

The ghost of a stare master was in her face, pleading: “We must make haste! We have to save this creature's life!”

“Save... Save its life...” Harmony gulped, and under Fluttershy's direction, she grabbed the opposite end of the creature and began hoisting it southward with Entropan limbs. If this was destiny, the time traveler wanted to sob. “Save it... Save it all...” The last pony murmured listlessly, her body bathing in the blood of stars.

Comments

[Lium]

Jesus christ, uploading 28 chapters and once? I was planning on going to bed but now I'm not sure.

[RoboRed]

Finally caught up to the break point from the mass chapter split/edit. The shorter chapters are much easier to go through and are less daunting. Also, definitely noticing some of the new scenes. A few chapters still need a comb-through, though.

[HornyUnicorn]

“You bet your silken mane, girl! Watch in awe!”

A scraggly blue mare walks up, angrily munching on a pine cone. "Get out of here hussy! This is Trixie's corner of the woods! Trixie doesn't give lip service to you backwater hicks! *cough* not without payment."

[Sarda]

Man, the universe just loves rubbing fate in her face, doesn't it.

[Prismic]

The story continues...

[Haremking001]

Why the heck would you reveal yourself and your symbol in official documents if it will only result in harder investigation after they look into it?!