The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Evertime

        Into the green basin of the Everfree Forest, the three pegasi marched with a possessed unicorn in tow. Keeping low to the grass-strewn earth, they navigated ravines, scaled earthen hills, traversed a sea of fallen tree trunks, and ducked beneath row after row of gnarled branches. The deeper they went, the denser the forest canopy became, so that a Sun-filtered miasma of green haze was gradually replaced with a deep emerald shadow that positively blinded them.

        By the sheer glow of Dinky's horn alone, they managed to pierce the darkness, and with studious eyes they made sure to capture every pitch and angle of the plasma beams randomly shooting from the child's shimmering cranium. They followed the magical streams, tracing the sporadic bursts as far they could into the thick intestines of the forest. The vegetation grew messier and messier, narrowing around them in veritable tunnels of vine-encrusted opaqueness, so that the heat and humidity of the cooking afternoon formed a sheen of loose sweat and exhaustion off of their panting bodies.

        As the bush-laden paths were suddenly replaced with labyrinthine drops that plowed deep into the roots of the Everfree's enormity, the three ponies were deafened by the claustrophobic echoes of Dinky's rambling voice. The tortured foal lectured about cosmic abstractions, unnameable horrors, and faceless shadows beyond the veil of limited vocabulary. Harmony shuddered to imagine that the child's inexplicably soulless tongue was the one thing painting the canvas of the green world black, so that festering vines of thick black thorns would sprout from the dark splattering paint of her words alone.

        The world indeed grew bleaker the deeper as the three dropped, one after another, sliding and hopping down half-dead root structures as they punctured a forested basement that lingered coldly below sea level. It was no longer a mystery to the last pony how the Everbriar of the future could occupy an absurdly deep basin of soil-less rock. She briefly imagined that the Forest was an accident, a random hole in the ground where Elektra's hooves had stabbed the planet in a brief tantrum of frustration. Gultophine's breath had merely lingered there before swimming the surface of the rest of the world while on its crusade to bring life to bodiless stone. In the future, Tartarus would claim simply what lingered closest to it.

        Harmony's mind wandered over memories, some twenty-five years old, others twenty-five hours old, and she briefly pondered as to why the Alicorn Sisters would construct a forest where so much had to die before anything could live. She was positive, from every lesson ever taught to her since foalhood, that the Sisters aided in their mother's Creation long before the Sundering of Consus, when the elements of death and discord were introduced to the world.

        Fluttershy had placed Mother Nature on a pedestal, had exalted it like a deity as much as an abstraction. Perhaps Fluttershy was right about nature. Perhaps nature was eternal, an essence that inspired the Alicorns in their act of Creation as opposed to being a direct product of their divine hooves. Did that mean—then—that nature was immutable, like time? And if that was true, then did that make time—like nature—something that was eternal, something that could never have been manipulated or altered by any god or goddess even long before Princess Entropa was ever foaled in the purpose of becoming time's everlasting avatar? If that was true—if any of that was true—then maybe Princess Entropa was eternally helpless to change the course of things, like the last pony was, before and after the Cataclysm happened on its very own.

        Harmony felt sick. She couldn't understand the purpose of nature, the reasoning for a force that animated all things mercilessly down a burning funnel into apocalyptic flame. It didn't take a Cataclysm to make nature absurd. Things were born only to die. In a world without sentience, this would hardly have been a crime. But there Harmony was, followed by a paling Derpy, a rambling Dinky, and a limping Fluttershy. She knew that she was leading all three ponies to their deaths, even if there was no Capricorn factor involved in the matter. Everypony in that forest, or in all Equestria for that matter, was destined to be crucified by the thorn-encrusted vines of fate, and it was all because of a series of events that had been thrown into motion by time and Mother Nature, eons before any purple dragon would discover the means by which he could hurdle a hapless soul deep into the throbbing heart of the holocaust to watch it unfold from the bleeding inside out.

        Harmony shouldn't have been there. She shouldn't have been doing this. There was no point, no sense, no significance to this facade of selflessness and heroism that motivated her to hike a possessed foal in the fruitless chase of a paper moon. She was fighting time, she was fighting nature, and she knew that she could not win.

        However, when Harmony looked at the mother and child, when she looked at Fluttershy, when she saw their sweating features, their blistering pains, their desperate faces with each shuddering breath that lunged them into the depths of Everfree, she knew that nopony would win by doing anything else either. Death and doom was their fate. Nature would see to that, but Harmony's presence there was anything but natural. She trotted through the forest on Entropan hooves, the same hooves that stood firmly on the ground between a storm cellar and a pale sea of trolls. Two and a half months before an infernal Cataclysm, and there was a chance—one damnably absurd chance—that these innocent ponies could experience it in peace. Nature wouldn't see to that, but Harmony could. Perhaps that was her part to play in fate.

        The idea for her was hope, or faith, but it was a very thin veil of faith, like the refracted air between a warm cottage and a cold window looking out on a blistering cold rainstorm. An eight-year-old foal walked forever towards the afternoon glow, her hooves slipping on an ocean of pale white rocks. A melodic voice beckoned her from below, and she saw stairs... wooden stairs just a collapse away via an orange streak laced with tears—

        Harmony hissed and shut her eyes. She skidded to a stop on numb hooves and furiously shook her head. A warm body nudged her in concern. There was a sensation, like a parting cloud of green fumes, and Harmony blinked her vision back to the dark depths of Everfree, spotting a breathless pair of crooked yellow irises blinking like oppositely swinging lanterns before her. Glancing briefly at the shimmering horn atop Dinky's crown, Harmony took a deep breath and solaced Derpy with a pat on the mare's shoulder. Derpy nodded, gulped, and trotted onwards, briefly taking point.

        Harmony glanced back behind her. She squinted to see Fluttershy trailing behind, her dainty yellow legs moving with a sudden sluggishness that worried the last pony. When the time traveler and the caretaker finally made eye contact, the Ponyvillean animal tamer took a deep breath and decidedly quickened her pace, strolling past her “assistant” with a summoned strength that forced the nearby shrubbery to bow towards her grace.

        A gray cloud wafted over the last pony's vision, so that the wandering form of Fluttershy's frail shape became enshrouded by black lines, like faceless monstrosities worming out from the peripheral vision of a scavenger's enchanted moonvision. Harmony could not help but think that the further they descended into the cavernous bowels of Everfree, the closer she was dragging Fluttershy's soft silken limbs to where they would fatefully form a snow angel against a granite wall beyond the goggles of a Wasteland survivor standing soul-deep in the pit of an enormous Briar.

        Derpy was horror-stricken, Dinky was crumbling under the weight of madness, and a certain caretaker's job was on the line. In spite of all of those crises, in spite of all those things that could very well perish, the immutability of time ended this desperate scenario with two exclamation points in the shape of two corpses: Fluttershy's and a Capricorn's. Harmony knew very well that the second she returned to the present, an Ursa Major would likely be devouring the last pony from a dinner plate of green flames. Regardless, she could only think of the two bodies that she had found, that she was already digging a grave for with each hoofstep she was making, with each breathless excuse that she was forging to legitimize the already indomitable length of this absurd descent.

        The fact that Fluttershy was visibly growing weaker with each blistering hour of the journey was of absolutely no consolation to the last pony. Then, as the three pegasi crested a sudden rise in the earth, after so many fitful drops taken down a quivering basin of soot, soil, and branches, the entire group shuddered upon a horrifically bright green sight before them.

        They had stumbled upon a horizon, overlooking an enormous valley of green trees, dense foliage, and sprawling vegetation. The afternoon shine of the world stretched from east to west with this veritable eternity of Everfree life. Even from the height of an airship traversing the stale cold skies of the Wastelands, the Briar never revealed this incalculable size to the last pony. What had originally appeared to Harmony as a sea of trees from the outside had suddenly blossomed into a daunting ocean of unbridled nature. She suddenly couldn't fathom second-guessing the courage and legacy of Faustmare, nor did she care to.

        It didn't help that the glances she received from Derpy and Fluttershy were utterly lacking the same surprise that was blanching across her own face. These two warm souls of the past obviously knew a lot more about what they were getting into than Harmony did, and it dunked the time traveler's black mane into a bubbling trough of shame, so that she took a deep breath and nudged Dinky briefly, encouraging another errant beam of plasma to billow from the foal's tiny, sun-bright horn.

        Of course, the beam pointed downward, straight into the ocean of bone-thick trees, and hopefully towards unseen caves of mana-crystals beyond. Harmony gave Derpy a firm nod, and the gray pegasus descended first, flapping her wings briefly to balance herself as she skidded down exposed root after exposed root, scaling the earthen wall before the inevitable plunge into the endless basin of green.

        “They're so huge. They could swallow us in a single b-b-b-b-bite!”

        “Miss Hooves, it is imperative that we keep our voices down,” Fluttershy said hushedly as the three pegasi and the one unicorn hid low behind a thick cluster of branches. Bright crimson and blue fountains of light danced across their shadowed coats. “It'd be best if we not speak at all.”

        “I've only seen the blue one before,” Derpy exhaled in a deep whisper. “It could crush an entire Ponyvillean house to dust. It almost did! I was there a year ago; I thought Equestria was coming to an end!”

        “I remember that,” Fluttershy breathlessly said. Her tired eyes blinked in and out of a curtain of sweat as she nevertheless gulped and fought to stay focused on the scene unfolding several hundred meters beyond them. “Twilight Sparkle was brave enough to solace the creature, but this is the first time I've ever seen it in nature, along with its mother, no less.” She glanced aside with a nervous shudder. “Miss Harmony, in all of your Equestria-wide errands for the Canterlotlian Court, have you ever come across such a sight?”

        Harmony stared and stared, her amber eyes frozen like petrified stones. Her nod was icy cold as she murmured: “Yes, I have.”

        From beyond the clearing, the gigantic earth-rumbling presence of an Ursa Major made its presence known with deep bass growls as it clawed at the earth with titanium-thick claws. It was a pulsating red hulk of a beast, its crimson jaws lined with glistening fangs as it persisted in its digging task, sending flakes of dirt and rock sailing every which way like a foal tossing sand across a beach. Hobbling around this scarlet menace, bleating and mewling with the docile height of a mere twenty meters, was a blue dwarf to the gigantic bear. The twinkling of its sapphiric coat of constellations stabbed at the last pony's eyes with a haunting familiarity.

