//------------------------------// // 25 - The Moment // Story: Predictions & Prophecies // by Kinrah //------------------------------// 10:32:14 10:32:15 10:32:16— Time magic was a tricky thing. It had eluded Twilight Sparkle on all of the previous occasions of her casting it, intentionally or otherwise. Doing the wrong thing at the wrong moment, Anthem had intimated, could result in a backlash that would unravel the magic like a coiled spring, firing the target of the magic back into the future before they knew what was going on. Now that she knew about it, it was how she planned to get herself and her friends back to 1001; simply disrupt all of the time magic at the same time and force it to complete. Getting here had been relatively easy, compared to this. Consider your next move very carefully. A wall of magic stretched up into the sky outside the tower. Less than a second had passed since the explosion in the other school tower, and right at this very moment little Twilight Sparkle was venting magic out into the world at a very unhealthy rate. Princess Celestia would be present in less than a minute to stop the flow, and after about an hour of elation over her newfound mentor and her newly-gained cutie mark, Twilight herself would be taken to hospital as a precaution for magic exhaustion. Shining Armor would too, actually. He’d done his duty and used his shield spell to protect Princess Cadance from the overload, and it left him a little frazzled. Both of their parents, who’d spent about twenty seconds as potted plants, were deemed to have been spared the brunt of it, as had the teachers in the room, whose only damage came in the form of gravity-inflicted bruises. Right now, though, that was yet to happen, because the explosion was still happening. Once she’d regained her senses, Twilight set about disrupting the same part of the spell matrix for Rarity, then while her friend recovered, she could set about figuring out what to do with Reeds. Reeds was native to this time period, she had no time magic surrounding her. Short of introducing time magic to her, and thus running the risk of having it stick around for a long time, there wasn’t much choice. “Twilight…?” Rarity managed, rubbing her head. “What did you—” “Stopped time. Can’t keep it that way for long.” Well. Might as well get her inside, anyway. It was surprisingly easy to grab the frozen pegasus, halted mid-recognition, with their magic and haul her inside. It was even more surprising when they were just settling her on the floor and her wings suddenly started flapping to keep her stable in a wind that was no longer there. With a shout, the two unicorns let go, and Reeds tumbled head-over-hooves to land in a pile against the far wall. It was very frustrating when magical things just happened and she had no time to examine them. Twilight didn’t know enough about time magic to know why that worked, but right now she was just going to roll with it. “Okay,” said Reeds, upside down. “Somepony gonna tell me what just happened? Moonshine? Starshine?” I don’t know, Twilight opened her mouth to say. It would be easier if they kept Reeds in the dark about this. What she said instead was, “Time stopped.” “Nice. Any chance you could un-stop it?” Before Twilight could come up with an excuse, Rarity fortunately did it for her. “Doing so right now would probably be a bad idea,” she suggested, pointing out of the window towards the explosion-in-progress. “I don’t know about you but I would rather not get caught up in that.” “Me neither.” Twilight had extra incentive: If she got caught in that wave unprepared, her magic was going to resonate with… well, her magic, and if it didn’t knock her out entirely it would definitely give her a much more serious headache than the rest of the unicorns in the city were going to get. Back in the Meditation Chamber, it hadn’t been that bad, but then she had almost immediately activated the Iris, which had wiped away all her physical troubles, and then she vented it through casting the teleport/time travel spell. Unless Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy were going to turn up, say, now, that wasn’t something she could do this time. With some difficulty, Reeds flopped sideways ungracefully onto the floor, then flapped over to the window to take a look for herself. She whistled. “Wow, you weren’t kidding. What is that?” No idea. “Magic explosion.” Okay what was going on? Twilight was ready to deny any knowledge of what was going on so she didn’t have to explain it, but then she just said the truth instead— It was only for a moment, but the Iris pulsed through the sides of Rarity’s saddlebag, and Twilight was sure she caught a glimpse of Anthem’s construct glaring at her disapprovingly. Really, it should have meant nothing. But the message that got through to Twilight was lying will make things harder later. Was the Iris forcing her to answer Reeds’ questions honestly? If that were true, then if she figured out that Starshine wasn’t her real name, then