//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 // Story: Life Is But A Dream // by Cosmic Charlie //------------------------------// “Toodle-loo, Fluttershy!” Rarity called sweetly, trotting down the path back toward Ponyville. Poor Fluttershy was stuck nursing her pet rabbit all day, and Twilight was nowhere to be found. Who was she going to get to give her opinions on a possible new fashion line? Rainbow Dash couldn’t be bothered, and the same surely went double for Applejack. Rarity was in the middle of a melodramatic sigh, when a sudden scream and the sound of laughter from a nearby bush made her scream as well, recoiling in horror from the noisy bush. After a moment she peeked from between her hooves to see none other than Twilight, clumsily climbing out of the bush in a frenzy, her mane an absolute mess, with Pinkie Pie happily trailing behind her. “GIRLS! Why would you scare me like that?! And, uh… what were you doing in that bush? Ah, nevermind! Forget I ever asked! I’ll… catch up with you later, Twilight Sparkle.” Rarity blushed hard and left in a hurry before Twilight could get a word in, not that she had much of an explanation to offer. “Bye, Rarity!” Pinkie shouted cheerfully. Rarity kept on moving, and appeared to speed up a little. Twilight spun around furiously, clearly a little unsettled. “What in the hay was that?! You could’ve gotten us killed!” “No way! I know what I’m doing, Twilight.” “Oh, definitely.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “Wait a minute…” Twilight looked around at her surroundings. “Rarity… Fluttershy’s cabin… We were just in the Everfree Forest! What did you do? What did I do?” Twilight started to get that unhinged look in her eyes again. “We can’t be here, because we were there. This isn’t possible. What did you do?” “I didn’t do anything, Twilight! I just used one of those places I told you about!” “So they’re… they’re like portals?” “Sort of, but you don’t just move from place to place.” “What…. What do you mean?” “Well, you know how time and space are… tied to each other? And… you know how you found that spell that lets you travel through time?” Twilight’s breath caught in her throat. She already knew where this was headed. “When you use the pla- the portals, you don’t just move through space. You move through time, too. That’s how I always found Rainbow Dash that day. I just found her, then went back in time and hid in the spot she was headed to. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.” Twilight felt like it was a good time to sit down. “So this is… the past? Or the future?” Pinkie licked her hoof on one side and held it up in the wind, then sniffed the air a bit. “Hmm… definitely the past. I’d say about two hours, maybe three.” “How long does it last? I mean, how long do we have here in the past?” “Oh, we stay here. Unless we go through another one. Otherwise stuff happens like it normally would.” Pinkie flashed Twilight another devilish smile. “Or, if you wanna change something…?” “But you can’t change the future, I tried! I did… did everything I could…” Twilight felt a cold sweat coming over her, and her heart began to race. “Pfft! I do it all the time. How do you think I knew how to get rid of the parasprites? THAT took plenty of tries to get right, let me tell you!” She punctuated each of the last four words with a hoof press to Twilight’s chest. “Um, are you feeling okay?” “Plenty of… ugh…” Twilight’s vision began to go white, and she collapsed to the ground. The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was Pinkie shouting her name. She dreamt of soaring through white clouds against a bright sapphire sky.