Scene 8: A Thousand Details
(v1.10)
The smell of smoke stung Twilight’s eyes, bringing with it tears of rejection as she entered Sugar Cube Corner. The confectionery shop hadn't fared much better than the rest of the town it seemed. The windows were clouded from the elements, and the cases inside were full of dust and baked goods that had long since dried out and acquired masonry status. The colorful wallpaper had faded to near imperceptible hues and was peeling itself off the walls. Everywhere Twilight looked there was a sense that time had simply marched on by and trampled everything around her under hoof.
"Who's awesome?" a familiar, scratchy voice trumpeted from behind her. "I told you I'd find her!" Rainbow said victoriously as she flew in ahead, skimming the ceiling and coming down on the other side of the main room.
This brought to her attention the other occupants of the dilapidated establishment. Despite the stagnant decay of the storefront, by Celestia’s grace it seemed a few of her friends had already arrived, dragging themselves in off of the wind beaten streets. It was at the sound of Rainbow’s voice that the two others looked up to greet her.
"Twilight! You're alright! Thank Celestia!" Rarity exclaimed as the other unicorn entered. Her coiffure was matted with moisture and had been blown into dire disarray from the harsh wind outside. Her carefully applied make-up had also rebelled, running all over her face and muzzle, and leaving long black streams slowly creeping down the side of her neck. From the look of things, she must have crawled out of the lake as well.
Applejack was leaning up against the counter, trying to look as relaxed as she could. She didn't really look any worse for wear, honestly, rugged as she tended to be. The dampness of the lake and the harsh wind only served to temper her figure… Her eyes, however, were very tired. "There ya are, we were right worried about ya."
"When you didn't come out of the pond with the rest of us, I'd thought we'd lost you..." Rarity said, a relieved smile on her face, "what with that… thing back at the lake. What was that? Some kind of monster escaped from the Everfree Forest?"
Twilight shook her head, trotting on past the ruined cakes and pies before sitting down on her flank by the front counter of the shop. She was tired. The stress and confusion had physically exhausted her, not to mention that her mind had been thoroughly shaken up as well. Even so, she began mulling over the various possibilities of their situation. What had happened to them? To Ponyville? Why had it happened? And how would they fix it?
So far, there weren’t any answers. Not yet.
"I don't know. I've never read about anything like it… or that darkness that chased us down the hill. I can't explain it now, but one thing I do know from my studies is that there has got to be an explanation for it, however unusual that explanation might be. We just have to find it… and fast." She gazed around the inside of Sugar Cube Corner, giving a heavy sigh. "Because from what I can tell, whatever is happening to Ponyville is getting worse, and it’s not going to stop unless we do something."
The smell of smoke taunted Twilight's nostrils again and, looking around, she glanced over to the other three.
"Do you girls smell smoke?"
"Aw, that's nothin'. Pinkie Pie was worrying her little head over us freezing solid or somesuch, so she got Fluttershy to help her get the stove going."
"But..." Twilight hesitated for a moment, shaking her head a little as she stood up again, "That doesn't make any sense. It's the middle of summer. Why would we freeze?."
"Well I know that, but you know how Pinkie Pie is. Who knows what's going through that pony's head? Prolly just makin' an excuse to get the stove going so that she can make some cupcakes or pancakes or... cake-cakes or somethin'."
Twilight's fatigue had started to settle in, making her stiff and groggy. It wasn't quite as bad as she had expected, considering how much she had been galloping about town. Of course, it still wasn't clear if she actually had been or if that whole sequence had been some sort of strange dream or hallucination.
Regardless of the truth of the matter, however, everything still ached tremendously. Giving a labored grunt as she started to move again, heading for the kitchen to look in on her remaining two friends.
The kitchen itself was surprisingly clean, save for a thick layer of dust that covered every flat surface. Several bags of flour were stacked in the corner, the canvas aged and brittle. Fine flour suspended in the air had been known to cause violent explosions when ignited, Twilight recalled. It was fortunate that there hadn't been enough around to cause such a catastrophe. Pots and pans were stacked on the counter, clean and relatively untouched by rust, preserved by the dryness of the environment in the kitchen.
Everything appeared to be just as the Cakes had left it.
The smoke itself was manifesting in dark puffs from a fire set in the belly of an old black stove, heat emanating in visible shimmers from the range as it caused the dust and cobwebs above it to recoil back towards the walls. Red flames roiled in the open stove, the articles within slowly curling and crackling as the fire consumed them.
