Six equine gasps went through the moonlit courtyard as they saw Princess Luna’s power tear away from her. They rose into whinnies of shock as the alicorn dropped, shrunken, small, and pale.
Applejack spoke first.
“What th’ hay just happened?”
“I, I don’t know!” Twilight tried running forward to Princess Luna. Her hooves flailed at the air until she set back down again. Only then did she race to the side of the fallen Moon Princess. John and his friend Mister Manco stood over her, looks of dismay on their faces.
“Young lady, be careful,” Mister Manco began, but ceased when John took him by his arm.
“Chief,” he said, “I reckon this is more their line than yours or mine.” The two humans took several steps back, clearing the way as the other five ponies galloped over. Twilight nodded thanks at them and turned to Luna.
A Luna she recognized.
“Huh?” Rainbow Dash hovered overhead. She dropped to the ground and leaned forward, her ruby eyes wide. “That’s not Luna, is it?”
“It is, dear,” Rarity said. “Rather, it’s the Luna we saved, if you remember.”
That was indeed who lay before them. Princess Luna, but not the Luna she’d been, the Alicorn Major only slightly smaller and less powerful than Celestia. But the pony-sized alicorn they’d first seen four years ago, lying amid the shards of the Nightmare – coat washed out, mane and tail natural hair and pale blue, a cute little filly instead of the millennia-old Mare in the Moon.
“Poor Luna.” Fluttershy pushed forward, slipping past Twilight to nuzzle the unconscious Night Princess. As Luna began to stir, Fluttershy spoke to Twilight. “Did, did we do this to her? Because of how the Elements have changed?”
“I don’t reckon that was it,” John said. He looked around the courtyard as he spoke. “Sorry to be interrupting, Twilight, but I saw something snakey come slithering up right as you and your friends blasted Luna there with your rainbow. The power that it peeled off from her went right to it.”
“And that’s not all,” Mister Manco had one hand on the tomahawk in his belt. His eyes were bright and alert as he kept lookout. “The leader of the Shonokin was right there.” He pointed at a nearby archway, an old gate by the look that now opened on nothing. “He called to it, said for it to come to him so they could ‘fulfill their promise’, and away it went.” He looked at Twilight, and the worry was stark in his face. “I have to say, young lady, I’m not eager to learn what sort of a promise the Shonokin made to – whatever that was.”
“Tantalus, I reckon Luna called it.” John said. He shook his head. “I know him from the old-timey Greeks, kindly, but not very well. Didn’t he do some wickedness and end up in the baddest parts of Hades for it?”
Before Twilight could ask what was going on, Luna spoke.
“You are almost right,” she said as she tried to rise to her feet, awkward and weak as a newborn foal. Her voice was that of the filly who four years ago had sobbed into her sister’s mane instead of echoing with the power of the Royal Canterlot Voice. Fluttershy and Applejack came alongside her, supporting her to where she could stand. The Moon Princess snorted in annoyance, but she took the help. “It was a Tantabus, the essence of bad dreams, a conjuration of nightmare and fear. The Shonokin conjured it and set it upon me… as I did to others as the Nightmare. Including that human king when he demanded I bend the fetlock to him. Snort! Dee must have written down my working, for all posterity to read!”
“Oh, Princess,” Fluttershy set one wing over Luna’s withers. “I’m sure you didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“I’m sure she didn’t either,” Mister Manco nodded. He and John walked closer to drop down and squat on their heels by Luna. “But whatever was meant, what’s been done is what we must deal with. Perhaps Luna can be kind enough to tell us what that is.”
Luna looked around at them all, as thought she’d rather be anywhere else. Twilight just hoped she looked as supportive as she wanted to feel. Her friends looked concerned. John and Mister Manco seemed perhaps more worried than concerned, but they paid attention.
Luna sighed and nodded her head.
“Very well.” Luna shook herself. “I will explain all I can, but first we must be gone from this place.” She pointed her horn skywards. Twilight looked and gulped to see how the sky was changed from the vivid night sky she remembered to something like a poorly done painting, with the stars and moon nothing more than splatters of paleness against it. “This dream realm has served its purpose, for our enemies more than us unfortunately, and unless we wish to be scattered across the Dream Realms of both Equestria and thy Earth,” she said to John and his friend, “we must be going.”