their cover would be blown! Oh wait. Her name was Star-shine, in Old Equestrian. Reeds whistled. “Thanks for the save. I may be a pegasus but that doesn’t mean I don’t run for cover every time something blows up.” She paused. “Uh, look, are we going to stay time-stopped forever?” Then she turned around and gestured to the empty coffee cups. “‘Cause I’m almost out of coffee.” At the same time, Twilight and Rarity facehoofed. Somepony had their priorities set. So how was Twilight going to approach this? If she were to just hide the Iris in Reeds’ bag, she’d probably drop it off at Lost Property (and the School for Gifted Unicorns’ Lost Property department was rarely staffed, infrequently checked and nopony could ever find it anyway). Or she might end up selling it, which was worse. An extremely powerful magical charm just for sale in a shop… Twilight mentally shuddered. That would be a disaster waiting to happen. On the other hoof, she could just lie go with the direct approach, with some creative editing. What made it a little worse was that she could tell that the Iris wasn’t directly affecting her thought process; it was just nudging her in a different direction, and it worked every time. Standing here next to it she felt compelled to at least tell a partial truth rather than lie outright. But it couldn’t work like that all the time, right? When she’d been trapped in 611, she and Princess Luna had been able to bluff past Daffodil, and initially to Sweeping Stroke, and even in the present there should be enough magic remaining to cause something like that. Trixie hadn’t been at all truthful with her boasting during her visit to Ponyville. …Ooh. Except, she’d claimed to have vanquished the Ursa Major, and from the Iris’s point of view, she had helped… “I can probably get it going again,” Twilight admitted, “but Reeds. I need to ask you a favor, a really big one.” A couple of the coffee cups went tunk on the floor as Reeds turned around and knocked them off the table with her wing. “Huh? I barely know you.” “I know, but it’s very important.” Carefully, Twilight drew the Iris from Rarity’s bag. It had stopped glowing, so for all intents and purposes it looked like what it had when they’d first seen it around Trixie’s neck - a simple crystal. Boy, were they wrong about that. “I need you to look after this for me.” If anything other than completing a time loop were riding on this, she would never just hoof over a crystal charm as powerful as this one. It needed studying. It needed a thorough examination. Giving it to a coffee-addicted teaching assistant to-be was just unthinkable, there were just so many things that could happen to it, especially in eleven years. But again, Twilight remembered Anthem’s words: ‘It has survived this long; it will survive you’. Even if Reeds used it as a coffee coaster for eleven years - she couldn’t, the coffee cups were bigger than that, and Twilight hated that that was where her mind went - she wouldn’t be able to break it. Hey - it had survived eleven years being the clasp for Trixie’s cloak. With a little trepidation, Reeds approached the crystal that was being offered to her in Twilight’s magic, and examined it. “I dunno, this seems a little fishy to me.” Her gaze turned to Rarity, and then to Twilight. “You sure you’ve got the right pony?” “Positive. Nopony else can do it.” Whoops. One of Reeds’ eyebrows went up slightly. “And why’s that?” Okay, Anthem, truth or— truth it is. “Because it’s a magical charm, and I can’t keep it safe.” “Magical charm? What does it do?” Even as she asked the question, Reeds reached out to touch it, at which point she sighed deeply and went slightly limp. “O-okay. Wow. It does that. Feels like I’ve just taken a really long bath,” she added, as if Twilight didn’t know. At this, Rarity’s head snapped around to meet Twilight’s gaze, and she pouted. Whoops again. Should have known better than to parade that out in front of Rarity. Then Rarity reached out to touch it anyway. “Oh my. You really should have told me about this, Starshine,” she purred, almost condescendingly. “Are you sure we can’t keep it? I can think of a few places to hide it…” Yes, and she would put it on a dress and parade it in front of everypony. Sorry, Rarity. Maybe next time. Now Reeds touched it again. This needed to stop. Even a harmless magical charm was addictive. Oh, but now Twilight wanted to touch it again too… The Iris is not a toy. Anthem’s voice almost echoed around the room. Stop playing with it. Both orange pegasus and white unicorn stepped back, blushing, ears flat against their heads. Neither of them knew who was talking, but you couldn’t disobey that tone of voice. That was the tone of a mother scolding their foal for doing something wrong, and they were all familiar with that. “So it does that too, huh?” Reeds forced a chuckle. “Well…” “You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to.” Rarity! After another pause, Reeds shook her head. “No, it’s okay, I’ll look after it for you. You’re not… you’re