The scarlet scarf wrapped around Derpy’s neck a bit loosely, and draped down to her hooves on each side. She removed it and re-wrapped it again, bringing it twice around her neck to shorten the ends out, and observed herself in the mirror.
“It’s nice,” she commented.
Carrot Top smiled, glad that Derpy admired her work.
“It’s yours,” she said, “I figure... y’know, it must get cold in outer space and all.”
“A bit, yeah,” Derpy said, seating herself on a pillow once again, “It’s funny, a day or so back we were back in the time of Starswirl the bearded, and-”
“Who’s that again?” Carrot Top interrupted, raising an eyebrow. Her history wasn’t the best.
“Somepony from before Equestria,” explained Derpy, “You know in those pageants how it got all snowy and the three tribes had to bond together and get over their bickering?”
“Yeah,”
“Well, we were around that time, and it was freezing,” she continued, “I picked up a coat that was stashed away in a wardrobe of sorts real quick, I didn’t really get to see it until I was outside. It looked hideous! Kept me warm a bit, but it was like somepony cut up half a dozen overcoats of every color and pattern and sewed them back together like Frankenstein.”
Carrot Top blinked, trying to imagine the sight of Derpy waltzing about looking like a clown while trying to save the world. It was fitting to the pony’s slightly klutzy demeanour, if totally irreverent toward important historical events. It was also incredibly amusing to picture.
The gardener pony walked back into her kitchen briefly, returning with a pitcher full of tea and a couple of ceramic cups bouncing on her withers. She set the pitcher down, dropped the cups carefully next to Derpy, and proceeded to pour each of them a glass.
“So the mayor election is the day after next,” Carrot Top reminded Derpy between blowing on the hot tea to cool it down, “are you planning on sticking around to vote?”
Derpy considered this. She had been so engaged and excited with her travels through time and space that she hadn’t considered who to vote for. She knew of Mayor Bowler the incumbent, but had forgotten all about the opposition.
Come to think of it, even before leaving she hadn’t heard much support for an opponent.
“Who’s running against Bowler?” she voiced, “I don’t remember.”
“Miss Gavel, I believe,” Carrot Top replied, “though now that you mention it, I haven’t heard much campaigning out of her. It’s like she’s not really trying; no banners, no speeches, nothing! I passed her in the street the other day while I was buying a basket of apples from the Apple family and she just gave me a blank stare.”
That reminded Derpy of the odd mare in the hobby shop who had stared at them and acted funny, which in turn reminded her of the green flashes of light in the hobby shop and in the mayor’s office. They all seemed connected somehow, and she began to realize that these odd events were significant and secret.
“Carrot Top,” she began, “Have you noticed anypony else acting strange? Odd flashes of green light?”
She nodded, taking a moment to sip her tea and then placing the cup back down on a nearby cork coaster.
“This past Tuesday I went to the library, and I wanted to check out the next edition of a novel series I’ve been working on. You know how the stairs goes up to the place where whoever the current librarian is resides, right?”
“Yeah,” Derpy responded, “I don’t know how the old pony manages it.”
“Well he wasn’t at the desk, so I called up and made a bit of noise. The lights started flickering up there, I think it was greenish... and then he came down, wide-eyed and a bit flustered.”
Derpy’s heart sank. There was definitely something going on, and she didn’t like the sound of it. She really wished the Doctor would hurry up and come back.
****
“Alright Doctor, give me a boost!”
Lyra stood on the Doctor’s back, standing on the back hooves and trying to touch the bottom of the cocoon enveloping the TARDIS. It seemed less than a meter away from the tip of her hooves if she stretched them up above her head all the way, but that wasn’t doing them any good.
“What’re you gonna do if..... that thing busts open and..... you’ve got a TARDIS landing right on top of you?” grunted the Doctor, “I can’t arch my back any higher than that, I’m sorry.”
Sighing, Lyra jumped down off the Doctor’s back and landed on all four hooves.
“So....” she said, “How does a time machine end up inside an underground rock cave inside a cocoon anyways? You’d think it’d be too heavy to move, let alone stick to the ceiling.”
