• Published 22nd May 2012
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Quantum Castaways - DustTraveller



Twilight wakes up to a deadly game of survival on an enigmatic island, and she's not alone...

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Chapter Two - Necessities

-Planet Hell, Nightwish


They trudged through the underbrush at a decent clip, the human pausing momentarily to pick up a canvas bag he'd dropped upon approaching the grove. At first she'd been more than a little skittish about the contents of that bag, as there was a faint blood scent attached to it mixed with the scent of fruit from the grove, but he'd reassured her by revealing it was, in fact, full of star fruit.

A clinical and somewhat detached part of her noted that humans were apparently omnivorous. Neat.

She noted several items about his behavior that worried her. His eyes were constantly moving as they marched, head swiveling smoothly from detail to detail, as though searching for signs of danger in the undergrowth.

He kept glancing at the sky, what little sky they could see through the canopy in any case, as though checking the position of the sun. Judging from the quality of light and said position, Twilight judged that they had less than an hour or two before nightfall.

That was both good and bad.

Good, in that she could finally use celestial navigation to figure out where in Equestria she was.

Granted, without an astrolabe that would be less useful, but Princess Luna carefully ensured that the night sky remained constant and that the stars didn't drift too far from their intended positions specifically so lost travelers could find their way. Twilight Sparkle had used the technique countless times out of intellectual curiousity.

Bad because... well, like the man said, predators loved the night time.

Marshall's eyes passed over her, and he visibly started, then relaxed. She realized that he kept seeming to have to reassure himself she was still behind him. That was troubling. He didn't come across as unbalanced, but the nervous habit suggested he still didn't really believe he wasn't alone anymore.

"I'm not going to disappear, you know." She said softly. She wasn't quite on the level of bleeding heart that Fluttershy was, but she was certainly no slouch in that department.

He started again, then his eyes snapped to her. His face tightened, then he nodded, turning back to the jungle.

He froze.

She stopped, seeing the sudden shift in his posture as he eased downward.

"What is it?" She whispered apprehensively.

He raised a finger, a gesture she wasn't quite sure the meaning of, peering hard into the slowly darkening jungle, then he cursed quietly and carefully shifted that odd clubby, sticky thing from his shoulder. It had far too many accoutrements attached to it to merely be a club. On closer inspection it appeared to be a a structure built around a tube of dark metal, with a lens of some sort atop it, uniquely economized for human utility, which he demonstrated by grasping a handle, pulling it back slowly with a quiet machine smooth click before bringing the device to his shoulder, putting the lens in line with his eyes.

He crouched down into the undergrowth and nodded his head in a "come over here" sort of gesture.

"Look out that way, over there by that mossy rock." He wasn't whispering, merely talking in a low tone, almost conversational, and she immediately noted how the lack of sibilance actually made him a little quieter than her earlier whisper.

She marveled at the neat trick, even as her eyes and ears strained to catch sight of what had him spooked.

"Do you see the rock?" He asked, not taking his eyes off whatever it was he saw.

"Yes." She said, emulating his quiet tone.

"Ok, follow that root at its base to the right, 'til you see it... and don't panic. Whatever you do, DON'T run."

Her heart sped up at his words, but there was a tight control there that eased her fears, somewhat. She followed his instructions and saw...

She wasn't sure what it was she saw. It certainly was an odd little thing.

It was small, perhaps the size of a filly. Thirty pounds at the most. It was crouched silently, coloration causing it to blend into the natural shadows of the jungle foliage. From the position it had taken it appeared to walk upright, with forelimbs ending in three claws. Its hind feet sported two small claws, and a third, larger, deadly looking curved claw that was slightly offset from the other two, like a deadly little scythe. She had no illusions about what THOSE were for. It was densely feathered all along its body, with a narrow, vicious looking head, alert beady orange eyes, and a slight overbite displaying a row of sharp looking teeth.

It was looking right at her.

She hunched towards the human instinctively.

"What is it?"

He shook his head slowly. "Don't know. Seen 'em before. Call 'em murder turkeys, but to be honest, I think they're some kind of... feathery little dinosaur. One of the many reasons I know we probably aren't anywhere familiar. Back home these suckers have been extinct for... millions of years. Keep your eyes on it, and tell me if it moves."

He shifted very casually over, scanning their flanks, the odd tubelike weapon pointed outward.

"What-" She started to ask.

