Lily stood speechless as she observed the silent landscape around her. The falling leaves of October had become suspended in mid-air as the wind disappeared entirely, leaving the air motionless. Her mouth stood agape, and she stood as still as a stone, the only thing discerning her from the frozen ponies around her was the light breathing and periodic blinking. “But that’s impossible...” she mumbled, staring at a leaf frozen in time before her eyes.
“I didn’t say I was lying, Lily,” I commented, walking over to her as she held out a hoof near the leaf, making sure nothing was holding it up. She even gave a small push off the ground with her front hoof to make sure that gravity still applied.
Poking the leaf gently with the tip of her hoof, Lily startled herself as gravity regained control and the leaf fluttered gracefully down. She hesitated a moment, watching as the foliage bounced off another suspended leaf as if it had hit a solid stone before it dropped to the dirt below. She reached out again and gave it a cautious poke to make sure she wasn’t just seeing things before reaching out her hoof to pick it up.”How is that even possible?” she wondered as she turned the leaf over and over to see that nothing had been changed in it.
I poked a few leaves around me, watching as they bumped into each other and other things before saying, “They’re frozen in time, Lily. If you touch them, then you’re taking them into the Frozen World with us, and all the rules of physics still apply.” I blew on one leaf and it flew sideways before graciously fluttering to the ground. “Do you believe me now?”
“Of course!” She said, poking a few more leaves before walking over to a pony stuck in mid-trot. “Does it work on other ponies?”
I yelled out,”Wait!” but it was too late as she pushed her hoof into the side of a familiar walleyed pegasus. Derpy Hooves fell into the dirt below like a ragdoll dropped onto its side. The angle that her body was at caused her to fall forward a little, knocking over Lily and toppling onto her. Lily started to push back on the grey mare in an attempt to keep her from crushing Lily on the ground
The act was fruitless as the full of Derpy’s body slammed into Lily’s and they both toppled to the ground in a heap. Walking over, I lent a hoof to Lily who was trying to push Derpy’s body off herself. Pulling her up I chuckled and said, “I could have told you that would happen Lil.” Pulling with all my might, I got her out from under the girth of the pegasus. “You need to try and avoid doing that though. If too many ponies get toppled over here, what do you think might happen when they all resume their ways in the normal world, but suddenly they find themselves in heaps on the ground?”
“Well they’ll probably be confused,” Lily jokingly answered, avoiding the answer she knew I was looking for.
To make sure she knew I wasn’t kidding about all this, I sternly told her, “The more ponies topple over, the more suspicion rises. If they kept track they might be able to notice I’m the only one who isn’t affected by these time glitches.”
“So,” Lily retorted, brushing herself off and poking leaves while trotting down the street. “Why is it such a big deal if everyone knows about this place? I think it would be awesome to visit here every so often! Why, I--”
“That’s just the thing, Lily,” I cut her off, running up so I was trotting next to her. “I don’t want the fame that comes with it. I don’t want to try and teach this to every unicorn that wants to know. I don’t want them coming to me to see if they can have their chance to come to the ‘Frozen World.’ Besides...” I trailed off considering whether or not to tell Lily the next part. I figured I had already brought her this far and I might as well spill all the beans.. “Besides, I come here because...it’s my little hideaway from the world.”
Lily stopped trotting and glanced sideways at me. “I see what you mean there,” she said averting her eyes quickly. “Sorry about that...”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said placing a hoof on her shoulder. “You’re my best friend Lily, and I would love to take you here, but I just don’t want it to turn into a chore by taking pony after pony into here only to tell them what they can and can’t do.”
“Alright, Colgate,” she said with a smile before breathing out a sigh, “Now what are you hiding from me? I saw you glancing around and how nervous you were when I poked Derpy. You were worried about something, so spit it out. What has you so strung up?”
I looked down at the ground and blushed a little when she told me this. I knew she had a knack for knowing when somepony wasn’t telling everything. I was surprised her cutie mark hadn’t been a question mark. “I’m not sure we’re totally alone in here,” I admitted, looking up at her to see a questioning face staring back at me. “I think there might be something else that can go here.”
“You mean there might be other ponies that can travel here?” Lily asked, glancing casually around at all the frozen mares and stallions in the street.
“Yes and no,” I said honestly. When I saw that she was even more confused at this I explained, “I think that some other creature can come here, but I’m not sure if its a pony or not. Last night during that storm, I was out here, and I had the feeling as if somepony or something was watching me.”
“So why didn’t you call out and ask who they were?”
