Perhaps Death

by WritingSpirit

The House Of Dancing Candles: Part 1 - Blossom

"We could've parked it somewhere else."

"Oh, it's just a climb down the mountain, Twilight. How bad could it be?"

Sure, there are better places to park a time machine, but you lot know me and being creative. We all have to try something new every single time, otherwise we would be just boring little ponies with nothing to do with our lives. Although, giving it a second thought... there are better places to park a time machine.

My dear old ship is perched on the edge of the cliff, where the moment you step out of the door is the moment you plummet into a seven hundred feet deep abyss faster than the Great Canterlot Recession of Year 969, which was the same abyss we were staring down at. We were suppose to land in the middle of the town of Two Hooves Junction, which was quite a stellar place, I would say, but something in the air made the TARDIS go all wonky and sorts, leaving us stranded at wherever we are at right now: on the peak of a snow-capped mountain at the edge of the cliff, where the snowstorms we're exposed to rattle us and shake the very foundations beneath us. Luckily for us, the TARDIS has scarfs! Ah, lovely little scarfs!

"You really want me to answer that?"

"Let's assume it's not as bad as it looks."

"Turner, we're hanging from a cliff," my companion stated firmly. "Do you know what are the odds of us falling to our deaths and down into the canyon of Celestia knows where?"

"That's where a rope comes in handy!"

"Alright. Let's see, do we have a rope as long as seven hundred feet, because oh, I don't know, there's probably no such thing?!"

"Oh, don't be such a twit," I said with a click of my tongue, earning a humph in return. "Do you realize that you freak out in the least likely of situations to freak out in?"

"I don't freak out?"

"Yes you do!"

"I don't," she snapped at me with a deadpan look, suddenly inhaling the frosty air deeply before her lips curved into a loose grin. Any looser, I would believe her teeth would fall out. "Freak out."

"Whatever floats your boat."

Returning to my controls, I flipped a few switches while my head starts to churn faster than a dishwasher, spewing out calculations and some appropriate jokes just for sating the brief and dull moment. Soon enough, the TARDIS started whirring again just as Twilight closed its doors, leaving the forsaken place we had been stuck in for the past half an hour. Yes, you read that right. Half an hour, spent mostly on small conversations, a few jokes in between and probably an argument or so while we're trapped at the edge of the cliff. Well, at least it had a nice view.

"I'll see if I can find a... proper landing," I said, fumbling with some switches. "It will be hard. The TARDIS isn't one for diving into valleys and leaping over peaks, so to speak."

"Your ship wasn't aerodynamically possible to begin with."

"Oi! Don't hurt its feelings!" I exclaimed, slightly shocked. "Sure, it might look like a blue box, but it's more than that."

Twilight just giggled at my defensive attitude. Yes, I'm quite touchy when it involves the TARDIS, because no one questions the TARDIS, including me. Sometimes, I myself am perplexed at the wondrous and sometimes life-threatening mysteries that my ship holds. You lot know the strange things that I'm talking about, don't you?

"Maybe we need a little tweaking here..." I muttered, turning one of the cranks. "And... there we go..."

With a lurch and the usual hum of the engine, we finally landed at somewhere a little bit lower in altitude and hopefully safer as well. I, of course, cantered towards the double doors with a little hop in my hooves. Who wouldn't if they knew about the historical landmark that is Two Hooves Junction? At the current day of age, that town does not even exist anymore! Then again, it wasn't my first choice of a destination.

"This is it, Twilight Sparkle," I said, beaming at my equally excited companion. "Your request has been fulfilled."

"You're sure it will be this time? Because, the last time you said that--"

"Yeah, yeah, Cyberponies, explosions, that kind of pish posh," I rambled with a dismissive wave of my hoof. "That was a mistake made a long, long, literally long time ago."

"I don't think four days is actually a long time?"

"Four days, four centuries, same thing! Plus, you're in a time machine! Four days is a blink of an eye!"
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"I don't think this is Two Hooves Junction."

"Yup," I remarked in return. "This is certainly not Two Hooves Junction."

For those who were wondering what we were looking at, let me try to justify it for you. Now, imagine a room filled in a flood of darkness, which would be pretty simple if you closed your eyes. Now, fill that room with a bunch of candles, all of them swaying from the ceiling and hung there by an invisible thread. Imagine all those candles being lit, the wax dripping onto the cold wooden floor beneath our hooves with a slight sizzle.

Aside from all of that, there was nothing, and by nothing I meant absolute zilch, zap, nada. If there were anything in the room, we would've been able to have seen it from all the candles, but there was only emptiness. Our ears strained to capture whatever minuscule sound that lingered around, but all we heard was the unnerving silence. It was only us and the candles.

That was what we thought. Just us and the candles.

Oh, how astoundingly wrong we were.