The Doctor took a moment to catch his breath, taking a small metal flask out of his jacket pocket and chugging some water. He then stretched a hoof out to Lyra, offering a sip. She shook her head, and he pocketed the item again.
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” he admitted. His eyes scanned the ceiling away from the cocoon containing the TARDIS and toward the other ones. They were much more numerous, and much smaller. He couldn’t see the contents in the darkness, so he drew the sonic screwdriver once more and flicked it on with the highest available brightness setting.
What he saw was chilling. Each and every cocoon contained a different pony, suspended in some kind of material with closed eyes as if asleep. Lyra gasped, noticing even more pods piled up about the cave containing unconscious ponies.
“What happened to them?” she cried as she recoiled in disgust, “Why are they all stuck inside cocoons?!”
The Doctor’s expression hardened, and his ever-present smile melted into a frown. He recognized this work all too well, as he had encountered this species during his fifth incarnation centuries prior. He hadn’t expected to find them here, or now.
“Changelings,” he answered, “These ponies are being kept- preserved if you will- inside these cocoons by changeling. They capture you, and knock you out, then you’re inside a cocoon until they need you. In the meantime they’re out there swanning about pretending to be you.”
Lyra frowned. She hadn’t ever heard of a changeling before, and odd creatures was one of her interests.
“Why do they need to do that?” she asked. The question was answered by a reverberating low voice from the corner, unseen in the darkness up to now.
“Because,” the voice said, “we needed to infiltrate this society.”
The Doctor lit his screwdriver’s point, illuminating the corner and revealing a blackish pony with wide, blue eyes and legs that were full of holes. It was flanked by another two darkish ponies, wings spread.
The first changeling leaped ahead, striking the Doctor as the other two attacked Lyra. The sonic screwdriver fell to the ground out of the Doctor’s hooves, and the cave was plunged into total darkness.
****
The night rolled on, and when neither the Doctor nor Lyra showed up, Derpy grew more worried. Carrot Top eventually grew tired of listening to the radio, and so contented herself to reading a novel quietly.
Derpy looked at the clock. It was 8:55 at night, an hour and a half after they had left Lyra and the Doctor. Trying to occupy herself, she picked up a book at random off the bookshelf that sat against the wall. It was Daring Do and the Curse of the Lost Tomb, one of the books she had already read.
She flipped it open to chapter one, and started to read.
8:57
She had made it past the first page, but hadn’t actually absorbed any of the information. She tried flipping the page back again, starting over from the first word.
8:58
She still wasn’t able to focus on the words. With a groan, she returned the book to it’s shelf and contented herself to lay down on the pillow, burying her face in it and waiting. The only sounds were the ticking of the clock, and the occasional turn of the page as Carrot Top read to herself.
9:00 arrived with the chiming of a cuckoo clock, and Derpy could no longer take it.
“That’s all I can take, and I can’t take no more!” Derpy cried, standing herself up and pacing, “They’ve been gone for too long, something awful must have happened!”
Carrot Top rolled her eyes.
“Derpy,” she said, “They’ve got a time machine, right? If it brought you back here a week later than you wanted, what’s a couple of hours?”
Derpy disagreed. Something felt... off. She remembered the TARDIS key hanging around her neck, and decided to gallop out the cottage’s front doors and into the middle of the dirt path. She held the key aloft, watching and waiting.
It pulsed for a moment, slowly.
“The TARDIS is still out there, see that?!” she yelled back to Carrot Top from outside, “I’m going to go after them to see what’s taking so long.”
“Derpy, no!” cried Carrot Top, darting outside and grasping Derpy’s back hooves, trying to physically tug the pony back inside the cottage.
“You don’t know what’s in that forest,” she worried, “If something bad got them, it could get you too! You could vanish into the darkness of the night without so much as a trace, and we’d never know what happened.”
Derpy slunk back inside. Carrot Top was right, as much as she was eager to find the Doctor and Lyra, she didn’t want to trap herself as well. Besides, perhaps the pulsating key didn’t mean the TARDIS was still materialized at that moment. The Doctor hadn’t specified what would happen to the keys once the TARDIS was up and running once more.
She’d have to wait until morning to go looking if they still weren’t there.