not just leaving a dangerous thing with me and then running off, are you?” Whatever gave her that impression? “No, of course not. But I need you to promise me.” Twilight set the Iris down on the table next to Reeds’ bag, and walked up to her. “Promise me that you won’t tell anypony about this, and I mean anypony. There’s a unicorn - Twilight Sparkle.” Don’t give the game away, Rarity, this is critical. “She knows about the Iris, but you can’t let her know that I gave it to you.” Wait, then she’d never open up in the future. “Unless she invites you to Ponyville for tea.” “That sounds oddly specific. You sure she won’t invite me for coffee?” Twilight chuckled. “Trust me, she’s a tea pony.” All she had to do in the future then was invite Reeds for tea and hopefully that would signal her that the game was over. And now she was calling it a game… What was this day coming to? “So, you promise?” The pegasus moved until her eyes were right in front of Twilight’s. “One condition.” “Name it.” She was going to ask for coffee, wasn’t she. “Buy me a coffee.” However did she guess? “Done.” Of course, neither of the two unicorns had bits on them, and Reeds was going out via the fountain. “Then a promise is a promise.” Reeds held out her hoof, and Twilight shook it, before the former walked back over to her bag and stuffed the Iris inside it. She swung it over her back. “Now, we getting out of here?” Twilight couldn’t keep them in the time stop for much longer. Still, it was a consensus amongst all three of them that they should try and get as far as possible away from the event horizon of the explosion before it restarted and there was pain. The further the better, though given how complicated it would be to get from the tower where they were to the city it was pretty much guaranteed they wouldn’t even make it as far as the castle gates. She was still working on a solution for when time eventually caught up to them. Shining Armor’s shield spell had protected himself and Princess Cadance, and she wasn’t bad at it, but she was fairly certain that since it was her own explosion it would just bypass any protective spells she cast anyway. After the royal wedding, Rarity had asked Twilight if she minded teaching it to her; as it turned out protective magic was to Rarity as healing magic was to Twilight. The route involved taking a circuitous path through the castle gardens, making it even longer, because the shortest path was already cut off by the wall of magic. This meant that they passed some familiar figures; the aforementioned brother and future sister-in-law and Princess Celestia, all of whom were looking up towards the explosion with a mixture of surprise and fear. Shining Armor’s spell was already being cast, probably on reflex, but the Princess wasn’t doing anything… just staring. They couldn’t stay and look, but Twilight was confident that that was another of the scenes she’d seen in her first prophecy. In teacher’s eyes, past truth. Not that it explained exactly what truth. Just another thing she’d have to ask the Princess about when all of this blew over. It suddenly occurred to her that if this was this moment, she hadn’t blurted out the line like she had all the other times they’d passed. Did that mean she had control of Prophetia now, finally? “How long until time gets going again?” Reeds asked, adjusting the strap of her bag, and stretching her wings. Twilight took a moment to examine the time magic, and really wished she hadn’t. “Oh no. I have to cancel it in less than a minute! Run!” Time was stopped, but it just wasn’t stopped enough. The unicorns ran and the pegasus flew, through the grounds, past some guards, past the fountain, and— Time slipped. 10:32:17 —S— Only for a second, Twilight’s modification to the time magic faltered, but a second was all it needed. The rush of wind that precluded the wave of magic jolted the pegasus above them, and with a cry, Reeds’ saddlebag slipped from her back. Time almost seemed to go slower, and with a start the lavender unicorn realized that this was exactly how she’d felt when they’d been in the Meditation Chamber and the windows blew in. Was that her fault, now? Magic crackled around the three of them, magic that in any moment was going to hurl Twilight and Rarity back to 1001 unless she canceled the time stop. Above them, the Iris fell out of the bag, glinting, reflecting the magic both within and without, and without thinking, Twilight leapt for it. She could hear music, and the voice was familiar… was Anthem singing? —H! SPLASH! 