“Okay,” Dash said, taking to wing again. Twilight noticed how the air from her wingbeats no longer kicked up any dust. In fact the stones underfoot no longer felt like stones. They didn’t feel like anything else, either. They were just – there to be stepped on. “How do we do that?”
Luna said nothing. She merely stepped towards the archway Mister Manco had pointed at. They followed her. Once she reached it she looked at the empty space within it closely.
“This is in truth the place where thou saw the Shonokin, good Chieftain Manco?”
“Right here,” he said. He stepped up and pointed one brown finger at the spot. “The air, I suppose we can call it, was torn open and he stood there. He waved to the Tantabus, you called it, and it slipped through and the hole closed behind it.”
“My thanks,” Luna said. She furrowed her brow in concentration and her horn began to glow, sending a moonlight aura over that empty space.
“Twi, what’s Season One Luna doing?” Pinkie Pie asked. She closed one eye and opened the other wider than a normal pony should be able to. After a second she closed it and shook her head. “Oh! Oh! Is she looking for the space where I normally keep my party cannon? Because if she is, then she’s looking in the wrong spot.”
“I doubt it, Pinkie,” Twilight said, wondering if she dared to ask just where Pinkie Pie kept that arsenal she liked to carry around. Raising her voice to be heard by John and Mister Manco as well as her friends, she said, “That’s a detection spell, but I can’t tell for what precisely kind of magic.”
“Nor would you, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna responded. This is a spell that hath gone unused in Equestria for over a thousand years –“
A sudden crash cut her words off short. Twilight looked and yelled.
The great palace, the Castle of the Sisters, was collapsing in on itself behind them, the rear wall of the Throne Hall crashing down. Twilight blinked to see the dust cloud billow up from where the wall had been. No, not dust, for dust didn’t swirl in a dozen different colors, some of them unidentifiable.
“That just can’t be good,” Applejack said, worry in her voice.
With a roar, the next bay of the hall collapsed; more dust exploded to swirl around them.
“As I said,” Luna’s horn glowed brighter than ever, “this realm is no longer needed by its makers, and thus it collapses.” More of the palace fell, but when it hit, it seemed to smash through the stones beneath to expose a swirling darkness. Twilight tore her gaze away. It seemed to scratch at her eyes when she looked at it.
Then the next bay came crashing down.
“And us with it, should we stay!” Luna turned and poured even more power into her horn. Sweat streamed down her brow. Twilight hurried to her side and poured her own magic into the spell, scanning wildly for – “What are we looking for again?” she yelled, as both the palace and the world about them began to crumble.
“The way through to thy human friend’s world, or at least the Dream Realm of it!” Luna whinnied and bent herself again to her task. Her words came in gasps as more of the realm fell apart into that void. “We do need – a key! Something of – that realm!”
“But you got us here all by yourself earlier, Princess!” Rarity called behind her, mane and tail blowing straight out behind her. A roaring wind began to whip at them, trying to pull them back towards the void behind and beyond them. Another bay and side hall crumbled, the stones and unnatural dust sucked into the void instead of falling.
“Can’t you just – retrace our steps?”
“Nay, much of my power hath gone with the Tantabus!” Luna braced herself against the wind. John dropped down by Twilight and Luna, and Twilight saw his friend Manco drop to his knees, clutching at Applejack’s neck for support. AJ snorted and dug her hooves in, bracing herself as another side hall disintegrated. Even Rainbow Dash was on all fours now, grimacing as she fought against that pull. Luna cried, “I need a link to that realm to relocate it!”
Twilight blinked as she caught a glimmer go along John’s silver-strung guitar.
“John!” He turned as Twilight tapped his guitar. “This! Your music! It helped you get home last time, maybe it can help us now!”
“It’s worth the trying.” John said as he took his guitar from his back and braced himself in front of Applejack and Rainbow Dash. They formed enough of a windbreak to let him focus on something other than fighting to hold on. Fluttershy and Rarity were hanging on to Pinkie Pie, whose smile began to look a little forced as her hooves sank into the dissolving stones beneath them. Then John began to play and Twilight made herself pay attention to Luna’s casting.
“Focus on the words, the feel of his music,” Luna turned her ears towards John. Her horn began to glow again, casting the detection spell. “We have little time to make another effort!”
