//------------------------------// // “Blink of an Eye” // Story: Perception // by Xz Hacker //------------------------------// Chapter Four: “Blink of an Eye” It had been a long and painful endeavor just to get Twilight to understand her situation. Talking was practically impossible both ways. Writing was the only option Rarity could think of. After searching the room for what seemed like forever. Rarity saw a pen and paper, and immediately began moving her muscles in her body in an attempt to get there as fast as possible. But for Rarity fast was very relative. Each step she took would take hours by her perception. Each real second that passed could see hundreds if not thousands of thoughts go through her mind. After she reached the paper she tried to summon her magic to grab the pen. She quickly found this to be of no use, as the amount of concentration it took to use magic over such a long period of time was far to great for her in this state. She instead resorted to using her hoof. Her penmanship with her hoof had always been horrible, as magic was far easier. Hopefully Twilight would still be able to read it. As she wrote she realized how much easier it was to focus of the details of each letter, considering her current abundance of time. When she had finally gotten done she began to turn around, hoping to see Twilight already there. After the eventuality of her turn was realized, she was disappointed to see Twilight still almost all the way across the room, although she had begun walking. When Twilight was finally near her she began to turn to look her in the eyes. No! No! Read the paper, don't look this way. Rarity couldn't possibly fathom why after such a long walk she would take the time to stop a look at her. What could possibly be going through Twilight's mind? Rarity had already started growing accustomed to the wait though. She knew that Twilight would eventually look at her message. She had to. How long could she possibly look at Rarity? Surly it had been at least a few seconds in real time by now. Finally Twilight's head began to turn back towards the table, and the note. She took the last final two steps necessary to reach the desk fully and began reading. After an eternity of reading Twilight's head rose. Once it had hit it's peak, it began to turn slowly towards Rarity. Rarity knew what was about to happen and dreaded it. As Rarity expected Twilight began to open her mouth and let out a low drone. Judging by the shape of her mouth she was either saying an 'ah' sound, or an 'oh' sound. Either way, there would be no way for Rarity to understand her. Rarity began moving her hoof wielding the pen back towards the paper. She needed her to know not to try talking, that it wouldn't work. Writing was dreadfully hard moving so slow, and tedious beyond belief. She thought about what words she could write to keep the message as short as possible to convey her message. Each extra letter was another hour of agonizing concentration on the incredibly mundane task of writing at such a slow speed. She choose to write. “To slow, can't understand.” Understand was such a long word compared to the rest, especially the beautiful contraction can't. She truly couldn’t think of a better word, at least until she had already started on the N in understand. At which point she realized she probably would have been able to get away with the word hear. It was to late for that however, and taking the time to scratch out the UN in understand then write hear would have taken just as long as finishing. Most of the time Rarity was writing the first word, Twilight continued to drone on whatever she was trying to say. It was about the time she finished the first O of too that she realized she could shave off the second O, and the same time Twilight finally stopped talking. After she was done, Rarity quickly began withdrawing her body, giving room for Twilight to begin reading. Twilight turned her head and began to read the new sentence. After a long time Twilight's head nodded, and her hoof began to raise from the floor. It took a long time, but Twilight finally managed to grab another pen, and begin writing something. She slowly formed an I, then an apostrophe. Rarity knew she was writing I'm almost as soon as her hoof went up above the I, but could do nothing but wait for her to complete the sentence. After an agonizing amount of time, Twilight finally finished her A in Celestia, completing her note that read. “I'm sorry, I will get Princess Celestia.” Overjoyed Rarity could feel her lips wanting to make a smile. That could take a while though, but she didn't care. She now knew that help was on the way. Twilight's horn began to glow, slowly and starting from the tip. A spell? Now? What could she be doing? Does she have more to write and wants to levitate the pen to make it faster? She could be getting ready to write her letter to the princess. That has to be it. Rarity shifted her eyes