Through the Well of Pirene

by Ether Echoes

Chapter 14: Convergence

“Of course, we can do extra cheese. Did you want a pickle on the side with that?” the waitress filly asked. It was all I could do to not crane my neck around to try and get a look at her cutie mark past the folds of her cute little skirt. In a world where destiny stamped itself on a person’s sides, I had to wonder if this was what she intended with her life, or if ponies, like humans, had to start with the small jobs before working their way up to their real dreams.

It’s funny when I think about it. She looked to be the same age as me, but she already knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life.

I smiled back at her and nodded. “Yes, please.” The straw under my rear shifted, and I surreptitiously fluffed it up when the waitress turned to go. It had me wondering whether or not this was a thing with pony cafés, or if it was in some way intended to be quaint or chic in a fashion I didn’t yet comprehend.

I flexed my hooves on the ground in front of the little mushroom-motif table and people-watched. Or, well, pony-watched. It was a habit that had quickly developed over the long hours of waiting for something to happen. Most of them were spent in Twilight’s library reading, but digging into the ancient tomes she’d requested from Canterlot demanded a far more scholarly approach than perusing more recent work did. After seeing me nod off onto the pages more than a few times, no one could really blame Twilight for politely suggesting I take a break to recharge, practice my magic, and maybe have some time around town to myself.

The worst part was how useless it all was. Moldy manuscripts full of unsupported ramblings about everything from demons in the air to the proper uses of dung in alchemy. Sure, goblins came up now and then, but it all felt so disjointed that it was clear the goblin race had managed to successfully obfuscate their presence from the historical narrative.

All this boiled down to me having no real further use to anyone.

Research was out of my hooves. Leit Motif and Marcus were off chasing leads. Naomi had already started putting together things we might need for a long-term trip. Twilight and her friends were always ready to tear off and save Equestria.

For being the person who brought all of these disparate people together, that was a real irony. I’d delegated myself into oblivion.

Despite all that, though, it was hard to feel unhappy about it. Indeed, it was something of a relief. Upon setting out, the prospect of rescuing my sister from the clutches of terrible monsters seemed so utterly impossible that the anxiety had been crippling sometimes. Now that there were loads of competent people working to help me, it felt for the first time that we might actually come out of this alive and successful. The only real source of anxiety other than my vague fears were my dreams, which remained full of unexplained imagery and uncertain context. Reflections of my waking uncertainties, no doubt.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel a little depressed that my every night ended with me drowning.

“Here you go!” the teenager from earlier said brightly, sliding the tray with my sandwich and orange juice off her head. “Enjoy!”

“Thanks,” I said, levitating the sandwich with a jerky sort of grace. It was much as Leit Motif had surmised—I had been created with an adult’s sense of herself, and all it took was a little practice, as if I’d been able to do it all along. It’s like the old saying about bike riding, only less to do with muscle memory and more to do with an inherent capacity to blow the world up with your mind. There was still no headway on learning real spells, though.

While I was in the midst of finishing the last few bites of my breakfast, Bon Bon wandered up from the road and waved. “Hello, Daphne!”

“Hey.” I waved back. “What’s up?”

“I was just doing some grocery shopping earlier,” she said. “On that note, I was wondering, have you heard back from Lyra? I need to know if she’s coming back. The fewer bales of diet grass, bottles of goat’s milk, and boxes of—” she shuddered “—puffed locusts I have to buy, the better.” She shuddered again for effect and muttered, “Really, just because ponies can eat a thing does not mean they should. And she won’t even touch my bonbons, just the store-bought ones.”

I tilted my head. “Doesn’t it offend you that she doesn’t eat your bonbons?”

“No, she buys the store-bought kind because they’re terrible. Sometimes you just want really bad food, you know?”

“Uh, no.” I said flatly.

She shrugged. “I don’t, either, but for her it’s a thing.”

“Well, I haven’t heard back from her, anyway.” I shook my head. “They should be returning by airship, so they might not send a message ahead of them. I don’t think you need to worry about Lyra, though; she’s almost certainly going to head out with us.” I glanced off towards the woods in the distance. “We’re probably heading into the Everfree when they come back, regardless of what they find. Those of us here in Ponyville haven’t really found any other good leads that didn’t dry up centuries ago.”

“Well, I wish you good luck,” she said with a sad smile. “For what it’s worth, you’re in good hooves. Lyra may drive me up a wall, but she knows her magic, even if she tries to brush it off as nothing special.” She shifted her saddlebags and glanced towards the market. “Want to join me? You look like you could use the company.”

“No, thanks.” I shook my head and perked my ears. “I think I’ll take a walk. Thank you anyway.”

“Don’t mention it,” she nodded.

In truth, I probably could have used a little companionship right then. No matter—I didn’t want to become dependent on others more than I already was. I hitched my own saddlebags back on and started towards town. These were a gift from Naomi through Rarity, and they looked and fit a great deal better than the borrowed set I’d entered with, which had been intended for a full-sized riding horse. I didn’t bother to ask how Naomi got the money for it, and I seriously didn’t want to know.

Despite growing ever closer to winter, the autumn air was still as warm and lovely as it had been the first day I’d stepped across the barrier. I let my legs stretch out a bit and trotted. No pony really paid me any heed. There was nothing remarkable about me now that I no longer sported a forest of cuts and bruises or a set of bags that were far too large for me. So what if I didn’t have a cutie mark, either—no adult was going to judge me for it.

The schoolhouse approached through the trees, and I slowed to look at the foals playing in the yard. It was impossible not to smile at such a sight. Pony foals really were the most aggressively adorable creatures on the planet. Quite a few of them were Amelia’s age, too. I focused on a team playing some pony version of soccer near the back fence and pictured her with them.

For some reason, she came out in my imagination as a unicorn filly, with a cream coat and blond mane, just like mine. Even as a foal she had that same irrepressible energy that she carried around with her everywhere else. She bounded across the field to look up at me with that sly, smug grin of hers.

“Hey, Daphne!” a stallion’s voice came out of her mouth. I blinked and shook my head, dismissing the vision and looking up to find the real source.

Oh, great. It was him again.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” Thunderlane asked as he floated overhead. “Thought I’d clear away a few of the clouds. You know. For the kids.”

“For the kids. Of course,” I said. “You're as subtle as you are charming, Thunderlane.”

“Also great with kids,” he said with a grin. Maybe he wasn’t quite as much of a dolt as I surmised, because that sounded like humor. “Out for a run, huh?”

“A bit, yeah.” I started along the fence, picking up my pace again. “Just kind of checking things out. Enjoying the sights.”

Thunderlane kept up with his wings holding him aloft a few feet off the ground. “Yeah, I bet you don’t get views like this back in Canterlot.” He paused. “Okay, well, maybe you do, but you get them from like a mile off the ground. What’s it like there, anyway? I bet it’s amazing living right there in the shadow of the castle.”

For a brief moment, I wondered if this was some sort of cosmic joke. Here I was, a whole world away, and it felt like I was just down the street getting hit on by a local boy. Well, to be fair, in actual physical distance, Ponyville wasn’t that far away, but that’s beside the point. For once, I was going to set the record straight on something.

“I’m sorry, Thunderlane, I think you’ve gotten the wrong impression,” I said, not that I knew what for the life of me what had given him that impression, “I’m not really going to be around here much longer, and I’m not terribly interested in a long-distance relationship. I mean, I’m from another world—”

“City.”

“—yes, city, and that’s not really the sort of commitment a mare can make in just a couple days of, uhm…” You continuously trying to “bump into” me and me fleeing the other way? I said in my head, but thought better of it. “…getting to know one another.”

Thunderlane dropped to the path. “Ah. Well. Fair enough, I guess,” he said.

“That Cloudchaser seemed pretty interested in you,” I lied. Then again, perhaps she expressed her like in ways I didn’t understand. Derisive ways.

“I don’t know. She’s kind of off-and-on,” he said. “I tried to see other ponies after the last rocky spell, but then Rainbow Dash took off on that acting gig and I haven’t heard from her since, either, so I figure it’s off between us.”

“And you don’t think Cloudchaser is a little peeved at being second choiced like that?”

“Huh? No. It’s totally legitimate. Still, just the way things stand. I thought you and I hit it off pretty well, though, so—well, no big deal.” He flapped his wings and rose. “Thanks for making it clear, at least. I could use that in my love life more often.”

I waved him off. “Any time.”

As he set off back into the sky, I allowed myself a small sigh. If only he’d been a pig, so I could have shouted at him. It would have been really nice to start shouting at someone right then, to have a good fight so that I could just get all of this frustration out over my helplessness and malaise.

I began to trot back to Twilight’s library so I could find Marcus and piss him off. It was only about twenty steps later that I remembered he wouldn’t be there—gone off with Lyra and Leit Motif.

I hadn’t been able to shout or fight with anybody since he’d left.

Somehow I’d wandered into the middle of Ponyville again. Young stallions and mares greeted one another and formed cheerful little cliques. I imagined myself among them, comparing them to the groups at school I’d allowed myself to become so engaged in. They wouldn’t be obsessed with pop culture or the latest trends, though—at least, not the ones I was familiar with. It was a whole new breed of familiarity, one I could let myself be sucked into oh-so-easily.

A pair of mares turned to look at me. I realized only belatedly that I had been staring, and gave them an apologetic smile and wave before trotting on. They probably would have asked after me given a moment to do so.

Any longer here and I really would be one of them.

My steps hurried and carried me back.

