//------------------------------//
// Blink of the Eye 
// Story: Destiny Sparkle 
// by Spirit Guide 
//------------------------------//

Waking up with a pony in your bed is a good way to start your day.

I woke up to find Twilight snoozing with my hand held between her hooves and sunlight streaming through my window. That's weird. The clouds should be hiding the sunlight. Not that I'm complaining but... I peered through the dim room towards the tipped shutters, where a ray of light was merrily lighting up the interior.

With Twilight on top of me, I couldn't go over there and check it out, so I carefully slipped out from underneath her, leaving the purple pony asleep on my bed and me free to go about my business. Item #1: investigate unexpected ray of sunlight during giant state-wide hurricane. I went over to the window. The light was warm and bright, I'd forgotten how it felt over the last few days. Not being able to contain myself, I slid the window open and looked outside. I gasped.

Nothing. No rain, no wind, just a clear blue sky. Wait, not quite. Craning my neck I did a full 180, which is all you can see from that particular window, and had a good look around. All around us was an enormous wall of clouds, shifting snaky tornadoes and solid-looking mile-high curtains of vapor. All around us, the house, the neighborhood, the city, those rings of white clouds stood tall, reaching for the sky.

What is this? I wondered. The storm still looks like it's still happening, just not in here. I wiped my hand over my forehead. For some reason, it was hot and I was sweating. So I stuck my head back inside and shut the window.

Opening my wardrobe and pulling out a fresh set of clothes, I glanced over at Twilight, who was still asleep. I am not going to wake her up, I told myself sternly, pulling my clothes on. I'll wait for her to wake up by herself. In the meantime, I'll go make breakfast.

I hurried downstairs. Through the window with our magically-printed picture I could see the yard and my heart sank. All the bushes and flowers were flat or uprooted, every tree was bare. My mother had worked so hard on them, tending to each and every plant, watering, pruning and arranging until the garden was a floral heaven. The garden, which was once clean and beautiful, now resembled a wasted hell. All my mother's work was wiped out like so much dead weeds.

There was something else that caught my eye though. Looking past the fence, I got a good look at some of the other houses on my street: They were all battered, patches of shingles missing from the roof, pavement bricks tossed out of the path, crooked gates and bent railings everywhere. It was depressing to look at the ruined homes so I was grateful when the sound of the upstairs bathroom door slamming shut, marking Twilight's awakening, brought me back to my senses. I turned away from the window and started on breakfast, deciding to go with a simple bowl of cereal.

Twilight appeared on the stairs as I was bringing down the bowls and spoons. She must've forgotten to look in the mirror on her trip to the bathroom because she had serious bedmane, the whole thing sticking up all over the place just like in Bridle Gossip. I tried to control myself and not stare at her mane as she walked past me towards the table.

"Morning," she yawned, climbing nonchalantly into her chair. Her head promptly made contact with the tabletop and snoring began to emit through the surface.

"You're lucky your cereal wasn't there," I said, sidling up next to her and placing a bowl in front of her. When she didn't react I attempted to rouse her, first by gently stoking her mane, then lightly poking her back then slapping her softly on the cheek. None of them worked. Sighing, I had no choice but to resort to my new technique: reaching down and gently rubbing her soft belly.

Effects were immediate. Not only did she wake up but she did so slowly, her head rising from the table, her mouth stretched into a big silly smile, her entire form shuddering from my contact, humming the whole time until she was sitting upright. Her eyes opened and she instinctively placed her hooves on the table to steady herself.

Twilight looked up at me. Her stomach rose and fell beneath my fingers. "Sorry about that," she said, blushing slightly.

"No problem," I told her reassuringly, walking around the table and settling in my own seat. "We both seem to enjoy it." We ate our breakfast in silence before bringing up the day's topic.

"I noticed it's quieter today," Twilight remarked, pushing away her bowl.

I nodded in agreement. "I looked out the window earlier and saw the strangest thing: the storm now seems to have surrounded us instead of raging beside and around us."

Twilight's eyes sparkled, the way I've noticed they do when she perceives something fascinating. "You mean the hurricane is circling us?" she asked, leaning forwards and putting her head on her hooves.

"Yeah, I guess that's what it was."

Jumping out of her chair, Twilight zoomed over to the window and looked out. When she saw the garden her face fell, but the minute she looked beyond at the countryside, her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. She rushed back over to me and yelled excitedly, "We're inside the eye of the storm! The very center of the hurricane!" She ran towards the door and started unlocking it.

I got out of my seat and joined her at the door. She was having quite a time wrestling the key in the lock, with her hooves for some reason. "I know a lot about weather Twilight, but I've never heard of the eye of a storm. What is it? Here, let me get that for you."

