//------------------------------//
// 11 - The Moonlight 
// Story: Predictions & Prophecies 
// by Kinrah 
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“The Great and Powerful Trixie demands an answer!”

‘To look upon the rainbow band’: PASSED; Rainbow Dash looking on her own sonic rainboom with Princess Luna’s telescope, while we were back in time. …Going to have to get used to thinking about that…

‘The final pillar cannot stand’: PASSED; A sonic rainboom knocked the last pillar of an Earth City promenade into Skyview Lake. (Will have to follow up on this; when a pegasus kicked it, it showed no signs of moving whatsoever, yet the windrush and tremor from a sonic rainboom did; was that really all it took?) This seems to have occurred on May 21st 990 rather than April 18th 1001 as previously assumed.

It was sometime in the early evening; Princess Celestia hadn’t yet lowered the sun completely but it was showing signs of descent. The two unicorns, along with some of the minor miscellany from the Meditation Chamber, had landed on a road through a small forest somewhere, making it impossible to see any landmarks without climbing up a tree. That was one thing Twilight was not willing to do, seeing as a) she’d been moments away from collapsing from magic fatigue, and b) the last time she’d been up a tree it had taken Fluttershy the best part of half an hour to coax her down again. Trixie, who was sans cloak and hat and starting to sound like a broken record, had been repeatedly demanding answers in between refusing to be seen by anypony performing the demeaning act of scaling the environment. So Twilight had just picked a direction and started walking. After a few moments of spluttering Trixie had followed her.

“Are you listening to Trixie?!”

‘Friends around see shock indeed’: PASSED; Myself, Rarity and Ditzy Doo reacting to the revelation about the sonic rainboom in line one re time travel.

‘She will sink into the deep’: PASSED; Not Applejack as initially feared, but an unknown pegasus who was knocked unconscious by the falling pillar in the second line and sank into Skyview Lake. This also apparently happened in May 990 which means that the pegasus got admitted to Canterlot General then? Princess Celestia might have trouble finding her, actually, seeing as the hospital was inundated with ponies with headaches after the explosions. In fact, she’s probably already recovered and been discharged, so…

She was taking the time to update her thought-journal. It was helping her to concentrate over the sound of Trixie complaining behind her. The assumption - she stressed assumption because the other unicorn refused to tell her anything - was that Trixie had had her own run-in with the Prophetia/teleport combination and had simply collided with Twilight mid-spell. Simply, of course, being an operative word; there might have been a precedent for two teleports intersecting with each other but she couldn’t remember reading about it anywhere. It wasn’t exactly a common situation.

Actually, the more Trixie had protested about it, the more Twilight suspected that she hadn’t even intended for it to be a teleport in the first place.

“Aargh!”

‘The symbol of magic will shatter’: PASSED; This was my cutie mark in stained glass on the Meditation Chamber skylight being fractured before my past self’s explosion while we were back in time. I guess I’ve always been responsible for that room’s not being decorated as it was, and the telescope’s being underground. Still trying to weigh up telling Princess Celestia about this whole ordeal vs Princess Luna’s disapproval at vandalizing her property. It really has hit home that one of the few things that she would have owned from a thousand years ago was destroyed, or rather removed, ten years before she came back to the world.

‘The city by power be battered’: Not actually passed, I didn’t say it out loud, but given everything else I’d say it’s safe to assume (it’s never safe to assume) that the ‘flash’ was actually the previously mentioned magical explosion going off in the university tower of Canterlot castle. That certainly battered the city with power, even if it was mostly harmless.

Right now the key thing was Twilight didn’t know was where she and her companion (for want of a vastly more appropriate word) were, and slightly more important than that, when they were. They could be where they should be in 1001, just really off-target, but they could just as easily be anywhen else. Time travel needed a whole new dictionary to be understood properly. First step was of course finding a landmark. It would be much easier to determine the where first and then move onto the when, unless of course the landmark bore features that didn’t exist in the present day. Then it would be really easy.

‘Easy’ was of course not taking Trixie into account who, for all the talk about getting caught by nonexistent passers-by doing the embarrassing act of climbing a tree, was perfectly content with throwing a tantrum.

