//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 // Story: It Started With a Hoof // by Skillet Biscuit //------------------------------// “Awww, poor Sapphire! I feel sorry for her!” Twilight looked at Pinkie curiously. “Why is that Pinkie? Personally, I’m jealous of her! Can you imagine what it must be like to sail across the sea to a far off land? I would feel invigorated!” Twilight stated enviously. Pinkie frowned. “Because she didn’t have any friends to keep her company! Can you imagine how lonely she must’ve felt, drifting out there alone on the high seas!” She frowned, her lower lip quivering in remorse. “I feel sorry for the poor mare.” Twilight smirked at her friend, arching an eyebrow. “Pinkie Pie, this did happen a long time ago, you know. Besides, having read a lot about Sapphire’s adventures in Equestria, I’m sure she would have been fine being alone for a few days.” She chuckled. “As a matter of fact, she was never that much of a social pony. She always kept to herself and went by her own rules. Didn’t really trust other ponies that much.” Pinkie frowned as she looked back at the page they were on. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Plus, she’s kinda of a turkey jerk. She seemed really devious, always playing nasty tricks on ponies in order to get what she wanted. I thought I was a prank master until I read about her.” Twilight giggled and patted Pinkie on the back. “Trust me, you are definitely the queen of pranks this day and age.” Pinkie smiled, a slight blush popping up on her cheeks. “Awww, thank you Twilight! I’ll think about that next time I decide to pull something on you!” She giggled, her laugh holding a tinge of insidious evil in it. Twilight smirked. “Oh, how very thoughtful of you.” The two mares giggled. Twilight smiled as she caught her breath. “You know, I’m glad you woke up tonight. You easily turned this evening around for me.” Pinkie nodded. “Hey! I couldn’t just leave my friend alone for the night! Where’s the fun in that?” She gave Twilight a playful noogie, her hoof ruffling up Twilight’s already messed up hairdoo. Twilight yelped as she tried to fight off Pinkie’s attack. “Ack! Pinkie, stop it! Haha! Come on now!” “Awww, come on! I’m not done yet! You’ve got to be more open to this type of fun, you know? You’re a bit of a hard head.” She lightly tapped Twilight’s cranium several times. “Knock on wood!” “Pinkie Pie! Ahh!” Twilight lit her horn and grabbed Pinkie’s forelegs in a purple aura, restraining the playful mare and finally putting a stop to her crazed assault. The pink mare frowned. “Hey, that’s not fair!” she pouted as she conjured her best puppy dog face. Twilight looked at Pinkie’s performance with askance. “Uhhh, not working,” she chuckled. “Although, I will say it’s a pretty worthy attempt.” Her eyes darted to Pinkie’s injured hoof, the bandage starting to show some signs of wear after all the passing hours. “Hey Pinkie, how is your hoof feeling?” Pinkie brought the hoof up to eye level, squinting at it and shaking it in front of her face. She smiled. “It’s A-okay! Hasn’t bothered me at all tonight, although it still feels kinda nummy at times.” Twilight nodded. “That’s not surprising. It's an unfortunate side effect of the healing magic. If you don’t mind, I want to look at it again tomorrow, just inspecting it to make sure its recovering well.” Waiting for a reply, Twilight almost expected Pinkie to be resistant to her offer. But to her great surprise, Pinkie replied with a gleaming smile. “I would love that! Thank you Twiley!” Twilight shook her head. “Don’t mention it! It’s no trouble at all really.” She looked back at the book, turning to the next page. Pinkie snuggled down into the cushions, rested peacefully between Twilight and the back of the couch. “Shall we continue?” Twilight asked. Pinkie slouched her head down on the pillow next to her. Her eyes were heavy with sleep, and her ears had lost much of their perpetual energy. “Aawwwhh I guess.” She smacked her lips as she looked at the new page, her eyelids fluttering as she fought to keep them open. “Does Sapphire take a nap in this chapter?” Twilight chuckled. “Knowing her, I doubt it.” She looked at the title and gasped in excitement. “Oh, this is my favorite chapter! This one tells about the time that Sapphire returned to Equestria and discovered the...Pinkie?” She looked back at Pinkie only to find her snoozing away on the pillow, her mouth agape and tongue lolling out. The night seemed to have done her well. She was still smiling. Twilight chuckled and quietly closed the book with her magic before placing it back on the coffee table. “Well, I guess that’s enough reading for both of us tonight. I think I’m getting a bit tuckered out myself.” As if right on cue, an enormous yawn forced its way out of her lips. Dropping the glow on her horn, she laid her head down on the pillow and looked outside. While the dark storm clouds seemed to put the outdoors in a gloomy shroud, she spotted the first glimmers of morning sunlight beginning to pop out of the horizon as Celestia’s sun began to rise. It would be pretty futile to get a good night’s sleep at this point. There’s just no chance. She found her eyes closing and for the first time that evening, her body