“Daphne! There you are,” Twilight called as I stepped in the door. “I just sent somepony out for you. Did you get my message?”

“No,” I said, pushing the door shut behind me. We weren’t alone—Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Naomi were all present. Naomi must have shaken Patch somehow, since she was no where to be seen. “What’s up?”

Twilight restacked books on the shelves behind her. “The airship is coming in for a landing. Leit Motif had a message sent saying we should all get together.”

“Wow, already? They must have gotten what they needed pretty fast,” I said, daring to allow a thread of excitement to enter my tone. I paused as I passed Naomi and rocked back on my heels, looking at her more closely. “Also, whoa, nice dress. Like what you did with your hair.”

Naomi beamed and twirled, trailing curls of red bouncing on her shoulders where they escaped the artful mass of braids and bun on her head. “Do you like it?” She smoothed her hands over the dark silk skirt, which hiked daringly over one leg. “Rarity adapted one of her styles, and I understand this is the sort of hair styling they use for a princess!”

“A greatly simplified ceremonial style,” Rarity clarified. She sipped tea from a cushion set upon the floor. “And a painter who can’t use more than one or two canvases hardly deserves the name, I say. Humanity offers many possibilities. Perhaps I should start thinking about how to expand into this hitherto untapped market.”

“Applejack and Fluttershy should be here soon,” Pinkie Pie said. “And then Leit Motif and Lyra and Marcus will be almost right on top of them! We should hang out after the big important meeting.” She bounced over to the table. “I brought some awesome cupcakes just in case!”

“They are awesome!” Spike agreed from behind the table. Twilight’s magic caught him up and dangled him in the air with a stolen cupcake in hand. “Uh. Just testing?”

“Testin’ what?” Applejack asked as she pushed the door open. The look in her eyes took me back a bit—they were as frosty as they had been when she’d heard the story of Marble Stone.

“Applejack,” Naomi asked quietly, “are you all right? Did something happen?”

“More like somethin’ didn’t happen.” She walked over to Rarity and pulled her into a tight embrace.

“Applejack? Dear, whatever is the matter?” Rarity asked. She tensed up, as if she could sense whatever dire news the other mare had to impart.

“I just spoke to Zecora a little bit ago,” Applejack said, keeping her voice even as she slowly worked into her story. “She’d come in for some of the leftovers from the harvest, like she does every year. I asked her why the girls haven’t come home yet, and why they ain’t sent word ahead.” She took a deep breath. “She said the girls came to her house days ago, and she hasn’t heard back from them since.”

It would have been impossible for Rarity to go any paler shade of white, yet she tried mightily. She put a hoof over her heart and caught her breath in slow gulps. “Do my mother and father know?” she asked in a breathless, strangled tone. “Oh, stars! We have to go at once! We’ll need to comb every inch of the woods!” At once, she leapt to her feet and raced for the door, with Applejack not far behind her.

Lost in the forest.

“Wait!” I shouted, holding them up short just as they reached the door.

Fluttershy, who was in the midst of opening it, froze and started to shut it again. “I’ll come back later.”

“No—damn it, not you, Fluttershy. Sorry.” I walked up to the two mares, looking them in the eye. There I saw fear, anger, and a powerful determination. These were two young women who had lost their baby sisters to unknown forces in those dark woods that laid outside their homes and swallowed the unsuspecting. Perhaps this is what Naomi and Marcus had seen that first night, when they’d looked into my eyes and decided to go with me.

“The Everfree Forest has a lot of dangers,” I said quietly. “You all know that better than I do. This timing, though… it strikes me as more than a little too coincidental for this disappearance to have been an accident.” I held out a hoof to forestall comment. “I know, there could be a million possible things that could have happened, but even if these events aren’t related, we’re all going to the Everfree anyway when Leit Motif and the others get back. We can all search together.”

Applejack tilted her hat down to hide her eyes as she glanced aside, breathing deeply to steady herself as Rarity did the same. “Yeah,” she said after a moment, “you make a good point. Can do more together than apart.” She looked up at me. “Mark me, though, if you have to leave the forest or we find any sign of the girls, Rarity and I… well we might not follow you out.”

I nodded. “I understand. Let’s at least hear Leit Motif out—maybe she has some news that’s relevant.”

Rarity didn’t speak—perhaps she didn’t dare to with her emotions running as high as they were—and returned to her cushion. The tea went untouched from then on. Pinkie Pie sat between the two silently, and we waited with breathless uncertainly.

Several minutes later, a knock came on the door, and then Lyra burst in like a ray of sunshine. “The conquering heroes return victorious!” she declared as she pranced in, with all four hooves striking a happy beat. “Pinkie Pie, confetti!” She held out a hoof to the pink mare. When none was forthcoming, she glanced around. “Whoa. I know I’m not welcome everywhere, but this is a tough crowd.”

Twilight sighed. “We just had some bad news is all, Lyra. I hope you’ve brought some good to counterbalance it.” Her ears perked and she glanced past her. “It sure sounds like you have, but where’s Marcus and Leit Motif?”

“Bringing in the prisoner.”

“What?”

“What?” I echoed Twilight’s statement and stared at the smug unicorn, along with everyone else in the room. “Please tell me you guys didn’t kidnap Lightning Dust? You did, didn’t you? I’m going to pony prison for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”

Lyra waved me off with a hoof. “I swear, we had perfectly good reasons! Also, you aren’t technically an accomplice to the kidnapping yet.”

“Is that a cut on your head?” Naomi asked in a worried tone.

“Don’t worry about it, Leit patched me up.” Lyra looked Naomi over. “Nice dress.”

Behind her, Marcus yelped as the back of his head hit the doorframe.

“A little lower,” Leit Motif said.

“Yeah, I got that much,” he grumbled and ducked, steadying one end of a large bag held in Leit Motif’s green aura. Leit Motif trotted in and shut the door behind her with her rear hoof. She winced and rubbed her side, where a wine-colored bruise was faintly visible under her dark coat.

Together, they formed a semicircle before us and laid the package down in the center of the room. “Ladies and gentle—uhm,” Lyra said, “dragon and human—I present to you the pony known as Lightning Dust.” She caught the bag’s end in her magic and dumped out the tied and gagged form of a blonde mare.

Leit Motif crouched next to her while we stared in horror. “No use playing coy, Flash. We have your number.” She reached down and yanked out the sock in her mouth.

Lightning Dust groaned and awkwardly shifted to a sitting position, with her legs tied together in pairs before her. “A-all right, tidy. If I were a real magician, you lot wouldn’ be laughin’ quite so hard. Shows what I get for—for neglectin’ my studies,” she said in an accent that rang all sorts of bells for me. As I so often could, I heard the three goblins in the forest as clearly as if it were moments ago. Then, with a little shake, she shimmered and changed, almost as if a curtain were being peeled aside. All at once her coat darkened to a deep yellow while her mane lost all of its color. Her eyes turned pale and her wings shed their feathers.

The other mares in the room gasped with horror. Rarity pointed a hoof. “Changeling!”

The mare known as Lightning Dust winced. “Ugh. Please don’ try to associate us with those things. I’ve never tasted love and by Thor I have no intent on startin’ now.”

“Well,” Rarity conceded, “you didn’t change in a vile shade of green…”

“No, you’re right,” Twilight said as she pressed her face close to the ersatz pony. “That definitely wasn’t changeling magic. Just how did you do that?”

Leit Motif gave Lightning Dust—Flash—a light kick from behind. “That’s not all of her tricks. Show them the other one.”

“Do I have to?” Flash groaned. She hopped away from Leit Motif as the latter lifted her foot again. “Whoa, easy there! Stupid question, I know. I just really hate doing it.” She puffed her cheeks and then shook herself again, letting out her breath as she did, as if expelling tension with it. Yellow coat turned to blue, white hair grew long and stained with color. It was an absolutely striking creature, with all the color of the rainbow—well, minus indigo.

If the prior transformation had set the mares agape, this one sent them into paroxysms.

“Stars and stones!” Rarity cried.

Twilight stood staring dumbfounded. Spike started to fan her with a library pamphlet just in case.

Applejack took her hat off. “What in tarnation? Rainbow Dash? How?”

Fluttershy rubbed her eyes and looked again. “Oh.”

“That is a gorgeous pony,” Naomi gushed. “Uh. I mean. Gasp.”

“I knew it!” Pinkie Pie shouted, stunning everyone as she leapt on top of the table and pointed down at the bound mare. “Dashie, you’re a time traveling shapeshifter who went back in time to save the world from the terrible forces of darkness!”

Silence greeted her pronouncement.

“Oh, that’s good,” Flash said. “I definitely need to use that one, someday.”

Pinkie Pie deflated as we stared at her. “What? It could happen.”

“All right, so,” Naomi said, “this Lightning Dust is actually a goblin named Flash, and—”

“Wait!” Flash said quickly. “Before you guys start smacking me around for information, just… hold on a second.” She eased herself onto her hindlegs and hobbled over to the center of the room. Leit Motif’s eyes narrowed, but Marcus touched a hand to her shoulder and she looked up at him. I blinked and stared as something seemed to pass between them. Leit calmed, but my attention was hauled back as Flash spoke again.

“Look, I…” Flash said as she looked around the room in Rainbow Dash’s eyes. “I probably ain’t the nicest person who ever lived. I… I nearly got some of you here killed and really didn’t kind of apologize for that.” She swallowed and looked down, shaking herself to return her form to that of the goblin pony. “I’ve spent a good amount of time thinkin’ back on that. It was… well, I was actin’ a lot like the sort of goblins I hated growin’ up, the sort who would pick on me and my kid sister for bein’ kind of small.”