‘Upon the surface last signs float’: PASSED; Fluttershy was wearing Applejack’s hat when she dived into Skyview Lake to save the unknown pegasus. Also took place in the past.

Addendums to notes on Trixie’s prophecy: Fluttershy holding Applejack’s hat took place in the same 990 CE time period. For much of the rest I can’t say, though going by the significance of the event v already established prophecy moments, it’s very likely that the bolt of lightning hitting the library is the same one which hit just as I cast Prophetia. I don’t think that can have been deliberate. When I get back - if I do ever get back - I’ll try talking to Snow Veil to see what happened, and get her side of the story.

…This is going to need some revision… Okay. I have some notes.

First point is the painting that got sent to Rainbow Dash. Time was compressed a little but it must have been the 990 CE rainboom, with my explosion going on over Canterlot in the background. Only unicorns would have been sensitive enough to that type of magic to see it, and basically everypony who did see it got headaches, so… more confirmation that it was da Colton, I guess? I still have to do some research to see if I can find out where it came from and why exactly it got sent to Rainbow Dash. It might just turn out that the Princess was right, that it was just an anonymous donor who just figured out where Rainbow Dash lived, but surely it can’t hurt to know.

Thinking about it, that’s the second item of da Colton’s that has turned up in an unexpected place so long after he lived, the first being his workbook. Is this going to become a trend? Are loads of missing da Colton works going to start showing up? If I remember correctly, a number of destroyed works were found in his workshop once the Great Fire had been extinguished, and he had a track record of keeping paintings hidden for months before allowing them to be viewed. It’s very possible that some items survived but were never revealed publicly.

“Do you feel sorry for yourself, Twilight Sparkle?!”

“Sorry, what was that?”

Trixie turned a peculiar shade of purple. “Were you not even listening to Trixie’s tale of woe and despair?!”

Sighing, Twilight stopped and rubbed her nose. “Look, Trixie, I’ve got a lot more to be concerned about than just you at the moment.”

“Name one thing that is more important right now.”

“Oh, I don’t know, making sure that we’re not stranded in the past?!” That shut her up. “As much as I’m sure that you’ve… ‘suffered’ since the Ursa Minor, the more pressing issue is a result of the spell which I cast, yes, maybe a little foolishly but with no malicious intention when I discovered something new, and which you then stole and cast and the result is that we are now possibly stuck in a completely different timeframe than the one we each intended to teleport from!” Twilight paused for breath. “So please excuse me while I ignore your complaining so I can gather my thoughts and try to nail down the exact way things went wrong and how to fix them!”

Ah… blissful silence.

For a few moments, anyway.

“What do you mean, the past?!” Trixie galloped forwards to keep up. “Your meddling with time travel has gotten us stuck in the past?!”

“Maybe! I don’t know yet! I was inside a destabilizing teleport which was supercharged with a time travel spell and then you crashed into me!”

“Oh, so now it’s about me, when it comes time to apportion the blame?!”

“You know that’s not what I meant!” Twilight inhaled, then exhaled slowly. She didn’t want to lose her cool. “Given how much power went into it… we could have ended up anywhere.”

“How much power?” Trixie asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

Twilight responded after a moment to do the math. “Part of an explosion went in, then all of the energy from a magical charm, minus the amount it took for my own explosion. Then a teleport which fell apart, my friends went one way, a bit of the scenery went another, and then there was probably some burnout from the collision.” She blinked. “Actually, there might not have been as much as I thought, in the end. I thought we would have been lucky not to end up back before Nightmare Moon was banished.”

“That much?” The other unicorn muttered something under her breath. “Very well, the Great and Powerful Trixie accepts your proposal to assume all responsibility for this event.”

“What?”

“She can tell by your aura that you are clearly magic fatigued, so she will stop making a deal of it until you are able to get her out of this mess. Trixie is also fatigued, and as much as she doesn’t care to admit it she will need to wait for it to pass before she can even think about solving it herself. Until then, she is relying on you, Twilight Sparkle, not to screw up and make things even worse.”

