//------------------------------// // Darkening // Story: Live and Let Grow // by xara //------------------------------// Several months ago... The bustling city of Manehatten rarely sleeps these days. Ponies of all shapes and sizes party, conduct business, and even have life-lesson-teaching adventures of their own late into the Equestrian nights. In one old corner of the city, a few ponies argued. A large stallion with an odd, yellow hat on his head and an unlit cigar dangling from his mouth raised a foreleg and roughly poked a hoof at the chest of the pony standing nearby. "We need the whole place surveyed, buddy. The mayor's quite insistent on that." "Yeah, Boss, but..." the second pony protested. He had on slightly grimy, white coveralls that didn't quite obscure his Mark of a small ruler. The boss poked the other pony again. "I don't wanna hear it, Gauge!" Gauge grimaced, but pressed on. "This place hasn't been maintained for ages, Hardhat! We'd need a whole team of ponies with clippers and shovels just to get the place clear, and you want me to survey it by myself?" He gave a despondent chuckle. "I can give general readings, sure, but the grove is so overgrown..." Hardhat chewed the end of the cigar, which was quickly becoming a tattered mess just about ready to collapse in on itself. "Look..." he said, and paused, looking very much like he wished the cigar was lit. "Mrs. Creek left this place to the city. Sun only knows how long it's been left this way. But with the state the manor was in, I wouldn't be surprised to hear it ain't been touched in...in a long time. That manor's coming down, and we're putting a new street in somewhere, and I'm not about to go in front of the committee and explain how a few overgrown shrubberies stopped us doing our job!" The other pony raised a hoof placatingly. "Alright, alright!" His unicorn's horn glowed a pale blue, and a nearby box of tools and a leveling instrument floated gently into the air. "I'll do what I can." The boss nodded, started to inhale, then glared down at the cigar in his mouth. He turned about and stomped away, muttering to himself. "Makin' me quit, with all the things I gotta deal with, grumble." Gauge set his tools down at the edge of the grove. Old Mrs. Creek's manor had included a large, walled-off section of land that had been spared the towering growth of wood and metal that marked the rest of the city. Old, twisted trees, shrubberies run rampant, and grass that hadn't seen a clipper in sun-knows-how-long had been left to grow every which way they pleased. He couldn't even see portions of the crumbling granite walls which kept the neighbors from shrieking and collapsing from the shock of such unkempt environs. He sighed. "No way I can sight along these lines." He opened up the toolbox and pulled out a huge roll of tape measure and a stake. Stomping the stake through a convenient hole at one end of the roll, he marked one corner of the plant-choked backyard. With the roll floating just above and to the left of his head, he started trotting through the tall grasses as best he could, heading north. Thankfully, the biggest trees and shrubs hadn't been planted so near the edge, so he was able to progress. If he'd looked closer at the path he left behind him, though, he might have wondered at the grasses' vitality in straightening back up from being trod upon... Twenty minutes later, with some rough measurements of the area taken, Gauge decided he'd try to plant some height markers and sight them as best he could. He muttered to himself, "Of course, I'll have to get the center..." ~ ~ ~ It stirred in its deep dreaming. It had paused in its strange thoughts, partially aware that something or somepony was nearby. It'd forgotten when it last had sensed another presence, but lazily decided to take a closer look. Stretching out its mind, it reached for its eyes. WHAT. It woke with a start, and no lesser amount of sudden, rising anger. It could feel the pony walking about, and saw he had paused, an expression of unease on his face. Anger flowed away and a feeling of despondency replaced it as it reached for more eyes, but could not find them. Gone, gone, it thought. It pushed aside sleep and dreams and awoke. ~ ~ ~ Gauge stopped in the middle of hammering down a marker at the edge of one of the thickets. He couldn't put a hoof on why, but he suddenly felt nervous about the place, as if somepony else had shown up. "Hello?" he called out, voice wavering a little. He got no response apart from the breeze rustling the leaves of the trees overhead. After a minute, he stamped a hoof on the ground and shook his head, wondering what he was worrying about. When something burst out from the middle of the thicket in a torrent of leaves, vines, and grass that left Gauge splayed out on the ground in surprise, he couldn't manage to describe what he saw later on. But everypony noted the rather incredible slightly-larger-than-a-pony hole that had appeared in the thick rock wall that day. ~ ~ ~ Present day... It was a typical, lovely sunshiny morning in Ponyville as Twilight Sparkle, student, librarian, and chief organizer or all things that should be organized whether they like it or not relaxed in her home with a tome laid out before her: 101 Ways to Improve Levitation Magic. Absentmindedly, she licked the end of her right