Twilight began putting her own magic into it, letting her inborn talent work with and through the magic of Luna’s spell even as she paid attention to the words John sang and the magic within them as well.
“Lights in the Valley outshine the Sun,
“Look away beyond the blue!”
Twilight felt it then, the dim thread of his world scattered among so many others. It was like trying to grab a straw in a whirlwind, but she forced herself to think only of the song, of the spell, and of the fact that this was the dream realm where anything was possible.
I won’t fail my friends. I won’t!
As she did John sang more, the words aiding her focus:
“Head for the gate and I’ll follow you,
Head for the gate and I’ll follow you,
Head for the gate and I’ll follow you,
Look away beyond the blue!”
It blazed before her, feeling so like both John and that other world beyond Starswirl’s mirror. Hard and almost mechanical, a machine being constantly added on to where Equestria was more like a perpetually growing tree going in all directions, But a song, a rhythm to it as well, harsh at times but hopeful all the same…
Something burst open before her even as something chill and hungry scratched at her fetlocks and she felt herself and her friends tumble through as the dream realm of Nightmare Moon’s defeat tumbled into ashes behind them.
For a moment Twilight just exulted in the feel of the ground beneath her and the air around her and the distant sharp birdsong among the trees. She let her heart calm its beating. Only then did she focus on what her friends were saying.
“Eeep! What happened to us?” Fluttershy’s panicked cry was followed by Rarity’s.
“Oh! Oh, dear! Twilight, did this happen to you?”
“Huh? Did what happen?” Twilight reached up to push her mane back and froze. She didn’t see a familiar hoof.
She saw a hand. Not one of the normal light violet shade from beyond the mirror, but one of a light earth color. And she was upright, on her hind legs. And couldn’t feel her horn. Or wings. Or tail. Just two weights on the front of her chest.
“What!” Twilight wheeled and looked at her friends, saw the five she remembered from Canterlot High but with skins of similar pale earth color instead of echoing their pony coats.
A tall muscular blonde mare – no, the word was ‘woman’ for humans – clothed similar to John but topped with a Stetson clutched a tree trunk for support. A lean wiry one hung onto the other side of the trunk, her short hair a rainbow, free hand feeling over her dark shoulders in horror. A smiling and pudgy girl with puffy pale red hair stood unsteady, checking out her lack of a tail. Two more clutched another tree to stay upright, one looking terrified from what Twilight could see under the long pink mane half-hiding her face, the other with near-alabaster skin and long amethyst hair examining her forehead in horror.
Twilight checked herself and felt utterly unsurprised, if dismayed, at what she didn’t find.
“Where’s your horn!”
“Where’s MY horn?”
“My wings!”
“Yore wings? Mah hooves!” Applejack looked down at her feet. Her toes wiggled and she shuddered in disgust. “This here better be temporary, is all Ah’m sayin’!”
“I strongly imagine that it is.” Twilight looked to see another woman, younger than the rest, barely out of fillyhood – no, girlhood – her hair midnight blue beneath an obsidian Royal Tiara. She folded her arms over Luna’s crescent moon peytral-turned-necklace on her chest, the long night-black dress she wore trailing to the ground as she stepped up to set a comforting hand on both Applejack and Rainbow Dash as they struggled not to fall over. “This is but another dream realm,” Luna said. “One far closer to thy human friend’s world than our own. Shifting from ours to his the way we did, it altered us to fit itself.”
“At least it gave us clothes,” Rarity said as she examined the outfit she wore of blue cloth pants that fit snugly and looked sturdy and a fine light blouse. She looked at the farm clothes that Applejack and Pinkie wore. “Though something more fashionable would have been appreciated.”
“I’d say I’m right glad it gave you ladies something to wear, myself.” John spoke up from where he stood. “It’d be right embarrassing, else.”
“Why?” Several formerly equine voices said at once. Twilight had to smile at how John was trying to frame the concept before she spoke up.
“I’m guessing this place has a nudity taboo, like Canterlot High.” She patted her hips. “I do admit, pockets are a pretty good thing to have.”
“They sure are!” Pinkie Pie reached into hers as she stood unsupported but unsteady, removed a variety of objects ranging from a whistle to a brush to a small plastic statue of her pony self. She looked at the latter. “I wish they’d get my mane right, and where’s my party cannon?”
