"What do you want?" Navarre asked, the world growing colder as he stared at Starlight through the doorway. At first, Starlight thought it was her reaction to seeing him, but then she saw him shiver too, and realized it somehow just was that cold out.
"I bet you've lost your memory too, huh?" she asked, noting his colorful cutie mark.
"Lost my memory?" Navarre scowled. "I should dearly hope not. Today is the crowning day of my career! If I fall into senility now, it will be a waste of one of the best minds of the century." He narrowed his eyes, pausing and thinking harder. "...Lost my memory too, you said. Has something been happening?"
Starlight bit her lip and puffed out her cheek, taking a page out of Jamjars' book and trying her best to look petulant. "No. But if you have all your memories, you should remember who I am."
"I've never seen you before in my life," Navarre flatly replied, though a flicker of doubt crossed his face as he weighed his certainty against the consequences of being wrong.
Starlight stared him in the eyes. "Your name is Navarre, which you probably don't remember. You're an evil scientist who worked for Yakyakistan and then the Griffon Empire, and you did experiments on moon glass and windigo hearts and created a mare named Valey, and were terrified she'd kill you."
Navarre spat. "A lot of made-up locations, and must you really refer to obsidian in the common tongue? Though you've clearly done some research. I wouldn't be surprised if my fame precedes me, though for it to manifest in the younger generation is somewhat flattering... Come in."
He left the door open, and Starlight followed, blinking. "So you do remember windigo hearts and obsidian?"
"Don't mock my hospitality by thinking I'd forget," Navarre haughtily chuckled. "This last month has seen me become the foremost mind on obsidian. Windigo hearts are a mere myth... to common science. How do you even know of them?"
Starlight shrugged. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she replied, a dash of irony striking as she wondered if Glimmer ever felt like this talking to her.
"Balderdash," Navarre drawled. "I put my belief in truth and facts. If I didn't believe you, it would just be because your story didn't hold up. And this belief has lead me to this!" He swept a hoof at a letter laying open-faced on a table, its text more sharply defined than anything else in the room save for the ponies. "A research opportunity to head a team that can access the hearts themselves! You know at least something about science. Tell me you can appreciate this."
"It sounds impressive," Starlight lied, not about to drop such an easy chance to make him keep talking. If this was Navarre pre-Icereach, however it was, he might know something about how to withdraw cutie marks from moon glass... a way not only to potentially reassemble Valey, but somehow let her escape.
Navarre grinned drunkenly. "Oh, it is. Obsidian is the future, filly. Once we learn to extract the knowledge it holds..."
"What have you learned about it so far?" Starlight asked eagerly, sitting with a polite and attentive smile.
Navarre stared at her. "You weren't sent by a competitor to steal my research and theories, were you?"
Starlight quickly backtracked. "No! I'm a fan. The truth is, when I grow up I wanted to be a scientist just like you, but my teacher told me I had to be whatever I got my brand in and that I shouldn't even try even though I don't have mine yet, so I was hoping you had advice..."
It was the right thing to say. Navarre chuckled. "Some take their job of gatekeeping the field far too seriously. I'm not giving you the details of my research that would be lost on your uneducated mind, but I'm in a good mood today! I have some inspiration to go around."
Starlight tilted her head and smiled innocently. "So what did you get rewarded for working on?"
"Obsidian." Navarre gestured toward a wall display that held a white stone, almost resembling a hole in the darkness... Starlight was curious to touch it and see what happened. "We all know it fell from the cosmos mere weeks ago. My investigations have been ongoing, yet the pinnacle of my discoveries... This substance contains thought waves."
"How do thought waves work?" Starlight peered closer.
Navarre stepped up to the case. "It would be wrong to call it an energy, but simple and close enough for your young mind. They are emanated by all living beings, and vary with emotions. I have detected them conclusively, and believe it to be proof of consciousness within the stones."
Starlight blinked. There was another thing she had heard described in the exact same terms, given off by all living things and not energy yet close enough. "Is that like harmony?"
Navarre made a face. "What kind of plebian name is that? Something your farcical teacher taught you?" He began arrogantly pacing. "The obsidian pieces contain some kind of consciousness that feels emotions and may be self-aware. If it had knowledge, too... Imagine, child, the kind of information that could be learned by minds carried from the moon! My research grant is in hopes of reaching that knowledge, of extracting these minds and seeing what comes with them..."
"Can I see that obsidian?" Starlight stood in front of the case, peering in.
Navarre frowned. "It is on display for a reason."
"Obsidian is black, right?" Starlight made a face at the empty white chunk. "Does this one look white to you, too?"
Navarre's expression slowly melted into confusion. "What the...?"
Starlight took a deep breath. "If I told you that we were both inside a piece of obsidian right now, would you believe me?"
Navarre gave her an incredulous look. "Where in the world would you get that ridiculous idea?"
"Well..." Starlight licked your lips. "Do you remember your name? Your parents? Your hometown? Where we are now? Any friends you had, or anything other than this one moment?"
Navarre looked down in contemplation. "I... They aren't relevant, though. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters! I have reached a status other scientists can fathom only in dreams!"