"Fluttershy? Pinkie? Are you in here?" Twilight called out, approaching the heat of the fire as she proceeded through the kitchen. There were a few doors leading to the back rooms, presumably for storage, so they might have gone off somewhere in order to get more fuel for the fire. It was a pretty silly idea, but Pinkie's ideas generally were. Still, there was a reason for everything that Pinkie did, even if it happened to be a little obscure.
Looking back at the flame, Twilight noticed that amongst the burning papers and scraps there was a small book. She cringed, a pang of apprehension running through her chest. There was just something sacrilegious about burning a book, and though she had set many aflame accidentally while practicing a few of her more volatile spells, doing so intentionally was just…unthinkable.
It probably wasn't anything important, and her friends probably hadn't realized the significance of the action, but…
Reaching into the stove with her magic, she grasped the book in a shimmering envelope of will and slowly lifted it out of the flames. It was quite singed, but not completely destroyed, the corner remaining aflame for a bare moment before she managed to snuff it with a firm contraction of magic.
It was a diminutive blue book with a thin, bare cover. Most of it had been burnt up, but it wasn't entirely unreadable. The pages inside contained familiar glyphs, the bubbly scrawly script that was Pinkie's mouthwriting. Each page contained a date and...
Wait, was this her diary? Why would she want to burn this?
May 27th,
Came up with a new song today! Now I just have to put words to it! I'm sure somepony will inspire me! Until then, I'll just keep humming it to myself until something comes up!
The rest of the page along with the next few were burnt and illegible.
June 14th,
I had that dream again. It took half a roll of alka-seltzer to calm my tummy this time… I know I can't ask every dream to be sugar plums and gumdrops, but why does that dream keep on coming back?
Nightmares? Not uncommon, but for somepony so insufferably cheerful, it was kind of sad. Twilight continued to flip through the remainders of the diary, leading up to August. The entries were divided between the typical Pinkie Pie fare of parties, songs and random musings; and accounts of her increasingly disturbing nightmares.
"...and I was stuck, all alone as the great black wave came and gobbled me up, covering everything in its darkness. I cried. I cried so much! But no one heard me! No one came… They'd already left me behind."
"Twilight?"
Twilight let out a loud shout as she dropped the book, a squeak coming from behind her, followed by the sound of falling papers. The unicorn whirled around to find a large and somewhat disheveled stack of paperwork on the floor that hadn't been there previously. A moment later, she noticed Fluttershy peeking out ever so cautiously from the inside of one of the cabinets. She gave a nervous little smile.
"Oh, hi," she said, slowly crawling out of the compartment. Twilight gave a sigh of relief and shook her head, picking up the burnt diary discreetly with her magic and setting it on the counter behind her. On the floor in front of her were a pile of old bank statements and business articles that Fluttershy had been carrying in a bag. More fuel no doubt.
"Still working on this, huh? Everything okay, Fluttershy? Er... I mean, are you okay, considering the situation and all...?"
Fluttershy looked off to the side, trying to hide herself in her mane as she contemplated. She gave a nod, either sighing softly or perhaps saying something so far under her breath as to be inaudible. Accepting this, Twilight just returned the nod and, drawing the old paperwork out of the bag, gave it a cursory examination before tossing it into the stove.
"Well at least you're alright... I was worried about all of you after we'd gotten separated earlier. There's something wrong in Ponyville, and it’s not a good idea to be off by ourselves. We have to stick together.” Twilight made a quick round of the room, staring idly into the cupboards and cabinets a moment.
“Speaking of which, where's Pinkie Pie, anyway? Applejack said that she was back here with you."
"Oh. She's upstairs in her room... she said that she wanted to check for clues up there," Fluttershy responded, heading over to retrieve her bag, "You know, see if anything was… out of place."
Pinkie was still on the investigative kick, it seemed, and would probably be so until she'd gotten it out of her system. Regardless, it would be best if she wasn't off by herself, and right now, Twilight would take any clues to the situation that she could get.
"Fluttershy, I'm going to head upstairs to check on Pinkie. The others are in the lobby. Why don't you head in there and join them?" Twilight asked, smiling to her before giving a sidelong glance back at the stove. "...I really don't think the stove needs any more fuel."
Any more and they would be at risk of setting the ceiling on fire.
"Oh, okay," Fluttershy responded, and dipping her head, she turned back towards the door as Twilight began to ascend the stairs to the second story.