"These little fuckers ALWAYS hunt in packs. Always. Thought I'd taken care of the pack that hunted this area weeks ago. Guess I missed a few. It's the little bastards we DON'T see that are the problem. That one there is the fake out. It WANTS us to see it. It's trying panic us and flush us into its buddies." He sighed slowly.

"Can't be many of 'em. They're being AWFULLY coy about this. I'm guessing two... maybe three at the most. That one there is a male, you can tell 'cause they're smaller." He shifted slightly.

"And there's the female. Clever girl. Ok... as soon as I take out the female, that little fucker is gonna come quick and quiet ready to tear me a completely superflous new oriface. Gimme some kind of signal when it moves."

"Wait! Wait!" She hissed frantically. "You can't just-"

"Twilight, those things are NOT playing tag with us." He said reasonably.

"That doesn't mean we have to... KILL them." She said, weakly.

He risked a look in her direction. "They are vicious little eating machines and they are going to do their damnest to end us in as messy and bloody a fashion as you'll EVER see this side of Animal Planet. Welcome to the jungle, sweetheart, it's time to grow up."

He paused. "Or die, if you prefer..." He said in that entirely too reasonable tone.

She winced. Then risked an irritated glance at him.

He let out a deep breath. "She's moving. On three."

She started, turned back to the male, and realized it was moving, terrifyingly fast, and deadly quiet.

"One,"

"Marshall, it's moving!" She whined. His jaw tightened, but he obviously couldn't risk glancing at the male.

"Two..."

It came on in a bounding, oddly birdlike scamper, snapping its jaws in anticipation. Those claws flexed as though already ripping into her flesh. She swallowed hard, frantically looking for a way out of this.

That didn't involve her or it bleeding.

"Three."

KA-KA-KRAK!

What happened next she was never entirely certain of. Three incredibly intense bursts of sound accompanied by bursts of light she caught in her periphreal vision errupted from the weapon the human held. This set her sensative ears to ringing and jerked a pained, startled cry from her. Immediately after firing the weapon he pivoted with a snarl, frantically attempting to capture a sight picture of the oncoming male. It was obvious he was going to come up a little short. The male "murder turkey" let out a trilling, piping, victorious shriek and launched itself at her...

Only to slam heavily into a purple plane of force she'd thrown up at the last moment, practically out of reflex. The voracious little mass of feathers and teeth hung there like a bird that has discovered the joys of sliding glass doors and a good window cleaner. The expression on its face could best be described as a cross between "WTF" and "I has a sad".

Her own expression hardened and she gathered her power, horn bursting into purple light as she telekinetically flung the predator away, sending it on a terminal arc which left a small hole in the canopy and ended with a distant crash of breaking vegetation and the scattering of myriad birds and smaller critters.

Marshall stared at her open mouthed, smoke drifting gently from the weapon forgotten in his hands. His voice, when it came, was full of quiet awe. "Holy Dungeon Master's Guide, Batman."

She eyed the hole with narrowed eyes, then nodded slightly to herself in satisfaction and rounded on him.

"Do NOT patronize me." She emphasized this with a little bounding stomp on her front hooves, eyes flashing.

He swallowed, looked at the hole in the canopy, where a few errant leaves and small twigs still drifted in the rapidly darkening sky, shook his head, then ducked his head in a nod.

"No, ma'am."

She winced at the ringing in her ears and stared at his weapon intently. "What in Celestia's name IS that thing?"

He blinked, glanced down, then scanned the tree line again, looking a little shellshocked. "M4 carbine. It... er... fires little bits of metal at extremely high velocities through the application of expanding gas... um... what the hell just happened?"

"Magic." She said, then frowned at his uncomprehending look.

"Unicorns can focus and manipulate the energies of the universe. Through our horn and the application of our personal thaumic field, we can generate a localized energy matrix to manifest a number of varied effects, including firing small flightless raptorian carnivores at extremely high velocities through the application of Kinesis."

He blinked at this.

She gave him one of his own little "got you fucker" grins.

He grinned back, and let out a little chuckle. "Why Sparks, I do believe that was a zinger. OK. Human one, unicorn one."

She flicked her ears confusedly at him. "Huh?"

He snorted. "I'm keeping score. Current score is one all."

She thought about this for a moment, then frowned. "When did you-"

He gestured at her expansively with his off hand, rifle still held at the ready.

"You walked into my trap. That counts." He said, loftily.