"I don't like this, Turner," she muttered in one of the rare instances she called me by name. It couldn't be helped, considering how nervous she was when it comes to places like these. Not like she was afraid of the dark or anything, it's just... there were better places that we could've ended up in. "We need to get out of here."

"But why did the TARDIS bring us here?"

"I don't know! M-Maybe there was a glitch in the system or something!"

"No simple glitch would reroute the TARDIS away from its destination," I firmly clarified, examining one of the closer floating candles and giving it a small push. It is as what one would expect a candle would be: waxy, hot and a little sticky when its sides are melting. "Something brought us here. Something wants to meet us."

"And not somepony?"

"A decent somepony would've written a letter or so," I stated. "And they certainly would have offered at least the lowest level of hospitality, if not a little more light in this room. It was almost as if... it was almost as if something wanted to hide in here..."

Aside from our echoing voices and our ragged breathing, we could only hear the resonating silence blanketing the room with an occasional drip from the melting wax. It was like living in a nightmare world of a cenophobiac, with nothing to turn to but oodles of candles. That sounded nice, oodles of candles. I should probably write that down.

"Get back to the TARDIS," I said, moving backwards slowly. "Do you hear me, Twilight?"

"The... the TARDIS..."

"What is it?"

"It's gone!"

That in itself snapped my head back, glancing past my companion into the room. True to her words, my dear ship was not there, swallowed into the surrounding darkness. Immediately, I sort of shoved her to the side, my teeth chattering as I galloped to where my TARDIS was.

"No... no, no, no, no..." I muttered, trotting in place. "This isn't happening. This is really not happening."

"So much for my request being fulfilled."

"We have bigger problems to worry about now!"

"I was the one that wanted to leave, remember?"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry!" I cried. "Now help me find a way out of here!"

Giving a frustrated groan, Twilight soon trotted about, weaving around the dangling candles with her little grumbles and such. Yes, I admit, I've gone a little too far on that part, considering that it was all my fault, but what can I do about it? My TARDIS just disappeared! If you had one, you would understand, right?

"See anything, Twilight?" I asked after a moment.

"I saw a candle. Is that helpful enough?"

"I already said I'm sorry, Twilight."

"You just never listen, do you Turner?" she hissed grudgingly. Here we go again with one of our petty arguments. Really, I find it peculiar that we were already bickering like husband and wife despite only being a surrogate couple, if there is such a thing. I'd say, we would argue about the most petty little things like the choice of bowtie I should wear on one occasion. She can be terribly picky on things. Then again, so am I. "We wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for your TARDIS."

"The TARDIS was reprogrammed to come here," I snapped, my wobbly composure pushed off its edge. "I personally set the coordinates to Two Hooves Junction myself!"

"As if telling me now would help us get out of here!"

I would shout my lungs out if I could, but knowing my dear companion, she would only retaliate in the most unimaginable ways possible. Believe me, she wasn't the first pony I know that would give me that complaint. There were worse ways that I had been... disgraced, so to speak. Much, much worse, believe me. Then again, this was a first when it comes to me and the TARDIS.

"Look, my fault or not, we have to put our heads together if we ever want a chance of getting out of this... this... whatever this strange world is."

A grumble was her sole response. Well, what else is there to expect?

"Now then," I began, fumbling about for my sonic. "We're in some sort of a pocket universe, I presume. Makes sense, considering some alternate universes are actually compressed into our own. But why candles?"

"Well, they are our only source of light."

"Very bad ones, just to add," I commented on her bluntly obvious statement, ignoring the look my companion gave me. Twilight Sparkle isn't a very happy mare to be around at the moment. It reminded me of that one time, when I promised to get this antique book for her in our local library and burned it instead while fighting a few foreigners, so to speak. She never talked to me for a week. Imagine that! A week over a small book! Then there was that... one misunderstanding we had surrounding her brother. That was the worst argument we had. So far.

"Now, if my assumption is correct and this actually is a pocket universe, the candles must be of some importance other than being just an ordinary source of light. It must be here for some other, more significant role."

"Or it may just be here for us to give a little light," my companion fretted, trotting towards one of the candles. "Maybe there isn't any way out of here after all..."

"There should be! If we can get in, then certainly there must be a way out!"

"And how did we get in here in the first place? The TARDIS, remember? The special time machine that we had been travelling in for so long now! I wonder who was that dumb mule who wanted to, oh, I don't know, go exploring and let the TARDIS disappear in the first place?!"

"For Celestia's sake, I said I'm sorry, Twilight."

"No, I had enough for once!" she yelled back at me. "I wanted to leave. You heard me saying that and yet you didn't even care!! We could've gotten away when we had the chance, but you just had to go 'exploring'!!"

"I was curious!! You know how I am when I'm curious!!"