Pinkie lived together with the Cakes, and the second story of Sugar Cube Corner naturally consisted of the living quarters for the five of them. There was the Cakes' bedroom as well as Pound and Pumpkin's room, set across the hall from each other. Each one sat solemnly, as it had for who-knows how long, quietly preserved with little more than a layer of dust to show age. The sun had faded the colors beneath it where it had shown through the windows, while the ones in the shadows were vibrant and dark. The windows rattled aggressively as Twilight passed between the rooms, the windstorm raging outside. Without the destructive force of the elements tearing at it, the interior of the building and its contents had been spared being torn apart and withered. Rather, it seemed to be suspended in a quiet stasis, like the inside of a tomb.
Upon reaching Pinkie's room, however, she found it to be much more... vibrant. The colors had outright refused to fade, and everything seemed to be just as the pink pony would have left it. Odds and ends, little items of no significant value other than sentimental weight littered the room. Instruments, gag items, balls and building blocks. Various toys and a stack of board game boxes sat in the corner of the room, piled in place with no rhyme or reason. The bed was already made, blue sheets and a pastel pink comforter leisurely thrown across it, and there were a number of pillows and stuffed animals resting upon them. They looked so soft and fluffy, and there wasn't a speck of dust to be found anywhere. It was as if Pinkie had been there the entire time, living there as usual while the world decayed outside.
"Pinkie?" Twilight said weakly as she wandered into the party pony's sanctuary. Pinkie was nowhere to be found, so Twilight began to examine the bedroom with a keener eye.
In a way it was comforting, being up here, but there was also a jarring dissonance about it that unsettled Twilight even more than she'd already been. Why would it be so... normal when everything else had begun to fade and fall apart? There had to be a reason for it, and the more she found the more it seemed like Pinkie had something to do with it, or at least knew more about it than she'd let on just yet.
Casing the room, there was nothing “unusual” that Twilight could find until something caught the unicorn’s attention out of the corner of her eye. Sitting back against the wall, just under the pink mare's bed, was a tin bucket. It was yellow with a big blue star on it and a pair of pink stripes, one at the lip and one at the base. Peering under the bed, Twilight grasped it telekinetically and pulled it out into the open to examine it. It looked as if it was old but well kept, the interior appearing to have been scrubbed regularly to prevent corrosion.
It appeared to be empty, the object light and easily manipulated within Twilight’s ethereal grasp, but as she leaned forward to more closely examine the bucket, her nose was assaulted by the recognizable stench of bile. She pulled a face as the foul odor invaded her nostrils and took to violating her sense of smell. Thoroughly disgusted, she quickly slid the bucket back underneath the bed and out of sight.
As she turned to leave, Twilight shook her head. This was bizarre. Had Pinkie actually taken the time to clean up, or was this just another anomaly in an increasingly unsettling situation? It had to be significant.
Unfortunately, that significance was that Pinkie was somehow connected to what was-
"Hi, Twilight!" A bright, bubbly voice rang out and Twilight lept into the air, whirling around as she instinctively attempted to warp onto Pinkie's bed. The result was not what she had expected. A burst of worryingly familiar static tore at her mind, thrusting her through a blur of searing, colorless fog as she felt sensations not dissimilar to what she would imagine it felt like if the flesh was being slowly flayed off of her head from one side to the other.
A moment later she was on her back, lying on the bed with Pinkie staring down at her curiously, a confused expression on her face. Her bright blue eyes were almost aglow in the diffused sunlight filtering in from outside.
"Are you alright, Twilight? Wow! You threw yourself for a loop that time! Oh! Hey! Did you find any clues? I've been looking all over the place, but I haven't seen anything," Pinkie said as she bounded about on her bed, the springs groaning with each bounce before she leapt off to the floor.
"N-no, nothing..." Twilight responded. Slowly, she sat up and begin to slide off the bed. Cautiously, almost as if she was afraid to step on the floor again. She set her first hoof down solidly and then followed with the others in quick succession, straightening out her nerves as she closed her eyes. Watching the vague impression of something crawling around in the dark behind her eyelids for a moment, Twilight's eyes snapped back open suddenly and she gave a start, as if she had just fallen asleep for a second. Had she? The bookish mare had been extremely worn down from the whole experience thus far. It wasn't too unreasonable to think so.
Pinkie turned her head slowly to the side, craning her neck around until she was looking upside down at Twilight from below.
"Oh! Well, okie dokie, then! Just remember to tell me if you see anything! Okay? I need all the clues I can get!" And with that the pink pony turned, giving a giggle and a snort, and sprung out into the hallway. A moment later, Twilight could hear a series of dull thumps sounding as Pinkie bounced her way down the hall and then the stairs, heading back towards the kitchen again.