hoof and turned the page. Nearby, Spike lightly snored atop his basket, one arm dangling out towards the floor. Twilight raised her head from the tome and smiled at her sleeping dragon companion before returning towards the reading. tock, tock, tock Twilight, irritated a bit, brushed back an errant hair with her other hoof. With a bright reddish glow, she used her magic to pull the warm woolen blanket that was across her back closer up to her shoulders. She glanced again at Spike, whose tough claw of his dangling arm just reached the polished wooden floor. After a moment without sound, she started to read a passage about the theory of self-levitation. tock, tock, tock "Spike." Twilight stated, trying not to sound annoyed but clearly wishing to stave off further interruption. "Spike, you're tapping the floor." The dragon continued snoring, his inhalations and exhalations raising his body, his arm, and the claw at the end of the arm along with it. "Spike." "Nnnrrfff?" Spike mumbled in unknowing reply. With a little roll of her eyes, Twilight levitates Spike's arm and tucks it back alongside the rest of him within the basket. Forgiving the little dragon his late repose, she hovered over the book once again, having earlier decided to finish it before joining Pinkie and her other friends for afternoon tea and cake down at the pond. tock, tock, tock Twilight's head flew up in exasperation, but she paused without speaking when she saw that Spike was still fully within the basket. She stood up, the wool blanket falling off her back and pooling around her hind legs, and she looked around the library seeking the source of the noise. Her eyes fall on one of the shut windows, where a small, black, unrecognized form was bathed in the sun's light from behind. Clearing her throat a bit, she trotted towards the window. Spike, having already been pressed into semi-consciousness, opened his eyes to follow her progress as her hooves resound on the hardwood flooring. "Twilight?" he mumbled. "What's going on?" Twilight aimed her magic at the window shutters and pulled them open. To her surprise, the black form turned out to be a small bird...clutching a roll of paper in its beak. With the obstruction of the window cleared, the bird flew down to a nearby table and dropped the paper upon it. With a small chirp, it nudged the paper, which obligingly rolled once over, then flew back out the window. Twilight, shrugging, magicked the shutters closed again, and walked over to the table. "Wake up, sleepyhead," she called out. Spike turned over in the basket and planted his face directly into the pillow. "Erggh, you saaaaaid today could be a late sleep," came a muffled groan. Unfurling the paper, Twilight's eyebrows furrowed as she glanced over the roll. "Spike. Get up." Spike growled a deep, dragon growl, ruined only slightly by his youth turning it a few pitches higher. With groggy eyes, he peered at the paper floating in front of his friend. "So what's that, huh?" "A message." "What?!" Spike came awake quite quickly. "Sending you messages is my duty! Whose trotting on my turf?!" "Calm down, Spike, you're supposed to be thick-scaled." Spike frowned, but made no reply. "It's a note from Fluttershy. I think that was a raven." Twilight cleared her throat again and started to speak in lecture-voice. "Dear Twilight, I hope you are having a wonderful day. If you have some time, I hope you are not too busy, I could really use your help with a problem at my cottage. If it's not too much trouble." "Sending messages by bird, it's enough to put a dragon out of a job," Spike muttered. "Who would come up with such a thing?" "Enough moaning, Spike! There's more," she continued. "I'm sorry for sending this by bird, I know it upsets Spike..." "That much is right..." "...but I just can't leave the cottage right now and it's really so very urgent. Thank you!" Twilight stamped the floor. "We'd better see what's up. Grab my emergency book-bag, please." She started perusing tomes. "Animal Afflictions A-Z, she might need that, better take it. Hmm, Home Gardens and Cottage Maintenance, could be useful." Books from various shelves, tables, and corner stands flew towards the bag in front of Spike, who huddled behind it trying to avoid being struck. "Okay. Okay, that should be good enough for a start. We can always send you back for more." "Yeah," Spike said, straining to hold up the bulging pack. "Let's hope that won't be necessary..." Twilight floated the two-pocketed bag over her back and secured it. They strode out of the library into the welcoming daytime sun and started down the town's path, nodding morning greetings to the citizens. After a few minutes, they turned a corner of the pebbled path leading to Fluttershy's cottage at the edge of town. As a small hillock passed by and vision of the cottage opened up, they stopped, jaws dropping in shock. Almost every inch of space in, out, and around Fluttershy's home was covered in...animal. Fur, feathers, horns, ears, beaks and maws crowded in bushes, tree branches, atop the roof, and along window sills. Fluttershy, standing near her doorway, bluebirds and redbirds and owls resting atop her mane, rabbits and mice piled up around her hooves, saw the pair approaching and called out softly but entreatingly. "Oh! Twilight, Spike...thank goodness. I sooo need your help!"