//------------------------------//
// Part 2, Chapter 7 
// Story: The Discordian's Daughter 
// by Pumpkin Patch 
//------------------------------//

        It was once again night. Stars were all Willow could see when looked up at the black sky. She lowered her gaze to view the ground and she saw only grass. There was no empty house or cobblestone path this time. It was simply a large, grassy plain that stretched indefinitely in all directions with only a few small hills scattered throughout.
        The wind was once again cool and calm. It gently brushed through Willow’s excessive mane, allowing it to sway in unison with the grass on which she stood. She was tempted not to move at all and instead simply lie down and let her mind drift with the breeze. 
        However, there was one curiosity that kept her from giving in to this environment’s seduction. There was a scent that traveled this gentle wind and it was a scent that felt very out-of-place to Willow. It was the smell of smoke and fire. It was faint to be sure, but potent enough in Willow’s mind to warrant investigation. 
        Willow followed her nose try find the source of the burning odor. She walked around in circles, trying to narrow down a direction. She circled several times, each time widening the radius of her search. Then finally, she found the point where the odor was stronger in one direction than any other. She followed it to the East. 
        Willow’s sense of smell lead her to climb a small nearby hill. As she climbed it, another of her senses was stimulated: her ears. They picked up a few vaguely melodic noises produced by unknown instruments, like a band tuning up before a concert. More curious though, were the occasional voices of ponies.  
Once Willow reached the top and she could see the other side of it, she no longer had to rely on her nose or her ears. The sources of both sight and smell were right before her eyes.
        There, in a small valley a short distance from the hill, was a campfire. It was still burning bright and releasing billows of smoke into the air. Willow, even at her distance, could still faintly feel its inviting warmth. 
        However, there were five other ponies here who were much closer to the fire. Four logs surrounded the flame and on each one sat at least one pony, with one log supporting two. The two ponies that were sharing a log, one a stallion and another a mare, were engaged in a casual conversation with another that was sitting by himself. The remaining two ponies chimed in on occasion, but for the most part they were busy fiddling with their instruments — one of them had a guitar while the other a harmonica. 
        From where Willow was standing, the scene looked very quaint and friendly. Still she remained cautious as she crept closer. There was still no way of telling how this group of campers would react to her presence. 
        That is, if they reacted at all. The one male pony who was facing Willow’s direction kept turning his head and several times his eyes passed right by her. Yet he had no response. It was true that Willow’s body and hair were both as green as the hills around her, but the light from the campfire gave her a shadow and her presence should have been obvious. However, the group of camping ponies didn’t even acknowledge that she was there. 
        Willow’s eyebrows raised. She stopped moving forward and decided to see if the ponies before her were not as deaf as they were blind. “Uh, Yo, everypony?” she blurted out. While her greeting was awkward and somewhat timid, she was certain it was loud enough to be heard. 
        But once again, there was no reaction. The ponies carried on chatting and fiddling with their instruments as if Willow was nothing but another gentle wind blowing against the fire. 
        She decided to get a little bolder. She walked straight up to the nearest pony, the one with the guitar who was facing away from her, and tapped him repeatedly on the back. Nothing. 
        However, Willow did notice something through her attempts to touch the pony. It felt as though her hoof wasn’t actually making contact with him. In fact, she could have sworn that it had actually passed through him slightly. She was so sure of it that it made her inspect her hoof. There was nothing out of ordinary about it, so the difference must have been the pony himself. 
        There was only one way to confirm it. Willow aligned herself with the back of the unsuspecting pony, reared back, and lunged at him full force. And at the point of impact...there was no impact. Willow’s body passed through him and landed head-first into the fire in front of him. Before she could scream in horror, though, she noticed that neither the flames nor the coals and wood they were emerging from burned her. The fire felt the same as the wind, gentle and painless. 
        Willow stood up in the middle of the bonfire and looked around. Once again, there was no reaction from the crowd. The ponies’ evening carried on uninterrupted. Willow’s face resumed carrying a bewildered expression, but only momentarily. It was soon wiped clean by a shrug of the shoulders. Deciding to simply surrender to the madness around her, Willow brushed her hair out of her face and made her way to the log where the stallion and mare were sitting together. 
        Having given up on her quest to make sense of anything, Willow's mind was now free to fully analyze the five other ponies around her. She noticed that two features were common among them: a laid-back, lazy demeanor and a long, disheveled mane. 
        Other than that, each pony was unique. The one strumming randomly on his guitar was orange with a dark brown mane. His partner on harmonica was red and his mane a solid purple. The single across the bonfire from Willow was yellow, had an orange mane, and was noticeably more heavyset than the others. 