Twilight put her hoof against her head, rubbing her temple for a moment as she tried to collect herself. All the pieces had to fit together somehow; she just didn't have all of them yet. There wasn't a complete picture to look at, but a thousand little details were all being catalogued in her mind.
The inconsistencies and patterns.
The way things seemed to suffer so from exposure to the elements. The way sheltered items were preserved but had still been struck by a passage of time that had seemed to come from nowhere. If time had really passed then there would be differences. Some things would have disappeared, been torn down or replace. New buildings would have been built. The would have been different stands in the market. Something would be different at least. But as it were, it was as if everyone had simply... left.
Had that roving darkness done this?
And the spectres. She didn't even want to think about those at the moment...
It was that thought that snapped Twilight to attention once more as she felt herself begin to drift off. She couldn't sleep alone. There was no way. Quickly making her way to the door, she gave one last look into Pinkie's room before trudging back down the hallway to the stairwell.
She would feel better with her friends around. As long as they were together, they could overcome this.
Slowly descending the stairs, Twilight returned to the front room to find her friends all gathered around. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had found a spot near the counter and were relaxing there. Fluttershy looked, as usual, both worried and generally apprehensive, as she lay curled up against Rainbow's side. The multi-hued pegasus had draped her wing over Fluttershy and was keeping watch hawkishly. There was a smirk on her face, but it was a thin veneer if anything.
Pinkie had taken to examining an old dried out cupcake from one of the cases. She picked it up and looked it over appraisingly before taking a big bite out of it. It gave a crunch, and Pinkie began to chew, looking less than impressed at the results. Rarity and Applejack looked to each other and put their hooves up to stifle a giggle. A soft warmth settled into Twilight's chest as she stepped into the room with all her friends.
There were few things that made her feel better than to be around them, and with that she finally managed a smile.
"Oh, Twilight! You're back! I'd wondered what was taking you so long..." Rarity said, her eyes bright despite the destruction to her make-up. "I was about to suggest we go up and look for you... Best to stick together in a situation like this, after all."
"Right... sorry, I just wanted to make sure Pinkie was okay." Her sentence was punctuated by the said pink mare letting out a soft 'blech' and tossing the offending cupcake somewhere behind the counter.
"Well, at least we're all here in one piece," Applejack said, heading over towards the window. She looked out at the street as the billowing clouds of dust tore down the road, carried by intense winds. Her gaze matched their intensity and her expression became hard for a moment. "Ah didn't like wandering all over town like that, on account of being up against something we ain't got any idea 'bout... I mean... First everypony disappears on us, then there's that thing that chased us down the road... and then the pond, and now this! Everything's all dried up like a June bug husk, and we haven't the faintest as to why it happened!"
Twilight approached her rugged companion and placed a weary hoof upon her back, just at the nape of her neck.
"Don’t worry, Applejack. We'll get to the bottom of this... We can handle it!" Twilight reassured her friend, trying to push some gung-ho into her voice. She really wasn't feeling it, but she had to reassure herself as much as Applejack...
"I hope so, Twilight. I hope so."
As Applejack gazed outside, the sunlight began to dim and through the dust she could see the sun start to slide down towards the mountains.
"The sun's setting..." Applejack stated, causing Twilight to look up. Indeed it was, faster than the Princess would allow and as if in response to that, the structure of Sugar Cube Corner gave a low groan. The wind began to die down rapidly, and before any of them had really noticed, it started to grow uncomfortably cold in the waning light.
"Um... girls! You know, this is just me, but I think we might want to head back to the kitchen! It's starting to get chilly in here and it's a lot cosier in the kitchen, anyway. ...and safer? Maybe?" Pinkie said, giving a broad grin that attempted to mask a sense of urgency in her tone... As the shadows rose up to cover the walls, the glass storefront began to crinkle softly as the temperature fell. There wasn't enough moisture in the air for frost but the floorboards were quickly growing uncomfortably cold underneath Applejack and Twilight's hooves as they began to back away from the front of the bakery.
Dash nudged Fluttershy to her hooves as Rarity made her way back to the kitchen. Pinkie Pie bounded after them and stopped in the doorway as a pitch-like darkness began to creep up the exterior of the shop, the timber and glass of Sugar Cube Corner's once cheerful facade moaning in protest. Twilight gave a surprised gasp, and her breath condensed in the air before her, a little web of frost forming abruptly on the window before her from the sudden introduction of moisture.
"Ah reckon we should listen to Pinkie an' head back."
"Yeah, definitely."