“Hey there, Mister Raven. Where’s your master?”
There were a million perfectly good reasons Fluttershy wasn’t home. She could be out running errands or visiting somepony’s sick pet or just grabbing lunch or a session at the spa or chatting with our friends. And I had to remind myself that it was good that Fluttershy felt so comfortable going out by herself nowadays. It was progress.
But still, I couldn’t help the tickle of unease, like a worm writing in my belly.
I hopped up to the roof, thinking she might be there. The grass thatching was matted down, pressed into the shape a pegasus might make laying on her belly, but the pegasus herself was gone. There were no birds, nor insects, or any woodland critters I could see. Just a lonely alicorn squinting in the too-bright sun.
The wind shifted, blowing from the forest at the edge of her meadow. New scents rode atop it – leaves and moss and something like blood. I frowned at the shadowed spaces between the trees.
“Fluttershy?” I called as loud as I could. “Are you out there?”
Only the wind answered. It teased my feathers, whispering of flight. My wings extended, catching the breeze, and I floated up a few dozen yards. From this higher vantage I could see the forest extending for miles to the south, an endless carpet of trees and crags and the distant suggestion of mountains veiled by the summer haze.
Too bright. I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled my wings in. The sensation of falling opened a hole in my gut for a moment, but I landed easily on the cottage roof. A few hops later and I was in the blessedly dark shade of its walls.
The door was closed and the windows dark. I knocked, and when nopony answered, I pushed the door open. “Fluttershy?”
Nothing. Only darkness. Not even the sound of Fluttershy’s animal friends responding to an intruder. I took a cautious step inside. The stairs were a few paces from the door, and I called up them, “Fluttershy?”
Something stirred in the rafters. My heart jumped, and I looked up to see dozens of little eyes that glinted like jewels looking down. There was a scrape and a stir of air, and the same massive raven that had shared the roof with us on my last visit dropped down, landing with a clatter on Fluttershy’s kitchen table. The teacups jumped and the silverware rattled.
Just a harmless bird. I chided myself for my silly fears and walked over to it, though I kept a bit of distance. Far enough that his huge beak couldn’t quite reach my eyes in a flash. “Hey there, Mister Raven. Where’s your master?”
It trilled lowly in response. Ravens had a wide vocal range, and some could even imitate pony speech. It hopped across the table, clumsy on two legs, and peered up at me. Even I, a pony who knew next to nothing about animals, could see the spark of intelligence in its eyes. I held out my hoof like Fluttershy had.
The raven tilted its head, inspecting my offer. It trilled again, and mumbled something, and stretched its neck forward to tap my hoof with its beak. It felt like knocking on a door. When I didn’t retreat, the raven hopped forward again and rubbed its head and beak against my fetlock affectionately, like a cat might.
It left a smear of blood behind on my coat. I grimaced at the sight and pulled my hoof back. The raven watched with curious eyes.
“Fluttershy?” I asked. “Is she around?”
“I am.”
I’m proud to say I didn’t scream. But I might have yelped a bit, spinning around to face the sudden voice behind me. The raven jumped into the air, startled, and lumbered with great flaps of its wings back into the rafters. A few lost black feathers drifted down on me.
“Fluttershy!” I let out a little laugh that was too high for humor. “Sorry. You startled me a bit.”
Fluttershy smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect my door to be open or anypony to be in my kitchen.”
Oh, right. The trespassing thing. “Uh, sorry. I tried knocking but nopony answered and then I checked the roof but you weren’t there, so I thought I’d just come inside and see if maybe you were doing something that involved loud noises so maybe you couldn’t hear me, but the cottage was dark and it looked like nopony was home and I was a bit worried so I—” I cut myself off to catch my breath. I was rambling. I was a princess – princesses shouldn’t ramble. I took another breath, and then another.
Before I could work myself into a lather, Fluttershy reached me. She pressed her cheek against mine and whispered. “It’s fine, Twilight. You are always welcome in my home, whether I am here or not. All of my friends are.”