She took a breath and looked back up at the assembled group. “I’ve been tied up for the better part of a day, so I’ve had an opportunity to do some thinkin’. Yeah, I’m a goblin,” she admitted with a tone of finality. “I’ve been livin’ among pony kind for years now. Sure, maybe I could have integrated better, but aside from signing a false name to some forms I ain’t broken any laws—well, uh, I guess underaged drinking is a law, and so is, uhm, a few minor offenses… but what I mean to say is, that I… I kind of like livin’ as a pony.” She rubbed her hooves together awkwardly within her bindings. “You all even gave me a chance after I’d done so much damage at the Wonderbolts Academy. I know it must seem a little weird, but I ain’t got no love lost for the Wand King—I came out here to be my own mare, not to be some… some pale copy.”

Flash looked around imploringly at each and every one of us, her eyes puffy and red as she held back the tears. “Please. I swear, I’ll tell you everythin’ I know. All proper and tidy, no holdin’ anythin’ back. If I know it, I’ll say it. Just…” She bit her lip. “Don’t take my life away from me. Maybe it’s fake, but it’s all I’ve got left.”

Leit Motif opened her mouth, as if to protest, but closed it a moment later and shuffled her hooves uncertainly. Even Lyra and Pinkie Pie looked stunned. Tears began to fall across Flash’s face as she once again looked to each of us in turn, lingering on first Twilight’s friends, and then Twilight Sparkle herself.

Into the silence, Fluttershy walked up to the bound mare. She reached forward and nuzzled at Flash. She dried her tears with her foreleg and untied her bonds. When Flash winced at what must have been painful bruises from the ropes, Fluttershy soothed them with her hooves. “It’s all right,” she whispered, and Flash fell against her weakly to cry.

We all filed into Twilight’s kitchen a bit later. Flash sat placidly on the long side of the table, quietly finishing a bowl of soup Fluttershy and Spike had prepared the moment the former heard that the prisoner was hungry from her ordeal. Leit Motif remained unapologetic, and we reluctantly had to agree from her telling of the capture that Flash’s potential for flight had represented an unacceptable risk. I looked at my friend thoughtfully as she walked in behind Marcus and rubbed up against her shoulder before we sat down.

“Thank you,” I said. “You and Lyra and even Marcus could have been seriously hurt out there.”

She flashed me a grateful smile and sat down next to me.

Meanwhile, Marcus had frozen and begun to stare at Naomi as if seeing her for the first time as the other human sat down beside him. “Na… Naomi?”

Naomi giggled. “That’s me.”

“You look, uhm…” He floundered for a moment. “Fantastic.”

“Isn’t he a dear boy?” she said and patted his cheek. “Last time I saw you looking like that, Daphne had been dressed up for that dance.”

“If a man can’t recognize beauty,” he said, recovering with one of his damnable cheesy quips, “then what worth is he?”

I stuck my hoof in my mouth and gagged. Leit giggled politely. It could have been my imagination, but she seemed just a bit more sure of herself as she settled in. Comparing it to my recent memories, though, she had just a hair more composure than the last time we’d sat as a group. I looked between her and Marcus again with a little frown.

“So, uh…” Flash said. “I guess I should start from the beginning.”

Twilight nodded from the head of the table. “That would be best, yes.”

Flash rapped her hoof on the table in a self-conscious gesture. “All right. So. I guess you could say it all started for me when I was just a little filly, maybe seven or eight years old. At the time, I lived with my family in a small town in the Everfree Forest on the verge of the Ways, right next to the ancient Wand castle there.”

Twilight floated a notepad out. “Ways?”

Flash nodded. “The paths between worlds. The Everfree’s full of them, if you know right where to look. You can crisscross it back and forth a hundred times and never find them. After Nightmare Moon destroyed her own castle, we goblins moved in, concealin’ ourselves just within the Way back to Mag Mell, the great goblin city that lies on no world, so that even if you were right on top of it you couldn’ find the castle.”

“Prime spot for kidnappin’ foals, huh?” Applejack asked bitterly.

Flash bristled and flared her wings slightly. “That’s untrue! I mean… sure, maybe some kids have been abducted on orders from time to time, but we don’t make a sport of it. People get lost in the Ways all the time, and if we didn’t save them they’d die.”

“And then you turn ’em into creatures just like yourself, huh? Sounds like a fair trade.”

“We don’t—!” Flash huffed and settled back. “Look, you don’t know the first thing about goblins, and we like it that way. We’re castoffs and leftovers because other people have made us that way. We don’t belong no where except those places we’ve carved out for ourselves. And goblinization ain’t our fault—it’s just the way things work out there. The Ways are dangerous and they shape you. People weren’t meant to live out on the edge.”

“I think we’re getting a little far afield,” Twilight said placatingly. “I’d love to hear more details about all of this, but we should stay focused on what happened.”

“Yeah,” Flash said with a quiet sigh. “Right. Well, as I was saying, eight years ago I was just a filly livin’ with my folks in town when the word came that the Court were testin’ young goblins. Anygob who was chosen would receive special rewards from the Wand King himself. Me and five others were picked, and when they brought me in they told me that for the next few months and years my life would need to be someone—somepony—else’s. That pony for me was Rainbow Dash. Each of the five others was a pony sittin’ around this very table. They were called the Elements of Harmony.”

Fluttershy lifted a hoof. “Uhm… I’m sorry, but I’m confused. We’ve only known we were the bearers for two years. Even Celestia didn’t know, right?”

“She’s never claimed any special knowledge,” Twilight answered, though her gaze was fixed on Flash. “But your Wand King did.”

“When the sky lit with a rainbow that rang from one side of the country to the other,” Flash said. “We were selected a few days before that, and the rainbow light’s the point when we were told what we would become.”

“Why, then? Is it some form of…” Twilight waved her hoof vaguely, “weird, metaphysical plot to try and steal the Elements? To somehow take our place before we discovered them and thus take them for yourselves?”

“I don’t know. I just know it has to do with a girl.” Flash shook her head. “That was the other thing that we were told: that there’d be a little human girl our age who would come and we’d all be friends together. They said she’d be called to us and we’d all go together to fulfill a big important prophecy.” She snorted. “That was working great until she stood us up.”

“I think it’s Daphne,” Marcus said.

I blinked.

“That sounds like a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?” Naomi asked skeptically.

Marcus shook his head. “Think about it—what other kid her age was insane enough to play around in the deep parts of the Everfree Park all by herself? Who met a unicorn? A unicorn who, I might add, was drawn to the Everfree Forest because of this very same rainboom thingie.”

Leit Motif shifted in her seat and opened her mouth, but Flash lifted a hoof and spoke first. “Ah. Pardon me, but who is this Daphne you guys keep talkin’ about?”

Hooves pointed towards me and Flash fixed her gaze, taking me in for the first time. She squinted and stared close. “That’s a unicorn.”

“I wasn’t always,” I told her. “I met a goblin in the woods who turned me into this by accident when I tried to rescue my little sister Amelia from him. That’s why we’re all here—your Wand friends kidnapped my baby sister.”

“Was the one with the wand a stunted, potato-like guy with a really thick accent?”

I nodded.

“Well,” Flash rubbed her chin with a hoof. “That’s Fetter, right and proper. He was Knight of the Wand when I left, and I guess he held on to that. How old’s your sister? I mean… maybe she is the one. Time passes differently over in Mag Mell.”

“Eight.”

Flash creased her brows at that. “Well, that ain’t right. Maybe if they thought she was actually a few years older… but, well, it’s bloody unlikely you’re the one we were waitin’ for. I mean…” She laughed nervously. “The girl we were to meet, she was supposed to be touched, special. Like, she could see things that no one else could, even things that lay over the horizon or far off in the future. The things she imagined came true.”

“Oh, well,” I said with a quiet note of bitterness, “that’s definitely not me, then. Not a single thing I’ve imagined has ever come to pass.”

Leit Motif and Lyra spoke up at once, talking over one another. They exchanged a look and Lyra ceded the table to Leit, who cleared her throat and said, “I think we may be dismissing this possibility too early. I know the connection is a little tenuous, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong.”

“What can we do with that information, though?” Twilight Sparkle interjected. “Flash, do you know anything else? Perhaps where you were taking this girl?”

“A well of some sort?” Flash answered vaguely, rolling her eyes to the ceiling as if she could find answers there. “I don’t know where it is, anyway. As for anythin’ else… sorry, not that much. For what it’s worth, you guys are way less scary than most goblins believe.”

“Uh… thanks?” Twilight quirked a brow and shook her head. “I think we’ve heard enough to know that this is very serious. Can you lead us to the goblin town?”

Flash nodded. “Of course.”

“Hold up,” I said. “This Rainbow Dash mare; where did she go? Was that part of your plan?”

“Heck no,” Flash said with a shudder. “We wanted as little to do with you lot as possible.”

Leit Motif leaned forward. “She disappeared a little under a week ago, didn’t she? Shortly after Amelia was taken.”

“And Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Apple Bloom just a little bit ago,” Applejack said darkly.

I drew up my memories from earlier in the day. “Thunderlane told me Rainbow Dash had gone away on an acting job.”

Flash’s ears perked forward. “Acting?”