She scowled. "It shouldn't. I wasn't-"

He shook his head, eyes back on the foliage. "No take-backsies. Mare up unicorn, and move forward."

She rolled her eyes and grumbled slightly, before glancing at him with a worried expression. "Are they gone?"

He scanned about for a few moments more, than relaxed and flicked a small button on the mechanism of the weapon.

"Yeah, I think so. Coast is clear. Don't drop your guard completely though. These little fuckers are tricky, I tell's ya."

He stood from his crouch and manuevered the rifle back onto his back with one smooth movement that she found herself fascinated by. It had never occurred to her how the mechanics of Spike's arms and fingers required such complex movements, but those movements were magnified in the tall primate. He scanned the undergrowth in the direction he'd fired, his face settling into serious lines. He glanced down at her and she glanced back, puzzled.

"You probably don't want to watch this, Twilight." He said in a voice gone serious.

Turning from her, he stalked into the undergrowth, and despite his warning she followed him, curiousity getting the better of her. He slipped around a small torn leafy bit of what she now recognized from history books as a prehistoric fern, towards a slightly larger and differently colored "murder turkey", which lay curled in a heap on loam and sand spattered lightly with crimson, feathered sides raising and falling shallowly.

Its eyes flicked in their direction, but it made no attempt to rise. The front of its chest was matted with blood and torn feathers, its back a welter of gore through which bone shone wetly.

How it was still alive, she had no idea. She glanced away, sickened, more than a little fearful now, considering the awful power of the weapon on his back.

He stared down at the beast silently, considering, shot her another glance, shook his head, and looked back, his expression one of a stallion who knows he's going to have to do something that will draw considerable ire, but is necessary none the less.

Her eyes widened. "What-"

He glanced back at her, then turned back to the task at hand and drew that long knife from his belt.

"No..." She said in a small voice.

"She can't hunt, not with three 5.56 rounds through her spine. That means the alternative is to let her die in considerable pain on the jungle floor, and feed some scavengers or let her rot." He said quietly, not turning around.

"But..." She protested weakly.

He sighed and turned toward her. "It's best we get this out of the way fast, Sparks. Sooner or later you are going to have to kill something to survive on this island." Starting with "Sooner", He emphasized each word with a gentle shake of the knife.

He glanced up at the hole in the canopy meaningfully.

"If you haven't already."

She glanced down, trembling. It wasn't her fault! She'd just reacted! She hadn't meant to... well... wait a minute, it was kind of a bird. Maybe it was ok? She didn't KNOW for certain she'd hurt it badly. She shook that thought off. No, before you do something, you take responsibility for its possible outcomes.

Even the ones you don't like. She shivered. Had she really had no other choices?

His voice cut through her musings.

"Meat is a reality you're just going to have to live with where I'm concerned, Sparks. If you plan on sticking around." He glanced down. His expression was sympathetic. Compassionate, even.

It was not, however, compromising.

"I don't want to be alone anymore, but I'm not going to risk getting sick because I can't get the nutrients I need. Maybe if I was a survival expert I could find alternatives, but I'm not. I'm a navy pilot with half remembered three week SERE, er, that's a wilderness survival and enemy evasion course under my belt, and a Bachelors Degree in Aeronautical Engineering."

She sighed. He gave her a slightly frustrated look, then appeared to grudgingly compromise.

"You don't have to watch. You don't even have to like it, Sparks. I'm not going to leave a living thing I mortally injured to die in agony over several minutes, and I'm not going to kill something and then let perfectly good protein go to waste." He said reasonably.

"Besides, the fucker made me expend calories and bullets to stop her from eating my hairy ass. The least she can do is be delicious."

She glared at him. "That's not funny."

He shrugged. "Point of view, Twilight. 'Sides. They taste like chicken, and I feel like chicken tonight."

She had been in the process of turning away, and this comment caught her attention again. She turned to give him a horrified look, and consequently caught sight of him turning with the knife and finishing the murder turkey in two quick motions, boot sole to the side of its long muzzle to keep it in place and prevent it from snapping at him, and one short, quick bone crunching stab to the base of the skull.

Step, in, crunch, out.

In a morbid sense it was actually rather ingenious in its efficiency. Like he'd done it a thousand times.

She couldn't grasp the idea of a species so economical with murder. She suddenly felt very dizzy.

