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// 5: There's A Fossil Trapped In A High Cliff Wall 
// Story: Éadóchas 
// by Jake Was Here 
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The walls of the Ponyville public library were not so thick as to be entirely soundproof, but they muffled the bustle of a busy day sufficiently to be conducive to an atmosphere of quiet, undisturbed study. Ponyville's librarian and her assistant were currently standing before one of the shelves, studying a large gap of empty space.

"So what's missing?" Spike asked. "You've memorized the whole classification system, you ought to know."

"Oh, I know all right," said Twilight Sparkle. "There's a dozen volumes gone, and all on the subjects of sleep, dreams, and sleep disorders. I just can't remember who borrowed them."

"Well, we've only had, what, two dozen visitors this week? With your memory, it should be easy."

"Should be," Twilight said. She grimaced slightly. "It occurs to me that my usual method of supervising book checkouts may need to be revised..."

Spike nodded. "Right. The whole don't-bother-to-look-up-from-your-own-book-just-stamp-the-slips thing isn't really working for you." He looked more closely at his boss and adopted sister. "What's eating you, Twilight?"

Twilight's ears drooped. "I'm worried, Spike. I've seen so little of the other girls lately."

"Maybe you ought to get out of the library a little more often. I'm always saying..."

"It's not that. I have been out of the library, lots of times! It's just that we don't seem to run into each other walking around town, the way we usually do. It's not like they have any reason to avoid me, but..."

"Hmm." Spike scratched his head. "The last time Rarity was here, she told me she was working with Pinkie on something special, something Pinkie wanted to keep a secret. I guess that'd explain why those two haven't been around much, but what about the rest?"

"For one thing, they don't stay to chat anymore. Haven't you noticed that?"

"...There was that one time last Tuesday," Spike replied slowly. "Fluttershy came in looking for something while you were out. I told her I had the kettle on for tea, but she didn't seem too interested in hanging out."

"Last Tuesday... That was chamomile, wasn't it? I know that's her favorite."

"Me too. I even told her it was chamomile, but nothin' doin' – she said she couldn't stick around. She was acting like she had something else on her mind." Spike shrugged.

"You see, Spike? That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about! They all seem to have something on their minds, every time I see them. Take yesterday: Rainbow Dash wanders in here, shuffles through the shelves, grabs a book, and zips back out. She barely even said hello to me."

Twilight took a step closer to the bookcase. "And the more I think about it, the more I think that this was the shelf she was looking at. Applejack, too... She came in over the weekend to drop a book off –"

"Which one?"

"I don't know. I wasn't looking when she put it on the RETURNS pile... Anyway, she brought that one in and checked out a couple more, and if I'm not misremembering, she took them from this very corner of the library."

"I know I found a book about dream interpretation in the reshelving basket last weekend," said Spike. "I put it right back and didn't think any more about it." He glanced up at the shelf again. "It's gone now, though. Wonder if Dash took it."

The two of them stared again at the empty space where the books on sleep should be. Twilight's eyes narrowed. "My friends are borrowing books about dreams and sleep disorders from me, they're acting just the way they would if they really were losing sleep, and they don't seem to want to talk to me about it... I don't like this, Spike. I'm seeing a pattern, and I don't like it one bit."

"Same here. Look..." Spike turned away from the bookcase to address Twilight directly. "You don't think this has anything to do with the Elements of Harmony, do you?"

"I hope and pray it doesn't." Twilight paced across the room, her mind moving considerably faster than her hooves. "Besides, I'm pretty sure something like that would affect all of us, so why hasn't anything happened to me yet? I... I suppose it could be saving me for last, the way You Know Who did – " she repressed a shiver of disgust – "but it's certainly taking its time. If it's even happening in the first place, that is, and I'm not just being paranoid. Again." She stopped in her tracks. "Wonderful," she groused under her breath. "I'm getting paranoid about getting paranoid."

"Doesn't sound too paranoid to me, Twilight," Spike said. "The way you describe it, it sounds kind of like the sort of thing that deserves at least a little worrying about."