The table’s attention turned back to her. Rather than shrink back, she pressed forward, looking suddenly very engaged. “I just had a really horrible thought… I mean, if they think they have the girl from the prophecy, even if they’re wrong, well… they’re going to want the false Elements of Harmony to be there. I’m probably the only one who left, so they’d need a replacement.”

“More like a stupid thought,” Applejack said with a snort. “If they were tryin’ to avoid contact with us, what makes you think they’d be so boneheaded as to contact Rainbow Dash herself?”

“Don’t underestimate the levels of incompetency the goblin bureaucracy can sink to,” Flash said dryly. “More importantly, I can’t tell you how many things we got wrong about you or your society. We’ve been prohibited from associating with Equestrians for like a hundred years now, on the Wand King’s orders. Tell you what… let me have a look at her mail from the last week.”

Twilight Sparkle got to their hooves and stretched her wings uncertainly. “I’m pretty sure it’s felonious to look at another mare’s postage, but… well…” She gave Leit Motif and myself an uncertain look. “The coincidences around here are getting just a tiny bit out of hoof. I want to see, too.” She started out the door. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“You can’t be serious,” Applejack said disgustedly. “Let me see that again.” She reached out and snatched the flyer from Twilight. “‘Looking for athletic actor for the role of Rainbow Dash in an upcoming play. Non-flyers and bipeds need not apply. All expenses paid. Please fill out the attached form for immediate return.’”

“How’s the pay?” I asked blandly. “Maybe I should look into this. I’ve been meaning to get a part-time job.”

“Sub-contracted imps, I’ll bet,” Flash said sagaciously. “They get overzealous with even the simplest orders. Probably because their brains are about the size of a robin’s egg, on the generous side. When they got the word to put out a castin’ call to all flyers, they meant it.”

Fluttershy stepped around the table curiously. “I guess that explains why Rainbow asked me to look after Tank for a while.”

Twilight looked at Fluttershy with exasperation. “Why didn’t you say—? Never mind. Whatever happened, we have pretty good confirmation that the goblins have Rainbow Dash, too. That’s pretty frustrating. If we need the Elements of Harmony to beat this Wand King back, we’re short a member… and I think it’s time I wrote Princess Celestia.” She grimaced. “I wish I had earlier, but we had no idea this was more serious than a very unusual kidnapping. No offense, Daphne.”

“No, I understand,” I said. “That’s not the sort of thing you awaken a kingdom for. What are these Elements, anyway? I’ve only heard vague mention.”

“The Elements of Harmony. They’re the six classical virtues that inform our society. They’re also six magical artifacts that represent those elements, and together they can drive back evil or destructive powers.” She frowned down at the flyer. “Rainbow Dash is the bearer of the Element of Loyalty. Without any one of us, we can’t work them to full effect. That leaves Equestria vulnerable to threats that raw force alone can’t handle.”

“Really?” Flash asked. “I always thought they enslaved and brainwashed people to your dark wills.” She coughed as the mares in question looked at her sternly. “Uh. Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

“Spike?” Twilight called as she started into the next room. “Take a letter.”

“Sure thing, Twi,” the dragon said as he followed her, grabbing a roll of paper and an ink well on the way.

Naomi crouched down next to me thoughtfully, careful to keep her dress from tearing. “How are you feeling?”

“Me?” I looked up at her. “All right, I guess. Kind of giddy, actually—we finally have a direction to go in.”

“What about all this talk of… of you and prophecies?”

I shook my head. “I don’t buy it. I mean… okay, at this point, I’ll buy that they had foreknowledge of events enough to plan this out in some fashion, even if it didn’t work out. Me being a part of it, though? Leit, Lyra, and Marcus just speculated wildly. I certainly don’t have visions of the future or anything like that.” I rubbed a leg up against the other. “If they were wrong about Amelia, there’s no guarantee I’m any better of a match.”

“All right. Fair enough, I guess,” Naomi said with a nod and ran her fingers through my mane. I smiled at her and gave her a quick nuzzle.

Flash shifting on her chair out of the corner of my eye triggered a reminder, and I wandered over to her. “Hey.”

She glanced up at me with uncertainty in her pale blue eyes. It didn’t seem as if she’d believed the idea any more than I did, but there was just the hint of wariness there—some hint of the scars of her past that she carried along with her, perhaps. “Oi.”

Shifting my stance to be less threatening, I sat on the chair next to her. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Without really waiting for a response, I asked, “How does one undo the magic of the wand?”

“The Arcana are more than magic,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, I honestly don’t know much about how or why magic of any kind works, but from the way I was told, they’re more than just spells. They’re like how Twilight there described the Elements of Harmony. They represent ideas, and they work in a way that’s not really easy to describe.” She shifted to look at me more closely. “The Wand, for instance, is the Arcana of Fire, among other things. Fire is change; it transforms things from one to another. The degree of change is important, but more important is what that change means.”

She waved her hoof towards the others. “Think about it… if the Wand—any portion of it, since it’s split into four—could change anything into anything forever and without consequence, there’d be no stopping the Wand King. He could have an army of titanium-plated dragons in a heartbeat. In order for a change to stick, for it to last or even be effective to begin with, it needs to work with concepts like identity and the spirit of what things are. A tree turned into another, similar kind of tree is easy. A tree into a dragon is almost impossible.”

“So… you’re saying that this won’t last, or…” I chewed over that information for a second. Something seemed to be niggling at me, as if this information were nothing new. “Wait. What if it’s somehow part of me to be a unicorn? I mean… there’s been times where I’ve felt as though I don’t have another body. That I’ve been this way all my life.” I glanced over to Leit Motif, whose green eyes mirrored mine as she looked back. “Like I belong this way.”

“Well,” Flash said steadily, “if that’s the case, then it may be that the only way you’ll ever get to walk on two legs again is to find someone willin’ to use a Wand on you.” She grinned. “That, or learn the goblin art of illusion shapechanging magic. Good luck, there; I had some of the best teachers the King could find and I still had trouble assuming one alternative shape. The second one, Lightning Dust, I was only able to put together because it’s so close to Rainbow Dash and myself.”

I sighed and nodded my thanks. I might have asked more, but Twilight returned with a dark frown creasing her features. “No response. I think Princess Celestia has made an unscheduled absence, but I won’t know until we can get a response back from conventional mail.”

“Wonder if she’s investigating this weird junk, too,” Lyra said thoughtfully. “We can’t wait around for a response, though, can we? Unless you can send a magical message to Princess Luna or the Captain of the Guard.”

“No, I can’t.” Twilight shifted her weight uneasily. “If there’s a threat against the Elements, we need to move now, with everything we have at our disposal.”

“The airship?” Pinkie Pie asked excitedly. “That would make this so cool.”

“Already taken off,” Lyra said with a grimace. “We can send a pegasus after them, but that might be a few hours, if they can even catch up at all.”

“Their next destination isn’t far—they’re making a stop, so there’s a chance somepony fast can catch them. It’s the only thing resembling military assistance we’re going to get for another two or three days,” Twilight said. “They’ll just have to meet us at the Tree of Harmony.” She looked to me with a small smile. “We’ve delayed for days. Now, we actually have a lead and I’m going to use it. Get ready to go, everypony.”

“Finally,” Marcus crowed.

Naomi sighed and toyed with the hem of her new dress. “Beautiful things rarely last.”

Rarity patted her on the side. “I know, dear. We must all bear that tragedy in our hearts.”

While everypony and everyone else scattered to make their last minute preparations, I went to the front door and pushed through in order to stare across the Everfree Forest. It seemed that a mist-shrouded castle lay just at the far end, looming in my mind.

“I’m coming for you, Amelia. Just hold on tight,” I said. Hope swelled in me, for the first time since reconnecting with Leit Motif.

Even then, though, I felt a quiet tremor of uncertainty. I put it down to nerves, but somehow I felt in my heart that the journey wasn’t over yet.

We still had so much further to go.

It was strangely comforting to see that so many of my other companions felt trepidation at entering the Everfree Forest again. My last experience there involved being chased by sentient plant life, so the prospect wasn’t a terribly settling one.

Of everyone, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie seemed the least concerned, which I rather expected. The latter two were counting provisions and tightly securing them in a wagon that Applejack herself would haul with a modicrum of camping supplies and other material.

Fluttershy and Rarity were hardly troubled by our first destination, this “Tree of Harmony,” which they had traveled to before at least once, and to its general area—near some old, abandoned castle—often. They fretted over handing over their respective workplaces, though, wondering who might care for their animals and clothes while they were gone and making hasty arrangements. I rather suspected that the already somewhat skittish Fluttershy would admit to being more than a little frightened of the Everfree’s dangers if asked, but had no interest in confirming it.

Marcus and Naomi were as worried as I might have expected them to be, having experienced the dangers in the same proportion I had. Naomi brushed Hector a little too much for it to be anything but nerves, while Marcus did the thing where he checked and rechecked his guns, making sure they were clean and well-serviced.

Leit Motif, who had once traveled the Ways to meet me once a day for several weeks, seemed no more concerned than if she were preparing for a long walk. Lyra, of course, displayed about as much fear as Pinkie Pie did. She parted only to say goodbye to a few friends and returned to lament that she couldn’t get any puffed locusts for the road. My bad on that.