        “I've seen it all before,” Harmony absent-mindedly drawled.

        Fluttershy mumbled to say, “The Ursa Minor has certainly grown since the last time anypony has seen it, but it hasn't yet reached maturity. Hmmmm... Very strange...”

        “What's strange?” Harmony hissed. “I mean, besides three adult ponies standing this close to an instant decapitation waiting to happen?”

        “It's not like an Ursa Major to keep its cub on earth for this long...” Fluttershy thought aloud, her eyelids sleepily dancing up and down her soft yellow brow. “Typically speaking, they should have migrated back to the heavens months ago.”

        “You mean like a Capricorn?” Harmony replied, giving Dinky's horn a brief, nervous glance.

        “It makes me wonder...” Fluttershy said. “The same cosmic anomaly that wounded the mother Capricorn, that seared the burn mark across its tail—perhaps it's affecting other heavenly creatures as well. It would certainly explain why Cloudsdale hasn't chronicled the appearance of a Scorpius in years.”

        “I thought we had Fillydelphia to thank for that golden nugget.”

        “The symbol will fall and the moon will watch her die,” Dinky suddenly shrieked in a loud pitch.

        Fluttershy yelped. Harmony hissed over a copper shoulder: “Miss Hooves! Dinner table voices, pronto!”

        Derpy nervously clamped a hoof over her daughter's twitching mouth. She winced and scrunched down even lower with the unicorn in tow. “I am so sorry! She cannot help it! The longer we wait here, the m-m-m-more she might—!”

        “Let's all just make like mules and shove oats into our holes for a spell!” Harmony sneered as she yanked herself and Fluttershy behind the thickest row of bushes.

        Briefly, the crimson Ursa Major paused in its digging. Its gigantic nostrils flared as it took a whiff of the tree-covered air. Several seconds passed, full of blinking, glancing, and sniffling. With a deep grunt, it returned to its digging. The Ursa Minor beside the larger beast playfully pawed at the thick clumps of earth that its mother was piling up.

        Harmony parted a few branches of shrubbery, shook loose a random centipede, and squinted clearly through the hole she had made in the foliage. The last pony watched as the giant bear plowed its serrated maw through the earth, clamped over something, and finally emerged with a deathly necklace of dangling bodies—dears, coyotes, cougars, and a few unknown creatures strung along a tripled loop of thorny vines—before standing up, growling at its offspring, and marching firmly towards the blossoming depths of Everfree. The blue “cub” waddled eagerly after its mother. With the majestic beasts' shimmering departure, the shadows of the tree-laden grove collected with a cold breath shared by all three ponies.

        “Finally, I couldn't stand another minute of watching those scary things,” Derpy remarked while hugging her quivering foal dearly.

        “They are mostly harmless, so long as they are not challenged,” Fluttershy said.

        Harmony nodded her copper face towards the fading glow of the distant pair. “Tell that to the unlucky creatures dangling from Mommy's teeth.”

        “Oh, those—I seriously doubt that they were victims of the Ursas. The bears likely scavenged the creatures after they died of other causes.”

        Harmony blinked. “You're joking, right?”

        Fluttershy bit her lip. “Uhmm... I'm not saying that the cosmic bears don't kill creatures to eat their meat. But they mostly consume the flesh of heavenly game that never touch down to earth. Besides, those specimens hanging from her jaws were far too small to serve as a proper diet.”

        “Then...” Harmony gulped, her amber eyes navigating a blacker-than-black lair full of crucified skeletons. “Then just what possesses them to collect all of those corpses and crud? Are they trophies?”

        “Nopony knows. Only once or twice in history has an Equestrian explorer survived trotting in and out of an Ursa's lair. While it's been written that Ursas keep the bodies of deceased terrestrial animals around the walls of their caves, it's still nothing but a pile of rumors. I... erm... I've long had a theory, though...”

        “What's that, Fluttershy?” Harmony asked. In a hoarse breath, she murmured, “I really want to know.”

        Fluttershy gave her a sideways glance of blinking blue eyes. Looking aside, she pensively uttered, “I believe that the dead trophies are a sign of... of frustration.”

        “Frustration?”

        “Anger, despair, even pain. Like I said, the Ursa Major shouldn't be here still. For all things considered, she should have taken her cub with her back into the heavens long ago. It's quite possible that something is preventing her. If that was the case, then I'm certain that her frustration would be most understandable.”

        “Like what is preventing them from leaving Equestria in the future?” Harmony asked, then winced. “I mean in the n-not too distant future?”

        Fluttershy shrugged. She reeled suddenly, as if about to collapse, but dizzily regained her balance. “I... I do not know, Miss Harmony.”

        A beam of hot white plasma shot across the glade. Cradling Dinky, Derpy looked up, gulped, and breathlessly said, “Can we please keep on moving? My little Muffin is b-b-b-b-burning up. We've waited here long enough as it is.”

        Harmony glanced at the gray pegasus, at the burning afternoon sky peaking down through the treetops, then at the infinite depths of Everfree stretching green-and-brown before them. With sigh, she shuffled back up onto all fours. “Miss Hooves is right. The Ursas are gone. We have no time to rest—at least not yet. For the kid's sake, let's make some friggin' ground already.”

        “Your courage is poetic, Mister Squirrel.” Derpy eagerly galloped ahead with Dinky's glowing horn streaking behind her.

        “For the last time—!” Harmony made to snarl, but was suddenly shocked by a crumpling sound beside her. She glanced over with wide eyes to spot her anchor having collapsed on her knees. “Miss Fluttershy! Are you all right...?”

        “Mmmm... Yes, I am fine. I... erhm... I've just been squatting for far too long and—”

        “You've been out of it since we began this crazy trip. Are you sure you got enough sleep last night? You were looking after that Capricorn for an awful long time—”

        “I am not too tired to do what needs to be done,” Fluttershy said. She shook her pink mane back and looked ahead with a hardened stare that briefly mimicked her off-ruby mentor. “Every second we waste is a second taken from Dinky's precious life. Come, Miss Harmony. We cannot stay another moment here.”

        Harmony gazed after her. With a deep breath, she trotted alongside Fluttershy, briefly glancing back to look at the deep earth dug up by the red ursa's claws—almost drowning in the blacker-than-black meat of it all, like a future wound festering twenty-five years in advance...

        “The limbo queen, the false bride, into the graveyard of forgotten breaths she sings and shatters,” Dinky hissed against a wave of misty water coldly billowing about her.

        “Lemme know the moment she picks up a Wonderbolts Airshow,” Harmony grumbled as she balanced herself across a weathered log stretched before a waterfall. “Then I'll be all ears.”

        “It would m-m-m-m-make me very happy not to hear you joke about my daughter's suffering.” Derpy frowned over her shoulder as she crossed the last few meters of the log and landed atop the rock cropping on the other side. “It's not her fault that she's giving us random magical soli... soli-li-li-li... solilo-o-o-o—“

        “'Soliloquies',” Harmony uttered from halfway across the log. The waterfall roared and billowed in bright ivory steam behind her. “And I do care about Dinky, Miss Hooves. But forgive me for trying to preserve my sanity. It's hard to make a joke about a joke—like this whole situation friggin' is. We've been following that glowing horn for hours. At this rate, what's to hope that the mana-crystal caves are any closer than the Goddess-forsaken center of the earth?”

        “I have to have hope!” Derpy exclaimed, glancing back to briefly nuzzle the breathless child's glowing crown. “She's my daughter. She's all I can hope for.”

        “I'll start hoping as soon as I see a point to this crazy trip,” the last pony grumbled aloud, as if mistaking the walls of the forest for the rustic inside of the Harmony's cabin. “I still think we should have gone to Twilight Sparkle or some other magician in Ponyville over this!”

        “You know as well as I do what's at stake!” Derpy sneered, her yellow eyes angrily orbiting wrong ends of the copper shadow hobbling towards her. “I know you royal clerks are trained to follow duty and logic, but what have you to say about k-k-k-k-kindness?”

        “I'll tell you what I think about kindness.” The last pony frowned. She glanced back over her shoulder. “Why if you knew half as much as—” She paused, her mouth agape. “Miss Fluttershy...?”

        “I... erhm...” The pegasus was barely two trots' length over the far edge of the log. The waterfall's mist and froth pelted her mercilessly as she stumbled to get a hoofhold of the flimsy bridge. “It's awfully hard... to... to keep my eyes... m-m-my eyes... Mmmm.. Ohhhhh—” Fluttershy's blue pupils rolled back in her skull. With a toss of her pink mane, she fell like a discarded flower towards the razor-sharp rapids roaring below.

        “Fluttershy!” The mailpony gasped.

        “Mule muffins!” Harmony gnashed her teeth and dove like a copper bullet after her anchor. The white froth of the waterfall knifed her Entropan wings in a sea of tiny ivory daggers. She squinted glossy eyes through the foggy haze of it all, hurdling her invulnerable body towards the obscure yellow shade that dotted the edge of her twitching vision. In a breathless scream, the last pony timed her dive just right, flung her hooves forward, and scooped blindly into the wet explosions of chaos. A silken body landed in her grasp, and she swiftly burst out of the tumultuous cloud of water with a quivering Fluttershy cradled beneath her.

        At the end of the heroic flight, Harmony's lungs were hyperventilating, like an orange foal stung with the cold raindrops of a gray afternoon. Fluttershy's voice had suddenly been reduced to sputtering coughs and choking noises against the time traveler's copper bosom. Harmony landed with a graceful stretch of her wings and planted the caretaker's body softly onto a riverbed bordering with water-soaked oak trees. The gray blur of Derpy Hooves hovered down beside them.

        “Is she... Is she d-d-d-d-dead?”

        Harmony instantly snarled: “Look, will you just shut up for a second and let me hear if she's breathing?!” The frazzled time traveler crouched over Fluttershy's twitching figure, her mind blazing over a million lantern-lit hours of reading all sorts of ancient texts of survivalism scavenged from the Wasteland's ruins. “Just—please, Miss Hooves—give me room to think!”