down as the spell slowly engulfed Twilight's horn. She was looking at the pen in Twilight's hoof. It was not glowing however. If she wasn't levitating the pen, then what was she doing? Rarity let her eyes move back up to the horn, which was now fully engulfed in a magical aura. Now it was beginning to spread to the rest of her head. She was casting a spell on herself? But why, what reason could she have to do that? Then it became apparent. She must be trying to teleport herself to save the trouble of walking. But there is a pen in paper right here. Can't she just write the letter here now? Why would she need to go somewhere else. It was far to late to stop her. She was mid-teleport. Now more than ever Rarity wished she would just hurry up. Watching magic spread across Twilight's body was disturbing at such slow speed. Rarity could watch each and every hair get caught up one by one as the magic's spread. This was certainly faster than anything else she could have watched though. It was at least moving a speed she could appreciate. After Twilight's entire body was covered she could see a bright light beginning to shine from the middle of the aura. Rarity then remembered when Twilight teleported, there was a near blinding flash of light. She immediately began to close her eyes, something she then realized she hadn't done since she first opened them all that time ago. She was amazed that she hadn't felt the need to blink in all that time. The spot of blinding light around Twilight got bigger as Rarity's eyes raced it to shut out all the light coming their way. Before her eyes were fully shut the light had gotten bright enough to hurt Rarity's eyes. She should have thought about this sooner. Her eyelids were closing at a rate much slower than she cared for. The light was blinding now, she could feel her eye's pain intensely. The pain remained uninterrupted until her eyelids finally closed shut fully When her eyelids finally closed, she could still see the light to some degree. She could also hear a small almost whirring sound starting. After a while the sound grew louder and more high pitched. Is this what Twilight's teleporting usually sounds like? Finally the sound peak, as did the brightness through her eyelids, and then almost at once they were both gone. She began to open her eyes. When they finally where open she realized how dark the room seemed. Her eyes had still not recovered fully from the brightness of the flash of Twilight's teleport spell. She stared at what was before her, a dark empty room in Twilight's basement. Suddenly she felt very alone. Twilight hand only been gone for what in real time must have been only a fraction of a second, but to her it already felt like an hour. As more and more time past she quickly became depressed. She let her eyes shut once more. Finding some comfort with them shut, compared to staring at the loneliness of her prison. Prison being relative. She could leave if she wanted to, but her situation was more a prison than any building could ever be. The isolation of the time Twilight was away was unbearable. She would rather be locked away in any normal prison than be subject to such torture. Her eyes were closed for so long she didn't even realize when she had gone asleep. It wasn't until her muscles in her front legs began to relax, and her head began to descend did she wake up. She regained consciousness and began to asses her situation. Where was she? Why was it so dark? Was she falling? No, she could feel the ground beneath her hooves, but her head felt as if it were falling. It was then that her eyes opened enough to see a small sliver of the light given off by the basement. She then remembered everything that had happened up to this point, and began to feel her body, and open her eyes. It took her a while, but she eventually straightened her head and forelegs, and had her eyes wide open again. It wasn’t but a few more real time seconds did she regret opening her eyes all the way. She saw the blinding light of Twilight's teleporting beginning in front of her. She began to close her eyes. This time they made it shut before she was blinded. When the light and sound finished peaking, Rarity began to open her eyes. It didn't take her even a quarter of the way open to realize that she had brought Spike with her. Rarity was so happy just to see Twilight back, but she brought Spike to? This was too perfect. Spike glanced over at the paper that Rarity and Twilight had been using to communicate and read it. Rarity noted how much faster he read than Twilight. He turned to Rarity and began to try and speak. He was definitely beginning to form the 'oh' sound. Rarity was sure of that. She was getting better at being able to tell vowels. She still didn't feel like piecing together what he was trying to say, but she let him speak anyway. She was still happy just to have him here. After he seemed to have finished speaking she began moving