relaxed. But you know, a nap should do just fine. In just a couple of minutes she was gone, far off in her own little world in the comforts of her library next to her friend. There was no telling where she went, but in the end, it didn’t matter. After all... We rarely remember our dreams...right? Twilight stood at the top of her precipitous perch. The chilling winds rippled over the top of the island, freezing her to the bone and blowing her mane back. Below her, the breaking waves of a stormy sea slammed against the rock base, sending sprays of ice cold salt water into her face. She felt the limp straps of her empty saddle bag against her back. In the distance, she spotted the placid beaches of Equestria, their white sands shining in the horizon. She gritted her teeth as she looked at the stormy sea below her. So close, and yet so far. “It’s too far to teleport from here! Ugh!” She shuttered as the waves lashed at the stone. “I’m going to have to risk the waters, aren’t I?” Before she could leap into the icy waters below, a low rumbling gurgled up from below her hooves, like the sound of distant thunder. This was no storm however. This was something far, far worse. Twilight froze, a shiver running down her spine. She recognized that rumble. “This can’t be good!” Suddenly, the treacherous waves below her parted as a large snake-like head emerged from the ocean, its glowing slit pupils staring up right at the lavender pony. The terror-stricken unicorn backed away from the ledge as three more heads emerged from the sea. Before long, six snake-like heads in total were towering above her, hissing furiously. In the storm’s wrath, the sea had swept her right into the home of a scylla, an ocean dwelling relative of the hydra. She had read about them in her studies during her travels throughout Equestria. They were amongst the most dangerous monsters of the high sea, terrifying carnivores that have even been known to attack passing ships. Twilight gulped. “Oh...my...Celestia,” she stuttered as one of the heads opened its mouth, revealing its vicious fangs. Perhaps if she were to slowly creep away they would let her go, see her as not worth their time and energy. One does not simply walk away from a beast. With a deafening roar, one of the heads lunged at Twilight. Instinctively, she lit up her horn and teleported out of the serpent’s strike. The monster’s head slammed into the thick stone, several of its giant teeth cracking. It reared its head back and roared in agony. Several other heads began to lunge at Twilight, who was running away from her hunter as fast as her hooves could take her. “Just keep running Twilight! It’s a sea monster! It can’t climb on land!” She looked over her shoulder, expecting to see her pursuer’s heads right on her tail, only to find that the monster had vanished into thin air. “What?” Twilight said as she skidded to a stop at the opposite end of the island. “Where did it g...” Suddenly Twilight noticed the ground darken as a shadow was cast over her. Its silhouette slithered across the ground as it descended upon her. Twilight looked up, and then a scream tore from her lungs. She leapt out of the way just in the nick of time. The scylla’s enormous tail crashed into the island, smashing the rock around it. The island creaked and groaned as a huge slab of stone tore away from the island, plummeting into the ocean and carrying Twilight with it. “GAAAAAAHHHHHH!” Twilight screamed. She clinched her eyes, waiting for the frigid waters to engulf her body. And then, everything seemed to disappear. The sounds of the ocean evaporated; the storm dissipated without a trace; the roars of the scylla vanished into thin air. A comforting warmth spread over Twilight, as if the pleasant Equestrian sun was shining upon her. Everything was silent. Mustering up her courage, Twilight opened her eyes and gasped at her surroundings, mouth open in shock. She was floating high in the sky, surrounded by tall, rocky peaks and puffy pink clouds. Above her, the Equestrian sun bathed the air in a tranquil warmth and placid light. Below her, the sea seemed to have disappeared, replaced by the endless expanse of the rolling greens and forests that made up Equestria. “Wha...where am I?” Twilight asked as she slowly descended upon one of the clouds. To her surprise, instead of passing through the stratocumulus, her hooves lightly planted themselves upon its surface, despite the fact that she had not performed any cloudwalking spells. Its surface felt fluffy and squishy, like a giant cotton swab floating in the sky. She looked around her and realized that the cloud seemed to continue on before her, like a path in the sky. Seeing that she had no other choice, she decided to press on, taking in her surroundings as she went. Despite her countless studies, she found it hard to determine where in Equestria she was. While she easily recognized the familiar landscapes many miles below, the strange peaks around her seemed to come from nowhere. They were...odd. Very odd. They were blocky in shape, made of unstable slabs that looked like they could slip away at any moment. Twilight gulped. “This is getting a little weird.” The path she was walking on lead ahead to an enormous wall of pink cloud. As she walked up closer to it, she could see the peaks around her disappearing in a mysterious haze until they were only a blur. She turned her attention back to the path which seemed to cut a hole into into the massive wall ahead of her, the entrance divided by what seemed to be a light curtain of cirrus cloud. She lit up her horn and grasped the barrier with her magic, carefully pulling it away. Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened in amazement.  “What in Equestria?” The mysterious haze that had shrouding the sky had disappeared, as had much of the surrounding clouds. But most amazing of all were the peaks, now fully visible in the Equestrian sky. They didn’t rise from the ground, but instead were merely floating islands that drifted through atmosphere. Twilight could only begin to imagine how they managed to stay afloat. “This....this is incredible,” Twilight gawked as she walked farther out into the void, stunned and invigorated by her discovery. Suddenly, she noticed something off. She wasn’t feeling the soft, puffy clouds that had made up her sky path. She looked down, her eyes widening in utter horror. The cloud she had been walking on had completely disappeared, leaving behind only faint wisps of water droplets. “Uh oh...” Twilight screamed as gravity suddenly took over, and she plummeted through the Equestrian sky towards the ground far below. She flailed her hooves out, desperately hoping to grab onto something. “NOOOOOOUmpth!” Twilight yelped as her fall was suddenly cut short by something soft and squishy. She groaned as she tried to get up, her eyes rolling in her sockets and her legs trembling from the shock. As she stood up, she noticed that the ground seemed to sink slightly below her weight. She looked down to find that she had landed on something large, white and squishy. There was a sweet smell in the air-- a familiar sweet smell. “Wait a min...Is this...?” She lit up her horn and grasped a portion of the ground below her, tearing a chunk of it away and pulling it up to her mouth. She took a bite and chewed, the sacchariferous taste of marshmallow tingling her taste buds. As she finished chewing, her muzzle suddenly caught wind of another smell wafting through the air, a mix of maple syrup and fresh, buttery pastries tickling her nose. Waffles. Without a second thought, she followed the scent, hopping across several giant marshmallows until she reached the source of the smell. It was a giant stand of monstrous waffles, each one as wide as the library and as thick as a couch, stacked up one on top of the other. So this was what was making up the giant slab like peaks that were floating around her. As she hopped into the middle of the stack, she noticed a pink figure lounging on a sun chair near the opposite edge, casually reading a newspaper and smoking a bubble pipe. Her puffy mane and tail were easily distinguishable. Twilight stood there agape, surprised to see another pony so high in the sky. “Pinkie Pie?” In a flash, Pinkie put down the paper and pipe, did a backflip over the chair, and landed in front of Twilight with ease. She smiled gaily as she zipped over to the lavender librarian and embraced her, picking the startled unicorn up off the ground and swinging her around in joy. “Twilight! Oh I’m so happy you made it safely! I was so worried about my little bookworm! How was the journey?” “Pinkie! Please! You’re squishing me!” Pinkie gasped in shock, releasing Twilight from her python-tight grip. She giggled nervously. “Sorry Twilight. Got a little bit carried away didn’t I?” Her eyes looked over at the bag. “Ooooh! What did you bring?” She asked, pointing a hoof at the bag. “Huh? Oh, nothing really Pinkie. I lost everything in a storm and...” She stopped when she suddenly felt an unfamiliar weight on her side. She looked down and noticed a strange bulge at the bottom of the bag. “Huh? Where did that come from?” She lit her horn and reached her magic into the bag, prowling her energies through the soft cloth until her senses came across something firm and hard. She grasped it with her magic and pulled it out, eyes widening. It was a small, red sparkling gem, just barely bigger than a bit. It’s shape was round and divine, as if it had been crafted by hoof. “OH MY GOSH!” Twilight jumped at Pinkie’s sudden outburst. She looked back at her to find her eyes were wide in wonder, her hooves shaking. “That...that gem! Where did you get it?” she questioned, her voice quivering as she slowly walked up to Twilight, her eyes never leaving the crystal. “I...I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve seen it. It just...appeared,” Pinkie reached up with a hoof and tenderly pulled it out of Twilight’s grasp, looking at it carefully as if she were in a trance. “I can’t believe it. I thought I would never see it again.” She looked back at Twilight, tears streaming down her face. At the same time, the world around Twilight  blurred, the sun shining brighter in the Equestrian sky. “I still remember when she first gave it to me. It was so long ago.”   By now Twilight could barely make out the world around her. The only purely visible figure was Pinkie Pie, who suddenly hugged her tenderly, burying her face in her chest and nuzzling her fur. Her voice was soft. “I miss her.”