        “I'm just concerned for Fluttershy, is all—”

        “Yeah, yeah, that makes the one and a half of us! Just—Nnngh!” She pressed her copper ear to the caretaker's chest and blanched considerably. “I don't get it! She's not choking on anything! It's like there's no water in her breathing tubes, and yet she's out like a—”

        “Hckkkt—Augh!” Fluttershy suddenly shot up with a gasp, her blue eyes blinking wide.

        Harmony fell back on her haunches, panting. “Fluttershy...?”

        “I... the log... I was trying to walk across and...” She bit her lip. “Oh... Oh dear...”

        “Oh Fluttershy,” Derpy slumped down—Dinky in tow—and scooped the Ponyvillean animal tamer up in a deep, deep hug. “You had me so worried! What's g-g-g-g-gotten into you! Your legs have been like rubber all afternoon!”

        “I... I don't... It's so hot and heavy today... and...” Fluttershy's blue eyes started rolling back once more. “Unnngh... D-Dear Celestia, so m-many stars...”

        “Miss Fluttershy? What's wrong...?” Derpy breathlessly gazed at her.

        All the while, Harmony was staring with rock-hard amber eyes. She looked at Fluttershy's wilting figure, at Dinky's glowing horn, at Fluttershy's moaning lips, at Dinky's bright strobing forehead again—

        “Dang it!” Harmony dove forward and viciously shoved Derpy off of Fluttershy. “Back off!”

        “Augh!” Derpy stumbled back, cradling Dinky and sneering the “clerk's” way. “What is your problem?! I was only—”

        “It's not you, Miss Hooves!” Harmony desperately slid Fluttershy's body away from the mailpony and pointed over the gray mare's shoulder. “It's Dinky. It's her horn! Can't you see?”

        “Huh?” Derpy's yellow eyes worthlessly rolled like competing clockwork in their sockets. However, she heard Fluttershy's pained groans, and her peripheral vision caught the residual pulses of Dinky's horn in response. “Oh dearest Nebula... I had no idea...”

        “Fluttershy...” Harmony propped the wilted caretaker up against a tree and gently slapped the far corners of her yellow face. “Miss Fluttershy—Come back to us. Snap out of it! Open those pretty eyes of yours, do you hear me?”

        “Mmmf... Moth-... M-Mother...?” The caretaker slurred, her eyes thinly reopening to gaze at the time traveler.

        The last pony's soul immediately buckled upon that utterance. Harmony wanted to collapse, wanted to sob, wanted to watch the orange shade march down those wooden steps and... and... and—“It's me, Miss Harmony,” she uttered, hiding her soul beneath the alien tone of her Entropan voice. “You fainted just now—Twice. I think... I think it has something to do with the energy coming out of Dinky's horn.”

        “I...” Fluttershy winced, hissed, and struggled weakly to lift her body up from the tree trunk. “I just need to—”

        “Don't pretend that you're not suffering from some sort of goddess-forsaken affliction!” Harmony frowned. “Cuz you are! You've been nothing but rattling knees and shoulders since we so much as set hoof into Everfree! You didn't show this sort of collapse the last two days when we ventured into the forest to find the Capricorn. There's a difference this time, and I think it's Dinky's horn.”

        “I... I told you before, Miss Harmony.” Fluttershy struggled and panted to say, “I am very much weak and helpless—”

        The last pony fought to stifle a snarl. “Would you can it already with the over-emphatic humility?! This is not a matter of—”

        “I am most exceedingly sorry to have to argue with you, dearest Harmony, but it is.” Fluttershy gulped and murmured with a quivering lip, “If you may recall my mentioning it, I... erm... I have an innate susceptibility to magical resonance.” She paused briefly to weather a dizzy spell and resumed, “Around unicorns and magicians like Twilight Sparkle or Rarity, it doesn't show. But when I'm exposed to raw and unfiltered mana batteries like alicorn artifacts, or alchemic stones, or... or...” She cast a forlorn glance towards Dinky's shimmering forehead. “... well... erhm... I start to lose control of my faculties.”

        “Since when?!” Harmony scoffed.

        “Since I was foaled. I was born a month in advance, remember? That alone has affected my body in so many ways all throughout my life. I never asked to be so frail...”

        “It's tr-tr-tr-tr-true.”

        Harmony glanced over and frowned at the mailpony. “What do you mean 'it's true'?!”

        Derpy gazed on either side of her. “I was there when Miss Fluttershy was being clinically treated. We used to share the same wing in the Cloudsdalian hospital.” The gray mare smiled bitterly as she gently stroked Dinky's glowing head from a safer distance. “You think my eyes are bad now? There were days in my foalhood when I could hardly even stand up.”

        Harmony took a deep breath. She shut her eyelids, pointed her muzzle towards the heaven, and—after a vicious exhale—she came down with an embroiled snarl, reopening two amber slits to burn viciously into Fluttershy's silken forehead.

        “You knew about this. You knew about all of this, before we even made this friggin' journey into the bowels of the biggest, nastiest, and meanest forest in all of Equestria, and yet you said nothing, Miss Fluttershy?!”

        “Harmony, Dinky's life is at risk. I cannot allow such a precious child's warmth to be extinguished by freakish happenstance, especially if I am partially to blame for it. As far as I am concerned, my health... my well-being is of no consequence—”

        “Well maybe it is to me!” Harmony exclaimed. “Did you ever think of that?! Huh?!” She dug a hoof into the pathetic earth and growled, “Miss Fluttershy, it sure has heck isn't kind to throw somepony for a loop when she only cares for you!”

        Fluttershy gulped and murmured under a rosy blush. “Miss Harmony, I think it's wonderfully noble that you would worry over me, but—”

        “You thought nothing!” Harmony snarled. “Nothing!” A hissing breath. “Excuse yourself all you want, Fluttershy, but I sure as heck am not going to let you die from poisonous magical resonance or what-the-crap-ever has been possessing Dinky! And if I hear you blame yourself one more time for what's happened, I'm liable to toss you back into that waterfall! Nebula strike me down if I'm lying!”

        “Every second that we waste debating this is another moment better spent in tracking down the caves.”

        “Yeah, well, you can contemplate that all you want from the warmth and safety of your cottage!” Harmony proceeded to scoop Fluttershy's torso up and spread her copper wings. “I'm taking you back this instant! I'm pretty sure Miss Hooves here can fly her skull into a cave and save Dinky on her lonesome.”

        “You c-c-c-can't be serious!” The mailmare balked. “I don't even know these woods, and what will I do even once I get to the crystals? You can't just leave me and Dinky—”

        “Oh hush!” Harmony flashed her a frown. “For all you care, I should be stuffing my cheeks with acorns! Fluttershy and I are out of here like Winter Wrap-Up!”

        “Miss Harmony, we can't!” Fluttershy barked—an ear splitting thing—so that it stunned the time traveler's Entropan body long enough for her to hear the caretaker's next earnest words. “Miss Hooves is right; she and Dinky need me. If I wasn't with you three earlier, what would have prevented you from stumbling upon the ursas before?”

        Before Harmony could speak, Derpy added: “There are tons of scary and dangerous things out there that would want to eat my Muffin!” The gray pegasus gulped. “And it's not even dark yet.”

        “They both need me, Miss Harmony.” Fluttershy's face visibly sweated and strained from the proximity of Dinky's enchanted horn. Nevertheless, she bravely murmured to the “Canterlotlian Clerk” embracing her. “And we all need you. Your strength is priceless, and so far you have guided us with amazing resourcefulness through this forest.” She gulped and added, “These past two days, you have helped me with a spirit of kindness that is unbelievably endearing. I implore you: complete the circle. Show the same kindness to Miss Hooves and her poor, precious child. I promise that you will feel blessed for it the rest of your life... as I have faith that I too shall live and feel blessed...”

        “Miss Fluttershy...” Harmony gazed deeply at her, drowning in those blue pearlescent eyes. “Every second you're around Dinky, you fall apart. I... I don't want you to leave us.... permanently.”

        A porcelain smile delivered a soothing voice—soft and frail, yet bold and strong. “I am willing to comply, so long as you don't leave us. Do not fear so much about tomorrow. Focus on the moment, as crazy as it may seem. Kindness shall forever be your greatest guide in times like this. So far, it hasn't let me down. I have faith that it won't let you down—or Dinky for that matter.”

        Harmony breathed unevenly. Her eyes twitched within the space between her and Fluttershy, a glistening fireplace, the phantom blue aura of a long-dead table. Rainwater had once cocooned them both in an isolated prism of truth and tears, or perhaps it had yet to. The last pony could no longer tell what was past or future, what was a dream or what was reality, what was green flame and what was gray ash. All she could hold onto, all she could embrace, was the voice, the melodic voice, and it was ever so desperately glistening before her now, like a rain-slicked metal scooter molded into a key that would open something that the winged mare had long denied herself, like gravity, like shuffling down creaking stairs...

        Derpy's Hooves' stuttering voice was a brief and interrupting thunder: “I'm very sorry to poke my head in, but whatever we're going to do, we need to d-d-d-d-do it now. Please. It's still your royal authority at hoof.”

        Harmony briefly clenched her eyes shut. After a seething breath, she fought the moisture from her eyes as she firmly held Fluttershy up and murmured into her ear: “Lean on me. Okay? Lean on me and I'll keep you safe.”

        Fluttershy weakly, weakly smiled. “Why is it that I have no doubt of that?”

        “Because my poker face stinks,” Scootaloo grumbled, frowning at her cards.

        “I didn't think we were playing poker.” Fluttershy smiled across the rug, sitting on folded hooves while staring at her own fan of playing cards.

        “Figure of speech. Sweetie Belle says it all the time when she's describing how her sister looks whenever she meets with Hoity Toity.”

        “She certainly sounds more and more like an almanac, if I may say so,” the caretaker said with a slight giggle.

        “Wrong type of book.” Scootaloo smirked. She shuffled through her cards. “Do you have any eights?”

        “Go filly,” Fluttershy muttered.

        Scootaloo reached back into a sea of cards lying between them. “That wooden storehouse that you have outside: is it really really important?”