Well… she was right, Twilight guessed. Even if it wasn’t one of those struggles which ended over laughs and a new friendship, if they were in the past - or even in the future - she owed it to her to get her back. It had been Twilight’s fault that the time travel spell was involved, after all. Trixie had stolen the book with Prophetia in, and it may have shared a couple of traits with the time travel spell, but not having the same level of access to the Canterlot Archives she wouldn’t have known that.

“I’m sure it’s not going to be that bad,” she said, to a huff from Trixie. “You never know, you might have knocked the time travel component out of the spell completely.”

“Any magic kindergartner could tell you that spells do not work that way, and it pains the Great and Powerful Trixie, a magician of humble origins, to have to say this to a pony who allegedly spent time learning from Princess Celestia.”

“Spells break the rules sometimes!” Trixie was probably right there, though. Still…

The sun was almost set now, and the shadows from the trees crossed the road right to left, so apparently they were heading south. Any moment now, Princess Luna would raise the moon, and it would get darker still for two unicorns who probably couldn’t sustain a light spell for very long. Hopefully they’d reach a settlement—

Ah, speaking of. At last, as they crested a ridge, a town appeared below them. Civilization. There was a train station too, so easy passage anywhere in Equestria if necessary. In fact… Twilight squinted, and could make out a familiar building in the town’s centre.

“Hoofington!”

Trixie’s face had broken out into a grimace. “Joy.”

That was an odd reaction. “Isn’t this your hometown?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie reserves the right to not answer any of your irrelevant questions.”

“No, Trixie, I know it’s your hometown, Mrs Fairy Cake told me. Did something happen here?”

“Trixie refuses to tell you!”

“Okay, fine.” Twilight scanned the town. Nothing looked much different from her visit here the previous week, at least from this distance. What she needed now was a more, um, informed opinion, and the only way she was going to get there was by pandering. “Speaking as a long-time Hoofington resident,” she said, raising her eyebrows, “does the Great and Powerful Trixie see anything that would indicate the year?”

The returned glare was ice cold. The other unicorn knew exactly what she was trying. It still worked, though. “Trixie supposes she will be gracious enough to answer questions that the student of a Princess is uninformed enough not to know the answers to.” She put a hoof above her eyes and squinted, making a few ‘hmm’ noises as she did so.

“Anything?”

“Shush!”

“Sorry.”

After a few moments more squinting, Trixie gave up, sighed, rolled her eyes, did a double take, and pointed upwards. “Will that finally answer your inane questioning?”

Twilight followed where her hoof was pointing, took a moment to register, and groaned loudly. “You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered into both hooves, before looking back up again. The Mare in the Moon stared back down at her. “Yep… that’ll do it.”





Trixie stared at her. “You expect Trixie to wear this,” she said bluntly.

“It’s the only other thing I’ve got, and we cannot be walking around in the past undisguised.”

“You call that thing a disguise?”

Jangle jangle. “It’s not the best as disguises but you can’t tell it’s me.”

“Trixie will admit that her eyes are inevitably drawn away from your face.”

Come on… the Star Swirl the Bearded costume wasn’t that bad, was it? Yes, it was jangling a bit, Twilight had removed as many of the bells as she could without permanently damaging it, but it was still a functional piece of clothing. She would have thought Trixie would prefer the simple brown hooded cloak that the pony had left behind in the Meditation Chamber. It wasn’t her usual cape and hat, but that really couldn’t be seen walking around Hoofington right now. Playing it safe was the best bet.

While walking around in an inhabited area in the past probably wasn’t the best idea in the book, they really didn’t have a choice in the matter. Even at this point it was a total unknown how long their magic was going to take to recharge, and they were going to need food and shelter. The twenty bits in Ditzy’s saddlebag should be enough to last them, and then Twilight could repay it when they next met. Hopefully Trixie could keep her loud voice under control until then.

Right now, though, she was still showing her displeasure with the cloak.

“Even if you do expect her to wear this and disguise herself, Trixie cannot wear a cloak without a fastener.” She held up the neck, which conspicuously lacked a pin or clasp. Twilight hadn’t actually noticed that. “Trixie wishes she had her own cape because unlike you she knows how clothes work.”

The lavender unicorn was about to pop a vein. “Okay, you want something to hold it together with? Find a stick or something and use… this…?”

She trailed off, in the process of lifting the charm crystal out of the saddlebag. Only now did she actually look closely at it.