"True," said Twilight, stumping over to her writing desk. She picked up a quill idly from the inkwell and examined it. "The question is," she sighed, "am I worrying too much or not worrying enough?"

Suddenly, Spike burst out laughing. "Hang on a minute! I – I just thought of something..." At the sight of Twilight's obvious indignation, he managed to stifle his hilarity. "I was down at the market just yesterday morning. I saw Pinkie Pie while I was out there, and she was just fine!"

Some of the tension coiled inside Twilight began to unwind. "Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure! Bouncy, hyper, talking a blue streak – she was completely normal, at least for Pinkie Pie standards of 'normal'. I tried to get her to say what she was working on with Rarity, but she just teased me about having to wait for Nightmare Night." Spike giggled again. "So there's two of you who don't fit the pattern."

Twilight sighed again, this time with relief. "Well, that's very good news."

Down the short flight of steps that served for a foyer, a knock sounded on the library door. "I'll take care of that!" Spike said, and was off as fast as his stubby legs could carry him.

"I can't tell you what a load it is off my mind, Spike," said Twilight, smiling down at the sheets of scribble that lay on the desk before her, and speaking loud enough that Spike could hear her. "I probably am just seeing things that aren't there."

"Um... I wouldn't be so sure." Hearing an odd note in Spike's voice, she turned to him as he came back up the steps. It was a shocking change from the Spike she had seen mere seconds ago. Unease was written on his face more clearly than if someone had actually scrawled Oh, Crap on his forehead with a marker; if his scales had permitted it, he probably would have gone pale. Twilight only had a second or two to wonder what had changed his mood so drastically... and then she saw who was following him.

It was Pinkie Pie, but she neither looked nor was behaving anything like her usual self. She shuffled up the steps in a manner that made Fluttershy look arrogant by comparison. Her coat and her mane seemed to have lost most of their sheen, dull imitations of their ordinary selves; her curly hair, no longer triumphantly bouffant, dangled in messy awkward locks over her face and down the back of her neck, as though she hadn't bothered to comb it or brush it after waking up. Her tail dragged listlessly behind her. When she finally raised her head to look at the other two, Twilight saw dark circles under Pinkie's eyelids – and was that redness around the edges of her eyes?

"Spike?" said Pinkie, in a tiny, broken voice. "Twilight?" Twilight found herself almost cringing at the sound. It was a crime against nature, it was a blasphemy of all that was pure and good, that a voice like that should ever come out of Pinkie Pie's mouth.

"Right here, Pinkie," said Spike.

"Um, look." Pinkie gulped, and her eyes shone briefly with emotion as they darted from Twilight to Spike and back again; she was holding herself barely in check. "I promise I'll explain everything later, you guys, but – but I really, really, really, really, REALLY need a hug right now."

Nothing more needed to be said. The other two leapt on Pinkie – Spike from right at her side, Twilight from all the way across the room – and wrapped her up in the warmest, tightest, most consoling embrace they could summon. Pinkie broke down, the unshed tears finally flooding out of her eyes, her forehooves wrapped tight around Spike and Twilight's necks as she sobbed, only two coherent words rising out of the general bawling: "Thank you... Thank you... Thank you... Thank you... Oh, thank you..."





Eventually, much to Twilight's relief, Pinkie's blubbering finally died down. Spike proffered a handkerchief, which Pinkie eagerly used to blot the tracks of teardrops from her face – and into which she noisily blew her nose. Meanwhile, Twilight was making rather a loud and frantic clatter in her kitchen. "Spike!" she finally called out. "Where's the kettle?"

"I'll handle it," Spike said. He hurried into the kitchen just as Twilight was hurrying out of it.

Twilight gently led Pinkie to the most comfortable chair in the library and sat her down in it. "How are you feeling?"

"M-much better now, Twilight. Thanks." And Pinkie looked it, too: some of the color and shine, though not all of it, had returned to her face, and whatever was weighing on her mind did not seem to be pressing down quite as heavily now that she had cried some of it out.

"What on the green earth happened to you, anyway?"