“I don’t know,” I said scratching the back of my head. “I just had this...feeling that whatever it was wasn’t going to be nice. I guess I didn’t want to know” I left out the part about the demonic eyes to see if Lily would just leave it at that.
“Have you tried asking Twilight about it?” She asked, thankfully not poking around for any more of a description of those “creatures” I saw.
“I haven’t given it any thought...” I trailed off, brushing a few leaves in front of my hooves to the side. “I didn’t want to reveal my secret to you, much less Twilight. I was just afraid that she wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret and then the entire town would be on me and... well... you know...”
“Colgate,” Lily laughed, cupping a hoof to my mouth, ”I get it. You’re scared that you’ll be discovered and you don’t want to tell anyone. Don’t freak out about this.”
She smiled and dropped her hoof from my mouth to walk back over to Derpy who was still lying in a heap on the ground. I sighed and walked over with her to help give the grey mare a lookover to see that she wasn’t hurt by the fall. Lily tried to get her into a dignified, normal position and we looked at her side to find that a slight red scar had been scratched into her right wing. Lily had a perplexed look on her face and I turned to ask, “How are we going to explain this? Do you think she’ll notice the cut right away?”
Lily just shook her head and took the lily out of her hair that she always had tucked above her ear. “This is a special type of lily that was cultivated in Canterlot Gardens by Princess Celestia herself,” Lily said, showing me the tan coloured flower she had removed. I gave her a look of confusion before she explained, “She said it was meant to ‘heal what ailments troubled you’ and told me it was called a ‘Lilium magika,’ or Magic Lily.”
“When did Celestia start handing out magic flowers?” I asked sarcastically while Lilly gave me a tired look of frustration.
“It was a prize for my outstanding lilies in a flower competition during the Spring has Sprung festival in Canterlot last year,” she said exasperated.
I gave her a nervous smile because I didn’t have any clue what festival she was talking about. “You went with me to the festival...” she said with a blank stare, before continuing. “You went somewhere and got drunk before wobbling back to me. I had to walk you back to the train, and thank Celestia we left late enough that no one else was there to see you in that state. You kept talking about a pony called Berry Punch before passing out.”
I vaguely remembered going to Canterlot for something with her and I blushed even harder. Trying to change the subject away from my drunken shenanigans, I asked, “So, what are you going to do with the flower?”
She rolled her eyes at me before smashing the petals up in her hooves and spreading the dust onto the gash on Derpy. “I can heal the cut, but I’m not certain how we’re going to get her back on her feet,” She said as the skin and fur seemed to mesh together and mend itself very quickly. It was as if the skin was healing completely before our eyes. “Do you have any ideas?”
I put a hoof to my chin while trying to think of how to re-freeze Derpy to her original state. I had never tried freezing the world a second time while I was still under the effects of the time spell, and I wasn’t sure what would happen if I did. I figured that at this point it was worth a shot and spoke up, explaining to Lily, “I could try and stop time again while you're holding her up, but I’m not certain what will happen if I cast it again if anything.”
“Then go for it,” Lily said, wrapping her hooves around Derpy’s torso. “The worst things that could happen is I get frozen too, or nothing at all.” Pulling her up, Lily tried to position Derpy into a sort of standing position. She tried holding up the front hooves while I held the back, but Derpy just flopped into an odd kneeling position where her torso was still lying flat on the ground with all four hooves spread out around her. After fighting with her limbs for a bit, I levitated Derpy completely off the ground while Lily stood underneath the grey mare. Lowering the pegasus’s stomach onto Lily’s back, I eased up on the lift until Lily was supporting the entirety of Derpy’s figure.. It was awkward, but with Lily bending her knees, all four limbs of Derpy’s touched the ground with a sudo-standing position.
“That looks like it should work, Lily,” I said stepping back and looking at Derpy again. “Just hold tight and I’ll try casting the time-freeze spell again. I may freeze you too, so sorry if you seem to teleport.”
Lily simply nodded as she struggled to hold the pegasus on her shoulders. “I don’t see how she can even lift this stupid body off the ground, much less fly,” Lily muttered under her breath as she started to shake from keeping the grey mare in a standing position. “Hurry up and get this muffin-muncher off of my back. I can’t hold her up like this too much longer.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I closed my eyes and thought of a ticking clock again, the hands slowly taking longer and longer to tick every second away. I had trouble imagining this again with only the sound of Lily grunting and panting every so often. Usually I did this on a busy day or in a crowded place so that I could physically hear the sounds around me grind to a halt. It was an odd feeling that made my spine tingle, but at least it was something to go off of.