        “I'm afraid so,” the caretaker spoke above the rain pelting the now-black windows surrounding the cottage. Evening had fallen, so that the fireplace had become a veritable nightly sun that illuminated them as much as it warmed them. Angel was lying snuggled on a tiny bed in the corner, his soft body rising up and down in deceptively peaceful breaths. “I have at least two separate locks on it. So far, it has withstood several nightly creatures attempting to scavenge from it without my knowledge. Still, it could stand to have better reinforcement, I do suppose. It's not yet been tested against really large wildlife.”

        “Don't the ponies lending you their supplies worry about all the stuff going to waste?”

        “Mmmm—Of course they do. But I think a lot of them underestimate just how close this cottage is positioned to the Everfree Forest. Ahem—Do you have any fours?”

        Scootaloo sighed and slid two cards across the rug and into Fluttershy's grasp. “Y'know,” she said with a blossoming smirk. “I bet I could design a really killer lock for your storehouse.”

        “'Killer?' Good heavens, Scootaloo, no!”

        “Heeheehee—C'mon, Fluttershy...”

        “Oh. Uhm... Right. You mean to say 'a really good lock'...”

        Scootaloo nodded. “I don't mean to brag,” she said with a wink, “But I'm pretty snazzy when it comes to tinkering stuff together.”

        Fluttershy breathily chuckled, glancing past Scootaloo towards the kitchen of the cottage for some reason. “I know that for a fact.”

        Scootaloo blinked awkwardly with thin violet eyes. “You do?”

        “Erm...” Fluttershy suddenly blushed. “Do you have any fives?” she asked.

        “Go filly...”

        Fluttershy reached into the pile, grabbed another card, and shuffled through her new fan. “Uhm... Any improvements you might be willing to give the storehouse would be greatly appreciated. But, in all seriousness, I do not think that would be necessary. Aside from a brief scare here or there, I've not really had to contend with many creatures wanting to get at the precious supplies inside. This side of the country is very calm, in spite of what everpony thinks of the wilderness.”

        “If you say so.” Scootaloo shrugged and hoofed through her cards. “You're the only pony who lives here.”

        “Mmmm... For the most part.”

        “Do you have any nines?”

        Fluttershy slid a card over and Scootaloo took it.

        “Do you... Uhm...” The filly bit her lip and glanced up nervously. “Do you ever get tired of that?”

        “Mmm? Of losing my cards to you?” Fluttershy briefly giggled. “It doesn't seem as though I have a choice—”

        “No, Fluttershy. I... uhm... I mean being alone.”

        “I've told you before, Scootaloo, that I'm not nearly as alone as you think—”

        “Please, Fluttershy. We've been together for so long this afternoon. I don't think I've seen you as happy as you appear right now,” Scootaloo said, her tone low and pensive. “Everytime you stop by Ponyville, it's for very brief spurts, as if you have to dash in and out for fear of turning to ash or some crud. I don't see what there is to be scared of. You're a delightful pony, and so talented. What's so horrible about showing your face around that you have to remain cooped up in this house all the time?”

        “I... I'm not exactly a social type,” Fluttershy murmured, eyeing the fireplace.

        “But what about your best friends?” Scootaloo gazed at her with sincerity. “Don't tell me you don't enjoy hanging out with them! There's gotta be more to your clique than the Elements of Harmony or what-crap!”

        “I'm... I'm not sure I understand the point of your inquiry, Miss Harmony...”

        “I want you to talk to me, Fluttershy,” the last pony uttered under her breaths, bracing the stumbling and limp figure of the Ponyvillean animal tamer as they followed Derpy's slow hooftrots up a winding mountain face that curved into a higher plateau of thick green foliage. “I don't know just how bad you're body is biting it on behalf of Dinky's horn and all, so I need you to stay awake and talk to me. Tell me about your friends.”

        “I... I don't have a whole lot of friends...”

        “You're joking, right?” Harmony smirked as she shoved a few random branches out of the path of Fluttershy's cranium and carried the two of them—shuffling—up the mountainside, keeping wary of the steep drop to their immediate right. “Give me a number.”

        “A number?”

        “Yeah. Let's get all quantifiable over this conversation!”

        “Fives?”

        “Go filly.”

        “Mmmmm...” Fluttershy reached into the pile, her ears drooped as her eyes wandered over a different matter altogether. “Six, though, if you count Derpy... I suppose...”

        “'Derpy?'”

        “Miss Hooves. The local mailpony.”

        The orange foal shook her head. “Doesn't ring a bell.”

        “Sometimes she does, when she flies too low.” Fluttershy blushed furiously and planted a hoof over her muzzle as she stifled a furious round of giggles. “Ohhhhhh... That was rather rude of me.”

        “On the contrary,” Scootaloo spoke with a smile...

        “I'd say it's worth it just to hear you laugh,” the time traveler breathlessly said as she hoisted Fluttershy up a steep bank and helped her onto a level ground of compact soil. The two pegasi stumbled slowly after Derpy and Dinky, two gray spots along the crest of a hill dotted with moss and shrubbery. “Did this 'Pinkie Pie' really make that joke in front of a zebra?”

        “Mmmm... Zecora wasn't offended, if that is what you mean to insinuate. She was just as curious to know what was black-and-white-and-red-all-over as I was.”

        “Yeah, uhuh. You want to hear another joke?”

        “You mean one that Pinkie Pie has somehow not told me?” Fluttershy breathlessly managed to say.

        “A horse walked into a bar and said 'Ouch.'”

        “.... I... I erm... I'm not quite sure that I get it...”

        “Think about it,” Harmony said. She held Fluttershy up on her hooves and gazed at her with a tired-yet-glinting smirk. “Think about ittttt—”

        “Oh... Oh! Eheheheh-nnngh—Ohhhh,” Fluttershy hissed as if assaulted with a vicious migraine. She rubbed her aching head with a yellow hoof and lurched alongside Harmony.

        The last pony bit her lip. With a clearing of her throat, she uttered, “You know what? Forget about Pinkie Pie. Already, I can tell she's my least favorite. Tell me more about this Applejack you know.”

        “Well, I told you before, Scootaloo, that she was the first earth pony I had the grace to meet here in Ponyville. Her family found me sleeping at Everclear, and without a single moment's hesitation, they brought me over to their house to eat, sleep, bathe, and have a warm place to briefly call my own.”

        “Jee, that sounds really, really sweet, Fluttershy.”

        “Mmm... It was most definitely kind. Applejack will label it as 'country hospitality,' but I know it for what it was. The Apple Family has been doing kind things in Ponyville for generations, long before anypony in my family even knew about the colony that Faustmare had settled here. You cannot meet a single member of Applejack's tree and not somehow feel happy to simply stand amongst them. I think they've lived off the land for so long that they've become a part of it. They are much sweeter fruits than the bounty they harvest every year.”

        “I bet Applejack would be tickled pink if you invited her for a sleepover one of these days—just to... I dunno... repay her for what she and her family did for you when you first landed from Cloudsdale!”

        “Oh... I dunno. That was an awful long time ago. I think she would just find it silly...”

        “Fluttershyyyy! She would love to hang out with you! Or Twilight for that matter!”

        “Twilight Sparkle is always busy these days,” Fluttershy stammered. She swallowed a lump down her throat and leaned sickly against the copper pegasus' hide as they strolled together, lethargically, in distant pursuit of Derpy and Dinky. The forest grew dimmer with crimson bands of the setting sun as a cold wind flanked their evening trek. “If she isn't writing to Her Majesty, working on her memoirs, or helping Cheerilee prepare a field trip to Whinniepeg—then she's performing one experiment or another with her adorable apprentice.”

        Harmony winced upon hearing the last detail of Twilight's activities. For a brief moment, the trees of Evefree were awash with even darker trunks in the moonlight. “Ahem... Adorable apprentice, you say?” Harmony remarked, fighting a brief bout of shivers. She eyed the growing shadows of the ominous forest around them. “Does Miss Sparkle have—ahem—a handsome stallion at her beck and call?”

        “Mmmm... No. Not quite.” Fluttershy's lips curved slightly. “She's a Cantertlotlian student from Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. As part of her entrance exam, she had to hatch and tame an infant purple dragon. But... mmmm... Of course you would know all of that already, Miss Harmony.”

        “I wasn't aware that many of the students actually kept their dragon as a pet.”

        “Oh no!” Fluttershy woke briefly from her exhausted slump. To Harmony's mute joy, she spoke with a renewed vigor. “Spike is anything but a pet! He's an intelligent, caring, selfless, resourceful bundle of joy!”

        “'Spike...'” Harmony rolled her eyes and hid her smirk from the yellow pegasus leaning against her. “Boy is that a creative name for a dragon.”

        “For instance, just this last week he was helping Twilight with an experiment to... uhm... to teleport objects through time.”

        “Huh...” The copper pegasus gulped. “Imagine that...”

        “I doubt it was successful, but it doesn't matter. The relationship that Spike and Twilight have to each other is adorable. Almost like siblings... Or... Or even mother and... and...” Fluttershy's voice trailed off her lips as her blue eyes sadly rediscovered the gray dots of Miss Hooves and her glowing offspring far ahead.

        Harmony blinked. Shifting nervously in their shared gait, she bravely cleared her throat. “You and Miss Sparkle... uhm... go far back?”

        “Oh, hardly. She's a very new addition to my life—A blessed addition, but still quite new.”

        “Well, which of your friends have you known the longest?”

        “Mmmm...” Fluttershy smiled sweetly, ignoring the card game altogether as her blue eyes found a hazy shade of blue beyond the visual spectrum of the windows. “Rainbow Dash and I go back as far as I can remember.”

        Scootaloo's violet eyes sparkled as her entire body lit up like an orange lightbulb. “You do?”

        “I... uhm... I met her at Flight Camp. I took far too many years to pass, compared to the average pegasus. And yet, even though she graduated two winters before I did, Rainbow would always come back to the campus just to visit me. I... I was the target of much teasing and practical jokes when I was young. I'm sure I've told you that. But Rainbow Dash... she never ceased to defend me, to come to my rescue... hmmm... so to speak.”

        “That's awfully cool of her.” Scootaloo smiled, leaning her chin on perky orange hooves.

        “To this day...” Fluttershy kneaded the rug with silken soft forelimbs. “I've never quite understood what motivated somepony as cool and as brave and as fearless as Rainbow to look after me and me alone. I once thought I figured it out... but... uhm, no, that wasn't the reason. Nor was it the other reason... ehm...”