It was a dead ringer for the clasp on Trixie’s cloak.

Oh boy, that pulled up a few questions. Obviously this couldn’t be Trixie’s actual clasp, because that was sitting, presumably in a stage wagon, somewhere in the future. So, what, a lookalike? Had her clasp been made to look like this? Or was it a complete coincidence? Either way, she would have had reservations about giving a very powerful charm crystal to a pony like her, but as it turned out, she had no worries. It was immensely powerful, yes, but that power wasn’t endless. What she held in her magic was an octagonal prism, nothing more, completely lifeless. Everything must have been used up… it had probably kept the ether from collapsing in on her as she traveled. Dead as a doornail.

“I… but, that’s…” Trixie shook her head, and snatched it from her. “Nevermind. Trixie will make do.”

Trixie’s prophecy - clasp being taken from saddlebag - PASSED; Not actually Trixie’s cloak clasp, but a drained magic charm from the Meditation Chamber. Extra extra extra important note to research crystal charms, see if I can identify it.

Now, the exact date was going to be difficult to nail down until they could find either another pony or a newspaper, but Twilight was running on a hunch that it was still 990. If it wasn’t, well, at least their disguises wouldn’t look too anachronistic. Plain cloaks were universal, and gaudy cloaks were more popular than might first be thought throughout history. They shouldn’t make that much fuss just walking through the town. It was getting to the time of night where ponies would be retiring to bed anyway.

There was still a fair bit of walking to do before the town was reached, and most of it was spent in uncomfortable silence. Twilight tried breaking it a few times, a few odd forays into conversation (things like “What’s Hoofington like”, “Do you know where we could find a place to board” and “Where did you teleport from”), but Trixie, being Trixie, was stewing and refused to answer her. Well, at least she wasn’t throwing a tantrum now. The last thing they needed was a trip through the town having a loud argument. When they got there, though, Twilight would be entirely dependent on Trixie showing her the way to go.

On the final approach to the town, Twilight stopped and sniffed. “Do you smell that?” There was a strange scent in the air, not unpleasant, but familiar from somewhere she couldn’t remember. Smelled sort of like… pomegranate? No, not quite… Nope, whatever it was was eluding her for the moment. Beside her, the other unicorn stopped, sniffed, and glared at her.

“Trixie smells apples.”

“That’s not what…” Another sniff. Oh. That was odd. She was sure she’d smelled… the atmosphere was now definitely apple-scented. Hoofington wasn’t an apple-growing town, it was founded to be close to the nearby hills which saw strong winds and were perfect for flour mills, and even though the town had been alive with many smells when she’d visited a week ago in the future, there had always been the underlying smells of grain, flour and bread. Right now, it smelled like Ponyville when the wind was blowing over from Sweet Apple Acres. “Okay. Ignore me.”

“Funny, Trixie was doing that already. She must be better at this prophecy business than even she first assumed.”

No argument, Twilight, she’s trying to get a rise out of you… “Yes, Trixie, I get it. You don’t like this arrangement and to be perfectly honest I’m not keen on it either. As soon as it’s possible for us to go our separate ways, trust me, I’m going.”

Their first pony encounter was an earth pony mare standing outside one of the outskirts houses doing a little late-evening gardening. Or at least, that’s what it looked like from a distance. As they got closer it became increasingly apparent that the mare had fallen asleep standing up, and the watering can she had in her mouth was completely empty, the flowers she was next to half-drowned. Twilight shot a glance at her companion, who rolled her eyes and decided to pay attention to something else, before gently nudging the pony. “Excuse me?” she asked, keeping her voice down.

“Huh? Whuzzat?” The mare snorted, dropping the watering can, and blearily opened her eyes. “Whoozere?”

“Um, I’m sorry for waking you, but I couldn’t help but notice that you fell asleep outside…?”

The mare looked around slowly through half-lidded eyes. “Ohrly. Thnssgs.”

“(Do you know her?)” Twilight mouthed in Trixie’s direction, when the blue unicorn’s idle gaze happened to wander back. “(Is she normally like this?)”

“(How should Trixie know?)”