“Her what now?” Manco said, sounding confused. Twilight saw John take him to the side and try explaining as much as he could about Pinkie Pie again as she looked around where they stood.
It looked like the woodlands they’d been in before. Trees all around, tall and strong, old growth rivaling the Everfree Forest. They seemed to come together to form a canopy overhead that let only a dim shadowy light through. The ground was spotted here and there with sickly grass, as well as with some odd-looking flowers. Very odd looking – their petals seemed almost fleshy, and they were the pale pink of blood-drained meat. Nearby were other flowers. Twilight took a few steps towards them, only to stop when John took her gently by the arm.
“Be careful about those plants, Twilight.” He pointed at them where they grew by and on one of the trees. Leaves showed dark and shiny with wicked promise. “That’s nightshade. Deadly nightshade, some folks call it. Poison. You don’t know what you’re a-doing, it can kill you dead.” He frowned at some others nearby. Twilight noticed that her friends were paying attention as well. “Those mushrooms look unchancy, but I don’t recognize air one of those others.”
“I’m not surprised,” Mister Manco nodded and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Many of these aren’t native to the mountains, and those are the plants you know best, John. Some of these others as well,” Mister Manco frowned as he looked at another patch nearby. Dark red berries clustered thickly together on one parasitic vine. “Those berries are deadly dangerous, and some of those vines look like poison oak. Bad to touch, worse still to inhale if it’s burned. Many of these plants don’t belong here in the mountains at all. Not in the real world, anyway. I think I can recognize mandrake as well.”
“Mandrake. Nightshade.” John frowned. “I recollect how some books said those were plants used in witching people.”
“They were,” Mister Manco said, nodding and looking grim. “Among other things. But for right now, I recommend we move along until we can find a place to hole up and get our wits together.” He pointed at Twilight’s friends; Rainbow Dash let go of the tree, fell flat on her face with a yelp. “It seems your friends need some time to get used to being bipedal, young lady.”
“Yeah.” Twilight winced to see Applejack let go herself and go over to the fallen Rainbow, crawling on all fours. Fluttershy eeped and clutched her tree all the tighter. Luna and Pinkie Pie to the contrary, the rest didn’t look to be doing any better. “Wait – if this is a dream, then why can’t we just become ponies again? I was a pony the first time we went to ‘your’ dream realm, John.”
“I think I’d like that,” Rarity said, sounding miserable as she clutched a tree for support. “But how?”
Twilight looked to Luna for an answer. Luna just smiled before she turned and spoke to the others.
“Remember the sensations ye felt as ponies,” Luna tapped a finger against one palm, pointed at her feet. “Earth under thy hooves, air beneath thy wings, magic flowing through thy horn. Ears that could turn to catch every sound. Mane streaming in the wind, your tail whipping behind you, the magic of Equestria flowing through you.” She turned to Twilight. “Do not do this, Twilight. For now, let us keep these forms. I will explain in a moment.”
Twilight watched as her friends focused their attention, brows furrowing and eyes shut. Their forms shimmered for a moment, then shifted like Changelings and were pony once more.
“Phew!” Rainbow Dash flew in a circle, flicking her ears and twitching her tail. She spread her wings wide, their blue feathers catching at the air. “Never thought I’d be so happy to see all this again! Lyra can keep the hands. Uh, sorry, John.”
“It’s kindly alright, Rainbow,” John responded. He looked at Twilight and Luna. “But why don’t the two of you turn pony again with the rest?”
“I’m wondering that myself,” Twilight wiggled one hand. Odd to see her form here, so like and yet unlike the one she wore at Canterlot High. “Princess Luna, why did you suggest that we stay human?”
Luna blinked at her, surprised.
“Why, to hide our true selves from the Shonokin, of course.” Luna stepped forward, heading out on a trail that ran under those dark-looking trees. Twilight noticed now that it couldn’t be natural. At the very least, it shouldn’t have been lined with stones that shone a soft white in this half-light. “They will expect us to follow them, but they should be looking for two humans and seven ponies, not nine humans.”
“Then why have our friends turn back into ponies?” Twilight asked as she stepped after Luna. She heard John and Mister Manco hurry behind her, and following them the sound of hoofsteps.