"Thanks. Anyway, the eye is the part of the cyclone where the barometric pressures are lowest," she explained while I unlocked the door. "Since the whole storm is positively spinning, the middle ends up being sort of hollow as well as round, hence the eye."

I pushed the door open and we went outside. If seeing the ruined garden from the inside was depressing, then being in it was downright heartbreaking. Standing amongst the dead shrubs and looking around at the bare trees, I felt the emptiness that was inside me before Twilight appeared. That bleak feeling of loneliness brought back by the loss of one of my mother's final marks upon the world.

Twilight looked at me, then followed my gaze. "Oh. I'm sorry. It must have been really beautiful before."

"Yes it was," I replied. "I can still remember what it looked like then."

She trotted over to the fence and leaned up against it. "Hey!" she called, waving a hoof over the fence at the street. "Come look at this!"

I ran over to her, across the dry lawn, and looked at where she was pointing. The houses along the road were even more beaten-up in person, each one looking as though it was attacked by a convoy of bulldozers and steam-shovels. Potholes filled the road and what few cars were around were either overturned or falling apart. The great green dumpster was now upright and full of water.

"I do hope they all have insurance," Twilight said with a nervous grin.

Chuckling at her comment, I turned back towards the house when I noticed something. "Twilight, look."

Twilight turned about-face and looked up too. "Wow."

My house was whole. Not a dent, not a scratch, not a smear on the paint job. It looked as new and perfect as the day my father had last cleaned it up, maybe even more so. It was unbelievable. My house was the only one on the street which showed no storm damage of any kind, not counting the garden.

I squinted at the corner of the street. I could only imagine what the rest of the town looks like: wrecked homes, yards torn up, public areas destroyed. Me and the other members of the construction team would have our work cut out when the storm was through, fixing up what looked like everything.

"That storm must've been having a blast," I said with a grin.

Twilight looked up at me. "Well, let's hope it doesn't get too carried away," she replied, the corners of her mouth turning up as she spoke, "or we'll all be gone with the wind."

We both started chuckling. Several kilometers away, a bolt of lightning flashed at the very edge of the calm eye, just inside the clouds. I slumped up against the fence and slipped down so that I was now level with Twilight's head. "An idea just struck me," I chortled, my sides beginning to hurt.

"Only because your head was up in the clouds!" Twilight joked. She fell on her back and we both started laughing. It felt good to share a laugh with a friend. I began to realize exactly what I've been missing out since my life took a turn for the worst. I almost forgot the hardships I've been through.

I reached forward and pulled the giggling pony into my lap. She stopped laughing and stared up at me, each of us wearing a smile. We sat at the edge of my mother's ruined garden, inside the eye of the storm, enjoying ourselves without a care in the world. But deep down, something told me it was only temporary.

"Tell me more about the eye," I asked of Twilight.

"Sure." She curled up in my lap and pointed at the huge clouds and swirling tornadoes in the distance. "That's the eyewall. Right in there is where the storms are strongest. We must've slept through it last night, but it was most likely rocking the house."

"I'm glad we were sleeping at the time," I muttered gratefully.

"Me too. It was probably very frighting." Twilight shuddered at the thought. "Unlike the low temperature that you usually get inside the hurricane, the eye is considerably warmer than the area would normally be due to warm air being pushed inside from every direction by cold air."

"That explains why it's so hot in the eye."

"Don't worry," Twilight said in a comforting manner. "In a few hours, the eye will have moved with the rest of the storm and the wind and rain will be back." She was silent for a moment as she realized what she said. "Ooh, that's not good."

I began to climb to my feet and Twilight jumped off. "We need to get ready if the storm's coming back," I declared, frowning at the slowly-revolving eyewall. We started back to the house. "I imagine it'll be at least another three days of crummy weather, endless gales and barrels of rain." I opened the door and Twilight trotted in ahead of me, heading straight for the couch. I followed and sat down beside her, my mind still focused on the fact that soon we would be back in the storm. That's when the radio crackled on.

"....thisshig rrrerrk...... winds still blowing at speeds well over 200........ meteorologists worldwide are clueless as to when the storm will end ........... everyone is asked to stay in their homes until further notice...... click tssssssssss......." The radio had shut itself off.

I groaned and sank down on the couch. Even the professionals had no idea when the hurricane would die out. It could be a few days, a week, hell maybe even a month for all we knew! I'd be stuck indoors the second we were outside the eye and back in the cyclone. All alone in my house with Twilight.

Who was being awfully quiet. 

Twilight was actually staring at the radio, her eyes wide in amazement. She's probably never seen a radio before. Hasbro's certainly never shown us one. "What is that thing?" she asked suspiciously.