"Well, you'll probably think it's ridiculous, but I'll tell you everything." Pinkie took a deep breath, and dove in. "I've been up since three o'clock this morning. I had this terrible, horrible dream – you know how sometimes you'll have those dreams where you know the whole time it's a dream and sometimes you can even change what's happening? I get a lot of those."

"Lucid dreaming," nodded Twilight. "I don't get them, but a lot of ponies do."

"Okay, so this dream was a lot like those dreams, but it was different too. For one thing, I couldn't change anything that was happening, no matter how hard I tried. And for another thing, I couldn't wake up. I kept telling myself, come on, it's just a dream, snap out of it, but I couldn't snap out of it, and after a while I started getting afraid that I was never ever ever going to wake up." Pinkie shuddered. "It was like the dream wasn't going to give me a choice – it wouldn't let me wake up until I'd seen what it was trying to show me."

"And what was it trying to show you?"

"I was... in a maze," Pinkie said, her eyes far away. "Like the hedge maze in the gardens at Canterlot, but much, much bigger. And the walls weren't even hedges – they were stone walls, but the stones were all tall and smooth and there weren't any seams between them. It was like the walls were all just carved out of one gigantic piece of rock that just went on and on.

"It was nighttime, but I heard a party going on somewhere in the maze, and when I looked up I could see some kind of a glow off in the distance. I said to myself, That's where the party must be. They've got a whole bunch of bright lights strung up. And for some reason it was really important to me that I get there.

"So there I am walking through the maze, trying to find the party, but I kept getting lost at wrong turns and having to backtrack and figure out where I was all over again, and every time I stopped and looked again, the glow was further off and the music was fading out, and I started thinking, cheese Louise, I'm never gonna find this place.

"But then I got lucky. I made a whole bunch of right turns in a row – turns in the right direction, I mean, not turns to the right – and the party started to sound a little closer again, and eventually I started running because I knew I was on the right track. I started finding confetti and streamers and empty plates lying all over the floor of the maze, like a whole trail of party stuff, and I just kept following the trail. The music and the lights and the voices kept getting louder – did I mention I heard ponies' voices, too? But I didn't recognize the voices or the music, I just knew that was what they were.

"So there I am, coming around the last corner in a full-on gallop, thinking about how much fun it's going to be, just dancing and laughing and drinking punch and playing games and making new friends... and then I have to screech to a stop because the entrance to the party is closed." Pinkie began to curl up into a ball on the seat and hugged her own tail tightly to her chest. "There wasn't a gate or anything; somebody had just took a bunch of big thick boards and nailed them across the doorway. I couldn't even see through. I almost got mad because I thought they'd shut me out, and then I realized that it wasn't anybody at the party who could've done it because the boards were all on the outside. They didn't know a thing about it.

"I started banging on the boards as hard as I could, just begging and pleading for them to let me in, but the music was too loud and nobody heard me. I could hear them, though, laughing and singing and dancing like it was the world's last party ever. And as I sat in front of the doorway, all of a sudden this nasty thought hit me: Maybe they don't need me. Maybe they wouldn't even KNOW me. And what's it matter, anyhow? It could be the biggest party in the whole entire history of the universe, but what's it matter when I can't even get in?

"And then – see, here's the part where it gets really bad." Pinkie's eyes had gone bleary again, and now she began to shake. Twilight leaned forward and laid a reassuring hoof on top of Pinkie's. "I'd looked down at the floor – it was the same sort of stuff as the walls, like rock but not really rock – and when I looked back up at the doorway it was just gone. Nothing but a blank wall. I jump up and look around, and there's no maze anymore either, just four big blank stone walls and me stuck in between them. And overhead the lights and the music are fading away again, and I get this feeling like that party's supposed to be all the fun in the world, all the great things that haven't happened yet, and it's going away forever and leaving me all by myself, and all the fun I've had in the past, all the parties I've thrown and all the jokes I've told and all the games I've played and all the ponies I've made to smile, they don't matter anymore – and I start leaping around, shouting and screaming and hollering, please, can't anyone hear me, somebody help, I can't get out of this thing, I can't wake up, please somebody help me – "

"Pinkie!" cried Twilight. Pinkie, caught up in the frenzied panic of her dream, had stood up on the seat of the chair and was banging her forehooves against a quartet of imaginary walls.