        Scootaloo raised a curious eyebrow.

        Fluttershy sighed, but smiled gently. “I know we hardly see each other these days, and there are times when Rainbow Dash appears outright frustrated with me because of my frequent fear and cowardice. But I know—I daresay, more than any other pony, I know—that she is the most loyal pegasus you can ever find. And even now, if I was to find myself in a horrible situation or bind, she would come to my rescue, even after all these years.”

        “Y-yeah... Rainbow Dash is awesome like that.” Scootaloo beamed.

        “I would rather say that she's kind,” Fluttershy remarked. “Even if she doesn't always show it, or would admit to it. Rainbow Dash is really one of the kindest ponies in all of Equestria. Our days—our memories that we have from Cloudsdale—they are all the proof that I need, and I cling to them like I would to my last breaths.”

        “Maybe you should hang out with her again.” Scootaloo smiled gently. “You could tell her yourself how much she means to you.”

        “I wouldn't presume to interrupt her these days,” Fluttershy said defeatedly. “She's so awfully busy with the local weather flier team and all...” She gestured out a rain-soaked window. “And... uhm... of course, there are the tryouts that she's so fixated on.”

        “What tryouts?” Scootaloo stupidly blinked, then brightened euphorically. “Oh, those tryouts!”

        “She's been working so hard, and I know that there's an upcoming event that she's been dying to prepare herself for.”

        “Well, if you can't invite Twilight or Rainbow Dash to visit you for a spell—”

        “Scootaloo, you needn't be so persistent. I respect the fact that my friends live busy lives and I—”

        “—maybe you could get together with Rarity again!”

        Fluttershy took a sharp, wounded breath.

        Harmony gazed at her from where she was tugging her lightly across a bridge of rocks that spanned a tiny river. “Miss Fluttershy, are you okay?”

        The caretaker exhaled—however—with the gentlest of smiles, something that could melt straight through the earth. “Rarity...” Her voice was like a song and the air a throng of flutes. “She is a delightful soul, if there ever was one.”

        “You speak as if she's a relic and not a friend,” Harmony breathlessly hoisted Fluttershy towards her.

        The yellow pegasus shuddered, leaning her weight over the copper visitor's flank as she was practically carried over the river to join a breathless mother-and-child on the other side. “We haven't seen each other in a terribly long time.” Her face hung in a pale slump. “Oh Nebula, I do pray she's okay...”

        “Has she disappeared off the face of Equestria, or something?” Harmony murmured, briefly remembering an ancient conversation over daffodil alfredo somewhere.

        “It is hard to tell, nor is it my place to find out—”

        “Well, why the hay not? She's your friend, isn't she?”

        “My very best friend in the whole world,” Fluttershy murmured, eying the rippling waters sickly as Dinky's horn pulsated from just a horseshoe's toss away. “Ever since I had met her, she had taken an instant appreciation of me. As to why, I cannot fathom. But she's only ever treated me like a precious jewel—not patronizing me, but rather indulging me in all of her life's little intricacies, trusting in me the wealth of her knowledge, her vulnerabilities, her fears and joys, her love and hate. Before I met her, I had acquaintances and occasional companions. Rarity has become my one trusted confidant in this world, my B.F.F., as she puts it...”

        “BonaFideFilly?”

        “Heeheehe—Mmm... No. 'Best Friend Forever.'” Fluttershy confessed with a rosy blush.

        “Sounds like you stumbled upon a gem.”

        “Only that she values me like one, and yet she's a well-to-do and artistically gifted unicorn who's surrounded by wealth. Not once does she let that get to her head. She's generous, she's compassionate, she's sympathetic, and she gives so much... so very much to both Trottingham and Ponyville. I heard that the town mayor needs a new cabinet member to fill in the vacant spot for Ponyville's Head of the Community Council. Rarity already gets my vote... Mmmm... for what it is worth.”

        “As lead animal tamer of Ponyville”—Harmony smirked back—“I'm sure that your opinion would be greatly valued.”

        “I can only hope.” Fluttershy exhaled, winced slightly, and recovered from the latest surge of magical resonance. “Just thinking of Rarity, and all the times she's ever talked to me, I respect all the things she's shared. Other ponies might think she does nothing but give me an earful whenever we are together. But I like it... I love it. I'm never too comfortable talking about myself. But hearing somepony like her go on about her life, and being so confident in me that she can share it: it makes me feel so special. And it makes me feel so... so...”

        “So what, Fluttershy?”

        She sighed, shutting her eyes before the fireplace. “So normal...” She said.

        Scootaloo blinked. Her orange jaw fell agape as she leaned her head to the side. “But... Miss Fluttershy, you are normal!”

        “Oh Scootaloo, dear sweet Scootaloo...” The caretaker sighed and looked at the foal with tired blue eyes. “No normal pony lives the way I do, spends more time with animals than other equines, deals with the random happenstance of a madly growing forest instead of a gentle and quiet town.”

        “We... We all have our talents, Miss Fluttershy. Or... I mean...” Scootaloo blushed and twitched her blank flank. “We all find them. And—sure—we may be alone when we find them, but why do you insist that you have to stay around this place by yourself now that you have everything together?”

        “It's... far too complicated to explain—”

        “Ugh! I'm sick to death of adults using that on me!” Scootaloo snarled. “Don't you do it too, Miss Fluttershy! You are so... so special, and you've got awesome talents, and... and...”

        “Scootaloo—”

        “If I had everything understood about who I was or what I could do like you, I'd not be wallowing around all by my lonesome! I'd find as many ponies as I could and I would frickin' party! Like Rainbow Dash does! I don't see why you have to treat yourself like you're the last pony on earth! I know I never plan to!”

        “You've got so many discoveries left to make in life, Scootaloo. And... And I do not wish to discourage you with the things I have to share about myself—”

        “I don't think you have any idea how hard it is for me to be discouraged, Fluttershy,” Scootaloo said with a jittery gulp. Bravely, she stared directly into the pegasus' face from across the pile of cards. “Please... Tell me. Tell me what it is that keeps you here alone all these years.”

        “Sometimes... Sometimes it takes a very long time—if not forever—to earn your way out of the faults that you were born with.”

        “Does this have anything to do with how come you don't invite any of your friends over?”

        Fluttershy was silent.

        Scootaloo blinked. Pale bleached stones pierced her heart. She bit her lip from the icy sensation, as if gravity skewered a measuring tape through her soul and reminded her of the sheer distance between the ground and the clouds... and the white wings etched forever beyond. “Fluttershy, when... when was the last time you saw your family?”

        “My family...” Fluttershy murmured breathily against Harmony's black mane. She was being dragged alongside her as the three pegasi marched liquidly through a grassy knoll where the tree canopy broke to reveal purple stars twinkling above. “My family and I have... uhm... we haven't talked or seen each other in a very, very long time...”

        “Ehrm... Why the heck not?” Harmony asked. “If you don't mind me asking.”

        “Well, first off, I come from quite a large household.”

        “Lemme guess, two brothers? Two sisters?”

        “I have nine siblings.”

        “Whoah... Uhm... Okay...”

        “All older than me.”

        “Uhh... Really?” Harmony squinted at the pegasus' frail form. “Okay, I guess I can see that now.”

        “I know what you're likely thinking,” Fluttershy gently spoke. “And it's quite true. I was... mmm... I was a rather unexpected addition to my family. I do believe that was the start of many things.”

        “How do you mean?”

        “Well, coupled with the fact that I was born relatively early, I easily paled in comparison to how strong my six brothers and three sisters were... and still are. Many of them are weather fliers. Two of them work in the busiest department of the Cloudsdale Rainbow Factory. One is a backup member of the Wonderbolts.”

        “Wow.”

        “Yes, I know. As you can imagine, my weaker and gentler qualities have made me look all the less special compared to them. While they excelled in every class of flight school, I failed miserably. While they became outstanding members of Cloudsdalian society, I... uhm... I drifted out of the spotlight and settled for a lifestyle centered around the care and taming of woodland creatures. All of my extended family members live in the clouds from here to Stratopolis. In the meantime, I've settled for a quiet and unassuming life on solid ground, ever since that one fateful day when I fell down here. So... as pegasus lifestyle goes, I... uhm... I've always been far from normal...”

        Harmony took a deep breath, all the while her amber eyes flickered through garbage strewn alleyways, abandoned barns, night-shrouded forests, Ponyvillean street corners, and the undersides of country bridges. Every single one of those sights blurred by from the back of a scooter, and yet they were burned far hotter into the last pony's mind than any single cloudy hearth or silver-lined bed of wisps.

        “There's nothing wrong with a pegasus' life spent on the ground,” the time traveler gently said to Fluttershy. “And if you ask me, the fact that you have chosen a way of living that is so different from the rest of your family makes you unique. You are special for what you do, Miss Fluttershy. Residents of Ponyville respect you. Obviously Her Majesty respects you, otherwise she wouldn't have sent me!”

        “Your attempts to placate me are noble, and I do appreciate where you are coming from, Miss Harmony.” Fluttershy attempted a gentle smile. Against the resonating magic of Dinky's nearby horn, her expression came out like a grimace. “But sometimes I would gladly give up all of Ponyville's compliments... all of my friends' respect... if it means that I could win my family's confidence back, that I could talk to my mother for the first time in years, that I could see my father for the first time in years. But... But that is not the case, sadly. Unless something amazingly dramatic is to happen, I'm not sure I will ever be accepted as one with my family. I've disappointed them for far too long...”

        “Miss Fluttershy...” Harmony gulped dryly. “That sounds absolutely terrible. And I shudder to think that you blame yourself for the selfish reasons that your family doesn't accept you.”

        “Is it selfish for an esteemed clan of Cloudsdalian wingbearers to look deplorably on such an odd member of its family whose weaknesses clash unnaturally with the rest of her litter? Miss Harmony, I may have innumerable qualities in the eyes of my peers here in Ponyville, but until I can make amends with the failures I have made in my natural standing, I... I just cannot feel right with myself...” With a deep sigh, she wiltingly murmured: “...nor with my friends.”