Boy, we were shouting at the tippy top of our lungs! This might be the greatest and loudest verbal debate since that one time when Princess Luna was challenged by one of the minotaur lords back in the day! In fact, I could've sworn that each and every candle flame flickered for a moment, shuddering at our benevolent exchange of words. That was when Twilight marched up to me and shot me a cold stare, the only thing standing between us being one of the many candles that populate this world.

Before she could even open her mouth, however, a sudden gust of wind blew across the devoid world, extinguishing row by row of candles in a tidal wave of darkness. It wasn't long before our faces were struck and our hooves shoveled from underneath, leaving my body sprawled across the floor and my vision shrouded in a darker shade of black.

"Twilight!" I called out, trying to pick myself up. "Twilight, are you there?!"

No response.

"Twilight Sparkle!! If this is one of your magic tricks, now's not a good time!!"

As suddenly as they went out, another flood of light washed over the world, the flames reigniting again on every single row of candlewicks. I was stricken by the tangerine wave for a moment, blinking profusely just to gather myself back again, though no amount of blinking could prepare me for what would happen next.

"Twilight?" I called out, voice echoing into the distance, my heart starting to hammer frantically. Of all the things that could happen, whether accidental or not, it was my worst nightmare coming into being. It was the one thing that I had faced countless times throughout my adventures, yet it still remained the worst thing that could ever happen to me.

Twilight Sparkle was gone.

Gone! As in vanish! Hocus-pocus! Poof! Immediately, I trotted up to the spot where I last saw her; the spot where she stood during our verbal disagreement. It took me a minute for everything to sink in and another five more for me to comprehend it, yet when I was done, all of it was swept away by a hurricane of emotions. Twilight Sparkle was gone. Twilight Sparkle, the companion that I somewhat grew up with, the companion that I looked up to and admired... gone.

The last thing we did was shouting at each other.

"Twilight..." I uttered, just... shocked, I guess. I didn't know what I was feeling. "Twilight... Twilight!!"

The candles stared down at me, these wax sentinels illuminating the darkness. They revel in the silent grief, each of their fiery eyes turning to me as I galloped across the black valley. Was it endless, I do not know. Was it pointless, I do not care. Twilight Sparkle was the only thing that mattered and I lost her. I was drunken on one last bottle of hope in my aimless search, the adrenaline sparking in the flints of my joints.
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"Is anyone there?!"

I immediately froze up on the spot after countess minutes of galloping at the sound of the voice. It was from a mare, around her late teens just like myself and my companion, although it wasn't Twilight Sparkle's, much to my disappointment. Nevertheless, it was still the voice of another pony. The voice of a friend... hopefully a friend. Who knows? One must be wary when the reddest herrings are possibly nearby.

Squinting my eyes, I soon spotted in the distance a moving globe of light, like a sentient candle in the distance. As it comes closer, I spotted the wielder of said light, now appearing to be some sort of lantern. She was wearing some sort of old, ragged cloak that reminded me of some of the deceptive hermits I met in the outskirts of Canterlot back in my time period. Explainable, considering the current era we were in, if I'm still in the same era, of course.

"W-Who's there?" she called out, sounding a little frightened. Of the dark, perhaps? Or is it something more than that?
"Show y-yourself!!"

Well then. She called it!

"I'm the Doctor."

"GAAHH!!"

Immediately, I found myself propelled into the air, whooshing into some candles before finding myself skidding on my aching sides across the floor. Groaning from the pain, a small pitter that is the galloping mare was the first thing I heard before I found myself being lifted up. No, I don't mean being lifted up in a helpful way. I meant being lifted up by a green field of magic and being lifted up by my chin from a shotgun perched directly against my neck, covered by the same field of magic encapsulating me. My eyes darted down to the trembling, teary eyed mare, who, despite her shaky composure, had some semblance of control when it comes to the arcane arts. I'd tip off my fez to her if I was wearing it now.

"Who are you?!" she demanded, glaring at me. "What b-business do you have here in my house?!"

"Your what?"

"Yes. This is my house or, technically, my attic. Now, you've got ten seconds to tell me who the heck are you and whatever the heck are you doing here or I'll see to it you wouldn't get another breath by the time I'm done with you!"

Okay! Simple! She's just scared, after all! I mean, I had to introduce myself to mares who would stick a shotgun up my neck all the time! No big deal! What's the problem there?

"I'm the Doctor," I answered reluctantly. "My friend and I were about to visit the town of Two Hooves Junction but instead our... craft ended up here, in your... attic. We had a... small disagreement and after that, she disappeared for a long time and I was beginning to worry about her and--"

"Snap it," she spat. Like literally spat. "I don't care who you are and what you were doing here. Just get off my property."

"Please listen to me! It's all a big misunderstanding--"

"I'll make your face a big, big misunderstanding if you don't skedaddle right now."

"I'm looking for Twilight Sparkle! My companion!"

"Companion?"

