Much had passed in the next few days, including Trixie's return, along with some kind of deletion of Pinkie's mouth. Where was Pinkie, anyway? Twilight was still looking for her, trying to dispel the magic, but the village was still recovering from the chaos. No one knew where she was, not any of Twi's other friends, not the Cakes, although the Cakes had mentioned she hadn't been able to eat for the past few days. Twilight cringed at that. Imagine Pinkie not being able to eat. How horrid.
It reminded her of the latest chapter of Pinkie's book, so different from the other chapters, about her time on the rock farm.
Twilight stopped and tried to imagine Pinkie being without any friends at all.
She tried.
She couldn't. It wasn't thinkable.
Pinkie'd learned the value of friendship much earlier than Twilight had. No wonder Pinkie was so possessive of them. They were so valuable to her.
Her eyes started to tear up with Pinkie's pain. She wanted to help Pinkie with all of her heart, but where was she? It seemed so hopeless. Twilight was desperately running through town randomly now, eager to find where she might be.
She suddenly approached a … nexus? Wormhole?
An eerie black circle stained the world before her; an iris closing off a perfect radius of the world. It was similar to the end of a movie, a camera trick, where the black boundary of the film would slowly bullseye into itself until the film was no more, and the movie was all black.
Yet here it was, in real life, a black void in the world, nightmarish in its perfectness.
Twilight slowly stuck out a front hoof into the inky blackness, giving a little 'eep' as it passed through the yielding event horizon. She quickly set it down there to stop it from shaking.
Breathing heavily, She slowly set up the other front hoof, gingerly stepping over the portal's boundary that wasn't quite flush with the ground. Its maker not being concerned with things such as reality.
Twilight kept thinking that the doorway might close suddenly, shearing her in half. Finally able to stand it no longer, she jumped both her back legs over, and tumbled upside down onto the black, featureless ground upon the other side, a dark, fully featureless void, not a speck of light, nor a note of sound, not even being able to feel her hooves upon the floor.
Twilight managed to upright herself to all fours and heard a general, distant 'snuff-snuff' of Pinkie's tears off in the distance, and started to follow the only sound in the universe. Noting, with some dismay, that the hole back to reality was no longer there.
She stopped and looked behind her again. And then to each side. The longer Twilight stepped through the blackness, the more she got the feeling of someone LOOKING at her. Several someones. thousands of them. She felt as if she were on stage, a character in a play. Of course, Pinkie always acted as if she were a character in a play, and it never bothered HER.
She shook her head and strode onward. She wasn't going to worry about that right now, for two reasons:
A. Pinkie was in trouble and she was going to help her.
2. This was Pinkie's universe, and she doubted anything would happen to her there, knowing Pinkie, no matter how sad she was right now.
Twilight started forward in a mild gallop, closing the distance between her and the sniffling at speed.
Pinkie's tears were slowly trailing down her mouthless snout as Pinkie tried to cry- but couldn't, "Mmmm. Mmm. Mm" .
Pinkie looked up and suddenly spotted Twilight.
"Mmmmmm! MmmMmmmm!" Pinkie looked right into her eyes, then looked down and shuffled her hooves, "mmm."
"Are you ready to go, now?" Twilight asked.
"MmmHmmm."
"Let's do something first," Twilight's horn glowed softly with her inner purple spirit, loosing her worldfamous magic with her trusty failsafe spell, disempowering the enchantment. Her temporary fear of the Black subsiding; here at least was something she knew how to do.
Disenchanted, Pinkie's mouth opened up with the BIGGEST rush of air, "Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh! Oh ThankYouThankYouIwantedToEatThoseCookiesSoBadAndNowICan,HowDoWeGetOutOfHere?"
"The … same way we got in?"
Twilight stopped. This was Pinkie's universe. That didn't sound right- too... logical; not enough … whimsy.
"Well, all the other ways might be … " Twilight smiled, "lonely. Let's go that way, instead."
Twilight closed her eyes, and started thinking about her teleportation spell, but not casting it. Instead thinking about the way she wanted to go, asking for permission, 'hello, little ways' she thought. 'Aren't you lonely? Do you want a friend'?
Suddenly, a circle back to the world appeared before them.
"Oh!" Twilight meeped. "That was easier than I thought it would be."
"Most things are, until people overthink them." Pinkie smiled and hopped briskly through. Twilight more gingerly stepped over the threshold, not wanting to trip over the … whatever that was.
Back in the real world, Twilight looked behind her. There was no black, no indication that anything had happened before. She looked ahead, where she wanted to be: with Pinkie.
Pinkie was again pronking thorough the streets. Her friend was happy. Because all HER friends were happy. And Pinkie, and Twilight, could make them so; a ricochet of happy that reverberated forever.