        Harmony was suddenly mute; her brain and tongue had been tied about a bitter knot forming at the base of her throat. There were so many things to say, and yet not enough reasons to say them. She suddenly realized that she was carrying Fluttershy towards two graves: one built by an Ursa Major, and one that the pegasus had been building for herself for a very long time now. It was a grave that her family would likely never visit. What an ironic ending it would be, then, for a selfless soul who so avidly paid respects to an entire sea of white stones memorializing ponies she never had the grace to know.

        By this point in the trip, Fluttershy's hooves were beginning to drag in the earth. Glancing ahead, Harmony could see a limping gait overwhelming Derpy's canter. The night hummed around them, and the two pegasi of the past were starting to collapse in on themselves. There really was only one thing to do.

        “Miss Hooves?!” Harmony called out with strong Entropan lungs. “Derpy, I think we should take a breather.”

        “The caves could be just b-b-b-b-beyond that hill, for all we know!”

        “I can make it, Miss Harmony,” Fluttershy said, but her words were painful squeaks shoved between wincing expressions. “Dinky is the one pony we should be worried about right now.”

        “Fat lot of good it will do to worry or labor over a pony when half of us are too dead on our hooves to do anything once we do reach the caves!” Harmony loudly said, “Let us rest. I'm not saying we have a friggin' sleepover or something, Miss Hooves. But Fluttershy's nearly fainted and you too look like a mess, if you don't mind me saying so. You're both welcome to argue with me, but Nebula help you if you so much as wish to succeed!”

        “Mmmm... The grass does look most inviting...” Fluttershy managed in a hissing whisper.

        “Do you hear me, Miss Hooves? We're resting,” Harmony managed to say, all the while dragging Fluttershy softly towards a bed of springy foliage and laying her down.

        Fluttershy murmured something, fought a rampaging migraine, and curled away from the pulsating location of Dinky and her horn. “Not... Not for too long, Miss Harmony, okay?” Her voice was a melodic whimper, and in a hazy blink the last pony thought she saw an orange shadow marching down invisible stairs to touch her—

        Harmony clenched her green flaming eyes shut. She fought a numbing cloud of agony, then blinked her amber orbs back to see Fluttershy lying down alone, breathing soundly as her wings twitched and folded into placid stillness. Ten meters beyond the half-conscious caretaker, Derpy Hooves slumped down to her haunches against a lone rock on the edge of a nearby treeline. She disentangled herself with her mailbag, the straps of which had formed hard creases into her gray coat. With gentle forelimbs, she slid the quivering little unicorn out of one of the pouches and cradled her in the grass between her spread hooves.

        “Nnngh... The ancient reptile and its satellite... Alone like children in the night! Hmmnngh... Do not look into the throat of heaven, children of the rancid winter under glass... Nnnngh... Snkkkt...”

        Derpy's face contorted into a painful sigh. She clenched her lopsided eyes shut and held the rambling little foal tight. The corner of her skin sizzled slightly as it made contact with the blindingly bright horn. She ignored the painful sensation.

        Sitting above a half-slumbering Fluttershy, Harmony forced herself to stare at the mother-and-daughter. It took all of her Entropan strength to wrench even a pindrop of sympathy away from her anchor to righteously address the other tragedy unfolding before her.

        “How... uhm...” The last pony bit her lip nervously. “How are you holding up, Miss Hooves?”

        “I am not.” Derpy shuddered and reopened her diagonal eyes. Even from a sobbing breath's distance, the mother could barely center her gaze on her suffering offspring. “I am falling apart.” A hard gulp. “I've always been falling apart. Only... with my Muffin, I thought I could p-p-p-p-put the pieces back together.”

        “Miss Hooves, don't—” Harmony paused to headbutt an aching dam of hypocrisy lodged in her skull, then continued, “Don't speak in the past tense like that, please.”

        “Forgive me,” Derpy shuddered to say. “I am not my normal self right now. Even when I am, I know it's very hard for anypony to speak to me... when anypony bothers to speak to me.” With a deep breath, she cradled the stirring Dinky to her and gazed off towards both ends of the night's sky. “I know what you must be thinking, and I don't blame you. In Canterlot, I imagine there are rule books that would have forced the city to t-t-t-t-t-take my Muffin from me years ago. So it's only natural for you to think that I got my just desserts. After all, she was foaled as a half-wing...”

        “Miss Hooves...” Harmony quietly murmured. “I never said... I mean I-I didn't wish to suggest that—”

        “It's okay. I know what she is. And I know what I am.” Derpy breathed harder, her taut lips steeling suddenly. After a flaring of her gray nostrils, she grunted, “And it doesn't matter, not to me. If I had to go through every humil... humi-li-li-li-li-li... through every bad moment of my past again, I would—if only it would mean that she would still come into my life.”

        “She loves you, Miss Hooves,” Harmony said. “And she respects you so much.”

        A quivering breath floated back in response. “I know,” Derpy squeaked. She gulped hard and ran a hoof over the foal's burning forehead. “I know it... But I hardly deserve it...”

        “She respects you...” Harmony firmly repeated as she shuffled a few steps towards the mare. In a firmer, braver voice, she said, “But she also deserves to be respected back.”

        “But I do respect her!”

        “Miss Hooves...” The last pony's amber eyes narrowed. “Everypony in town knows she's not stupid. She wants to know about her father. She needs to know about her father.”

        Derpy's face leaned until one of her sad eyes angled appropriately with Harmony. A ring of starlit moisture formed pathetically around its yellow edge as the mare's voice stammered, “I need to know about him too...”

        Harmony stood still, biting on her lip nervously. She couldn't say anything to shed light on that.

        Derpy could: “All of my life, I've only had other p-p-p-p-ponies laughing at me, joking about me, saying rude things behind my back. I may not see well, but I can hear well. I've never really blamed other ponies, but I always desired something different... something more. Honestly, who in this world doesn't want to be loved, normal or not?”

        At the word “normal,” Harmony briefly glanced over her shoulder at the softly slumbering form of Fluttershy. In a pit of nausea, the last pony realized that this yawning moment in time was embracing the company of three Cloudsdalian rejects. Part of her wanted to go extinct right then and there.

        Derpy continued speaking, “One summer, five years ago, I met this handsome stallion, a dashing unicorn.” Her face swam briefly through a sea of bitter-sweet smiles, like tattered ships on a gray horizon. “He talked to me when so many other ponies didn't; he said things to me that I never dr-dr-dr-dr-dreamt anypony would.” She produced a sharp breath, like her lungs were being knifed from the inside out. In a shameful stammer, she uttered, “I don't know if you can ever relate, and I hope that you wouldn't. A lonely life lived in the company of laughs and sneers can make you do some really st-st-st-st-st-stupid things.”

        “I know loneliness, Miss Hooves,” Harmony said with a quiet nod. “Call it what you want, but I imagine desperation makes fools of all of us in our own time.” She deflated, remembering suddenly the taste and smell of blood in the ashen air.

        “Well...” Derpy ran a hoof gently through Dinky's blonde threads. “One day, this handsome stallion in my life was gone, along with all of his sweet words, his gentle smiles... his pretty lies.” A dry gulp morphed into a painful smile. “But I was not alone. No... No... Because in place of a shameful hole in my life, my Muffin came to fill it up. She would not come easily. The hospitals in Cloudsdale rejected me. My family would not speak to me. But I was not about to give up on this life that was gr-gr-gr-gr-growing inside of me. All of my life, the world had ignored me. I was not about to ignore it. Finally... finally... I received help. Miss Red Heart in Ponyville's hospital oversaw the foaling. I didn't realize just how painful it was going to be. A pegasus is not built to deliver a unicorn. I was out for days after Dinky was born; I dreamt that I had died. But I wasn't dead. One morning, I woke up, and they laid my Muffin in m-m-m-m-my hooves.... and when I looked at her... when I looked at her... she... she...”

        Derpy's eyelids clenched shut. Her shoulders shuddered once, twice. A hiccup, a low breathy inhale, and she reopened them and gazed everywhere through a sudden cascade of yellow tears.

        “She looked at m-m-m-me. She saw me. After a life of nopony looking me in the eyes, my Muffin did. She looked at me. She looked at her mother, me, her mother.” She hissed through her teeth and tilted two streaming eyes towards the stars as she held the quivering child tightly to her shuddering gray coat. “And I finally knew... Praise Gultophine... I finally knew that there were kind and precious things in this world.” A deep, wincing breath. “And every p-p-p-p-painful length I went through to see that she came into my life was suddenly worth it, because I had proof that there could be something beautiful enough to love even me... and I could love it back.”

        Harmony stood silent as a stone, weathering the quivering air of the mailpony's sniffling voice. The mare shuddered, laid Dinky gently down in the grass, and caressed the foal's quivering face.

        “A few weeks ago... Dinky woke up in the middle of the night with a shriek. I went to see if she was alright. She said she had a nightmare. I asked if she wanted me to sleep with her, to protect her. Do you know what my Muffin said?” She glanced up with two wet eyes pointing away from a painful smile. “She said that nightmares were merely the brain's way of process... pr-pr-pr-pr-pro... of cleaning up information during sleep. She knew the scary things in her nightmare weren't real. All those years of buying her books and making her into the smart p-p-p-p-p-pony that I wasn't had worked. I had done my Muffin right.”

        Derpy closed her eyes and took a deep, torturous breath. She came down the crest of her lungs with a wince as she whimpered:

        “But it didn't feel right.” She squeaked. “It should be M-M-M-M-Mommy's job to scare away the nightmares, but Dinky didn't need me to. It was then that I realized how selfish I had become. I need my Muffin... I love her and I need her so much. Every day, I do my deliveries in an upside down world full of laughter and sneers and... mmmfffmm—and she is the one thing in the center of my eyes. My Muffin is what keeps me flying back to solid ground: her and her alone.”

        “Hmmnngghh... Frozen fields. Crystalline organ beneath the warriors of the burning forge!” The possessed foal sobbed and quivered. “Silver happening... Silver happening...”