The one person whose reaction actually surprised me was Flash. She wore the skin of Lightning Dust at the moment, but I of all people had no trouble picturing the alien creature she truly was underneath it—of everypony here, I might have expected her to show the least amount of fear of anypony who wasn’t utterly insane. Her eyes, though, were wide in their sockets, and she fluttered her wings with an uncertain twitch often. From the chest of her goblin belongings, she’d produced a set of deadly sharp hoof blades that she kept kneading on the ground, and I frowned as I considered her. It seemed to me that trusting her to be along on this mission at all, let alone carrying weapons, was a rather extreme risk that probably shouldn’t have been countenanced.

Fluttershy had, however, convinced all of us to give the disguised goblin a chance, and the other mares were inclined to take the gentle pegasus at her word.

“You know,” Flash said, in nearly flawless Equestrian accent, as she noticed my interest, “maybe it’s a little weird, but I kind of feel like I know them already.”

I perked my ears at this odd topic, but leaned in curiously anyway. “How’s that?”

“We—that is, the other actors like me—all spent the better part of a year perfecting our roles. We studied everything we could about Equestrian society and what was known about our chosen targets. A lot of it was wrong, honestly, but ultimately we just sort of acted like we normally did, just under new skins and names.” She watched the others getting ready with a quiet sort of sadness. “The funny thing is that just by being ourselves we seemed to have gotten closer to the truth than we could have believed. That meeting in there… it makes me wonder what they’re up to. Maille, Twig, Pinion, Rose, even Kiln…”

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

“Do what?” She looked at me. “Join up? Because I wanted to be something. Somegob special, who others looked up to. Why did I leave? Because I wanted to really be something, not just a puppet.” She shook her head with a sigh. “The others? I don’t know. They told us that we were chosen, that we were destined to bring the world to a better place. Maybe they bought into that talk, but I didn’t. I felt lied to the minute I stepped up.”

I tilted my head. “Change the world? How?”

She shook her head. “Just that what we did would ‘shape the world that is to come’ and make it better for everygob. Whatever that is, however we would do it, I have no idea. It’s just the sort of thing you tell stupid kids to get their egos inflated.” We started towards the others again, with a gust of autumn breeze carrying red and gold flowers around us. “The thing they don’t tell you about prophecy in the stories is that everything depends on you. Your every action, your every thought sometimes. I didn’t want to dedicate my life to something I didn’t understand.”

Her head turned towards me as we stood at the edge of Ponyville, where the houses gave way to grass and scattered copses of trees. “Honestly? You know what I find pathetically hilarious? Your quest for your little sister—Applejack’s and Rarity’s, too. I left a little sister of my own back there. She was just a little thing, and she never had the guts to stand up to people picking on her.” She smiled. A sad, remorseful expression. “I can tell you don’t trust me, so… you know. Take it for what it’s worth. I understand what it means to lose someone important to you like that. Call it selfish. If I do this thing for you guys, I ingratiate myself to the ponies, and I can go pull my little Wire out of that place so she can come live with me in Equestria.”

My attention wandered to where Leit Motif sat and stared at a blank page of her journal, her pen held uncertainly in a telekinetic grip. “I think I can understand that, yeah. You won’t mind if I still feel a little uncertain, I’m sure.”

“Everypony else is. Don’t let them fool you—Twilight had me tell her the directions to the goblin castle and Mag Mell both, among other things.” She looked up towards the flat, gray clouds hovering over the Everfree. “I think, no matter what happens here, a lot of things in Equestria are going to change. I’m the first goblin in known history to open up about the Ways, I bet. We’ve kept that protected for a long time.”

I nodded. “Fair enough. I wonder if things back home will change, too. Are goblins responsible for keeping us from knowing about things like magic and the like?”

“Not entirely,” she said with a glance at Marcus and Naomi. “I’m not a historian, so I can’t tell you much, but I know there was a point in time where it was worth your life to go into the human realm. Nowadays, we keep our true selves more hidden than normal. Even today we try not to risk revealing ourselves.”

“I guess I have a lot to decide about my own future as well,” I said uncertainly, with another glance to Leit Motif. At the time, Lyra was menacing her with Naomi’s brush and chasing her around a tree.

“Come o-on, Leit! You don’t take proper care of yourself, and your mane is so long and brushable!”

“Get away, you freak!”

“You know,” I said, “I think I could get to like it here, myself.”

“And then we take a left at the trees from Snow White, cross the river of the fabulous serpent, and we’re almost there!” Pinkie Pie announced as she bounced ahead. The girls knew this part of the Everfree like the back of their hooves, and we’d made excellent time. It was barely past noon, though the gray clouds had turned the day gloomy. The Everfree’s dense foliage seemed faintly unreal without the deep shadows of direct sunlight.

“Wait, hold on a second,” Marcus said, “how can you possibly know about the Snow White trees?”

Rarity looked at him, baffled. “The tale of Snow White, the beautiful unicorn princess who was betrayed by her evil sorceress mother and who brought joy and loveliness to the lives of seven miserable, tiny earth pony stallions?” She beamed up at the sky with a dreamy smile. “Why, it’s a classic!”

“You mean the prissy unicorn princess who was utterly useless,” Applejack grunted, hauling the supply train with as much effort as it took to stroll down a lazy street. “Not to mention, those stallions are only dwarfed in the unicorn version. They did all the danged work for her in any event; all she did was get swept away by some nameless unicorn prince at the end, leaving her real friends in the dust.”

“The unicorn version is the definitive version, thank you,” Rarity said with a toss of her mane.

“In the pegasus version,” Fluttershy said, “the prince is a pegasus who, uhm… beheads the witch and burns her house down.”

“That’s the pegasus version of every story.”

“Well, girls, actually,” Twilight said, “scholarship shows there’s no clear provenance to pinpoint the origin of the tale, and—”

“While this discussion is just fascinating,” Lyra interrupted loudly from her position in the van, “we have arrived. Evil enchanted castle yonder.”

Twilight gave Lyra a cross look. “The Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters is neither evil nor enchanted. Well, aside from the preservation spells that kept its vast and valuable collection of ancient tomes, tapestries, and other priceless historical treasures secure until it could be safely catalogued and transported away by the Canterlot Archivists for restoration and eventual public display.”

“Did you practice breathing exercises for when you do those long sentences, or is that, like, one of your earth pony powers now?”

“Lyra!” Leit protested.

“She’s a mare after my own heart,” Marcus asided to Naomi in a stage whisper.

Ahead through the misty gloom stood a castle, or what had once been one. Stones piled haphazardly against one another, slowly crumbling from the steady erosion of centuries. A frosty wind blew in from the east and I tightened my scarf about my neck. The air in Ponyville was almost balmy by comparison to what it had become in the Everfree over the last week alone. It was a reminder of how winter’s icy grip drew closer every day.

Hector, beneath Naomi, nickered and stamped his hoof. Naomi patted his neck and frowned at the castle and the rickety wooden bridge connecting both sides. “I’m not sure Hector likes it, even if it isn’t evil.”

“We’re actually heading down into the canyon there,” Twilight said, pointing a hoof at the gorge splitting the land between the castle and us, “the rest of you can stay up here while we retrieve the Elements. Well, unless you’d like to come down with us, I guess.”

Marcus and Lyra took one long look at the precarious stairway that led to the murky bottom. “Not enough nope in the world,” he said, and she nodded her head fiercely in agreement.

Leit Motif eyed Lyra. “You’d probably just teleport anyway; what are you so nervous about?”

Lyra backed away from the gorge with a little shiver of her tail. “Me and dark, narrow places don’t always get along so great. It’s why your house fills me with existential terror.” She zipped her jacket up against the chill.

“All right, be back in a jiffy!” Pinkie Pie said as she bounced down the steps, followed by her friends a moment later.

A powerful, frigid wind tugged through the trees and set the branches to swaying. Hector stamped his hooves again and tossed his head.

“Isn’t that just so noble?” Lyra asked. “He’s eager for battle so we can save our friends Rainbow Dash and Amelia!”

Flash stared at her. “You know he’s a horse, right?”

“Saddle Arabian? Of course! He’s an exiled prince.”

She rubbed her face with a hoof. “How exactly did you capture me, again?”

Marcus, Naomi, and I all gazed into the forest. “Quiet,” I said, “Hector’s got a pretty keen eye for danger. If he’s nervous, there’s something wrong.”

Leit Motif frowned and looked down into the gorge. “I think the others went into a cave. I could send a message.”

“It could just be wolves or something else spooking him,” Marcus admitted. “They wouldn’t attack a party like this, though.”

“I don’t know,” Naomi said quietly. “Doesn’t something seem a little odd?”

“Like what?”

She shook her head and adjusted the hair braided under her hat as she wheeled Hector around. “It’s like there’s something… different about the forest.”

“Probably just nerves.”

There was an easy way to solve that puzzle—for me at least. Carefully, I reconstructed the image of the area as it had appeared when we first entered, then projected it out unto the forest as it appeared now. As I compared the two, though, I started in surprise as I realized that many of the trees were now a foot or two closer, out of sync with their original positions.

“Say, Flash,” I asked quietly, trying not to stare at the trees, “you mentioned something about goblin shapeshifting magic earlier. What sort of things can it do?”

“Well,” Flash said, “like I said, how easy it is depends on the circumstances, but it’s kind of an all-purpose disguise.”

“So, hypothetically, could someone in a cave disguise themselves as a stalagmite?”

“Sure.”

I looked down at the gorge, pointedly turning my face away from the trees. “How about trees in a forest?”

“Yeah, what’re you getting… at…” Her eyes widened slightly.

“What’s up?” Leit Motif asked.

“Do you have any spells that affect a wide area?” I asked her. “Blasty kind?”