Oops. I didn't tell her about radios. I'm such a dumbbolt. So I launched into an explanation of radios and signals and, with Twilight's knowledge of the eye, why we haven't heard anything until now.

"So it's like a telephone only for a lot of people at once," Twilight summed up.

"Anyone who's tuned in," I confirmed. I unconsciously reached over and started scratching Twilight behind the ear. Her entire body relaxed and she slipped into my lap again, humming contentedly with her eyes closed.

"Should we be worried?" she asked, turning over and giving me access to her underside.

I started rubbing her warm belly again. It helped calm me down as much as it calmed Twilight. "I don't know. Honestly, I stopped worrying about things like this ever since I was alone. Nothing along the lines of 'living' really seemed to matter anymore."

"But what about Equestria? And other fans of the show, of Equestria? Don't they matter?" She sounded upset, like she wasn't happy with the way I was thinking. "What about starting your family anew? Surely that must matter to you."

Looking into her deep purple eyes, I struggled for an answer but none came. It was simply too distracting, some sad part of my mind still is disbelief concerning Twilight and the rest of me attempting to ignore the inevitable continuation of the possibly endless storm. With a groan, I gently slid Twilight off of me and walked over to the window. I stared through the stained image on the glass and out towards the eyewall. Tall, thin cyclones spun along the perimeter of the eye, a windy barrier against anyone who'd try to get out. Twilight joined me by the window, her face concerned but still stubbornly expectant.

"What's important to you?" she asked again.

I looked out at my mother's dead garden, at the fence my dad painted just a year ago. Turning around, I examined the contents of my home with a sense of realization. All around me were memories of my family: framed portraits and photographs, items they'd made and left behind, signs of great accomplishments and, probably most valuable of all, the family tree, going all the way up to my great-great grandfather, the first master of the house. All at once I felt revitalized. I remembered that life meant something and it shouldn't be wasted mourning uselessly. Twilight was right. One way or another, I would make my parents proud and start the family again. It would take time and effort, but I'm sure of one thing: My Little Pony has made everything easier.

Twilight managed to catch my wandering attention with a wave of her hoof. "Well?" she asked once more with a hint of worry.

I knelt down beside her. "You're right Twilight. Everything is falling into place now. The things I care about are fitting together like a puzzle of fate. I can't run away from the world anymore. I swear that I will try to become like other bronies and hopefully find some with whom I could share my feelings and thought on Equestria. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye," I finished, holding my hand over my eye

The purple unicorn smiled at me. "I like what I hear. Nice touch on the Pinkie promise."

"It's one of those things you commit yourself to the first time you hear it." Grinning, I wrapped my arms around her in a tight embrace which she returned with outstretched hooves. She nuzzled my chest and I stroked her mane, feeling a new kind of joy and comfort. We separated and returned to the couch, only then realizing we lacked something. Something important. And it was I who pointed it out.

"Now what?"

"Well," Twilight began, "according to the radio announcer, this storm is unlike anything human meteorologists have ever seen and, to be honest, I don't remember a storm like this one ever occurring in Equestrian history. So we can hypothesize that this hurricane was not brought around by any natural means."

"No way it was Discord," I said immediately. The Equestrian chaos spirit always gave me the creeps. "He's under rock and key."

"No, it definitely wasn't Discord," Twilight agreed. "But It may have been some other creature unknown to Hasbro and thus unknown to you and anyone else here. There's a lot more than just draconequui and changelings when it comes to magical creatures in Equestria."

"Well I'm stumped. What do you think it is?"

Twilight clopped her hooves on the couch. "I'm not sure, but it may have been windigos. They were known to cause extreme blizzards and suchlike back when Equestria was first discovered."

Ah yes, the windigos. The defeat of the winter spirits and the founding of Equestria started the ponies' version of Christmas, Hearth's Warming Eve. Celebrated for different reasons than one of the world's most popular holidays, the Heart Carol the ponies sang during the episode is sometimes considered to be a real brony anthem. "Their power sort of matches the disaster," I said, looking out the window at the twisters again, "but there's just one problem: there aren't any windigos in this world as far as I know."

"Maybe they were created by something in your world then," Twilight suggested. "I don't know much about their past up until Hearth's Warming Eve, but we both know they feed off fighting and hatred. Did any humans get into a fight or something?"

I gave Twilight a humored look. How little she knew, it hurt to think about it. Oh well, better late than never. "Twilight, this may sound unbelievable but we humans are probably the most violent, evil and unforgiving race on the planet and, quite possibly, the universe."