        Derpy bowed her face and touched her forehead to the crest of Dinky's burning horn. The mother's tears steamed in the heat from her daughter's magical affliction. She tossed her blonde mane as she shook her head left and right and shudderingly said:

        “I don't know how Mommy's going to drive these nightmares away. Nebula, help me. Without my Muffin I am nothing, nothing. All I'll ever have to go b-b-b-b-back to is a blind world that notices me even less than I could ever possibly see it. I couldn't live in that world; there would be no kindness in it. None whatsoever.” She stroked a hoof over her daughter's ailing face, sniffled, and murmured: “None wh-wh-wh-whatsoever...”

        Harmony stirred uncomfortably. Every tense muscle of the future scavenger's pained soul wormed through the numb Entropan limbs, until she finally managed to rest a hoof on the mail mare's shoulder. “I may not speak for a kind world, Miss Hooves, but I like to think I know something precious when I see it. The birth of your child—the one miracle that you experienced in your life is but a preview to another miracle, one that could very well happen tonight.”

        “What miracle is that, Mister Squirrel?”

        Harmony smiled bravely past Derpy's words. “Your child's survival. I have every intent to make sure nobody's kid dies tonight. Yours... or the Capricorn's.”

        “I wish there were more clerks from Canterlot that were as sympa... sympa-pa-pa-pa-pa...”

        “I may not be an expert on sympathy,” the last pony said, “But I know a thing or two about survival.” She smirked with a shade of pride. Just then, there was a snapping sound—like a branch being stepped on in the forest. She and she alone spun around...

        ...and glanced breathlessly towards the window. “Did... Did you hear that?” Scootaloo stammered.

        Fluttershy was already bounding up to her hooves. In a surprisingly strong burst of wings, the caretaker floated up over the card game and pressed herself to the double windows stretched before the rain-drenched night beyond the reading seat. Hardened blue eyes squinted through the obsidian glass, meandering every knifing drop of liquid that pierced the edges of the Everfree Forest.

        Scootaloo bounded up onto quivering hooves, her violet eyes bright. “It's the storehouse again, isn't it? Something wants to get the stuff!”

        “That... That remains to be seen,” Fluttershy said in a deep, contemplative voice. She was more confused than frightened, a steely complexion that Scootaloo hardly recognized, but instantly respected. “I am not used to this prolonged amount of rain; I could simply be imagining things...”

        “What if we went out together and scared whatever it is off once and for all?”

        “No.” Fluttershy shook her head. She spun around. “I want you staying inside.”

        “Pfft—Again? I can look after myself, Fluttershy. Helping you scare these critters away is the least I can do for you letting me stay here!”

        “Until I know exactly what we are dealing with—if we are dealing with anything—I want you to stay inside.”

        “But what if there's something out there that you can't deal with?”

        Fluttershy strolled past and cast a desperate smile. “You would doubt the stare master, Scootaloo?”

        The little foal wasn't buying it. With a stony expression, she grumbled, “Don't pretend you're not half as freaked out by those noises than I am.”

        “Erhm...” Fluttershy bit her lip in a trademark pensiveness. “We both do well to be frightened, but when it comes to the two of us, Scootaloo, it is my place and my place alone to investigate this.”

        “But why? Can't you at least let me help?”

        “Scootaloo, you've been so very polite to me all afternoon. It would be a shame... erhm... for that to stop now.”

        The foal merely raised an eyebrow to that mechanic of guilt.

        Fluttershy nevertheless swung the front door open and stared resolutely out into the rain. After a slight shudder, she said, “Unless you specifically hear me call out for you, do not leave this cottage. Do you understand me?”

        “But Fluttershy—”

        “The storehouse is my responsibility. It falls to me to earn my keep. I shall return shortly...” She bounded out, letting the door swing shut to the dark, wet world beyond.

        “Hmmmmph...” Scootaloo folded her front hooves with a frown. “You're not the only pony who needs to earn something, Fluttershy.” With a huff, she marched up to the reading seat and all-but-planted her orange nostrils to the glass, squinting out into the obsidian monsoon that enshrouded the quaint little house. All she could make out were the mere phantoms of shadows, of distorted air dancing around errant drops of rain, kissing their way in and out of the penumbra of pale starlight.

        Just then, Scootaloo's heart skipped a beat. She was hearing noises—or the echoes of noises. She couldn't be entirely sure, but she thought she could make out a pounding. Something had scampered from the left side of the blackened yard... over to the right and blacker side of the rain-soaked horizon. There was a sloshing sound... a deep and low bass noise... and then the continual hiss of endless rain.

        “Wooooh... Freaky...” Half of her shuddered and the other half smirked in a fitful spell of excitement. Her ears twitched as she glanced left and right, attempting to adjust her violet eyes to the glass' dim reflection of the fireplace that crackled behind her. Several minutes into the witless gazing, Scootaloo heard more sloshing, more shuffling, another bass hum, and then the ever-present hiss of rain shrouded it all once more.

        In the tranquil nightlit space between breaths, Scootaloo thought of Everclear. She thought of a mineshaft that consumed the souls of ponies like so many barren rocks that forever plugged the mouth of that terrestrial serpent. She thought of Fluttershy, she thought of flowers, and she thought of shadows—like the outline of darkness that had so phantasmagorically haloed her when she stood before the bathroom mirror with her hoof raised, feeling for the soul of the pony that stood beyond it, only to make contact with the cold kiss of nothing that was reserved for the mystery that was tomorrow. In so many years of homeless scavenging, Scootaloo had only stolen things; she had never earned them. She could be the loneliest soul on the face of Equestria, and she would never get a cutie mark—so long as she allowed herself to be swallowed by that opaque shadow in the mirror.

        For once, the foal had tried to do things differently. Fluttershy had let her, but Fluttershy could barely let herself do things differently, the hard way, the brave way, the humble way—by giving up what was precious to her—her gentility—by rushing out impulsively into that dark wet night full of noises. Scootaloo was afraid to give up something as well, and yet Fluttershy had dragged it out of her. She had found a piece of Scootaloo that was willing to receive, and it left the foal feeling just as blessed as she felt nauseous.

        For her sake—and for her host's sake—Scootaloo felt compelled to practice the one talent she had always denied herself, but felt the need to exercise then, even if it could end in more blood than cutie marks. Scootaloo had to stretch the invisible wings of her courage, the one bulwark that had kept her safe from all the elements that had hounded a foal's lonely life of survival, but had also blocked her from indulging in the softer shades of life, the shades lent her via a melodic voice on that drenched afternoon, the things that she was still never, ever strong enough to earn.

        “Pffft-Yeah. Screw this.” She half-smiled, half-sneered, fully-pushed a hoof forward and opened the windows with a rain-soaked creak. Summoning a deep breath, Scootaloo dove out into the pouring world and landed in a splash upon flooded grass.

        The orange foal immediately shivered. She wasn't prepared for just how cold it would be outside. She had slept through worse storms before, but this evening was somehow different. A warm fireplace and a pile of playing cards flew away from her flank like a distant star as she scampered dauntless into that thundering night.

        With squinting eyes, she peered left and right. Her pink mane was already wrapping around her neck in a slick mat of surrender, but she didn't dare turn around. She listened for plodding sounds that weren't her own—that may or may not have been Fluttershy's either. All she heard was thunder—distant and grumbling—as her sloshing path lit up in random strobes that revealed a deep black forest of wooden teeth stretching beyond, forming the gnarled ribcage of a suddenly soulless Everfree.

        All was madness and obscurity. The foal was more frustrated than she was scared. In a determined breath, she pivoted against the cold rain and marched north—around the far end of the house—where she at least knew where one important thing was.

        The storehouse: it stood before her like a pale wooden igloo on the edge of the cottage's windowlit haze. From the bobbing vision of the wet foal's scampering approach, it appeared in one piece. Scootaloo managed a smirk, for this entire situation appeared completely and utterly absurd. It was most likely just the sound of a falling tree branch that had ushered Fluttershy outside, and the sloshing noises that the window-gazing foal had listened to were likely nothing more than the hoofsteps of a rain-soaked pegasus running silly circles in the darkness. When all of this muddied chaos was said and done, the two ponies would have a long laugh—

        Scootaloo skidded to a splattering stop. In a breathless stance, she squinted at the wooden door to the storehouse. Against the pale bark of the frame were several slashes—clawmarks—and the deep splintery ravines collected rainwater like a wound would collect blood.

        It wasn't fear that made Scootaloo's heart race quicken; it was shame, the sensation of a stupid mistake bringing a stupid survivor to a stupid end. The hairs on her back rose against the raindrops as—just then—a deep bass hum rose from behind, shaking rivulets in the puddles all around her. Scootaloo spun around in a voiceless exclamation.

        At first, she saw nothing. And then, there was a strobe of lightning, and she saw it. More specifically, she saw her reflection. Her blanching face flickered a dozen ivory times—glistening off of a row of razor sharp teeth pointed straight at her. Then the lightning's strobe ended, and she was cast into darkness, shivering at the serrated end of a deep and prolonged growling noise...

        With an instinctual gasp, the last pony's amber eyes twitched open. She blinked to see purple starlight twinkling down upon the same grassy knoll she had meditatively shut her eyes to ten minutes ago. Fluttershy was still slumbering, her yellow body twitching fitfully in the throes of aching spasms. Propped up against a pale rock, Derpy sat with her eyes shut and her body slowly rising and falling in a bitterly brief sleeping spell. Dinky sat in her mother's lap, and she was anything but unconscious.

        “Mmmffft... For the sky to turn red, the earth must bleed. Once more, the black stare returns. The stars melt away. Nnngh...”

        Harmony took a deep breath, rubbing her eyes with a copper hoof as the mental barrier of gray ash and snow dutifully washed away a rain-slicked evening to return her to the present... which was the past.

        “Gotta hoof it to ya, kiddo,” she murmured across the thick Everfree air. “You've landed yourself in one motley crew. I'd say you're the only pony in this forest that's making sense. I could write a book to your words.”

        “Do not be the same herd that he has marched you into being, only galloping at the same speed in a different direction!”

        “I rest my case.” Harmony tiredly, bitterly smiled. With a deep breath, she gazed over at Fluttershy, at her silken and wilted figures, at the invalidic limbs that once charged bravely into an obsidian night drowning in rain... and tears. “I could write so many books... with the things that I've seen. With all that I am... with all that I've become.” She sighed heavily out her nostrils, her brow furrowed with a renewed ache. “But a eulogy, Spike? It's all so much... It's all so... so much. I can't. I simply can't do this anymore—”

        “Seriously, kid—Would I let the world be any less cool by disappearing?”