Flash adjusted the straps on her hoof blades. “The one she used on me would do nicely.”

Leit blinked uncertainly. “Uh…”

The trees rustled in the harsh wind. A comparison proved they’d moved another couple inches closer. “Use it on the trees behind us.”

“That’s not exactly an easy spell to pull off. Is something…?” She trailed off as I looked into her eyes, then nodded. Her horn lit from within as she concentrated, a light filling it just under the surface. Lyra quirked an ear our way. Her face remained unchanged from its general state of amusement, but I could see her muscles tense. Marcus adjusted the grip on his rifle and Naomi tightened hers on her reins.

It was probably too much to hope that our would-be ambushers wouldn’t notice our preparations. Seeing trees stop still against the wind was just slightly unnerving, and the illusion began to unravel from there. Armored humanoids riding one another’s shoulders, the highest holding aloft branches were all I saw before Leit Motif spun. Her eyes lit up and she opened her mouth in a silent shout. Blindingly bright light flared from her horn in a burst that was followed by first a sharp shock and then a billowing wave of fire and sound that erupted in rings across the cliff face, kicking up the bed of leaves and goblins alike into the air.

“Get to the other side!” I shouted, rearing up and galloping across the wooden bridge. Lyra stepped next to Marcus and the two of them vanished in a golden bubble to reappear on the far side an instant later. He recovered after a moment’s disorientation and took aim across the ravine. I could see the conflict in his eyes as he turned his weapon deliberately against other sapient creatures, his finger hesitating on the trigger. Golden armor fashioned itself around Lyra’s body.

The rest of us crossed the bridge, setting it to swaying wildly, especially as some of the goblins recovered and raced after us. Leit Motif, though a bit dazed from that first spell, aimed her horn at the bridge and fired a needle-like beam of light that swept across the hawsers. They snapped and the goblins shrieked as they plummeted and clung desperately to the ropes. They landed against the cliff wall with a clanging racket, while atop it the other stunned goblins shouted and waved weapons at us.

“Oo, very clever!” a high-pitched voice called from above. “Not quite there, though.” Before anyone could react we were pelted from above. Small bombs burst around us and thick, stinking clouds of yellow smoke billowed up. My lungs burned and sent me into a fit of coughing as I inhaled, and my eyes stung so badly that I could barely see. Vaguely, I perceived winged blurs above and Lyra standing unbowed in the spell-forged armor that protected her face.

Hector screamed and galloped past me. Naomi would have been above the cloud, but she was at the mercy of her terrified mount. I tried to stumble away, only discovering that my feet were carrying me towards the ledge when it gaped up at me. Desperately, I tried, just a fraction of a second too late, to arrest my motion and rear back. Flash, despite her hacking, leapt and caught my forelegs as I started to pitch over the side.

I blinked away my tears and looked over her head as beams of golden light cut through the flying goblins overhead. They sizzled as they struck and disrupted the formation, but one darting figure simply flew through it. What beams did connect bounced off her fine armor, and she delivered a powerful kick to Lyra’s head. The magic armor flashed and sparked with the impact, but held, and Lyra came back up snarling.

More immediate to my concerns, mine and Flash’s hacking made our mutual grip precarious. Her Lightning Dust disguise fell away, leaving her exposed in her goblin form. Slowly, I felt myself slipping and tried to tighten my grip. “Flash, we need to…” I wheezed.

Her grip slackened as she choked.

I tried to gasp for air and found some. “Flash!”

Her streaming eyes opened to meet mine. For some reason I could not explain, it felt as though we’d known each other for the longest time—almost as if we’d been friends all along.

Then the strangest thing happened.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. The tendrils of thick smoke crawled. Light scintillated slowly off Lyra’s horn as she conjured golden pony shapes to fight alongside her. The grinning form of the airborne goblin twisted as she drew a shining blade from her side.

The sound of rushing water filled my ears and a woman’s voice whispered through them, soothing and pure. It’s all right. This isn’t how it ends.

I looked down. The slope was nearly sheer, but below me lay a number of grassy protrusions, choked with old roots.

Time caught up again. “Flash. It’s all right. You can trust me. Just let me go and go help the others.”

“B-but—!” she stammered, but her eyes softened as I looked at her steadily. Then, carefully, she loosed her forelegs from mine. Falling, I reached out and clung with all my might. The roots tore from the dirt wall, but held after a precarious, swaying moment, letting me brace up against the cliff. My throat ached with the caustic fumes, but I kept my coughing to a minimum.

I wished I could see what was going on up above, particularly when the sound of gunshots reached me. Down below was no more comforting. Even as the other mares down below returned, the goblins we had abandoned on the other side charged down the stairs to meet them. I marveled as other ponies leapt into action, flinging spells and hooves at the oncoming horde. Despite being outnumbered, they fought with incredible ferocity.

Yet, more were coming. They boiled out of the woods by foot or by wing to join the fray. I dug my hooves into the earth and hauled myself up, every unexpected shift in the material making me wince with fright. The drive to press on, to do whatever it took to help my friends, kept me going. Finally, I found the top of the cliff and dragged myself up.

The sight wasn’t a good one.

The smoke had cleared, but the damage had been done. Naomi struggled in a net while Hector spun and kicked at goblins who grew bolder as they encircled him. Marcus crouched against a wall where Leit Motif lay sprawled, protecting her with his own body. His reluctance to shoot had been tempered, for a few goblins struggled away across the ground clutching their bloodied limbs, while more shots rang.

Lyra stood braced in the center of the fight, with magical pegasus simulacra spinning about her, taking arrows and spears for her or leaping to smack a goblin from the sky. The goblin leader dove again, weaving through the defenses, only to be buffeted back when a flash of zig-zagging light knocked her off course, knocking her helmet clean off and sending her blade spinning into the grass.

She flapped her wings and rose back into the air, shaking her head in surprise. Freed of its confines, her mane, a frizzled mass of sun-touched electric blue, stuck up in every direction. “I’d know that kick anywhere. Flash! You’re back!”

The light resolved into Flash, whose white tail whipped behind her as she circled. “Pinion! Leave these people alone!”

“Uh…” The hovering mare glanced around. “I don’t know; I seem to be winning. That would be kinda counterproductive, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re a bunch of idiots!” Flash spat at her. “You’ve had the wrong girl! The plan doesn’t mean anything anymore! Even if it did, what makes you think this is right?”

Pinion’s face darkened and she pointed her hoof at the circling Flash. “Don’t you talk to me about right and wrong! Don’t you even think about it! You abandoned me, and the rest of us, a long time ago!” She dove down and caught her fallen sword before rising back up. “We were your friends! We’re your people! You don’t think we missed you? And what about Wire? Do you have any idea what’s happened to her since you left?”

Flash slowed, her eyes widening. “You don’ understand.”

“No, I think I do. I think you got selfish. I think you let bein’ Rainbow Dash get to your head,” Pinion snarled. “You couldn’t handle bein’ second so you needed to go be first, and damn the rest of us!”

“I didn’ mean to hurt any of you,” Flash protested.

“Well, you did.” Pinion snapped her feathered wings and launched herself up to Flash’s level. Her eyes and voice softened. “Are you gonna turn against us here, too?”

Flash’s leathery wings beat as she slowed to a hover. She looked down at her hooves, then up at Pinion. She looked down at me, and her eyes turned flinty.

“No.”

“Oh, yay!” Pinion said, turning a pirouette in the air. “We’ll have a party, just like old ti—!”

In the blink of an eye, Flash closed the distance between them and kicked Pinion directly in the face. Knocked out cold, Pinion plowed into the earth below with a thunderous impact. “I’m gonna save you from yourselves!” Flash shouted.

Dismayed at the loss of their leader, the goblins fell back towards the woods. Marcus took the opportunity to reload while Lyra caught her breath. Relief was short-lived, however, and when they rallied they came with goblins on foot, huge, troll-like creatures clad in mountains of black armor.

I shook my head. “No… this can’t be how it ends.”

Of everyone here, I was the most useless. Even Naomi had struggled to pull her pistol out of its holster while tangled in her net, and was firing warning shots into the air. Hector stood panting and bucking threateningly beside her. Lyra stood as a shining warrior, however beaten and exhausted. Marcus sighted down his barrel. Even Leit Motif struggled back to her feet and lit her horn in readiness. Again, time slowed, letting me savor each bitter moment as my friends armed themselves against impossible odds.

All of their brave, bold heroism would be for nothing.

Sure, earlier, I’d used my memory to figure out that we were being attacked, but all that had done was delay the inevitable. The warriors that imagination pulled out of the air couldn’t fight alongside my friends. An imagined storm couldn’t batter the flying goblins out of the air or send stinging hailstones into the giant ones.

Frustration bubbled up in my skull. The water rushing in my ears turned to boiling. Pain arced like lightning. Pressure built and built until it stood ready to burst free.

“No! This isn’t how our story ends!” I shouted. The horn jutting from my forehead sparked and burned. A green torch, it cast shadows across the glade.

The water poured forth, and, as it went out from me, I shaped it. A flood of green sparks washed over the battlefield, and in its wake, the forest grew. Trees sprang from the ground fully formed while budded vines roped themselves around their trunks and branches. When the buds opened, a hundred thousand flowers of every color and shape spread their petals. Waterfowl, gulls, parrots, cuckoos and cranes, hawks and falcons, woodpeckers and hummingbirds, pigeons and doves, owls and flamingos, a million birds flew into the sky. The vines poured off the side of the gorge and a river rushed down its ancient bed.

