//------------------------------//
// It’s Been a Bit of a Long Time 
// Story: A Hush Reigns Over the Universe, But a Final Blaze Shouts 
// by Comma Typer 
//------------------------------//

In the morning, there is a list to check. Another schedule of appointments, checking up on other worlds. A cup of coffee this time; no sugar, no creamer: just dark, bitter black.
She pours into her headspace a system of questions and answers, meant to gently coax out more of an amiable relationship with the worlds ahead. To her relief, most of them are the sane ones, nothing like the cosmic horrors of a heart in cinders she only saw passing, dreamful glimpses of.
Her hooves drag her to a portal. Levers pulled, flashing buttons pressed, the portal’s frame alight with a bevy of indicators, she lunges forward.



Drops of water pitter and patter from hanging stalactites. The cavern yawns with a rising hoard, though it sparkles not of gems but of scrolls of inked paper.
Ebony and silver glitter the scales of the lair’s dragon. Cinnamon is as dust to him as she stands small before his head, holding such a flammable notepad.
“I know it’s been a bit of a long time since our worlds met,” she says. “Actually a bit since, well, we met your world’s humans.”
She fumbles on her notepad. It sinks through a mountain of unprocessed pulp and oceans of ink.



Inside a dimensionally different city of dragons stuck in Equestria, her guests sit at the top of a watchtower, overlooking rows upon rows of residences, with a combined pony-dragon guard patrolling the area. She was briefed over half a year ago about this being a worlds’ convergence. She could tell by how the purple dragon on Starlight’s left didn’t look at home with Equestria’s draconic neighbors.
“Actually, can you believe it? You’re the second dragon in a row today!” Cinnamon looks up from her notes to register the faces of both Starlight and who she remembered as Spyro. “Still, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
Her magic wavers, drops the quill. They both ask if she’s okay while she keeps her jaw from twitching, her eyes defogged from the mist of tears.



“Uh, why were you meeting with me?” says an older Scootaloo, accompanied by a Flurry Heart.
Cinnamon falters, checking where she is and what she waited for: a train, having just departed Ponyville. “I mean, I was told—”
“Weren’t you supposed to meet up with Stock Image?” Flurry asks.
“How do you know? Actually, never mind. We’ve met before. I just needed more preparation dealing with a ghost, but with Stock being away, well…”
She later confesses, in written word on her report, of airing things out to barely adult Scootaloo and literal-foal Flurry, along with being unable to hide her wet eyes from them.



“Me again?” Wallnut asks, on a boat bobbing along the piers of Tobuck; the buildings that make up the cityline are afresh with scaffolds and new coats of paint. “Look, I appreciate the gesture, but one, isn’t this all a whole work-in-progress? And two, I’m not even done with my tale! Haven’t even started yet, miss!”
“It doesn’t hurt to check, and—”
Her quill falls into the water.
Before Wallnut dives in to save it, he checks her pulse, her panicking pulse for a frozen mare. “Lady, I think ya got bigger problems than some war or meeting me.”



Cinnamon watches as a blue little dragon creature from an Everfree launches from her desk, signaling the end of her late-night appointment. All lights turn off in waves; maintenance staff enters with mops and toolboxes. The portal’s light fixtures shut down last.
She puts the schedule aside, riddled with erasures and impromptu notes. Relations have been maintained. Checkmarks, currency marks, and exclamation marks fill her own review. Her bag is picked up in her magic; she sets her face towards the exit.
A desk opens on its own. A candle burns bright within.
Cinnamon stops cold. “No, please, I just…”
The candle lays there, casting a greater light upon her desk, upon her papers. The little calendar and the rest of the stationery glimmer. The frames of portals all across shine on her face by the light of the candle, like the moon joined with the sun.
The sense of light pours into her heart. White invades her mind. Dots, just like in the dream realm, surround her. Ann, not yet fully formed, years ago—excited to meet her a year after her own creation, shaking paw and hoof. Then being told that she had a counterpart back in her world, her and her best friends Cookie and Oakley, helping up their Earth’s Applejack through strange magical times. And then her turn came, the spotlight on her; Cinnamon had read the reports from the other agents and observers, of Anarchy’s non-conventional birth, of built-in safety features, of schoolmates and a hoofball game, freeing up Cozy Glow and almost causing the end of Equestria in the process… all tucked in with a foggy Nightmare Night, where in all her dreams, the future ended there, and the universe started closing its doors.
She debases herself against her desk as all things fall apart, her defenses worn down by an amorphous tide searing her from within. By the time emergency staff carry her dry-heaving body to the ward, her eyes are fountains.