“They know not how to speak and move as humans do,” Luna said. She moved forward steadily, paying no heed to the way the nasty-looking vines on those trees hung down low, like – Twilight shuddered – serpents ready to strike. “Thou and I have some experience in this, though thine is more recent then mine. And we must learn what these beings mean to do,” Luna gave a shudder of her own. “Are they but opposed to thy human friend, or do they seek to work evil ‘gainst Equestria itself?”
“So.” Mister Manco said behind her, his voice deep and thoughtful. “A war party, then. Scouting the enemy. A good idea if we can keep hidden from them.” Twilight didn’t think that either he or John would have trouble with that. They moved through these dark woods as quietly as cats on the prowl.
“Like I did in Korea betimes,” John spoke up, sounding grim. After what she’d seen, Twilight couldn’t blame him. “Reconnaissance, the officers called it. You go and see what the other fellow is a-planning to do, and hope he doesn’t catch you at it.”
“Exactly,” Luna said, and with such satisfaction in her voice Twilight wondered if she smiled.
By now they’d reached another small clearing. Luna entered it and turned to them. Twilight moved to stand facing the trail, and waited beside Luna until everypony stood before them. Luna nodded at how quietly they moved. Twilight felt a twinge of annoyance to realize that between her, John, Mister Manco, Luna, and her friends, she was making the most noise. Luna seemed to glide over the ground like a wraith.
She stood and waited until they’d all entered the clearing. Her blue eyes wide on them all, she spoke.
“Ere we go further, tell us, Master John, Master Manco. What know ye of these Shonokin? From Twilight’s account, they seem hostile to all other than themselves. Do they dare open battle, or strike from ambush? Can they be reasoned with? My sister calls me overly eager for battle at times, but if we can talk with them…”
“Forgive me for interrupting, Princess,” Twilight gulped as she remembered the talk she had with the Chief Shonokin, “But I doubt they’re willing to discuss anything. The Shonokin chief spoke several times how all John’s homeland belonged to them, and how we’d help them whether we wanted to or not.”
“That don’t sound any too friendly to me,” Applejack muttered.
“Not to me either,” John said. “I’ve fought these Shonokin a time or two afore this, and airy thing Twilight just said sounds like airy thing they told me when they wanted me to be a-joining with them. They tried to act friendly like, but once they knew I wasn’t to be tolled over to help them they got killing nasty about it, right fast.”
“These creatures...” Luna walked across the clearing and back, chin in one hand. She looked at John and Twilight, worry in her eyes. “What are they? Whence do they come? If they were willing to treat with us in civilized fashion, I and my sister could perhaps find a place for them within Equestria, as we did for Buffalo and Griffins and Minotaurs. But from what you have said and I have seen, they cannot be trusted.”
“No, madam, and my pardon for interrupting,” Mister Manco said as he rose from his crouch. “I’ve had to deal with the Shonokin myself, and my people once fought theirs a long time ago. I also know of others who faced them, like John Thunstone up in New York City, and what they all told me was exactly what we’ve heard and seen here. They want revenge, and the power to gain it with, and if they tried to treat with Miss Twilight, who may have trusted just a bit too well when she talked to them…”
Twilight blushed.
“It was because they saw a chance to use her, and the rest of your folk, to their own ends. As to their origin?” He looked thoughtful, and when he spoke again, his words were deep and carried around the clearing. “No one knows, maybe not even the Shonokin themselves. Thunstone thinks they may be some sort of almost-human offshoot that split off from true humans a long time ago…”
Like Donkeys and Zebra from Earth Ponies?
“…maybe as far back as Neanderthal man, maybe further. My folk always saw them as spirits.” He looked at the ponies and chuckled. “Perhaps much the same way we’d have seen you ponies if we knew you back then.”
Twilight wondered why John and now Mister Manco kept thinking of ponies as nature spirits of some sort. They were perfectly normal beings in whom Equestria’s magic flowed, who used that magic to aid and guide nature in its proper course, and there was nothing strange about that. But Mister Manco was speaking, and his words were interesting.
“…Or evil witches like the Night Goers and Raven Mockers,” he nodded at John. “John might be able to tell you things about similar beings that his ancestors knew, like the Fair Folk, living down under the mounds.”
Like Diamond Dogs? At least the feral tribes?
“A hidden race, living alongside and sometimes preying on humanity, but never truly a part of it.”