“(You did live here—)”

A light snoring interrupted them; halfway towards the house, the earth pony had fallen asleep again. Concern for her health - it wasn’t that warm out - overruled concern over influencing the past and Twilight had to rouse her twice before she got inside. Given her condition, she probably wouldn’t remember this anyway.

Disturbingly this quickly became a trend. Along the unpaved street that led into the town, there were numerous ponies crashed out, some standing up, some having apparently fallen over, one pony even halfway into his home. Okay, there was something going on, it was incredibly improbable for an entire town to have narcolepsy. It was magic, Twilight was sure of it, but she still hadn’t recovered enough of her own magic to throw out a detection spell. It wouldn’t be the first time (or would it? She wasn’t sure when the first had happened) that a large number of ponies had been made to fall asleep; she had read about two separate incidents, one involving an unfortunate combination of a miscast and an amplifier, and the other during a concert in Vanhoover where a song turned out to be an extremely effective Griffish lullaby.

When she mentioned these, Trixie huffed and pointedly looked the other way.

A newsstand, complete with salespony slumped snoring on top of it, confirmed Twilight’s suspicions - the Hoofington Press, dated 19th April, 990. She’d gotten the day and month right, but that distraction had cost her the year, fantastic. Even further back than she had been before. She left a couple of bits on the stand and flicked through it. No local events like the concert, no mention of any special circumstances… Come on. An entire town of ponies didn’t just fall asleep for no reason.

“Trixie, please,” she said, folding the paper and stowing it away. “I think you know more than you’re letting on here. April 19th, 990. Do you remember what happened that—?”

“Trixie does not remember.”

That had been said entirely too quickly, and both of them knew it. It took a few moments of Trixie weighing up continuing her denial or giving in for her to make the decision. “Fine. Trixie will educate you, if it will only cease your incessant nagging.”

“I wasn’t nagging, it was a perfectly reasonable request for an answer.”

“Which you repeated countless times despite Trixie’s unwillingness to answer.”

“I— Okay, yes. Sorry.”

“Hmph.”

Trixie’s path led them deeper into the town, and soon enough Twilight was on vaguely familiar ground. Yes, here was the train station, though they were approaching from the opposite side that she and her friends had left from. It was a very weird feeling, that she’d been here only recently but that recent time was eleven years into the future. Suddenly she was struck by Pinkie Pie’s Pinkie Sense prediction, a surprise that a pony was going to get but had somehow already missed, and how apt it seemed now. A surprise in the world’s past but the pony’s future. How typical of Pinkie to predict something like that.

For a moment, the sight of a train idling at the station platform was alarming - bringing to mind the possibility of an unconscious driver and an impending accident - but for once, Twilight actually remembered something about the time period before speaking. In the middle of April 990, the entire stretch of tracks from Hoofington towards the northern cities on the east coast had been closed, due to ‘wild animal encroachment’. There would be no collision, but… something wasn’t sitting right.

A poster on the side of the ticket office caught her attention, and she detoured from the road, ignoring Trixie’s complaint about not knowing what she wanted. “All townsponies invited to the grand unveiling of a marvelous new invention,” she read out loud, running her hoof over it. “April 19th at 6pm in the Market Square.”

“Congratulations, you can read.”

Twilight did her best to try and remember the tourism map. “We’re headed in the direction of the Market Square…”

“You can also read maps. Wonders will never cease.”

The lavender unicorn sighed. “Trixie, believe me, I want to get home as much as you do, but constantly offering sarcastic remarks isn’t going to help either of us.” Trixie opened her mouth. “And no, I’m still trying to work out how I’m going to get us back, so I still haven’t got time to listen to your story of the hardships you’ve faced since we met the first time. One thing at a time, alright?”

If Trixie had been fuming any harder smoke would have started to come out of her ears, but she caught herself before she snapped, thankfully. “Very well. Yes, we are headed to the Market Square.”

“What happened?”

“A pair of moronic brothers.”





Yes, it was exactly who Twilight thought it was, and somehow, it didn’t surprise her.

“The Flam-Flim Twins’ Grande Tempo Applespresso Mk. 3,” she read. No wonder the whole town stank of apples; here at the epicenter the smell was almost overpowering. The machine was vaguely recognizable, but it still had a long way to go before becoming the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000. “Well, that explains a lot.”