And just like that, all my foolish fears melted. I felt a silly smile stretch out my face, and I returned her nuzzle. Her mane smelled of wildflowers and fresh sweat and loam.
“You’ve been in the forest,” I said.
“I was.” She stepped around me and straightened out the silverware knocked askew by Mister Raven. She brushed the shed feathers away to join the rest on the floor. “It’s a beautiful day outside, and the forest is so peaceful.”
“Looking for your new animal friend?”
She nodded. “She’s still out there. I can see signs of her sometimes, broken branches and the like. Sometimes the remains of her meals.”
“What do you mean?”
“Predators rarely eat their entire kills. Certain parts are inedible.”
Oh. I swallowed. Up above, I imagined I heard the raven hopping along the rafters. “Do you know what it is, yet?”
She shook her head. For the first time, a sign of frustration appeared – a little furrow between her eyebrows; a slight downturn of the corners of her lips. “No. She’s very clever, I think, but she’s very shy as well. Animals can be like that if they’re not used to ponies.”
“Well, you’ll find her soon, I’m sure,” I rushed to reassure her. Anything to bring back that smile. “Say, uh, you wouldn’t happen to have butterbur, would you?”
Fluttershy blinked at the sudden turn of subject, then let out a little ‘aaah’ of understanding. “For your eyes? I think I do! Just one moment.” She vanished in a yellow and pink flash, darting out the door and around the side of the cabin faster than I could follow. Outside, I heard the cellar door open and fall with a clatter.
A minute later, the sequence reversed itself, and Fluttershy set a tiny wax-stoppered glass jar on the table. Inside the cloudy walls I could see thick, succulent coin-shaped leaves with tiny spines, like a cross between a jade plant and holly. I raised my eyebrow.
“Zecora gave me some a few months ago for my hay fever,” Fluttershy said. “You burn the leaves, and add a bit of the black resin that forms to any drink you like. Hot drinks like tea work best. It should help your eyes, and if you ever get poison ivy it works on that as well.”
I lifted the jar and put it gently in my saddlebags. “Thank you.” The words seemed woefully inadequate for her help, so I leaned forward to nuzzle her again.
She returned the gesture with a radiant smile. “Of course. Did you need anything else?”
In fact, I did. “You haven’t seen Discord around, have you?”
“Not since this problem began.” From her tone, she wasn’t certain there was much of a problem at all. But she hadn’t seen him like I had, or heard Luna’s warnings. “But if I do see him, I’ll let him know you want to talk to him.”
“He already knows that. Tell him he has to talk to us. Or better yet, knock off tampering with ponies’ dreams. It’s more dangerous than he realizes. Luna is getting involved.”
Her ears shot up at that, and her eyes widened. “Oh no! Is he in trouble?”
“He…” Yes, he was. Or, anypony else would be in his situation. But was there really much we could threaten the spirit of chaos with? “He’s not. But he will be if he doesn’t knock it off.”
Fluttershy stomped a hoof with a quiet little thud. “Then I will tell him! I’ll tell him, no more tea time until he starts acting nice again!”
Well, there was something we could threaten him with. It all went back, as Luna said, to Discord’s need for attention. Perhaps I was going about this all wrong, and I should just give up my fruitless investigations and go back to the library to read books in peace, and before I would know it things would be back to normal. That’s what I should do.
As if. “Thank you, Fluttershy. That’s very brave of you.” I smiled, and Celestia help me if it didn’t feel real. “You’re, ah, you’re not dreaming anything unusual, are you?”
She shook her head. “You know my dreams are boring, Twilight. I can never remember them. They’re just… images. Odd ideas that make no sense and then they’re gone.”
“Right. Unless you’re sleeping with—next! Next to somepony! Ha ha. Ah…” I froze as the germ of an idea sprouted in my brain. Just a test. For science! An offer between friends. We girls had all shared beds in the past. There was nothing untoward about it. Fillies did it all the time. And probably stallions did too. Maybe. There were none I could imagine asking so brazen a question, so that bit of knowledge would forever evade me. But Fluttershy – I could ask her, and of course she would say yes. I could already imagine the weight of her on the mattress beside me, the soft scent of her, of wildflowers and fresh sweat. What would she dream in my company? What would I dream?
