//------------------------------//
// The Dreaded Town 
// Story: Navigate 
// by Sleestack 
//------------------------------//

	“So do you think the conductor saw us get on the train?”
“What?” The moon was setting, and the opposite end of the sky was fading from blue to orange. “Oh. Yeah, the conductor? I don’t know. I don’t think so. He would have gone straight to our car if he had.”
“Okay. Then how did he know we were on the train?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he heard us moving around in the car something?”
“Over all the sounds of the train? I don’t think he could have...”
“Look, I don’t know. But there’s something that I want to know, Rose.”
“Hmm?”
“When you were pushing me out of the train, were you um... putting your hooves in certain places for certain reasons?”
Rose gave him an offended look. “What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing, I’m just not sure if I’m, you know, that I’m attractive like this. You know, as one of you. And I don’t mind if you were attracted to me or anything, I mean I’d understand. But you just have to watch where your hands are-”
“You are going to stop talking. Now.”
“Okay, geez, fine.”
“But, speaking of grabbing-”
“Hey, I’ve been keeping my hands to myself. I mean hooves. Whatever.”
“Well, when you grabbed my hooves to pull me out, you grabbed really hard. I was afraid you were going to leave me bruises.”
“Oh.” Trip remained silent.
“What’s wrong?” Rose asked, concerned.
“Nothing. We’ve just been walking for a long time. Again. You have a really bad sense of distance, you know that?”
“Look, we’ll be there by sunrise. We’ll have plenty of time to find the Elements of Harmony.”
“Joy.”

Trip felt extremely uneasy, even more than he had in Canterlot. The town, to him, had the sensation of a war zone. Glances from the creatures that inhabited it were the bullets whizzing by him, some striking him directly. Each step was a potential step on a landmine. But he had to maintain a calm exterior. Which, of course, was hard to do since every nerve in his body was telling him to scream “Take cover!” and jump under something.
When in Rome, thought Trip. Slight smile. Good posture. And... make conversations without talking, apparently?
It was the strangest thing. As they walked by groups of the creatures, they would move their mouths as if they were talking to each other, but no words would come out.
Trip kept his eyes forward but leaned his head towards Rose. “What is going on with all of them?” He whispered.
“Hmm.” she said, looking around, totally ruining Trip’s attempt at discretion. “Something important must be going on.”
“Important? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, if something important goes on, and you’re not a part of it, you’re just supposed to go do your own thing. But you’re not supposed to interact with the important thing.”
“Who the h- makes these rules, anyway? Actually, no, how do you just know them?”
Rose contemplated that for a second. “I don’t know. It’s just something you kind of pick up after a while.”
Trip lowered his head in anguish. “I think what really upsets me about this, is that you aren’t getting upset about this.”
She tapped his chin. “Come on now, we’re not here to complain about my lifestyle, right? We’re here to get you back to Maryland. Where everything is wonderful all the time, right?” she giggled at that.
“Technically, that’s here. I said that about this place.” Trip said, lifting his head slightly. “Just tell me if you see the uh, Elements of Symphony, or whatever they’re called.
“I think that might be some of them, over there.” Rose said, pointing in the direction of three of particular horses. Trip looked and had a combined feeling of dread and relief as he saw them. But he even welcomed the grief, because it was how he felt when Renee forced him to watch the show. Feeling it almost gave him the sensation of sitting down on the couch with her, just enjoying her presence and drowning out the voices of the characters that at one point, were separated from him with a screen. Now, the only thing that separated him and them was a couple hundred yards. 
The three that were there were the purple one, the yellow one and the orange one. They were discussing something, but nothing that looked extremely important. They didn’t have looks of urgency, or fear drawn onto their faces. It was probably safe to interrupt them. Even so, he was going to wait until they came to him.
“Alright, the purple one’s a brainiac, so I’ll probably have my best bet from her. The orange one is from Texas, so probably not much going on up-” he paused. 
Rose looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s no such thing as Texas here. How does she...” he shook his head. “Never mind. And the yellow one... I think she’s afraid of everything or something. Especially strangers.” he turned his head to Rose. “Especially strangers, right?”
Rose shrugged.
“Well, either way, the purple one is still the best bet. I’ll just direct my questions at her.”
“Don’t you know their names? It seems kind of rude to call them by their color.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know their names. I’m just trying not to admit to myself that I do.” Trip looked back at them and saw that they were walking in the opposite direction of him.  “No, no! This way, little horsies...”
They kept their course. Trip started walking around the corner of the building. “Where are you going?” asked Rose.
“I’m just gonna make it so that I just kinda ‘bump into them’, you know? If I just run up to them, they’ll get scared or offended. Skittish, I think they call it. No, I have to be real friendly and casual about it. Try to strike up a conversation, make myself seem normal. Then behind the scenes I reveal my most dark secret. That’s how these things work.”
“You know, you keep saying that. That you know how we’re supposed to do things.” She gave him a condescending look. “I don’t think that any of the ways you’ve suggested to do things has worked once.”
Trip looked away. “Yeah, true, but that’s only because I haven’t been thinking like a cartoon in the right ways. But no, really, this is more of a social thing than anything. Trust me, okay?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’ll trust you, again, but that doesn’t mean I expect this to work.”
Trip smiled. “That’s all I ask. You wait here. Make some more small talk. Try to blend in.”
Rose laughed a little. “I do it better than you ever could.”
He walked along the backs of the buildings. Occasionally, one of them would come out the backdoors, but he’d just smile and nod and continue on. None of them seemed to mind he was there. Eventually, all that separated him and the three was a single building. They were standing still and talking again. He inched his way around to the other side of the house.
He kept his distance. He was still good at blocking out the character’s voices. He tried tuning in, but found they were talking about something he didn’t even care about. He was here about his problems, not theirs.
“Excuse me, ma’ams?” Trip said. No response. He tried again, a little louder. “Ladies?”
The purple one kept talking, with the other two listening intently. Trip had to rely on desperate measures.
“Excuse me. Excuse me! Twilight Sparkle?” Trip called out. The words tasted funny in his mouth. He was pretty sure that that was the first time he had actually said the names of one of the characters. The purple horse didn’t so much pause while speaking. He took a step closer.
The landmine went off.
Suddenly, a flash of white. Trip went blind for a second. He had lost his physical form again, he was in the void. He tried flailing his limbs to get traction, to get moving, but he was petrified. He looked ahead of him and three horse shaped auras appeared, all of which were a light blue. But they were moving. No, they were spinning. No, Trip was spinning. He was floating, every way was up. He saw dozens more of the horse shaped auras, except almost all of them were a dark orange. 
Then the colors ran together. Trip’s vision smeared until everything was a mix of white, orange and blue, which somehow combined into a horrid black shade that surrounded Trip. He could feel it, the black brushing up against his skin, encasing him and eventually crushing him. 