10:32:18 10:32:19 10:32:20 A moment of silence followed the sound of breaking glass, the weaker wave of magic coming from the other direction as the previous excursion to 990 left the Meditation Chamber, and the distant sound of magic crackling around the epicenter of the explosion. “Well done, Twilight,” said Rarity, patting her on the back and making her flinch. “You could have perhaps timed that shield a little better, but…” Twilight, who had been belly-down on the floor and squeezing her eyes shut in anticipation, risked cracking one open, then the other. It… it was over? “I… I didn’t do anything.” The other unicorn was confused, and rightly so. “But… I thought you put up a shield. Something protected us from your blast.” Something, or— Rest calm, and remember me. The Iris glowed in Twilight’s outstretched hooves. I expect great things await you, Twilight Sparkle. Go. Find your friends. Did… did Anthem save them? Did the Iris put up a shield of its own? What wasn’t it capable of? One thing was for sure - unless Trixie changed anytime soon they were going to need to relieve her of it somehow. She was not the sort of pony who could be trusted running around with a powerful magical artefact. Rarity gave her a look, and she knew exactly what it meant. “No, Rarity, we can’t keep it. Otherwise we’d never be here in the first place. The Iris stays here with Reeds— uh. Where’s Reeds?” Neither in the air above them nor on the ground next to them was there any sign of an orange pegasus. But she’d been right there! Just above them, when… when time restarted and she’d been out of range of the shield spell… so the windrush… they both looked behind them, at the fountain, and the unconscious form of Reeds Melody partially submerged in it. So that was how she ended up in there. Whoops. Now she was out of the story again for eleven years, until Twilight and Princess Luna went to visit her in the Magic Grounding Ward. What a long, strange trip she’d have. What a long, strange trip it had been. Now they just had to tie up the loose ends. Starting, of course, with Reeds again. Her next port of call was the hospital; so that’s where they were going. Twilight carefully lifted the slumbering pegasus onto her back, Rarity secured the bag with the Iris, and with the sympathetic looks of the guards they had to hurriedly explain to, left the castle. It shouldn’t have been as easy as it was. But between the guards trying to work out exactly what had happened and trying to calm the citizens, their journey down the Broadway to the hospital went completely unchallenged. It helped that they weren’t the only ones carrying a pony to the hospital, although they were generally carrying moaning unicorns, not sopping wet pegasi. Hopefully the hospital had some spare towels. “Now all we have to do is find the others!” Rarity shouted, above the sound of their galloping hooves. “Do you have any ideas?” “One step at a time, Rarity! One step at a time!” And that was perhaps the biggest lesson Twilight had learned from all this. Sure, she wasn’t going to stop with her schedules, but she was going to leave at least a little room in for things that were unexpected. Looking into the future only heaped more and more stress on her as she tried to predict what was going to happen based on her prophecy, and avoid anything undesirable. Taking things as they come was how they got through this. Finding their friends? They’d find them. The entrance to the hospital was already busy by the time they got there, but the crowd parted to admit the stricken, and the two unicorns and pegasus entered with a minimum of hassle. Reeds was lifted onto a stretcher, her situation was explained to the nurses, and her bag was taken to be stored in a locker. Goodbye, Iris. See you in eleven years. After all of that, it seemed a little anti-climatic, seeing one of the doctors taking it away and stuffing it unceremoniously in a locker. There were far too many ponies in the building to even hope of getting as far as the ward with the nurse who was pushing Reeds’ stretcher, but it gave Twilight some comfort to know that she was there and she was being seen to— “Twilight? Rarity?” “Applejack?” In the end, they had to abandon the lobby; it was just far too packed to even think in there. On the plus side, they went outside, and found Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. On the negative, side, well… “You did what?!” It wasn’t a scream. Twilight would have described it more as a screech. It came dangerously close to attracting some unwanted attention. “Time isn’t a game, Pinkie!” she chastised her friend as the group walked along the street, though the pink pony was clearly paying the barest minimum of attention to her. “If you do something wrong, it could have consequences!” “Yeah,” Pinkie countered, “but what if I hadn’t, huh?” “That— I— that’s not the point!” It was the point, and that was the most frustrating thing about arguing with Pinkie Pie, most of the time she was absolutely right. “You’ve got to be careful with time travel! What if you’d interrupted something that was vitally important?” “But I didn’t!” “She’s right,” commented Applejack, over Twilight’s right shoulder. “‘Sides that balloon pony, and the pegasus we took to the hospital, we didn’t interact with nopony.” “And I saved a building full of ponies!” added Rainbow Dash. The whole weather station thing had already been explained, hurriedly, and Twilight wasn’t happy about that either, though marginally less so considering that