||Fit the Second||
High pitched sounds were squeaking intermittently from Twilight’s twitching face.
“Star Swirl the Bearded? Clover the Clever? Discord?”
She began trotting back and forth, speaking in between deep breaths. “Okay, no, this is good… this is exactly what I want.” She turned her head mid-pace and locked her eyes on Pinkie Pie. “Now, Pinkie, you just have to take each of those things you just told me about—all of those crazy, ridiculous things—and explain each one of them in order. It won’t be very hard.” She gulped. “Just… just start with Clover the Clever. You said he was trying to find Star Swirl?”
Pinkie nodded, sending locks of bouncy pinkness in all directions around her ears. “Yup! Star Swirl disappeared when the Elements of Harmony turned Discord to stone!”
Twilight stopped pacing and shook her head. “No, Pinkie. Star Swirl the Bearded left the country in search of a cure for the blizzard under the reign of Princess Platinum, leaving his apprentice, Clover the Clever, to advise the princess in his stead. He was never heard from again.”
“False!” Pinkie trumpeted, sticking a hoof in Twilight’s face. “That might be what your history books say, Miss History Books Believer, but Bluish Carol knows the reeeeaal story.”
Holding back an outburst, Twilight channeled all her academic rage into one word: “Oh?”
“While Chancellor Puddinghead was making Equestria—”
“You mean while the three tribes united under one flag.”
“—Star Swirl crossed the Pahoofic ocean and accidentally found the Wabe!” She threw her hooves out to her sides and spun around in circles.
Twilight raised a hoof off the ground in surprise. “Star Swirl found this place?”
“He sailed here,” Pinkie affirmed. She squinted in the direction opposite of the portal and poked her tongue out from the corner of her mouth. “Uhhh… oh, there! See? The ocean!”
Twilight peered in the same direction, taking note of the sparkling surface painting the horizon.
“But, Pinkie… you said this place wasn’t on Equus!” Twilight reminded in a shrill tone.
“It’s not!” Pinkie said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t sail here.”
Twilight’s ears twitched. “Yes, actually, it does mean that! How can you sail somewhere outside your own planet!?”
“Duh! Portals!” Pinkie skipped merrily around her friend and tapped on the floating doorway.
Twilight’s brain was practically whirring. “Did…” She shook her head briefly and pushed out her jaw. “Did you say—earlier—that those sailors we saw through the mirror were commissioned by Clover the Clever?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pinkie chirped, “to find Star Swirl here on the Wabe.”
“How did they know he was here if he found it by accident?”
Pinkie giggled. “No, silly! That was the second time Star Swirl came to the Wabe. The first time, he came back to Equestria all by himself!” She winced. “Well… not actually by himself, but… he figured out how to come back without help.”
Twilight nodded. “Go on. How did he get back?”
“With that thing!” Pinkie said, leaping to one side of the portal and pointing to something behind it. Nervously, Twilight Sparkle trotted to her side and gaped at the abstract scenery beyond.
The portal was at the foot of a wide, grassy hill—although the grass was mostly cream-colored with a black line spiraling around it to the peak. From the crest of the hill sprouted a massive stone structure, comparable in size (and even shape) to Ponyville’s library. It was a highly decorated, ancient Sundial of gargantuan proportions. The concave, trunk-like pedestal that burst from the oddly colored grass was carved with intricate crisscrossing patterns intercepted by the visages of vicious looking animals, archaic plants, and… alicorns. The disk atop the pedestal was even more complex, but the details of its decoration were hazy from Twilight’s distance.
“What is it?” she breathed.
“I have nnoooo idea!” Pinkie answered. “But I think it’s just beeeeaautiful! Don’t you?”
“Yes,” Twilight answered honestly. “It looks very old.”
“I bet its millions of years old!” Pinkie said, beginning to bounce. “Billions, even! Star Swirl said that nothing on this island ever changes, ages, or dies. Isn’t that wild?”
“Never changes?” Twilight repeated, tearing her eyes away from the Sundial.
“That’s right, never changes. Everything here stays exactly the same! That’s why Bluish Carol said the portal lets you go through space and time, because no matter what’s happening out there—” She pointed to the portal. “—everything stays exactly the same in here!”
“Wait, when did Bluish Carol come into this?” Twilight asked. “How did he find out about the Wabe?”
“He came here, Twilight,” Pinkie explained, “on the Lutwidge. You were just looking right at him!”