She giggled. The sound snapped me back to the present. “You make it sound so scandalous, Twilight. But I know how important this dream thing is to you, so if I do have any odd dreams, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
Oh. Well, that could work too. I swallowed. “Great! That’s great!”
“It’s the least I can do.” She stretched her wings. “If you don’t mind, though, I’m going to head back out. The sun will set in a few hours, and I want to try and find my new friend before then.”
We exchanged a few more words, but I had no desire to keep her from her tasks. So I nuzzled her again, and followed outside as she closed the cottage door. She waved and soared off into the forest.
I squinted. Had the sun gotten brighter while I was in the cottage? It felt that way. I held a hoof over my eyes until I made it to the elm-shaded path leading back to Ponyville.
* * *
I cut a square of tin foil about the width of my hoof and set one of the plump butterbur leaves on it. The leaf jiggled like gelatin, fat almost to bursting with oils, and my nose wrinkled at the bitter scent rising from it. Nothing like butter at all.
Fortunately my laboratory had a fume hood. I suspended the leaf and foil above a bunsen burner with a clamp, turned the flame up to maximum, and let the fire do its work. The leaf popped and hissed and the green boiled out of it until only a black sludgy stain remained on the foil. I pulled it away from the burner to let it cool.
I don’t know how most ponies prepared traditional folk remedies, but I used science.
I heard faint feminine voices drifting from the study beside the kitchen when I emerged from the library. Starlight and Trixie, no doubt, presumably after a long day of shopping and spa-going and intimacies I definitely wasn’t thinking about. For a few minutes the flame beneath the teapot and then its quiet whistle drowned out their voices. I poured a simple mug of jasmine tea, suitable for the early evening hour, and scraped a bit of black resin from the butterbur into the hot water. It melted instantly, leaving nothing behind but a faintly bitter scent almost lost in the floral fragrance of the tea itself.
“Hello!” I called before entering the study. It wouldn’t do for me to walk in while they were enjoying each other’s company too much. But if they wanted real privacy they ought not to be in the castle’s public areas, so I only paused a few seconds before joining them.
My concerns were groundless. They sat beside each other on the couch, engaged in nothing more scandalous than sharing a magazine. Faintly steaming cups and a lone plate bearing a few pieces of sliced apple completed the scene.
“Hey Twilight.” Starlight smiled and waved me over. “Want to join us? Trixie was showing me some of her new tricks.”
“Oh? Safe for indoors, I hope.” I could only imagine the damage one of Trixie’s fireworks shows could cause in a small room like this.
Trixie smirked. “Entirely safe, princess. Prepare to be amazed by the most dextrous demonstration of sorcerous skills you have ever seen!” Her voice took on a showmare’s cadence, powerful enough to fill the room and reverberate in my chest. She held out her hooves and turned them around to show they were empty.
Except they weren’t. Suddenly there was a deck of cards in them. No flash of magic, no hidden pocket, just cards where none had been before. I blinked and was about to ask how in Tartarus she managed that without any obvious use of her horn, but she was already shuffling the deck. The cards blurred together as she split them and spun them back together.
“And now, would my lovely assistant care to cut the deck?” She balanced the deck atop her hoof and held it out to Starlight, who giggled and divided it with her magic. “So suspicious ponies know that Trixie is not cheating.”
She took the deck and spread it out on the table in a fan-like arc. Every card was perfectly spaced – I could’ve spent an hour placing each one and not been so precise as she was with a simple sweep of her hoof. “Choose one, please. Look at it, memorize it, and then replace it. Do not tell Trixie what it is.”
Oh, audience participation? Fine. I eyed the cards, looking for any subtle variances in the patterns on their backs. Some clue for her to know what I was about to choose.