she could hardly be blamed for doing it. Hay, Twilight herself would have done something similar. She felt like such a hypocrite, but you couldn’t ignore something like that. “That’s two awesome things I did today!” “I feel our morning was somewhat more… confusing,” Rarity admitted. “To be honest I’m still not sure I understand everything. But the past is the past, is it not?” “It is now!” And soon, they could leave the past to the past, and get back to the present. They needed a private place, and now that she was mostly calmed down again, Twilight knew exactly where they were going. Home. Or to be more specific, her home. The Sparkle family house wasn’t anything fancy. It sat where Canterlot met the mountain, below the ridge where all of the more noble families had their mansions, not in the most opulent district of the city, but in perhaps one of the nicest. A modest building, detached, not any more fancy than the ones on either side, just unique in its own way. Of course nopony would be there, her entire family was still inside the castle grounds at this point. A perfectly private place. Still a shame that all of the windows were broken. “Um, won’t your parents mind us being here?” Fluttershy asked, as Twilight retrieved the front door key from underneath a flowerpot. “I don’t see why they would. They are my family, after all.” Her parents were understanding enough. They’d be perfectly willing to host their daughter from the future, if a little disconcerted. “But we’re not staying long. A few minutes and I can dispel the time magic and send us back to where we belong.” “And about time, too!” said Applejack. “Heck, I don’t even mind if we end up back in Hoofington rather than Ponyville, s’long as we’re where we’re supposed to be.” All six of them trooped into the house, and Twilight made sure to put the key back underneath the flowerpot before shutting the door. She didn’t know what the state of the house had been when her parents had returned, but unless they made a real mess of things, like leaving the key in the wrong place, it was likely they’d never know anypony had been there. Except for one thing… Annoyingly it still took her a moment to remember the matrix for Reconstitution so she could fix the windows. (Later, she’d ask her parents about it. They’d been very surprised to find out that their house was the only one in the neighborhood with intact windows, but otherwise indicated no knowledge of any unexpected visitors.) Before starting, it was probably a good idea to get an indication of what had actually happened on the other sides of things. Personally Twilight had seen two of the remaining prophecies, the one from hers concerning Princess Celestia and the one from Trixie’s regarding the locked door, and she guessed at a stretch she could include the line from hers about the explosion. Applejack had mentioned falling out of a balloon, so that was done… After Applejack explained exactly what had happened, Twilight facehooved. It was such a simple answer it was ridiculous. In teacher’s eyes, past truth: Check, though the truth was still ambiguous. The city by power be battered, check. Two will rise, one will fall, check. “Oh yeah,” Rainbow Dash said, when Twilight mentioned her propping up a beam. “Yeah, I did that. I saw that picture that Dinky drew of me but I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time.” Help them as they flee their fate: Check. Twelve down, one to go, and of course it was the most difficult one to figure out of them all. “Don’t suppose anypony saw a hurricane or anything?” she ventured. “Or somepony called Hurricane? Near a thaumometer?” There was a very awkward pause. Then Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy looked at each other, and very slowly raised a hoof each. “You did? Where? Who?” Rainbow pointed at Fluttershy, who blushed, and grinned sheepishly. Uh… was she pointing past her, or… no, she was definitely pointing at the other pegasus. “I— but— what?” “Aheheh…” Rainbow rubbed the back of her head. “Y’see, after that whole thing with the the waterspout up to Cloudsdale, some of the patrol started calling her Hurricane Fluttershy…” “It’s not really a nickname I’m proud of,” added Fluttershy, watching in concern as Twilight tried to comprehend the bomb that just got dropped. “I mean, I don’t mind it, but…” “I forgot her when I was saving the other ponies in the weather building,” Rainbow continued, drawing gasps from the others. “She screamed, so I went back in there, and got her out, and the graphs were going berserk. You should’ve seen it.” Deep breaths, Twilight. So the Hurricane she’d been worrying about was Fluttershy. What was that in the face of everything, right? Right…? Turn back to answer Hurricane’s call: check. That was it. That was all of it. Her first prophecy, the one she’d made in 611, the one she’d just done in the Meditation Chamber, all of it had passed. Only one thing remained, and that was Trixie’s vision of a book falling to the floor, but was that really so