"S-s-... sorry, Twilight," Pinkie said, sitting back down with an embarrassed grin and a sniffle. "Anyway, I don't know what was supposed to happen next, or maybe that was meant to be the end of it. The next thing I knew, I was in my own bed, and my face and my mane felt all wet, and Missus Cake was leaning over me and shaking me and shouting 'Pinkie, wake up!' I asked her what was wrong and she told me she'd woken up when she heard me down the hall crying in my sleep but just as she came in to check on me I started screaming for help." She slumped down across the seat on her belly. "I went into the bathroom and got some water on my face to wash the tears off, but I couldn't get back to sleep at all. And I've been on the edge of tears again ever since."

Twilight couldn't think of anything else to do; she leaned in and hugged Pinkie again. "Good grief. You poor thing."

"You know something?" Pinkie said, trying to widen her excuse for a smile. "Just telling someone about it makes me feel so much better. I don't know why I didn't do it the first chance I could."

"At least you told someone," sighed Twilight. "I don't know what's going round lately, but all our other friends seem to have something happening to them that they don't want to discuss."

"You think it might be bad dreams? Like mine?" Pinkie's eyes suddenly lit up. "Oh! That makes sense! Hey, Twilight, listen: Just last week I was at the spa with Rarity and Fluttershy, right?"

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "What were you doing at the spa?"

"Long story. Anyway, Fluttershy was feeling down, and when we asked her what was wrong she said she must have had some kind of nightmare... no, wait a minute. Are we still allowed to call them that or would Princess Luna be offended?"

"I-I'm sure she'd understand, Pinkie," stammered Twilight. "What were you about to say?"

"Oh, right. Fluttershy said she'd been feeling awful all morning and she couldn't lay a hoof on the reason, so she thought she'd probably had a nightmare, and that reminded Rarity that she'd had some kind of bad dream too, the same night. I dunno if it's connected to my dream, though, because what they were talking about wasn't even one ten-zillionth as bad as what happened in mine..."

"Still," said Twilight, shaking her head, "it doesn't seem like a coincidence." She levitated a pencil and notebook over to herself from the little table by Pinkie's chair, and began scrawling notes feverishly in shorthoof. "It's like I was telling Spike just before you came in – "

"You called?" said Spike, setting down a neatly loaded tea tray on the table.

"Well, speak of the dragon," said Pinkie, and surprised herself by laughing.

Spike smiled. "Well, you're definitely sounding better."

"Feeling a little better, too," Pinkie replied. "Is all that for me? Including the sandwich?"

"Yeah. You sounded like you needed something solid."

"I do, I do! I barely even picked at my breakfast today..." Pinkie picked up the lid of the teapot with her teeth, just long enough to get a whiff of the brew inside. "Ooh, is that chamomile?"

"Of course," said Twilight. "One of your favorites, isn't it?"

"Yup, and Fluttershy's all-time favorite too. Although I kind of liked that one tea you made that one time – what was it? You know, that really dark stuff with the touch of orange peel in it?"

"You mean the Duke Sorrel?"

"Yeah, Duke Sorrel, that's it! I've been trying to come up with a recipe that'll taste good with that tea..."

"Really?" Twilight pricked up her ears, sensing a chance to get Pinkie's mind off the unhealthy subject that had possessed it in her sleep. "Do tell."

As Spike poured the tea, Pinkie talked about the difficulties of balancing the flavors of different kinds of sugar and caffeine. Twilight had once read a book on the basic theory, as she had with almost every theory of anything under the sun and moon, but she was curious to hear Pinkie's own perspective... and considering how relaxed Pinkie was beginning to look, she was more than willing to sit and listen, for the sake of her friend's peace of mind.

The discarded handkerchief lay on the floor next to the chair, forgotten, until Spike hastily retrieved it and dispatched it to the laundry bin.