her body in to hug Spike. Hearing him, seeing them both, she was glad, but she was also feeling greedy. The amount of time it took to reach him and grab him was worth it. She held him tight. She savored the hug. The warmth of the little dragon, even the roughness of his spikes. She enjoyed it all, and took it all in. Touching someone else was just what she needed to calm herself during this nightmare. After a minute she finally let him go, although reluctantly. She wondered to herself how long the hug actually lasted, and if it seemed at all awkward. She moved over to the paper, and began to spell out another short sentence. She wanted to express how happy she was to see them both. What words would suffice to express her joy? She settled on writing “Glad you're here.” before she even touched the pen to the paper. She knew they couldn't appreciate how much effort went into such a sentence, but she felt like she had to at least do that much. After reading what she wrote Spike's hand went for another of the pens on the desk and began to write. His sentence seemed painfully long, but Rarity took pleasure in enjoying each stroke. “I can't believe what is happening, are you OK?” She knew as soon as he had began to right the O in OK what he was going to ask. Rarity began moving for the paper then, and choose to express the intense loneliness that she had felt with no one around her for so long. She wrote: “Waiting was painful, so alone.” That was one of her longest sentences yet, but somehow she had already began to get used to writing them out. She finished writing and withdrew to let them both read. Their eyes began to scan the words. Rarity heard something from up above. Her head and eyes began to turn to look, the sound grew louder very quickly. She couldn't turn her head fast enough. Was it some sort of explosion? What kind of sound could get so loud so fast? When her head finally looked up and far enough to the left she saw the door at the top of the stairs had begun to open, and could see a small amount of gold poking through. It was Celestia! She was going to be saved. She could feel her mouth begin to turn up in a bigger smile. After a while Celestia was in clear view as the door swung open. Celestia had in her haste knocked open the door. Celestia almost immediately began to bound down the stairs. At what Rarity could only surmise as her full sprint. Rarity curiously began to turn her head and eyes back to Spike and Twilight. Wondering if they had finished reading, and if they had had the time to process Celestia's sudden entrance. They had already started to turn their heads Clestia's way as Rarity's eyes finally could see them, knowing this satisfied her curiosity, and she began turning back to the oncoming Celestia. When Celestia finally arrived in-front of the trio, she stared intently at Rarity for what Rarity could guess was a brief second, and turned her granite gaze towards Twilight. Twilight was already beginning to look pale, her eyes moving down and to her right to avoid Celestia's gaze. Celestia began to open her mouth to speak. This time Rarity entertained herself by attempting to guess what Celestia was trying to say. She had a feeling it would take a while. She managed to make out 'Twilight', 'do', 'out', and 'me.' All the other words just didn't have enough accent on the syllables to make them out well. Twilight began to speak, and Rarity didn't think she could take another full sentence. She moved to the paper and began writing. She simply wrote: “You are angry, fix this first.” She hoped it did not seem to rude to the Princess, but she was getting tired of writing these long sentences, and was cutting words wherever she could. The Princess read the message as Twilight stopped talking. When she finished reading she levitated the pen from Twilight's hoof and wrote: “Yes, of course.” Then began to cast a spell. It was similar to how Twilight's spell started, except it encompassed her horn much quicker, but then spread out in a spherical fashion from there, engulfing all four of them in its aura. The bright light Rarity had grown to expect from teleport spells shown from the middle of the orb. It also got brighter much faster than Twilight's spell, and thus she had no time to close her eyes, before the pain of the flash set in. When she had finally recovered from the blinding light, she slowly began to make out the shapes around her as the castle. Celestia had teleported her to the castle, along with Spike and Twilight. Celestia almost immediately ran off. Rarity wondered what she was doing as Celestia slowly turned towards a hallway, and then proceeded to almost jump that direction. Is that what sprinting looks like in slow motion? After an eternity of staring at Twilight's concerned face, Celestia could be seen running back down the same corridor she had exited through. Behind her Rarity could make out the flowing black hair of Celestia's sister, Luna.