The imaginary hands slowed down more and more while I imagined every tick getting louder and louder to try and emphasize to myself that time was indeed slowing to a halt. Finally the hands were almost immobile until the clock struck twelve and stopped entirely. Just then a chime broke my concentration and my eyes flew open. Looking over I saw that Lily had indeed been frozen under Derpy, but that wasn’t the only difference in the second Frozen World.
The sky had gone away.
It seemed that the sky had vanished and been replaced by a void with an unnerving shade of black that didn’t seem natural. The light was still there, albeit a bit darker than before I had cast the second spell, but that wasn’t the only odd thing about this second world. Dropping my eyes back down from the empty void above my head I noticed the ponies that had already been frozen. They were all in the exact same spot as before, but something seemed very off about them. I couldn’t tell what was different until I had walked over to un-freeze Lily and drag her to a spot where no one would see us leave this frozen place. I rose my hoof to touch Lily, but jumped back when I finally noticed what I had missed about the frozen pony.
Her eyes were gone. There were indentations, almost holes, where her eye sockets should have been, and they seemed to fade into the same unnatural black that the sky was composed of. My heart sped up at this chilling sight, and I took a step back, looking at the rest of the ponies around me. Every one of them had the same thing happen to their eyes and suddenly I felt as though something wrong and twisted was going on. The feeling of being watched seeped into my bones.
Giving a haphazard jab to Lily to make her body collapse under Derpy, I grabbed her hoof and drug her out as quickly as I could without hurting her or the pegasus above her. Once she was out from under the grey mare’s girth I levitated her onto my back, which tired me out a great deal. I quickly glanced around before deciding to unfreeze us in a nearby alley in between the café and another shop. Taking a few steps, I thought I heard a whisper from my right.
Turning my head I saw nothing but the eye-less ponies that populated this place. Taking a few more hurried steps, I heard the same whisper and whipped my head back towards the sound with a few beads of sweat running down my neck. Again, I could not locate the source of the whisper, and again, something felt different besides the already creepy mares and stallions around me. I looked a bit harder, trying to figure out what was different that my mind was noticing, but I was failing to see. Looking at a few of their faces, my brain clicked and I gave a gulp as I saw what I had been missing.
Everypony on the street had changed the direction of their stance since I had first frozen the world. I hadn’t noticed it until now because I was worried about getting Lily back into the real world. The ponies that had been trotting up and down the street were no longer facing the direction they had been going, nor were they in the same poses as when they had been frozen. There were more of them than there had first been as well, and I didn’t recognize their faces. I started to run as fast as I could for the alley with Lily on my back, because every single one of them was facing me.
I lunged into the alleyway and laid Lily down next to me before closing my eyes to begin the reverting spell. I imagined a clock at a standstill and with all my might pushed the second hand to start moving. It was resistant first, but I managed to get it to start grinding forward after a few nerve-wracking moments. Opening an eye to see if Lily had started to become reanimated again, I saw four figures blocking the exit to the alleyway that hadn’t been there when I started the spell. All four had pairs of glowing red eyes and nearly shapeless features, seeming to be made out of a smoky mass. They could be described as pony-like figures, but they never moved any body part individually.
Slowly they seemed to advance towards Lily’s frozen body almost hovering across the ground. Their limbs seemed to dissipate as they started their short journey, causing them to look like a limbless pony. The sight of them sprung fear into my soul and I forced every ounce of energy that I could into conjuring the de-freezing spell. As they advanced closer and closer, the air around us started to chill down to a point where I was shivering. It felt odd as the temperature in the frozen world was usually the exact same as it was before time stood still. Before I could do anything to try and dissuade the creatures, Lily’s body started to slide towards the black figures as if being pulled by an invisible force toward them.
With my heart pounding my chest, I grabbed for Lily’s arm, trying to keep her safe, but she started to slide faster towards the figures at the end. Pulling back, I tried to keep them from getting to her while still maintaining enough concentration to keep the spell going. I was starting to tire out from performing the spell and keeping my friend out of harm’s way. I didn’t know why they wanted her and not me, but I wasn’t going to let them take my best friend away.
I yanked a few times with all my might I could muster while concentrating on making the Earth turn again, but she was still being pulled with me grabbing onto her leg, even to the point where I was being dragged along with her. The seconds started to tick by faster and faster when suddenly my hoof slipped and she flew towards the beings. A flash of ignition occurred and suddenly her entire body caught fire and blinded me. I covered my eyes to shield them from the light and heat, but when I opened them, I saw that the world was back to normal and the shadows were gone.
But Lily was nowhere to be found...