        Harmony froze. Slowly, icily, her copper head pivoted to stare dazedly at the glowing unicorn. Her amber eyes were twin suns, sudden phantoms that could light up the Wasteland for an eternity.

        “I'll be darned if I let you die!” Dinky's lips moved under a pair of glowing ivory eyes. A cool and wind-throttling voice was lurching out from her throat. “Don't fret! I'll be back in—like—half an hour, tops!”

        Ten seconds later, the last pony's heart finally beat again. On quivering, foalish limbs she hobbled up and slowly shuffled across the grass, her eyes locked like titanium staples on the child's pulsating horn that throbbed with each of her hoofsteps.

        “Her skin is not yours...” Dinky snarled, her hooves curling tighter to her gray tummy. “It is not your skin to wear!”

        “What... What did you just say...?” Harmony stammered in a pitiful whisper.

        “Da. Is in pony's eyes, Brucie thinks.” Dinky stirred and twitched as a shimmering voice wafted through her, out of her. “Brucie knows...”

        Harmony stood like a teetering statue over her. A dry gulp. “Who are you...?”

        “Snnkkkt...” A wicked sneer, a suddenly cold and raspy voice. “A silver strip for your thoughts, blank flank?”

        “What...” Harmony frowned. “...are you? What do you want with Dinky?”

        “There's a good angel, Harmony.” A rich, affluent accent, tainted with sorrow and joy. “That I haven't cried before...”

        Harmony didn't know why, but she was hyperventilating. The closer and further she stared into the shimmering horn of the possessed foal, the more she felt green bands of fire eating at the edges of her peripheral. She hissed suddenly, as if the world was about to spin out from underneath her and explode in black briars and thorns, thorns, thorns, thorns...

        “Hcckttttt-t-t-t-t-the Onyx Eclipse. The Onyx Eclipse is coming, through a dead keyhole of heartless stars...”

        Harmony paled. With quivering lips, she flashed a gaze upwards at the purple haze of endless Equestrian constellations. She then threw the child a horrified look. “What?!”

        “It will suck all of the light out of her children...” Dinky's horn pulsed into the black of night. “...and bathe their cradles in chaos' flames.”

        “Who are you?!” She gazed once more at the stars, then slid up and all but bit the glowing unicorn's face as she barked: “What is the Onyx Eclipse?!?”

        “What is there to change?” A deep voice, suddenly. Evaporating tears. “Don't you see? I killed my mother.”

        A ravenous troll leaped out of Harmony's flesh. In a vicious snarl, she grabbed Dinky with two shivering hooves and dangled her by the shoulders. “Celestia dang it, talk to me! Who are you?! What do you see in the friggin' stars?!”

        Dinky gasped. With her bright eyes rolling back, she once more mewled, her voice cracking. “I don't want to be loyal to them! I want to be loyal to you, Harmony—!”

        “Why is Equestria going to burn up in flames?!” Harmony shouted, her amber eyes burning. Something yellow and porcelain stirred fitfully behind her. “Why am I still here?! Why is everypony dead but me?! Why, dang it, why?!”

        Dinky gasped. In a wave of gray ash, her yellow mane billowed into marshmallowy white and lavender strands. “With our cutie marks, we'll rock Equestria.” Sweetie Belle sputtered. “We use our stomachs to digestia?”

        Harmony shivered in a green bubble. Her eyes blinked from amber to scarlet to violet—

        “Miss Harmony?”

        She turned and flashed a look across a carpet littered with playing cards. Fluttershy gazed down from above the fireplace, crucified to the stone wall with black thorns. “Is everything all right?” Her melodic voice was drowned out as the rainwater beyond the windows exploded like Cloudsdalian corpses. The moon shattered as a wave of fire swam over Everfree and barreled against the black bars of the arcane vault. From behind, there was a gray shadow flying—shrieking—towards the orange foal.

        Blinking, the last pony turned to look, only to be impaled by a thunderous hoof to the face. The world flashed white like moonvision, and she somersaulted backwards until she was lying—sprawled out—in a grassy knoll beneath purple starlight. Following the thrown punch, a panting Derpy cradled her shivering, possessed foal close to her chest while frowning the time traveler's way.

        “What's the m-m-m-m-matter with you?!” The mother hissed. Her frowning eyes swam yellow meteors around the copper pegasus. “Stay away from my Muffin, do you understand me?!”

        “Did you hear her?” Harmony hopped up to numb hooves, panting and sweating through a pale sheet of horror. “Did you?! Please—somepony, anypony—tell me you friggin' heard her!”

        “My daughter is sick! And none of this shouting is helping her get any better!”

        There was a deep rumbling sound—like thunder. The green world shook under the thick voices blanketing the air. “Uhm... Ladies...?” Fluttershy demurely stammered from the background.

        “Please—Just let me talk to her again!” Harmony twitched and twitched but tried to calm the situation with an outstretched limb. “She's picking up something! I don't know what it is, but I-I gotta hear more!”

        “You've done enough! I can't believe I trusted you, even for a second!”

        “Trusted me?! Miss Hooves, I'm trying to save your kid! Just like Miss Fluttershy! I know the two of you are going through a lot of crud right now. But please—for my sake—for... uhm... for Canterlot's sake! Let me just—”

        The rumbling intensified. The blades of grass shook. Fluttershy stirred up to four wobbling hooves and murmured once more: “Ladies, please, if you could just—”

        “I don't care if it's for Celestia's sake!” Derpy frowned. “Stay away! I mean it! I thought you were a kind pony! Guess I was just st-st-st-st-st-stupid! I'm always stupid!”

        “Derpy, for crying out loud, get a friggin' clue! I'm on your side!”

        “Oh no! I've fallen for that before! Not again, Mister Squirrel—”

        “Pony! P. O. N. Y.!” Harmony fiercely barked in Derpy's reeling face. She flailed her upper limbs before the gray mare's clockwork eyes. “Do you not see the hooves! These were not made for gathering nuts, ya Luna-forsaken optometrist jigsaw puzzle! Look at the friggin'' hooves! Miss Fluttershy, tell her! Tell her you see the friggin' hooves!”

        “Uhm... I most assuredly see the frigging hooves.”

        “There! Ya hear that?”

        “But... uhm... if you two would please stop arguing just for one—”

        Derpy retorted above the loud rumbling. “I swear, the only reason you're here is because you're scared for Fluttershy! You d-d-d-d-don't even care if my Muffin lives or dies!”

        “Miss Hooves,” Harmony snarled. “Did you or did you not hear me promise earlier that—?”

        “You were just trying to make a stupid pony feel better!”

        “I was trying to be kind, you envelope-sniffing little—”

        “Ladies!” Fluttershy shrieked, suddenly hobbling between the two and pointing with a yellow hoof. “The ground—”

        Harmony glanced. “What about the ground—Ho boy!”

        The earth exploded beneath them with an ear-splitting snarl. All three pegasi went flying. Dinky's shrieks split the Everfree night, only to be drowned out by a thunderous roar as a great white mass slithered upwards from the depths. With a lashing tail that ripped flanks of grass from their roots, a giant leathery creature stared ravenously at the floundering ponies with milky-white sideways eyes.

        “What is that thing?!” Derpy stammered.

        Fluttershy gasped and squeaked, “Oh my! Oh my—We were on marked territory!” She gulped and struggled against her magically impaired limbs to point at the monstrosity. “It's an ivory nematode!”

        “Well of course it is!” Harmony snarled. On a wave of bubbling anger, the copper pegasus flew mercilessly through the air with an Entropan hoof outstretched. “I'll be danged if I'm in the mood to hug the friggin' thing!”

        “No!” Fluttershy gasped. “It's too big—”

        The gigantic lizard let loose a banshee cry, spun one hundred and eighty degrees, and struck the airborne time-traveler with the cedar-thick bulk of its tail. In a breathless grunt, Harmony's Entropan body was knocked back like a rubber ball. She slammed into the earth and cut a deep ravine, sliding to a stop besides a gasping Derpy.

        “Dear Nebula! Are you okay?!”

        “Yeah...” Harmony hissed through a fluctuating vision of green plumes. “Thankfully I landed on my bushy tail!” The last pony hopped back to her hooves. “Just tell me where the dang salamander went! I'll show him a new position he can bend that tail of his in—”

        “Fluttershy!” Derpy suddenly shrieked.

        Harmony blinked at her, then flashed a pale look across the knoll. She paled. “Oh dear Epona...”

        Fluttershy scuffled up against a lone rock, panting. With wide blue eyes she watched helplessly as the full weight of the ivory nematode sailed towards her—howling—its pale leathery skin flickering like a bolt of lightning...

        ...that punctured the dead thick of the night, revealing the glistening jaws once more to a young Scootaloo. The deep bass hum belonged to a leering maw, and the drooling snout belonged to a dark shadow with glinting eyes that stood across from the foal.

        The orange foal remained frozen in place, drenched by the evening's deluge. Her back was to the claw-scratched storehouse full of priceless bundles of Fluttershy's supplies. Scootaloo knew this. It was the single reason why she wasn't moving.

        There were few things in her young life that the little pony could afford, and even fewer things that she felt like she deserved. All which was empty was normal—was just—like all the gaping spaces that had been left, like the spaces that had been yanked from her. They lingered and decayed like dead holes in the earth, or empty mine shafts. They sung blank verse with the hollows between white-winged names, or the breathless sobs between a sleeping foal's heartbeats.

        The teeth parted slightly—yawning black gaps of heated breath. Scootaloo stared into the abyss; it felt like staring into a darklit mirror. She wasn't surprised at what she did next, at how slowly and steadily she picked up a random branch that she had spotted lying in a puddle before her. She gripped the flimsy bludgeon in gnashing teeth. The wood was thick, rich, like a blue table that she was responsible for breaking, something that was once again an incredibly more important piece of life than what she was about to break next.

        She thought of the melodic voice one last time, and then she shut it out and allowed the nightmares to fall in place of it as she growled a low growl... and charged her way towards the beast beyond the blackness.