"By doing research on obsidian and the things inside it." Starlight pointed a hoof. "Listen. I was your student. We were experimenting on obsidian together, trying to find a way to see what was inside ourselves rather than getting what was inside out. But there was an accident, and you got stuck inside and your memory got damaged by it! It's working properly for me. I'm not really here. I'm... tethered to the outside! But we're here because you wanted to research what it was like being inside, remember?"
Navarre starred at her, flabbergasted by her string of lies. For a long minute, he tried to parse what she had said.
"...I did it?" he eventually whispered, holding up his hooves and staring into them. "Is this truly...?"
Starlight nodded. "We are truly inside."
"This is incredible. I-I..." Navarre's eyes lit up. "Laboratory procedures. We must record and take notes. Tell me everything."
"I'm a little less interested in telling you everything than in getting you out of here and understanding this place..." Starlight tapped her forehooves nervously. "If there was any reason you'd remember less in here, do you have any idea how it would work or what it would be?"
"Hmmm." Navarre sat down, folding his sarosian wings in thought.
Starlight hesitated. "If it helps, a part of our research I think you forgot is that when you transfer a pony's soul from one body to another, their memories don't stay. So if you're just a soul in here, maybe your old memories aren't with you?"
"Nonsense," Navarre huffed. "I can remember it as clear as day! My acceptance letter, submitting my final work to the royal..." He frowned. "Are we the only ones here? If we were inserting ourselves into obsidian to see what was inside, surely there would have been something else inside to see."
"There are other ponies." Starlight shook her head. "Outside."
Navarre got up and opened his door again. Instead of the balcony, the scenery outside had been replaced with a winding bridge into a mountainous valley, the bare beginnings of a road visible before everything was lost in falling ash. They were standing inside the entrance of a huge stone tower.
"...Maybe when it's warmer out?" Starlight asked, shivering from a blast of cold air.
"Only if we can still find fitting answers to your questions." Navarre resumed his pacing, this time deep in contemplation. "You've seen others. Have you talked to them? What did they look like? What were they doing? You said they had lost memories too?"
Starlight nodded. "I saw a few. Two were getting married. One was excited about finding this place. He said it was his life's work to get here."
"Life's work..." Navarre's eyes slowly widened. "And you say I've not only forgotten things from before this, but from after?"
Starlight shrugged. "They weren't very keen on talking about what they forgot. All they wanted to talk about was what they were doing."
"In absence of our connections to our bodies... Achieving one's life's work? A wedding, ordinary as it may be... My own crowning achievement..." Navarre's look slowly turned hollow. "Have you seen anyone who remembers things not related to their pinnacle of existence? Perhaps it is that only our strongest memories... But then why do you remember things?"
"The way we were trying to enter with worked properly for me," Starlight lied. "I guess I keep all my memories. But are you saying we remember the things that are strongest or most important to us?"
"It is a logical assumption." Navarre glanced again at the moon glass in the display. "Though the prospect of being reduced to a single moment in time... terrifies me. What is science if not a means to immortalize our names in the ledgers of those who were great forever? Tell me! Whatever procedure we used or accident I suffered... Can it be undone?"
Starlight gave him a steady look. "If it can, could you figure it out?"
Navarre sighed. "How darkly ironic that my own state of existence leaves me precisely able to contribute knowledge toward my predicament without being able to comprehend it in the first place. What would be needed of me?"
"We need a way to pull brands out of obsidian and put them back in pony bodies," Starlight replied, tone dead even. "Sarosian bodies, if we need to. You invented one. Do you remember it?"
"Alas." Navarre shook his head. "All I know is that I desire badly to begin research into how to do such a thing. That is what my grant is for."
Starlight's ears fell. "Well... Can I have that, then? Your obsidian? If we're inside obsidian, I have no idea what that is now, but it might be important."
"Of course. Anything to recover from this predicament." Navarre opened the case, drawing the white stone out with a pair of tongs and offering it to Starlight. "...Don't scratch it."
Starlight tried to take it... only for it to nearly bounce out of her grasp. The rock had a field around it that pushed against her and repelled her, and she clasped it firmly between her hooves, certain that if she slackened the pressure, it would shoot out from between them like a magnet forced up against the wrong polarity. "Hey! It doesn't do this normally...!"
Eventually, she got it safely tucked beneath a wing, though it took some effort to keep the wing folded around it. Navarre was already by the door, donning a scarf. Starlight tilted her head. "What are you doing?"
"Sticking with you," Navarre insisted. "Wherever you're going next, it would hardly do for my intellect to be left behind."
That was a good idea. "Okay." Starlight nodded, finding a second, filly-sized scarf conveniently laying around for herself. She pushed the door open, leading the way out, and looked over her shoulder when she realized Navarre wasn't following.
"Who are you?" Navarre blinked at her with an identical expression to when she had first seen him.
Starlight swallowed.
"What do you want?" he insisted, sending a shiver down her spine. Starlight turned tail and ran.
After a minute of running, Starlight reached a beach, waves lapping against a stony, mountainous shore as the ash continued to fall. She panted for breath, the cold climate gone, and didn't want to think. What had happened to Navarre? It was like he reset... Did she move him too far from the state where he was frozen in time? Did he become too self-aware, or gain some quality that the moon glass drained from him all over again? Or did it have anything to do with the white stone she still had as proof of their encounter...?
She almost wanted to go back and look for him again, but the way she had come was gone, only mountains left behind her.