        Then there was the couple that Willow shared a seat with. The mare's body was a familiar aqua-green color, though it was accompanied by a less familiar blue hair with white streaks running through it. She was clearly comfortable sitting very close to the stallion next to her, a stallion who was gray, had a blonde mane, and sported a pair of tiny, purple tinted spectacles. 
        "So anyway, that's what I think it all means," said the heavyset pony sitting across from the couple, "You wrap with me, sister?"
        The mare of the couple closed her eyes, "Hmmm...dunno, that's not the vibe I'm getting sugar."
        "Really?" said the yellow pony in a raspy voice, "How 'bout you, doc?"
        "I sorta get your jive, but this ain't really my bag," said the stallion of the couple, "You'd best lend her your ear, brother."
        "Yeah, he's just the Doc," said the mare as she stroked the gray pony's mane, "He just makes the potions. I make the predictions. And I think you're groovin' in the wrong direction with this..."
        The strange ponies' conversation had Willow's attention, though it might have been mostly from their vocabulary. To date, she knew of no other pony besides herself who spoke that way. She wondered how frustrated Rainbow Dash would be if she were present. 
        “Well, lay it on me,” insisted the pony across the bonfire.
        The supposedly insightful mare smirked. “I think he’s saying that you worry too much.”
        “Huh?” said this evening’s subject. “How do ya figure that?”
        “Well, you said they were all runnin’ back ‘n forth in your pad, right?” asked the blue-haired pony. “I bet the scene looked mighty busy. Your pad’s, like, a reflexion of your mind and you got way too much goin’ up there. Ya need to chill a little more.”
        The yellow pony’s eyes widened. “Whoah. That’s real deep right there.” He turned his eyes towards the ground. They shifted slightly as gathered his thoughts. “I-I guess I have had a lot on my mind lately. Dag. Maybe I do need slow the stage coach down a bit. Still, how’s a poor pony like me supposed to figure that all out. I mean, I respect him and all, but sometimes I wonder why he don’t just tell it like is, ya know? You’d think that’d be easier than floodin’ a pony’s pad with weasels.”
        The conversation went on, but Willow’s attention was starting to drift away from it. It was comfortable here. Her head was lifted towards the sky and it swayed left and right as her legs rocked back and forth. She let the campfire warm her body a her mane enjoyed the breeze and her ears tuned in to the sounds of nature and friendly conversation.
        ‘Yeah,” said the stallion sitting on the same log as Willow, “and besides, that’s just not his vibe. You know that, mare.”
        “And how,” said the yellow pony. “Ah well, he’s the master I gue—”
        The conversation suddenly stopped. Willow was so relaxed that she hardly noticed at first, but soon the lack of talking became too obvious. She lowered her head to look at her spectral friends. 
She gasped. They were all staring directly at her, all with completely vacant expressions. Their gaze was stabbing and Willow found herself frozen, as if their eyes had physically pinned her in place. She couldn’t even force her own eyes closed.
And the next sight only made her wish even more that she could close them. Gradually, each of her onlookers’ mouths slowly formed into an unnaturally-wide grin and their eyes melted into a horrifyingly familiar hot white. 
Then there came something else Willow knew unfortunately well. The ponies started cackling maniacally, but not in their own voices. All of them were laughing in that same awful screeching sound. As they continued to laugh and laugh, the laughing grew louder and louder until it was nearly deafening. 
The cackling continued as Willow watched each of the ponies’ bodies distort, becoming wavy, transparent clouds of mist. And, like mist, they all drifted towards the sky, their laughing echoing over the prairie.
Dark clouds were moving in overhead from all directions, meeting in the middle and forming the eye of an impending storm. The nearly shapeless masses that once were ponies joined the clouds as if they were one in the same.
Just as quickly as the eye of the storm formed, it started closing, growing small and smaller until it disappeared entirely. Then, with a loud thunderous bang it reopened, this time in the shape of two large white eyes and a psychotic grin. Despise’s face stretched across the sky, larger than the moon itself.
...and she was staring directly at Willow.
Willow’s mouth was gaped in fear as her hair flailed violently. The wind was picking up speed, so much so that she felt her body about to tip over from the force. 
Then she heard Despise scream down at her from the heavens, “Run…”
Void of any other option but to obey, Willow took off in the opposite direction. However, her gallop was broken at best. Between tripping over her own hair and being hit by the powerful gusts of wind, Willow spend most of her time being tossed back and forth across the ground. She had no more control over her direction than a tumbleweed.