The mare just stopped with the white threats all of the sudden, looking at me with an expression that I would categorize under dumbstruck. Immediately, the magic around me dissipated, leaving me to fall onto the floor with a single yelp. Quickly, she lifted me up -- this time in a good way -- with her two hooves, dusting me off as she... bawled? Groveled? Rejoicing? Really, all these bombardments of emotions... is this what you lot meant when you talk about 'mixed signals'?

"I'm so, so sorry! I such an idiot!! I didn't... didn't know you were... oh, if only... if only she were here! She would love to hear--"

"Didn't quite catch your name."

"Oh! Ahem! Sorry..." she began, excusing herself with a cough. "My name's Flambeaux. Blossom Flambeaux."

"Yes. Lovely name, Blossom, now have you seen my companion? Twilight Sparkle? Purple mare from top to bottom and about... I didn't really get her height so--"

"Never mind about that," she quickly interjected. Once again, to be bested verbally by some stranger. "It isn't safe to talk now. Right now, we have to get out of here."

"B-but--"

"Now!! Before they get us!!"

Popping my hooves faster than a cola and mint recipe, we galloped off with Blossom in the lead, weaving around in the darkness. The fear she had whilst wandering around was back in her eyes, yet even I am put off. No, not by the darkness, mind you. The Doctor faced more vile and repulsive beings than an obscure shroud. There is certainly something here. Something... otherworldly.

"Where are we going?!" I couldn't help but ask.

"Out! That's all you have to know!!"

I wanted to voice out a bit of concerns on my end, like the fact that she pointed a shotgun to my neck five minutes ago, but when I turned back, the sudden wave of extinguishing candles struck once again, sweeping across with the remainder of light urging me desperately to go on with her.

Lighting her horn up ever so suddenly, the sight of a latch being tugged upon was one for sore eyes as light burst from below. Judging from that alone, she wasn't lying when she said we were in an attic. Quickly, she dived into the bright hatch of freedom, her hoof reaching out to mine as she hung onto the sides.

"Come on, Turner!" she shouted frantically.

Wait, what?

With a great, gravity-defying leap, I dived down into the embrace of light, just as the doorway to the darkness above slammed shut. My flanks pummeled into wood, making me hiss and wince in the aching pain that followed before Blossom gave me a helping hoof up. I dusted myself with a cough, finally able to get a glimpse of my savior/possible captor in full view.

Blossom Flambeaux was certainly a mare alright. A mare deserving of a name such as Blossom, with her bright pink hair and pale emeraldine coat. Top it off with a brilliant smile and you have her alright. She was panting as fast as I was, though she didn't even break a sweat! Either her hobby involves marathons, or this isn't the first time she had been doing this.

"You okay? Did you sprain anything?"

"I'm... phew... fine" I wheezed. "You... you called me by that name."

"About that, Turner... long story."

"Believe me, I have all the time in the world."

"You wouldn't believe it if I told you."

"You wouldn't believe the things I've done either," I replied, wanting the full scoop. Still, Blossom kept her silence. "Alright, start from the beginning. Twilight Sparkle. You seem to know her."

"I... I do," was her answer.

"How?"

Blossom recoiled at my stern, blunt tone; not everyone likes how upfront I usually am. With a sigh, she cocked her head towards the wooden stairway, once again leading me down to what seems to be the lower floors of a fine mansion. I swear, if we're in the same timeline as planned, then this Blossom Flambeaux must be somepony noteworthy and of a higher class than most. Not many ponies can have such fine mansions, even in the present.

Following her into a room and invited by a pair of black, sleek oak doors with gilded gold frames around the etchings of its panels, we stepped into what seemed to be the most prestigious looking study I've ever seen. With the floor covered in the finest carpeting, the left room side held a pair of red velvet chairs, the right a luxurious roll-top desk covered in papers and with a feather dipping in an ink pot. On the walls were enough book-filled mahogany shelves to make my companion squeal with delight, all lit up by a glass chandelier hanging from the very top. By the alicorns, this mare must be even higher in status than most high-class ponies around and she wields a shotgun, of all things! My, my, she's certainly one interesting pony.

"Sit." she beckoned towards the chairs. "You might need to for the story."

"Yes. I recall you mentioning it was long."

"Long is actually quite an understatement, Time Turner." Blossom sighed, glancing warily around before speaking: "I should start from the beginning. You were looking for your companion, yes?"

I nodded.

"Twilight Sparkle. Do you know her?"

"I do," was her reply as she looked down, her face turning a somber gray. It looked as if the answer was enough to make her, the mare with a shotgun in both arsenal and attitude, a little put off. When she turned back up to me, she wore a waning smile, making me flinch as she held my hoof with a slight tremble in her voice.

"This might be hard for you to accept..."

What came next struck my excited, pounding heart still.

"Twilight Sparkle was my grandmother's best friend."
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