Twilight was thoroughly exasperated. “But he only lived a hundred years before us, Pinkie Pie,” she said. “If the crew of the Lutwidge was commissioned by Clover the Clever, that would mean it sailed more than a thousand years ago.”
“Yup! It did!”
Twilight was speechless. Her jaw hung at an awry angle as Pinkie giggled.
“Mmmaaaybe I should show you something else,” she said, beckoning Twilight back to the Portal. “It’ll help! I Pinkie Promise!” She drug her hoof twice across her chest and pressed it over her eyelid.
Surprisingly, the simple gesture did wonders in calming Twilight down. She trotted, head low, back to the hexagonal hole in the air and watched in awe as Pinkie twisted her hoof at its center. The images beyond sped up; the storm disappeared, the ship approached a colorful island, stopped and anchored near the shore, and the lanky Bellsteed helped each member of the crew through the ocean by twisting his hoof in their manes.
“That looks painful…” Twilight muttered.
“He’s a rough guy,” Pinkie said, shrugging. “Oh, oh, here it is!” She stopped whatever she was doing and the image slowed to normal speed. Beaming briefly in Twilight’s direction, she said, “Come on! We’re gonna miss the speech!”
Twilight gasped as Pinkie leapt through the portal. She appeared on the other side, landing on the empty deck, and nodded encouragingly back at the mirror. “You remember how to pass through, right?”
Shaking with a range of emotion, Twilight closed her eyes and focused on her desire to understand. Without opening them, she followed an old Pinkie-Pie-adage, passing through the Portal with a hop, skip, and a jump.
“Well done!” Pinkie squealed, hugging her friend quickly before hurrying to the edge of the boat nearest the island. “Heehee, isn’t this weird? We were just over there, but waaaayy in the future! Or maybe the past… who knows with the Wabe?” She giggled again and leaned over the wooden railing, pointing both of her ears at the crew gathered in a circle on the distant beach. “Good thing sound travels well over water, right, Twilight?”
The unicorn swallowed and strained her ears. “Er… right.”
They listened closely. Twilight was surprised at how well they could hear the Bellsteed’s speech from their distance.
“The time has come,” the Bellsteed said, “to talk of many things: of shoes, and ships, and ceiling wax, of cabbages, and kings! And why the—”
“You aw-ready to’d us that,” a nasally voice shouted out from his small audience. “Twice!”
A murmur of agreement passed through the crew.
“Ah, yes… but remember, my friends.” The Bellsteed held up an old bony hoof. “What I tell you three times is true.”
They were silently impressed with that.
“Now, to business!” the Bellsteed continued. “This is just the place for a Snark, as I have told you twice before, and where the Snark is, the Wizard must be also! Now I have chosen you all because you have certain qualities that are useful in tracking a Snark, for they are the most bizarre and unpredictable of creatures. However, if we work together, I have full faith that we shall find it, and the Wizard with it!”
They broke into a quick round of cheering.
“Now I wouldn’t be surprised if there were several Snarks on this island, so don’t get too excited if we find just one or two. We must keep searching until we find the Snark and the Wizard. Quite a hoofful, I’m aware, but it’s what we are being paid to do, and so we shall do it! What what?”
“Huzzah!” they cried. Pinkie laughed.
“What exactly does a Snark look like?” asked a burly pony. Twilight remembered him from the last scene: he had called Bluish “Toasted Cheese” for some reason.
“That’s the Boots,” Pinkie reminded her, whispering into her ear.
The Bellsteed rubbed his bearded chin. “Hm… well, there are two quite distinct batches. One has feathers and bites, the other has whiskers and scratches. And although common Snarks do no manner of harm, yet I feel it my duty to say, some are Boojums—”
He broke off in alarm as the baker—Bluish Carol himself—whimpered and fainted to the sand. The Boots and his posse laughed at the display while a fiery-maned pegasus and a few others dove to his aid. They began removing items from their saddlebags to help revive him.
Twilight gasped. “Is he all right?”
“Well, I’d hope so!” Pinkie said. “He’s our main character!”
“Huh?”
“Oo, watch! This part’s funny. Hee hee!”
||PP||
The baker eyes fluttered as a muffin waved back and forth under his snout. He began to slowly inhale its sweet, familiar aroma—and then gasped as a bag of ice was dumped over his chest. He sat up, hyperventilating, casting his eyes from face to face on the flawless shore of the Wabe.