More and more came out, more than I could imagine, more than I could control. I felt like a vessel, pouring out everything I had and more that I never knew was there. Strange wooden wolves sprang out of the brush, fashioning themselves out of sticks. Huge lizards belching fire launched themselves down from the sky.

A huge goblin shrieked in terror and swung his great axe at an oak that appeared right before him—only to overbalance and fall when it passed right through the trunk without the slightest resistance.

“It’s fake!” a goblin piped, her voice rising over the din.

Of course it was. But it didn’t matter.

The goblins stumbled in disarray as they tripped and fell through the imaginary landscape, struggling to find solid ground, let alone their enemies. Their voices were lost in the piping bird song, making communication impossible. The roar of a dragon drowned out their horns and whistles.

Around my friends and allies, I lifted the veil and appeared to them, conjuring a half dozen Daphnes that waved them through a clear path, taking them around the goblins who flailed hopelessly about. Marcus and Leit Motif were led to Naomi, who they freed. Together with Hector, they rejoined Lyra, and then Flash came, dragging Pinion in her wake. Down below, a Daphne spoke rapidly to Twilight, explaining the situation and gesticulating wildly.

Through it all, I walked unharmed towards the castle gates. Anyone looking at me would have seen what lay on the other side of their vision, as if I had never been there at all. Instead, the fake Daphnes charged the goblin lines, taunting and misleading them, taking them in circles. Some sprouted wings and lost their horns to dive amongst the birds, mocking the flying goblins and calling them names.

It was a bedraggled fellowship that limped into the castle gatehouse. An expanding bubble of blue light popped to reveal Twilight and her friends, who all panted with exhaustion. Bruises and cuts covered everyone but me, and my head ached and throbbed as if to make up for my lack of actual injury.

“Daphne?” Leit Motif asked quietly, her eyes wide.

“Hold on,” I gasped. “I’m going to try and… and get rid of them.” I turned back towards the field, putting together false images of all of us, to send them away and trick the goblins one last time. As the illusionary mares raced into the woods, though, they fell apart into a mist of green sparkles. The forest and birds, too, were falling apart, leaking green light. As the pain and debilitation sapped into my limbs, so too did errors seep into my creation, until it swam together in a verdant haze. That, too, vanished as I collapsed, and the light in my horn went out.

“No,” I moaned, watching the milling goblins rally and advance up the hill towards the castle. “Not after all this…”

“Don’t lose hope,” Applejack said. She tilted her hat to shade her eyes as the noonday sun broke through the clouds at last. It filled the land with color and life once more. “Look to the west.”

As one, we turned our heads up, and saw descending through the cloud cover from the direction of Ponyville a long, dark shape. Held aloft by its great envelope, the airship glowed like a beacon as it caught the fresh sunlight. From its decks, pegasi leapt. They peeled clouds from the sky and started to strike them en masse with their hooves, darkening the puffy shapes and sending lightning bolts dancing out ahead.

I had to hand it to the goblins. When faced with a shifting battlefield and constantly changing odds, they didn’t fall into despair very easily. For a moment I thought they might dig in or try to rush the castle gates, so determined did they seem. Even as they prepared, though, a horn sounded across the glade twice and the goblins as one turned from their efforts and retreated into the woods, melting away. I exhaled and laid my head down, the cold stone a welcome relief for my throbbing head.

Leit Motif came to my side, her eyes wide as she looked down at me. “Daphne… you…”

“What?” I slurred.

Her face lit up with the brightest, most sincere smile I’d seen on her since we were children. “Look.”

I craned my neck back and followed the line of her hoof. The others were watching as well with big smiles plastered on every face. There, on my thigh, sat the image of a vase pouring out a stream of stars. My mouth fell open, and I touched it gently, as if I expected it to hurt. I ran my hoof through the hairs, noticing how each one had been individually recolored to form the image.

“A unicorn’s cutie mark is always a special, magical experience,” Rarity said proudly. “Unicorn magic always happens for a reason. Congratulations, Daphne.”

Applejack rolled her eyes. “Any cutie mark is special and magical.” She gave me a grin. “Still, fancy work.”

“Looks like a gift for illusion magic,” Twilight said brightly. “Reminds me of being a filly again. It’s very exciting! You know, I’ve been thinking of starting a class for the young unicorns around town. You can learn how to harness your talent and—”

Somehow, I got the feeling that she was wrong on that, but I couldn’t really put a hoof on exactly how at the time.

“Whoa, there; let’s not start plannin’ her life out just yet, Twi,” Applejack said. “We’ve got a few little matters to tidy up before hoof. Includin’ our new prisoner.”

So caught up had I been in the revelation of my very own personal identifier that Pinion’s capture completely slipped my mind. It might seem odd to get all worked up about a stamp on your haunch, but it was more than that. In a way, it told me nothing new—after all, I’d always known that my imagination had a vivid, lifelike quality to it. The explosion of magic was certainly cool, even though I knew that repeating that feat might well require years of study, but that wasn’t the important part. It was, in a very real sense, an affirmation that who I was mattered, that I could do something to influence those around me rather than being dragged along by them in a quest that had stopped treating me like a relevant part.

Of course, it was also another nail in the coffin of my chances to transform back into a human, but personal journeys are made in little steps.

Leit Motif nuzzled me, the smile never leaving her face. “I’m so happy for you, Daphne. It fits you so perfectly, too.” She swished her tail and did a little dance. “You and I are going to have so much fun together!”

“Whoa, Leit,” Lyra said with a little laugh as she looked up from examining her jacket for damage. “You’re freaking me out here. Don’t make too many deep, personal strides at once. It’ll give you whiplash.” Her eyes tracked to mine and I saw a brief flicker of what I could only imagine was jealousy. Then she smiled an apologetic little grin and winked at me.

“Speaking of,” Leit said, leaning towards Lyra and fixing her with a penetrating gaze, “where in the wide world did you learn all of that battle magic? You’ve been freaking me out with all of your unexpected competence.”

“Well, uh…” Lyra scratched the back of her head. “You remember that whole disaster at the wedding of Shining Armor and Cadance at Canterlot last year?”

“Intimately,” Twilight Sparkle said sardonically.

Lyra nodded. “I really felt useless, there. Not only did I fail to notice that a friend of mine—Cadance—had been captured and replaced by a shapeshifting queen of darkness, but I let myself and my friends get brainwashed into attacking Twi here. Then, when I broke out, what could I do against the invasion except cower in the cave waiting for it to be over?” Her face hardened, taking on a stony determination. “That feeling of helplessness as all of my friends and loved ones are being devoured right before my eyes, while I sit there and sob bitterly, wondering when it would be my turn to be next? Never again.” Then it brightened into a grin. “So I asked Shining Armor to enroll me in the unicorn Royal Guard advanced training program.”

Leit Motif spluttered. “Wh-what? That’s… you’re crazy! I don’t think even most Royal Guards go through that! Don’t you know how hard it is? I mean, obviously you do, but really?”

“Wait,” Applejack said, quirking an eyebrow skeptically, “are you tellin’ me that you’ve been a Royal Guard all this time?”

“Uh, no,” Lyra said, rolling her eyes. “I’m a musician. Who happens to be a Royal Guard reservist. It’s a big difference.”

Leit Motif rocked back on her hooves, staring at Lyra with an uncertain look. Whatever may have passed between them had to wait, however, because Pinion stirred and groaned from her spot on the floor. Leit helped me to stand and we all went to stand around the captured goblin.

It was swiftly becoming clear that what rhyme or reason goblin forms had was based largely on chaos. Pinkie Pie and Flash had stripped her of her silvery armor and equipment, and we could see that this pseudo-pegasus had features quite different from Flash. Her mane and tail were an electric blue, shot through with hot pink highlights, a jarring combination if there ever was one. The hair along her belly was white, soft, and downy like a cat’s, while black stripes ran across her back, making her look a bit like a particularly harmless blue tiger crossed with a pony. Unlike Flash, her wings were feathered and tinged with red.

“Bloody hell,” Pinion slurred, “anygob get the license plate on that hoof?” Half of her face had swollen from the powerful blow that took her down, so that was pretty understandable. “Ain’t tidy to hit your cousins; I’m in agony, I am.”

Flash glanced down and away. Fluttershy touched a wing to her side and she sighed. “Sorry, Pinion. I couldn’t let you hurt anypony.”

“Anygob, anypony,” Marcus muttered. “This whole universe is insane. Next thing you know, I’ll be saying ‘anyhuman.’”

Naomi jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. “Hush. Somehumans are trying to listen.”

Pinion tilted her head up. “Your solution to me hurtin’ ponies was to crack me in the face?”

“Uh.” Flash pursed her lips, looking thoughtful for an extended moment. “Yes.”

“Oh. Well. Fair enough, I guess!” Suddenly coiling her spine, Pinion sprang up into the air and back to all fours as if nothing had happened. She might as well have been elastic. She looked around to find a forest of hooves, weapons, and lit horns greeting her from the assembled watchers and quickly tucked her wings up. “Oof. Made a real botch of this one, I see. Wand King’s gonna feed me to the sewer goblin if’n I—” She gasped as she caught sight of Pinkie Pie, and her eyes lit up.

Then, with a little shake, she shed her wings and curious patterns. Her frizzy mane and tail puffed like a loaf rising in the oven, or, perhaps, a party balloon. In the space of a breath, two Pinkie Pies faced one another.

