//------------------------------//
// Chapter 17: Broken Goddess 
// Story: Sisters of Willowbrook 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Derek stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. The reflection she saw staring back was just as disorienting as it had been the night before—if anything, it was worse. 

On her first day of waking in Willowbrook, she felt like the world was behind a thick fog. It warped her memories, suppressed what she could say, and seemed to be clawing its way into her mind. It would silence her thoughts and memories if it could.

Waking now, her mind was clear. She still couldn't say certain words out loud, but otherwise she could see normally. She could not rationalize what she saw as a dream or the use of drugs, or hypnosis, or whatever other explanation.

It was like the very first time she'd managed to make a spell work—impossible, yet undeniable.

She looked back at the face of a young, frightened child. When she twisted and lifted her tail, she saw confirmation that even the subtlest aspects of her identity had been stolen from her. It wasn't enough to be just a horse, or just a child, or just in another world. She had to be female as well.

Derek's little bathroom had an adorable vanity painted with multicolored hearts and prancing unicorns. There were dozens of different containers—vials and tubes and bottles of creams and salves and makeup. So she assumed, anyway.

Figuring out how makeup was meant to be used when her face had fur was still ongoing. Some of these other bottles were probably perfume, at least from how nice they smelled.

No one came in to stop her as she tinkered around with some, until she found something she took for hair-gel. Getting it into her mane also meant smearing half the tub all over the countertop, given her lack of coordination with her hooves.

But she got it in. Then she started moving her hooves wildly, sweeping back her mane in the most masculine way she could manage. 

After what felt like ages glaring back into the mirror, she hadn't made it much past tomboy. She knocked a few bottles right off the table in her frustration, before just rubbing her head against the wall, messing up her mane in the most exaggerated way she could.

"A brave style, Purple. I'd even call it avante-garde," Iris spoke from behind her, obviously suppressing a laugh.

Derek turned, ears flattening. "Hey, you shouldn't come in! I'm naked!"

The pony stopped in the bathroom doorway, eyebrows going up. "I'm not sure how those are related." She made her way over, glancing once into the mirror beside Derek. 

Tomboy was bad enough, but now her mane had transformed into “three increasingly aggressive cow-licks.” The pony nudged her shoulder with one leg, guiding her back into the chair.

"More like this." A hairbrush lifted from the sink, along with a bottle. They moved on their own, like an invisible stylist had appeared beside her. Derek jumped anyway, nearly tumbling out of her seat at first.

Right, unicorns can just do that. She settled awkwardly back into place, pretending very hard that she hadn't just made a fool of herself.

"Now, let's just loosen this up a bit. Maybe we can part it here? That looks appropriate for a filly your age."

"No," Derek snapped. "I don't want to be girly."

The older pony's confusion seemed to grow. The brush did move aside, which was something. "What do you want, Purple?"

She struggled to answer that. Obviously the same force that wouldn't let her use her real name also prevented her from mentioning this. The headache would start right up and keep her from sharing.

She didn't want to take the chance. That was the only reason.

"I want to look... mature. Dignified."

"Ah." She nodded knowingly, then the brush started to move again. This time, it layered her mane, separating the colors.  There was only so much she could do with it so long and girly. The changes didn't make it look less feminine, just less childish.

At least she didn't look like a hobo. After a few minutes, the mare seemed satisfied. She set down the brush, then gestured for the door. "You must be hungry, Purple. Come along for breakfast."

She needed no cajoling into that. At least this time her meal wouldn't be served in her lonely bedroom.

As it turned out, her new world had many of the same foods as her old one, except for a prominent absence of bacon. She hadn't become magically more coordinated since the night before. But she managed not to spill all over herself, which was something.

When they were finished, she followed Iris through the huge mannerhouse, with servants always lurking at the edges of her vision. She could've sworn she caught Little Risk watching her more closely than most. It was enough to keep her blushing all the way to the library.

"We didn't have as much time yesterday as I would have liked," Iris said. She rang the bell, then waited for a servant to open all the blinds. Despite her magic, doing it all herself was evidently beneath her. 

"I thought we might speak a little about what you remember. About the place you were before waking up here."

Derek froze, fear and uncertainty roiling in her gut. What did she remember? How about an entire lifetime! A career, patients she cared about, a practice she had built up over years. A family who would eventually notice she was gone, friendships. Granted, she had at least one of those friends here in Willowbrook...

Assuming Charlie still considered Derek a friend. I can still get us home. If I'm quick enough, we could brush it off as getting lost in the woods. We'll turn into a crazy story of hikers who wandered too far, and the forestry service will probably close the Hidden Falls until they put in a proper trail.

That was all still wishful thinking. It would stay that way until it wasn't.

"Purple? Can you hear me?" 