Trip opened his eyes. He was laying down on the ground, shivering. He put his shaking front limbs in front his face. Still hooves.
“Trip? Trip, are you okay?” said a familiar voice.
“J-just peach-chy.” he stuttered.
“What happened? Where did you come from?”
“H-h... now-where.”
“Oh my goodness, you look awful! Get up, get up, come on.” He felt hooves on his shoulders lift him up.
“Tha-anks.” he spat out.
“Trip, were you swimming or something? The ground here is all wet.”
“Sw-weat.” he responded.
“Are you sure? There’s a lot-”
“SWEAT.”
“Okay, okay come on, let’s get you to a nurse.”
He managed to get back up on all fours, but no part of him wanted to hold up all of his weight. His front left leg was especially a challenge. Any time he put pressure on it, his body would dip, making his head coming an inch away from smacking his head into the ground.
Somehow, Rose knew exactly where to go. She was able to steer him with an actual sense of direction. They were at an infirmary tent within a matter of minutes.
“How d-did you know how to g-get here?” Trip asked.
“I don’t know. It just seemed like a place a doctor would be. Hold on.” Rose left for a second and came back with a white pony, wearing a nursing cap.
“What are his symptoms?” She asked, as she and Rose helped walk him to a bed.
“He randomly appeared out of nowhere, is sweating a lot, and he’s shaking.”
“...interesting.”
Trip focused again and found himself in a bed. The nurse and Rose exchanged some more words and the nurse left.
“Trip, what happened?” Rose said, after a long silence.
“Hey Rose, you wanna see a magic trick?”
“Trip, are you okay?” she asked, concerned.
“A-la-ka-ZAM.” Trip stuck his arms out in front of him, as if he were casting a spell. “I’m in two hospital beds at the same time.” He fell back so his head was resting on the pillow, and laughed silently to himself. Rose left the room.
“Also, I think he might be hallucinating, or he may be seeing double, or something.” he heard from outside the room.
“I’m FINE.” Trip called out. “It was a JOKE. You never hear of humor around here?”
Trip heard some quiet discussion again. Rose, the nurse, and... a third one. “Who’s there?” he yelled. “What’s wrong?” A purple horse walked in. A purple horse with similarly multi-toned hair. Trip jumped to the far side of the bed. “Stay back! What did you do to me?”
She seemed confused by the gesture. “I didn’t do anything. But we need to get something clear.”
Trip relaxed back into the center of the bed. “Okay. Okay. I need to talk to you, too.”
“Well, I just wanted to you to know that I’m going to need you to stay away from me and my friends.”
That shocked Trip. “What? No, I don’t think you understand.” He tried putting on a smile. “I have a problem, which, I think only you and your friends can-”
“Well, I’m really sorry to hear that, but we can’t.” she interrupted.
“What? No, really. I’m in a really bad way, and I need some powerful... magic. Yeah. And you and your friends-”
“Look, I’d really like to, but we really don’t have time. We have a lot of important things we need to-”
“What? Can’t you just put them off until later? You are really the only ones that can help-”
“As much as I’d like to help you, we need to stick to the schedule.”
“Schedule? What schedule?”
“Um... Well, it’s kind of hard to describe. We just need to do important things in a very specific order, and always on time.”
“...like a script.” He muttered, defeated by the realization.
“Yeah! Kinda like that, if you wanna look at it that way.” She looked at a clock in the room. “Oh! Look, I might be able to help you when we’re done, but that probably won’t be for a while. I’ll try and talk to you later, okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Okay. Good! Bye!” She walked cheerily out of the room.
Trip laid in the bed, staring directly in front of him. Rose walked in. “What did she want?”
Trip didn’t respond.
“Trip, are you okay?”
“I hate the word ‘important’.”
“What?”
Trip looked up at her. “Nothing.” He swung his bottom legs out of the bed and got on all fours. “We have to wait here until they’re done with their... business. I guess we have to find something to occupy our time until then.” Trip left the room, and Rose followed.