Everypony shouted at him, asking for an explanation. He cringed at their noise, holding his hoof defensively over his eyes, until the Bellsteed cried “Silence! Not even a shriek!” and excitedly tingled his bell.
Though the Boots and his closest companions continued to murmur amongst themselves, the Bellsteed lowered his head near the baker’s and asked, “What’s the meaning of this, lad? Have you drank enough water?”
“Yes, yes, I’m qu-quite fine,” he stammered, struggling to his hooves. Feather helped him on the rise and offered a look of concern.
“Then why on Equus did you faint?” the Bellsteed groaned, causing the Boots to howl with laughter.
The baker cringed. “You… you mentioned a… a Boojum,” he whimpered, shuddering.
“Yes, yes, they're related to Snarks. What about them?” The Bellsteed lifted his brow expectantly.
The baker sighed and looked to Feather; the sweet mare nodded kindly, giving the baker the strength to speak. “Well… my mother and father were honest, but poor…”
The Bellsteed grunted. “Skip all that! We haven’t got all day.”
The harshness in his tone tore at the baker’s fragile composition. An embarrassing tear leaked from his eye as he said, “I skip forty years to the day we embarked from Van Hoover. My uncle was there to see me off—I’ve lived with him all my life, you see—”
“Oh, skip your dear uncle!” the Bellsteed exclaimed, jolting the poor unicorn.
“He told me, just before I boarded, about… well, you see, he was a professional hunter in his day and had quite a bit of experience with Snarks. He gave me advice on how to properly catch one and… and warned me to beware of…” He swallowed hard. “…B-Boojums.”
The baker had to shut his eyes and take several breaths through his teeth before he was able to continue.
“He was an odd soul, my uncle—spake often in meter and rhyme. It rubbed off on me, I suppose—I’m something of a poet in my spare time. Oh, but, anyway… he told me, just before I boarded the ship, he said:
‘But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum, for then
You shall softly and suddenly vanish away
And never be met with again!’
Is that true, Bellsteed?” The baker shivered and looked deeply into his captain’s eyes. “Are there Boojums here, and… do they… do that?”
The Bellsteed stood silent and grim in the sand. “I wish you would have mentioned this before, chap. It’s excessively awkward to mention it now.”
The baker dug his hoof into the sand shyly. “Well, I…”
“Well, there’s no use debating over it now. Yes, if you must know, the Boojum does in fact remove one’s existence, so I advise you all—” He swept his eyes over his crew. “—to beware of them. I’ll give you the rest of my speech when I feel it is necessary, but for now, let us begin the search! The princess’s vizier expects us home within the month, and Snarks are about as difficult to locate as Wizards… and we need to find both! So hop to it! The day’s just begun!”
He galloped into the wonky treeline without another word, bearing a determined smile. The baker sniffled and marched in that direction, leaning away from Feather’s attempts at a comforting embrace of her wing. The Boots snickered and kicked sand in the baker’s direction. “Try to keep up, Toast,” he taunted. “Don’t wanna run into any Boojums on your own!”
The shout made the timid baker yelp, drawing cruel laughter from most of his compatriots. Feather shook her head in the Boots direction, but he paid her no mind.
“Don’t listen to them, Candle Ends,” she said with a small smile. “I’ll stay right here with you, okay?”
The bluish unicorn nodded sadly, forcing himself to trudge closer to the multicolored jungle.
“By the way,” Feather continued, biting her lip, “those muffins you made for breakfast this morning? Those were the best yet. You’re a really talented baker.”
He grunted.
Feather leaned forward from his side, trying to catch his eye. “You said, uh… you said you were a poet, right? Is that what you scribble all night in the ship? Poetry?”
The baker made no noise, but met Feather’s eyes for only an instant.
She smiled. “I’d like to read some of that sometime. If you don’t mind.”
Unsurely, he nodded. Satisfied, Feather stood upright and trotted bravely at his right. The unicorn dared not straighten his slouch, frightened by the line of alien trees quickly engulfing his path.
||PP||
“Oh, shoot!” Pinkie said, pounding one hoof into the flat of her other. “I forgot, they go into the Wabe before it happens!”
Twilight’s irises shrunk. “Before what happens?” she managed to ask.
“Come on, we gotta follow ‘em!” Pinkie said, grabbing Twilight by the hoof. While the purple mare screamed in protest, Pinkie pulled the pair of them over the railing of the Lutwidge and into the lukewarm ocean water below.