“Trixie has had her various dealings with the Flim Flam brothers,” Trixie commented, waving a hoof. “But they couldn’t possibly hope to defeat the Great and Powerful Trixie in a stage-off.”

Ponies had made a half-hearted attempt to clean up after the event, which judging from the number of chairs and bottles still scattered around had drawn an immense crowd. The entire square must have been packed. “Were you here?”

“No. Alas, past-Trixie had been tragically struck down by flu. She is likely sleeping of her own will.”

All things considered, Trixie was taking the reality that there were now two of her in the town rather well. At least there would be no chance of the two meeting and causing time to unravel. Not that that had happened when future-Twilight met past-Twilight. This was an entirely different situation though and Trixie was Trixie. She didn’t handle having ponies upstage her very well. Still, one can only have imagined what would have happened if she’d been trying to perform while this was going on.

“For the record Trixie would easily have drawn the bigger crowd,” said unicorn dismissed, as if she’d read Twilight’s mind. “Any technological innovation would have been barely worth mentioning after a show of Trixie’s caliber. Not even the Dark Magician himself could outshine Trixie!”

“The Dark Magician’s fictional.”

Trixie flushed red. “Shut up!”

From what was written on the various chalkboards which were set or knocked over around the square, the Applespresso was ‘guaranteed to replace your morning caffeine’ using a ‘patented apple-flavored coffee’. For one, there was no such patent, even in 1001, and second, if all the crashed ponies were any indication, it didn’t work. Yep, definitely a Flim Flam brothers invention. Popular, with the effectiveness of a chocolate teapot, made on the cheap and sold for an exorbitant price. Some things never changed.

Something still wasn’t sitting right. Apples and coffee in a straight-up mixture would taste disgusting, but it wouldn’t cause sudden onset sleep. Obviously there was no question as to whether apples were a component, but coffee? Even through the apples Twilight should have been able to smell it, and while there was a lingering trace of coffee, maybe from the market itself earlier in the day, there wasn’t enough to give to that many ponies. Under the assumption that there was no coffee in it at all, then what had they used as a cheap substitute?

Trixie mock-yawned.

Ignoring her, Twilight headed for the barrels brazenly stamped ‘coffee’ and levered the top off one of them. Nope, what looked like little maroon berries inside was most definitely not coffee, and the scent she’d smelled on the outskirts, the pomegranate-ish smell, hit her with full force. Again, it was familiar, but she just couldn’t place it. Just what was this stuff? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Applespresso’s tap. Tasting strange things was a bad idea, but some things just had to be done for science. She’d only need a drop; it couldn’t have that much of an effect, especially if she didn’t swallow it. Swiping a plastic cup, she poured herself a little, then very, very carefully tipped a drop out onto her tongue.

Oh, no.

She spat it out immediately, dropped the cup, and tried desperately to wipe any residue off her tongue. “No, no, no…” Those… morons! They must have known what this stuff was! Whatever would make them think it could make a coffee substitute?! This was idiocy on a universal scale! Trixie laughed; Twilight turned on her. “This isn’t funny!”

“On the contrary, this is the best show Trixie has seen since her own.” The magician smirked. “So what’s in it, o learned one?”

Twilight couldn’t keep the anger from infecting her voice. “Snoozeberries!”

“Whoever heard of a snoozeberry?”

“They’re nothing like coffee at all! They’re otherwise harmless, but just licking one is enough to put you out for ten minutes! They used to give these to ponies as anesthetic before major medical operations!” Twilight looked around. The berries had been diluted with the apples, but the smell was still everywhere. Nowhere to run. “And that’s not even the worst part!” It only grew in the north, they must have carried the berries by train, that explained the closure of the line, they never specified what kind of wild animal encroachment it was…

“Enlighten Tri—”

The ground shook. It was only a small tremor, barely enough to cause ripples in the tanks on the Applespresso, but both unicorns immediately paled. Trixie shot forwards and grabbed Twilight by the shoulders. “Tell me! What’s the worst part?!”

A roar in the middle distance. Both of them turned to look towards it. Then back to each other.

“They’re like catnip to Ursa.”