She noticed and rolled her eyes. “So mistrustful. Is this better?” She turned her head fully around and covered her eyes with her hooves.
I chose a card near the middle at random and carefully slid it out far enough to lift and barely peek at the underside. The Four of Chains. I slid it back, and for good measure shook the table, disordering the rest of the array. Good luck now, Trixie.
“Done? Good.” Trixie turned back and swept up the cards. She stacked them and tapped them and shuffled them with the same blinding speed as before. She spoke as she shuffled. “You remember your card, right? It would be terribly embarrassing if you forgot! Why, that would ruin the performance before it began!”
“I’m sure I’ll remember it,” I said. I couldn’t take my eyes off her hooves, though. Forget the rest of the trick – how she shuffled the cards with her hooves like that was magical enough.
She stacked the deck a final time and centered it on the table between us. She tapped the top with her hoof three times, waved her legs above it, and declared: “Prepare to be amazed! For this is NOT your card!”
She flipped over the top card. The Nine of Secrets.
I clapped slowly. “Incredible.”
Trixie’s grin grew. “Oh, just wait, princess. For this is not your card either!” Then she flipped over the next card on the deck: the Angel of Stars.
I shrugged. “The odds that either of those would be my card is less than four percent.”
“Ah, you are correct, my mathematically inclined friend. But Trixie also predicts that this is not your card! Nor this, nor this, nor this…”
With each intonation, Trixie flipped over another card. The Eight of Secrets. The Two of Moths. The Queen of Chains. And she kept going. Finally, there was only one card left. She paused with her hoof above it. “Well, that’s the deck. Trixie suppose this must be your card, then?”
I sighed. “Fine, you got me. How did you do that, though? I never saw—?”
She flipped the last card as I spoke. The Prince of Moths.
Um. I blinked at it dumbly. “Where’d it go?”
“What, this?” She leaned forward, reaching behind me. Her hoof brushed my ear, and I swear to Celestia I felt her really pull something out of my mane. Not a sleight of hoof – there was something in my mane I hadn’t noticed and she pulled it out.
She set the card on the table, face down. I flipped it over. The Four of Chains.
“How’d you do that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Magic, of course.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I was watching your horn the whole time. You never used any magic at all.” I picked up the other cards in my magic, spreading them out in the air. There had to be some trick to it, some clever catch I wasn’t seeing. “Show me how you did that.”
Trixie laughed. “Oh, Twilight. You’re the perfect mark. Why can’t you be in the audience for all of my shows?”
I tried another tack. “That’s not real magic. That’s just… misdirection. Illusion. You distracted me somehow.”
“Mhm. That must be it.” Trixie grabbed the cards out of the air and shuffled them again. I glanced at Starlight for a moment, and when I looked back the cards were gone. She noticed that I noticed, and she smirked.
“She’s been practicing,” Starlight said. Her voice had lost any hint of its previous humor. “Tell Twilight what you told me earlier, Trixie.”
“What?” Trixie grabbed a slice of apple from the plate and popped it in her mouth, chew it down loudly. “About the dream?”
That got my attention. I set aside the silly thoughts of cards and focused all my attention on Trixie. “What about dreams?”
She let out a sigh, loud and dripping with theater. “I’m not sure why it matters, but I’ve had exceptionally clear dreams the past few nights. Dreams that make sense for once, and you know what they tell me?” She leaned forward, propping her hooves on the table. “I dreamed of the greatest show ever performed. An audience of thousands. An entire city, turning out to be amazed by the impossible. Not petty sorceries or spells like any unicorn can learn, but magic!”
She raised her hoof and twisted it, and there was a card balanced edgewise upon it. She set it down onto the table slowly, carefully, somehow suspending it upright like a marionette. “Watch closely,” she said, and she leaned forward to exhale on the card.
It teetered. After a moment it tipped over and fell.
Huh. “That’s it? What was supposed—” I looked up from the card and stopped. I heard a quiet gasp from Starlight.
Trixie was gone.
“Hey there, Mister Raven. Where’s your master?”