She'd been standing in silence, probably looking stupid. The windows were open, and someone had kindled a little fire in the hearth. 

It didn't seem uncomfortably cold to her, yet she could feel a chill. She felt it, without it properly reaching her. "Sorry, I got a little distracted." Her ears betrayed her again, but she was getting used to that. "What do you want to know?"

Iris led her to a comfortable sofa by the window. She produced a scroll and quill pen from nowhere in particular, and held them in the air in front of her with more of that strange magic.

A direct confrontation of the impossible, on the one hand. On the other—even Risk lingering by the wall was capable of exactly the same thing. An entire species that relied on magic. But how did her species get things done?

"Where you come from," Iris said. She spoke the question quietly—not for the ears of the distant servants, then. "We know some things, but only what records have been passed down since the True Gods ruled in their glory."

You know we traveled from another world, right. You have magic too. Is that what brought us here?

"What do you know?" Derek asked. Her voice shook as she did it, maybe a little braver than she should be. But she asked anyway. "About the place I come from, I mean."

Iris hesitated. "Do you remember the conversation we had on our way to the manor?"

"About... keeping secrets?"

"Yes. This qualifies. Anything I share with you is as dangerous as the memories you bring. Do you understand?"

She nodded.

The mare finally looked up. "Little Risk, please wait outside. See that no servant enters until I call."

He nodded, hurrying out the doors without another word. He pulled them closed with his own magic, leaving them alone by the window.

It was a good view of Willowbrook, or at least the lands of House Vale. Derek could see fields and orchards, tended to by distant pony outlines. There must be dozens of them.

"We do not have its proper name," Iris said. "We call it Abbadon—a state of absence. It is the gulf that unravels all magic. Even the soul twists and unravels when passing through. Only a creature of greater resilience could survive the passage. No pony has ever managed to glimpse through. We know nothing of what it is like there."

"Uh... normal?" She winced, unable to meet Iris's eyes. "I don't know what you're asking. It has plants and animals and gravity and people and cities and time and life and death and—everything else?"

The unicorn scribbled furiously. From the intensity of her scratching, she might've been writing every word Derek had just said. "Do you remember being banished there?"

"No." A simple enough answer. Of course Derek hadn't been banished anywhere. But technically that meant she didn't remember it, right? "Nothing about that. I grew up there. My whole life was..."

Not great, not perfect. But trying to say anything specific really did threaten to split open her skull. "Not very magical. I only learned how to do it recently. I didn't even think any magic would work. I was still feeling everything out when a spell I was working on..." 

How much should she tell? She felt no compulsion trying to stop her from telling the truth about magic. But just because nothing would force her didn't mean that she could trust Iris. Being nice for the one day they'd been together didn't prove that Iris was trustworthy.

Unfortunately it seemed she had already said too much. "You were working on your own spell when you were brought here?" The unicorn scribbled eagerly at the scroll, silent for almost a minute as she wrote. "That might just be the missing piece we've been looking for. We've tried so many times to reach down into that realm, but the magic always fails. Generations of your loyal servants have dedicated themselves, without success."

Derek got up, backing away from her. "I don't remember... specifics," she said. "You probably shouldn't make any important decisions based on me. I failed, that's why we're talking in the first place."

"Failed?" she repeated. "Weren't you banished to Abbadon? You're back in Equestria now, Purple. Your banishment is over, you're home."

She spoke with such confidence, like she was declaring some profound truth that would shake Derek's whole world. All it actually did was confuse her. This isn't my home. I was born somewhere else. She remembered everything. She was still going to find her way back.

"The magic you used to bring us here—" she said, choosing each word carefully. "Could we reverse it to go back?"

"No," Iris said. "Substance cannot exist on the other side. Everything we know to be meaningful—actually, what am I saying? We just have theories. You can tell us what it was actually like."

She leaned in close, falling silent again. If she thought the pressure of it would get Derek to share more than she wanted, she would be disappointed. She knew all those tricks, they wouldn't work on her.

Someone screamed from down the hall—several angry voices, overlapping. Derek couldn't even make out what they were screaming, but clearly Iris could. She rose to her hooves, tossing the pen aside but keeping the scroll in the air beside her. "Apologies, I'm needed. Enjoy the library until I return." 

She ran for the door, banging them open with her magic as she went. She took off galloping down the hall before Derek could so much as open her mouth.

"What the hell?" Derek took a few nervous steps after her, ears perking to full alertness. Being an animal did have some advantages. Her senses were far sharper.

But the voices didn't unite into anything coherent—just servants yelling for each other to go downstairs. Something important was obviously happening.

Derek moved to the window instead, propping her forelegs up against the wall to see down.

A carriage was parked in the cobblestone drive, flying white and yellow sun flags.