Twilight gasped, her hooves clapped over her muzzle in shock. "I know it doesn't seem possible to you, you've known very little war but on Earth, large-scale quarrels and squabbles are numerous. State-wide battles are declared over the stupidest things, fights over our dwindling resources reducing our numbers. We are, without a doubt, the biggest threat to the planet."

The look Twilight gave me then was one of realization and horror. "If everything you said is true," she said with a twinge of fear, "if hatred and war are so common, then it's very likely that windgos have spawned."

"You really think there are giant, hate-hungry, storm-bringing horse-spirit-monsters flying around the country, and they're the ones behind the hurricane?"

"I'm here," Twilight said plainly, tapping my arm. "It's not unlikely that some windigos were created from these wars you've mentioned." Her expression became sad. "Is it really true though? Have humans really been fighting?"

I nodded. "A long time ago, there was a battle known as World War One. Nations and states all over the planet separated into two forces, which spent the next couple years in constant battle. The war ended with over sixteen million deaths, ranking World War One among the deadliest conflicts ever, only for it and all other past wars' death toll records to be shattered by World War Two." Twilight gasped in horror again. I sighed. "Twilight, if you don't want to hear anymore about this stuff, I completely underst—"

"No!" she yelled. Her reaction was quite unexpected. She quickly regained her composure. "I'm sorry. I'm just not used to hearing about such big disasters. Please go on."

"Okay, I will. So World War Two rolled in and the world suffered its worst drop in population ever, over 2.5%." Twilight's expression of horror reached its peak. I'd never seen her or anypony else make a face so horrified in the show. "I'm still not sure if the world has ever fully recovered from the war. Some people are still shaken and the ones who were around at the time sometimes refuse to talk about their experiences."

Twilight plopped herself down on my lap and stared up at the ceiling in disbelief. "So much war," she mumbled, pawing the air in front of my nose. "So much hate. We ponies wouldn't last a month if we fought as much as you said humans do. I'm beginning to think that it really is windigos who're creating the storm. Their feeding off of the hate and resent left in the air from all the wars."

Great, I was afraid of that. If Twilight comes up with a theory or guess, I feel safer going along with her. "Is there anything we can do about them?" I asked, absent-mindedly running my fingers through her mane.

Twilight closed her eyes, enjoying the brushing. "Before Equestria was discovered, the three tribe leaders' assistants and advisers managed to eliminate the windigos with the Fire of Friendship." She stopped and opened her eyes. "But I don't know how we could possibly recreate that ancient piece of magic. Clover the Clever himself never fully understood it." She sighed and leaned back, gesturing with her hoof to continue my stroking.

I let my eyes travel around the room as I brushed Twilight's mane with my bare hands. Finally they rested upon the coffee table, upon which lay the Equinomicon. A thought came to me. "Couldn't we use a spell from the Equinomicon?" I asked Twilight, pointing at the book.

Twilight wrapped the tome in her levitation aura and floated it over. "I don't think we'll find anything in here," she said, flipping through the introductory page and the Ultimate Recovery Spell. "The rest of the book is still just gibberish and hooey."

"Bummer. We could've really used some outside help to deal with some outside forces."

"Windigos are pretty 'outside'," Twilight agreed, "but whatever's hidden in the Equinomicon is probably 'farther out' than anything either of us has ever encountered."

I nodded. "Without a doubt."

Twilight groaned. "I hate not being able to do anything about this!" she grumbled. "I'm so used to using the magic of friendship to solve the problems that I keep running into, but I can't fight the windigos with just my own magic. In fact, I don't know if I could fight windigos with my unicorn magic. I don't know any spells that would work on them, and I have no idea how to conjure the Fire of Friendship."

"It's at times like this when we have no choice but to wait for help," I said quietly. "Although, there's one thing you can always say that may very well help us out of this mess."

"What?" Twilight asked, looking up at me curiously. I grinned.

"Please."

As if it were just waiting for me to ask, the Equinomicon started to glow. My smile grew wider as Twilight stared at the book in disbelief, her mouth hanging open. "You've got to be kidding," she mumbled.

I started laughing. "Don't question it!" I roared, pulling her into an upright position on my lap. Twilight put her front hooves down before her to balance herself as I scooped up the Equinomicon and held it in front of us. The book flipped itself open to the scribbled-on-looking page directly opposite the Ultimate Recovery Spell.

"Shh," Twilight whispered excitedly, tapping the book. "The letter are moving!"

"I know, I know!" Sure enough, as it had yesterday, the previously illegible script was reorganizing itself into readable sentences.


Hello again, friends. The time has arrived
I am glad for us all that you have both survived
But that's enough suffering for the entire world
It's time to put an end to this-