“Oh no,” Leit Motif moaned, “not this again. Ponyville barely recovered from the last time she duplicated herself.” She shuddered along her entire length, from her nose to the tip of her tail. “I’m still not done with the paperwork.”

Pinkie Pie—which is to say, the original one—rocked back on her hind legs, and then forth, pushing off the ground with her tail. Pinion matched these movements. Pinkie and Pinion craned their necks up, then sunk them down to the floor, locking eyes the entire time. Pinion pressed her head forward and Pinkie retreated, then vice versa. They trotted around one another, tapping their hooves in the same rhythm.

“Bluh!” Pinkie Pie said, making a twisted face with her tongue out, only to be greeted by the same. “Pinkie picked a pickled peck of pears parsimoniously prior to prestidigitating passionately!”

Abruptly, they both leapt on to their hind legs and snatched a cane and a top hat from nowhere at all. The rest of us backed off in shock, horror, or both as the twinned Pinkies tap-danced across the hall, singing as they went.

“Be a clown, be a clown,
All the world loves a clown.
Act a fool, play the calf,
And you'll always have the last laugh!”

At last they stopped in the middle of the room. “Oh my gosh, this is so great!” one of them said, and I couldn’t have picked who without reviewing the events in detail, so perfectly did they match. “I know!” the other answered. They giggled and bounced around one another.

Leit Motif lit her horn up and took aim.

“Whoa!” Lyra said, pushing Leit’s head down and away. “You don’t know which one is which!”

“I don’t care!” Leit grumbled, but powered down with a huff regardless.

Twilight Sparkle stepped forward, her wings and ears held low. “Uh. Pinkie?”

The two spun to face her, while the sounds of the airship landing filtered in from outside. “Yes, Twilight?” they asked in stereo.

“Never mind. Forget I asked.” She glanced between them. “So, uh… are you guys…?”

Leftmost Pinkie Pie nodded. “The bestest best friends ever!”

Rightmost Pinkie Pie grinned. “Sure are.”

Quickly, I ran back through my recollection of the shell game of their discovering one another and pointed a hoof at the one on the left. “Hold on, Pinion. This is nice and all, but you kidnapped my baby sister,” I said in a ringing voice.

The room went still, with only the propellers powering down outside breaking the silence. Pinion tilted her head and stared at me blankly. “Amelia has a sister?”

“So, you admit that you—” I froze. “Wait, she never mentioned me?”

“Nope! I mean, not that I’m doubting you or anything, but we played together for day after day after day every day for a week and she never once mentioned having a sister of any kind.”

Visions of Amelia locked in a dungeon somewhere crumbled into dust. To say I didn’t quite know how to take this information would have been a fantastic understatement. “You… played with her, and she never…?”

“Oh, sure,” Pinion nodded, “it was great! I got to be Pinkie Pie every day, and we’d play hide-and-seek, or bake together, read together, catch frogs together, sing in the rain together…” She gave herself a little shake and shifted back into her native goblin form with a pop.

Naomi lifted her brows, taking up my slack while I reeled. “For a whole week? She just blandly accepted it?”

“Yup!”

Flash stepped forward to her cousin’s side. “Pinion, look—I know you think what you’re doing is important, but you’ve got the wrong girl. This ‘Amelia’ is not the child.”

“How do you mean? She has all the signs.” Pinion frowned and tapped her hoof on the ground to count. “Right color of hair and eyes, the right location. She’s deeply imaginative, powerfully charismatic, and intelligent. Everything was going smoothly.”

“She is eight years old,” Flash said exasperatedly. “How could you possibly have made that mistake?”

Pinion’s eyes widened. “Really? I thought she was, like, twelve. I didn’t want to say anything about her height because I thought she was stunted and that would be super rude.” She tilted her head. “I mean, twelve years falls close enough to the Mag Mell divergence, so we thought it would just be a little under the expected age.”

Flash looked towards me and I shuffled my hooves uncomfortably at the intensity of her stare. “Well, she isn’t.” She put her hooves on Pinion’s shoulders. “This is all a terrible mistake. You have to go to the castle—you can explain the problem to the others, get the little girl out of there, and… I don’t even know what happens after that, but the whole thing is meaningless if Amelia isn’t the child. You know that, right?”

“Oh, sure,” Pinion nodded, “I’d love to do that.” She shot me a bright smile. “I’m sorry about kidnapping your little sister, Miss Amelia’s Big Sister. We totally meant to kidnap another little girl.”

“Uh. Thanks?” I glanced at the others and stepped forward. “Please, if you can get her back, I’ll… well, I can’t make any promises for the others, but I came here to protect Amelia. If you return her safely, I’ll take her back home and stay out of this until it’s all over, whatever happens.”

“Definitely no promises,” Applejack said darkly, “though I don’t blame you, Daphne. You didn’t sign up to protect Equestria, we can’t ask that of you.” She stomped over to Pinion. “Now, what about my sister?”

“And mine,” Rarity piped up.

“Wow, you have sisters, too? Neat!” Pinion said brightly. “I have no idea where they are! There is, though, one teensy little problem with the whole ‘me going to the castle to get your sister back’ thingie.”

My heart stopped. “What’s that?”

“She maybe kinda, uhm…” Pinion sat and rubbed her forehooves together. “Escaped.”

“Escaped?”

“Yup,” she nodded. “She escaped out of the fake Ponyville we set up to contain her, then evaded the entire castle’s worth of guards to float into the Everfree Forest on a river, then she and some other fillies managed to beat up my entire search party, and I’ve been searching for her ever since! Except I don’t think I’m going to find her, because Maille thinks she escaped on a smuggler’s wagon across the Ways to go to the great goblin city of Mag Mell, which lies between worlds.” She puffed her cheeks out. “I am simultaneously really frustrated with her, really proud of her, and really scared for her.”

Marcus broke down laughing. “Little Anteater… did all that?” he gasped. “Oh, Daphne. That’s your sister all right.”

Leit Motif caught me as I slumped and fanned me with a hoof. “Whoa, are you okay?”

“I’m not sure how much more of this I can take,” I whimpered.

Fluttershy coughed and pushed herself forward reluctantly. “Uhm. It sounds like you’re really worried about her. Why did you kidnap her? What is this ‘child’ thing all about? Even Flash didn’t really seem to know.”

Twilight flared her wings and shook her head. “It will have to wait until we’re on the move. We’ll have plenty of time to talk on the ship.” She looked towards Pinion. “I’m sorry, but until future notice we’ll have to regard you as a prisoner until we can conclusively rule out your allies as threats.”

“Will I get to spend time with Pinkie Pie?” Pinion asked.

“Uh… sure?”

“Yes!” she grabbed Pinkie about the neck and squeezed her close. “You are so, like, my idol!”

“Aww,” Pinkie Pie grinned. “I’m idolatrous!”

“That’s not what that word—” Twilight sighed. “Never mind. For the sake of Amelia, can you at least tell us how to get to… wherever she is?”

“Well,” Pinion said thoughtfully, still clinging to Pinkie Pie like a barnacle, “she’s either somewhere in the Everfree Forest, which I don’t think is likely because we should have found some sign of her by now or in the city of Mag Mell. The thing is, Maille is following her, and she’s pro-o-obably going to catch her.”

“Is Maille one of the false Element bearers?” Fluttershy asked curiously.

“Oh, yes. She’s Rarity!”

Rarity flattened her ears, lifting her chin. “Just what is this Maille character like?”

“Super pretty.”

Rarity considered that for a moment. “I’ll have to see her, of course, but that sounds promising.”

“Ahem!” Twilight interrupted with a flare of her wings. “Where is Maille going to take Amelia if she succeeds? Back to the castle?”

“Oh, no,” Pinion said, “she’s going to take Amelia straight to the Well. If you want to get there, you’ll probably have to start now, because it’s a lo-o-ong way from here, even by the Ways.”

“The… Well?” Twilight asked.

Pinion nodded. “Yup! The Well of Pirene, it’s—”

Whatever Pinion said next I didn’t hear clearly. The moment she said the word “Pirene,” queasiness boiled up in me. Four legs felt suddenly unnatural, and the room pitched as my balance vanished. “Are you okay?” Naomi asked, her freckled face close to mine.

“Y-yeah,” I said, pushing myself up. I looked over to where Pinion was speaking with Twilight still.

“So… how do we get there?” Twilight asked.

Pinion fluttered her wings and looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “It’s to the south a ways. Though I really shouldn’t tell you… I mean, you might try to foil my King and stuff.”

“Pretty please?” Pinkie Pie pleaded.

“Well, I dunno… I was trusted with a really important job.”

“Did you Pinkie Swear?”

Pinion gasped. “No! Of course not! That would be super duper important! Though Amelia broke hers and she wasn’t cursed with a terrible fate…” She withered as Pinkie Pie opened her eyes wide and trembled her lip. “Oh, I can’t say no to you! Okay!”

“Great,” Applejack said with a disgusted shake of her head. “Let’s get on the ship, then. Might as well get this over with.”

I wobbled back to my hooves and stepped out into the open air. Really, I should have been ecstatic—here I was, about to take a ride on an airship, go tearing off on an adventure, we had a firm lead on Amelia, and I managed to discover my very own special magical talent.

Yet, for some reason I couldn’t quite place my hoof on, nothing about this seemed right. Part of me wanted to turn around and run right then.

I shook myself and cleared my head. No, this was the path that would take me to my sister. No matter what, I was going to walk it.

This story won’t end, not until Amelia and I are walking back home together, hand in hand.