unusual? Twilight dropped books all the time by accident, Spike even more so. Now that she wasn’t voicing the prophecy lines out loud, it could pass when she wasn’t looking and she’d never know. Was there any point in waiting for it? No. None whatsoever. “Okay, gather around, everypony.” Carefully setting some of the furniture to one side, Twilight did some quick mental arithmetic. Good, that all checked out. Unlike the return to the present from 656, where time elapsed in the past equaled time elapsed in the present, they ought to arrive at exactly the moment they left, and some change. They couldn’t arrive before they’d left, that’d just be a paradox, but so far the time travel spell had been pretty good at avoiding those. “Now—” “How exactly are you gonna get us back to where we came from?” asked Rainbow Dash, glancing at the others as they all stepped up. “I thought that crystal did it last time.” “It did,” Twilight confirmed. “Well, actually, it turns out that it took us back to this moment because I programmed it to, but—” “You what?” “Look, I’ll explain it all when we get back to 1001, okay?” Doubtless the explanation would sail over all of their heads anyway. “I discovered that the six of us all have time magic surrounding us, from the time travel spell which is supposed to be temporary.” “Well clearly it ain’t,” said Applejack, stating the obvious once again. “Yes. Using the Iris’s power, the spell was slightly disrupted so…” how could she explain this to them without a two hour lecture… “…essentially the spell has ‘forgotten’ that it’s supposed to be temporary. I’m just going to tweak it so it does remember, and that’ll send us back to the present in a snap.” Rarity sat down, then stood up again when she realized nopony else was doing it. “Well, I for one have had just about enough of today,” she commented, to general nods from the others. “Are you absolutely certain about this?” “Positive.” And it wasn’t a brave face, she really was convinced that this was how they’d do it. “Is everypony ready?” “Mm-hm.” “Yup!” “Go for it, Twi!” Twilight closed her eyes, focusing on the time magic, then opened them again, her eyes attuned, to a solid haze of purple around all six of them. In close proximity, it would just be a matter of finding the right thread, following it to its source, and tweaking it just… about… there! Given everything else, she was expecting nothing to happen for a moment before they were suddenly back in 1001, so the abrupt forwards thrust transition into the ether was particularly surprising. No, something was wrong. It wasn’t supposed to work like this; the end of the time travel spell when she’d cast it and it was working properly had just been a magic flash, similar to a normal teleport. Canceling the spell wasn’t supposed to do that! Unless… unless those two timestops she’d done had messed with it, somehow… Panic ran through Twilight’s mind as she hurriedly confirmed what she already knew. They were going too fast, much too fast, at this rate they’d overshoot 1001 and end up in the future! No! They were going back to the present! They need to slow down! But how did you slow a destabilizing spell? You couldn’t, you just had to let it off and hope it smacked into something harmless, like a tree or a pond or a cloud— Oh. Really? Was it really going to be that simple? Unconsciously she’d started repeating a mantra like last time, in the hope that it would get them to where they wanted to be. Now she just had to change it a little. If they started slowing down too early they’d land, well, too early, so they needed to get close, and then hit the brakes… would it be enough? There was only one way to find out. They’d left April the 22nd. But if she aimed just a little earlier, say nearly two weeks… On April 10, 1001, there was scheduled to be a light rainstorm over Ponyville. A lot of traders had prepared for it, the pegasi in charge of it were all pumped up, and the town was generally ready. However, by the time the morning had rolled around, it became quite evident that something somewhere along the line had Gone Wrong, leaving everypony with patchy cloud coverage and a soft westerly wind. More than anypony else, it confused the weather patrol, as they swore blind that they’d set up the storm that was now missing. The weather front had been parked about half a mile north of Ponyville’s outskirts, ready to catch the early morning wind. At about 4AM, the weather patrol finished packing it together, congratulated themselves on a job well done, then went home to have breakfast. None of them were looking in the other direction, so nopony saw the brief flash of magic as six ponies hurtled into the cloudline and disappeared, taking the clouds with them. Almost home, Twilight reminded herself. Just a few more seconds, and they’d be back in the vault, right after they left, and everything would be fine again. Uh. Hang on. Hadn’t the vault been full of— The Lifebearer’s vault snapped into focus around her in a flash, and there was magic everywhere.