After trying fruitlessly many times to get back on her feet, Willow gave in and simply allowed the violent gales to carry her. It actually proved less painful. She switched her strategy to trying to find something cling on to as she was rolled among the hills and valleys. The only thing she could see, though, was grass. She tried gripping her teeth on to a patch or two, but of course the common green plant was too weak to keep her fastened to the earth. Willow began whipping her head in all directions as she continued being tossed about looking for something else to help her, anything else. 
And her eyes eventually did spot something else, but it wasn’t something that would provide aid. In fact, it provided the opposite. Shortly after Willow heard a loud rumbling in the sky, she saw an almost blinding flash of light as a streak of lightning hit the ground, just a few hooves’ length ahead of her. It barely missed her as she passed. She then felt a lightning bolt striking the ground near her in the opposite direction, or at least it was the opposite direction until the wind shifted her back towards it. Her eyes caught the tail end of the strike as she narrowly passed. The wind spun her around again and again, and in each direction she was tossed she narrowly escaped electrocution. Her vision was covered in spots from the constant barrage of bright flashes.
        Then suddenly, the wind weakened enough that it could no longer carry her. Willow hit the ground hard, but at least this time she stayed. However, she didn’t have time to feel any sort of relief. As soon as she shook the hair out her face and looked up at Despise’s visage still suspended in the sky, that horridly-wide mouth formed itself into a circle. Then, spewing from that mouth, came a funnel cloud. 
        As soon as the tornado touched down, it immediately charged for Willow. Before she could get up to run, the winds picked up again and sucked Willow towards it. She entered the spinning winds of the funnel within seconds and her body was sent spiraling upwards. It was as though Despise was sucking her up through a straw. Willow’s body reflexively fought the wind, desperate get back to ground, but of course this was useless and she knew it. She had no means of escape and no one to help her. This was the end. 
        But as these horrible thoughts spun through her mind like her body was spinning through the tornado, Willow felt an unexpected impact. It was sudden and painful, but she immediately noticed that she was no longer spinning in the air. In fact, after the collision she felt something solid underneath her, something furry. 
        Within seconds she realized she realized that she was once again on Luna’s back. The Princess of the Night carried her out of the funnel and into the open air. As soon as they were clear, the Alicorn turned and faced the face in the sky. The eyes of Despise’s face twitched and the tornado immediately dissipated, although the wind was still strong.
        ‘You!” screamed the visage in the clouds. Its voice was as loud as a thousand thunderclaps at once.
        “Covering the dream with clouds to prevent my gaze,” said Luna. “Clever, but you have not stopped me!”
        From the mouth of the face came a deafening scream as the lightning strikes resumed. Luna dodged the first bolt and the next and the next as she made her way closer to Despise. Willow was barely able to hang on through the repeated shifting of directions. The strikes increased in number and speed as Luna flew closer. Despise was clearly panicking. and not without reason. After swerving past countless lightning bolts, Luna was a mere few hooves away from her visage, particularly her left eye. Then, with one final burst of speed, Luna darted forward and pierced through Despise’s eye. The impact was like the shattering of glass. 
        Despise’s shriek was somehow louder than before, and it was accompanying by a low, rumbling sound. It was as if the sky was somehow experiencing an earthquake. Willow looked down and saw that Despise’s face was deforming and the dark clouds were breaking apart. As they broke into smaller and smaller pieces, the rumbling and screaming dissipated with them. 
        Soon, there was nothing below Luna and Willow other than the pleasant prairie Willow had started in. Willow was relieved to see it, though it bothered her that even at the height she was at she could see no end to it. 
        Luna began her descent and in a much gentler way that she had been taken up to the sky, Willow was now being taken to the ground. Once there, Luna bent her legs to provide Willow with an easy dismount.
        Willow, now finally on her own hooves once again, stumbled her way to the front of Luna and faced her rescuer. Before she could say thanks, though, Willow noticed a look of sincere pity on Luna’s face. 
        “Uh, what’s wrong, spooky mare?” asked Willow.
        Luna didn’t answer and her expression didn’t change.
        Willow scratched the back of her head, “Um, thanks for saving me again. You...you think she’s gone for good this time?”
        Luna remained silent as she turned around and spread her wings. 
        Willow began to worry, “Wait, we’re ya’ll goin’?” she yelled. 
        Again Luna said nothing and her wings began to flap. It wasn’t long before she was airborne. She took off into the night sky, leaving Willow behind in the prairie. 
        “Wait!” Willow kept calling out. “Waaaiiiittt!!!!”