“I rightly do remember some I heard from my old granny, and more I read,” John nodded, and lightly strummed his guitar. “Stories about old, old folk who hid theirselves away and did all sort of nasty sneaky things to people.” He looked thoughtful and began to recite, as though quoting:
“Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen.
We daren’t go a-hunting,
For fear of little men…”
“Yeah, well,” John and Mister Manco both took a step back as Rainbow Dash flew to hover between them and Luna. “This jawing really ain’t doing us any good. If these guys stole Luna’s magic and want to use it to try and hurt John’s friends, then we gotta stop them. End of story. An’ what do they need Luna’s magic for, anyway?”
To judge by the looks on her friend’s faces, Rainbow wasn’t the only one wondering about that. Her mortal pony friends, anyway. John and Mister Manco both looked at Luna. And Luna just looked worried.
“I fear I know what they wish with it,” Luna said. She swept her arms out around her, taking in the shadowy clearing. “Twilight Sparkle, John, you were in the Dream Realm as manipulated by the Shonokin before this. Does this feel the same as it did then?
“Why of course –” Twilight stopped. She felt, carefully, with her magic as well as her senses. Her surroundings didn’t feel the same as before. There was no longer that ‘unreallness’ to them. Now it felt to her like something else, something nastily familiar now that she thought of it.
“It’s kindly different,” John said. He raised one hand as though trying to take hold of the atmosphere around them. “It minds me of one-two places I’ve been afore, and none of them good. You should know the one, Chief; the time we went up on Wolter Mountain and found the Raven Mocker village.”
“Yes,” Mister Manco said, his voice and face grave. He tilted his head back like sniffing the air. “I know what you mean now, John. Like the air before a thunderstorm, but this feels like scum on polluted water. Like you want to bathe to take the feel of it from your skin.”
“Like what we felt that time in the Everfree,” Twilight said with a gulp. “When Thorn took it over. Scary and nasty and like something in it wants to hurt you.”
“I feel it too,” Fluttershy said, her voice barely audible. She ruffled her wings, feathers splaying before she settled back down. “I didn’t want to upset anypony else by saying it. I thought it was because this was a dream.”
“A bad dream,” John said. “And maybe about to be getting worse. For us and a right many other people. Isn’t that right, Miss Luna?”
“Yes,” Luna nodded heavily, that long human mane tossing like she was still equine. Twilight felt her heart sinking as Luna said, “The Tantabus has not just my magic, but my power, my memories of being Nightmare Moon. It can manipulate bad dreams, make them nightmares, for as many beings as either it or the Shonokin desire. More so if Outside of Dream.”
“Bad dreams,” John looked at her. “How bad a bad dream?”
“Bad enough that peace would be lost to those feeling them,” Luna’s fists tightened along with her voice. “Enough of that, and ponies and humans alike would sicken and die or go mad. Thy enemies would no longer need to risk themselves in the slightest against any enemy, of either Equestria or thy world, good John. They could extort whatever they wish from any being they desire, and my darker self, the Tantabus, would be delighted to aid them.” Her face dropped. Twilight went to Luna and gently nuzzled her as the Night Princess said, “I have done this. Even when I but seek not to forget my past sins, they use me to do evil.”
Twilight wondered what it would be like, two worlds under the hooves of the Shonokin and the Tantabus, and in such a way there would be no chance of fighting back. What could they do? Stop dreaming? She knew what kind of damage that would eventually do… Then what? Give in, let the Shonokin have their revenge on everyone who’d ever fought them, and let Luna’s Tantabus act on every evil whim that once ruled Nightmare Moon’s heart?
She remembered four years ago, when her sedate life as Princess Celestia’s student “got interesting”. Even when she was Nightmare Moon, she still had some Luna left to restrain her…
Twilight looked around at her friends. Human and pony alike, she saw the same fear and determination she felt.
“Then there’s only the one thing left to do, isn’t there, Princess Luna?” As Luna looked her in the face, Twilight said, “We stop the Shonokin and the Tantabus before all that happens.”
She turned and, hoping she looked as sure as she felt, headed for the trail running between the trees and further towards whatever reception the Shonokin had planned. John was beside her in a moment, and the others followed.
“Those were right fine words,” John whispered to her as they walked. “Do you have air idea of how to stop them?”
“I’m working on it.”