Fun fact, unlike terrestrial equines, Equestrian ponies are more than capable of a vomit reflex. Which is probably for the best, seeing as the now infamous "baked bads" incident might have had more serious ramifications in a species that couldn't void their stomach.

Deadly even.

She turned away, heaving, bile and partially digested star fruit spilling onto the blood specked ground. She stared down at it and watched reality fade in and out at the edges of her vision, and only the horrified realization that if she passed out right now, she'd end up in her own vomit and the blood kept her on her feet.

She kept her back to the human's quick field dressing of the animal. Her head hung low between her forelegs, and she focused on breathing in and out, and not being sick again or passing out. Consequently, she only heard the wet slicing noises of the human's casual butchery.

This did not help.

It felt like forever, but was probably only around five or ten minutes before he announced his completion of the act, wiped his knife off on the leaves and stuck it back in its sheath, and they continued onward in uneasy silence.


Lieutenant Commander Marshall "Rain Man" (formerly Beetle, but YOU don't pick your callsigns, and a rather infamous incident during a liberty port in Pusan Korea had ended that handle forever) Bailey was not a soldier. At least, he did not identify himself as one. Sure, like any cocky twenty year old punk just out of OCS, he'd wanted a fighter pilot slot. The problem was, of course, that the Navy had needs, and they didn't always coincide with the wants of twenty year old would be fighter jockeys.

Thus, after an Associates Degree, Officer Candidate School, flight training and various required courses, he'd ended up attached to Fleet Logistics Support Squadron Six Two, or VR-62, "The Nomads". While flying the venerable C-130T Hercules four engine turboprop cargo plane, he'd developed a distinct love for the mechanisms of flight and, as the years passed and he advanced slowly but steadily up the ranks, and at the advice of a respected senior officer, he had taken the opportunity to continue his college education. Over the course of his career, he had actually developed a love for the aeronautical engineering field, thus it seemed like a natural fit.

He'd never been in a fighter cockpit, and wasn't entirely sure he wanted to be, at this point. At the age of thirty, he was not an old man, but dogfighting was a young man's game, and he was getting just a little long in the tooth to start down that road, now.

Then, of course, the universe had shown itself for the perverse bitch goddess that she was and dropped him onto this hell hole, and Marshall had discovered something else that he was, above all else.

A survivor.

Now he was starting to wonder if perhaps he was also crazy. The thought had occurred to him in the past. In the long, long hours of solitude. This island wasn't exactly a great place to be if you were starting to doubt your senses. There was just too much wrong with it. Animals that should have been extinct, geographical features that couldn't exist in tandem...

Among other things. The talking purple unicorn pony with the flank tattoo was pretty much the icing on the crazy cake. He had to keep looking over at it to prove to himself it... no she, was still there. It just looked so ridiculous. She didn't look much like a terrestrial pony, when you examined it with a critical eye. She was too small, barely waist height, probably less than seventy pounds, the eyes were too big, the muzzle was too short the face too expressive... and, you know, it was bright purple with a mane garish enough to make an anime girl blush, and a cute 'lil horn.

Frankly, she looked like someone described a pony to an ignorant and drunken Chuck Jones once, and in a self-destructive binge of alcohol and barbituates he'd scrawled his interpretation of a what a cartoon unicorn should look like... and not one of those anime ones that were done all ultra-realistic.

No, ol' Chuckles did what Chuckles did best. We're talking Looney Tunes. Emphasis on the looney.

Still, several factors suggested to him it... damn it, SHE was actually there. For one, in his worst fever dreams he certainly wouldn't have imagined up a little cutesy purple unicorn. He'd run a hundred six degree fever and had to be taken to the hospital during flight school once. In his hospital bed he'd hallucinated that his roommate from college was sitting on his chest and reciting landing checklist procedures in a bad Russian accent.

Which was just before turning into a gargoyle with the face of Christopher Walken, and telling him he was going to be late for school if he didn't get up.

All of which was fucked up, and incidently led to him acing the written test on landing procedures, but never anything as off the wall as a pretty petite purple pucking pony.

If HE'D imagined it up, it would have been a huge black thing with a razor wire mane and steel hooves shooting fire out of its nostrils. Maybe with Ronnie James Dio astride it.

Or you know, someone small and curvy, and distinctly more brunette, athletic, with legs that went all the way up and modest breasts, he wasn't picky, and more than a handful was a waste.

Oh and skintight leather pants.

Leather pants were awesome.

Unless he was considerably more fucked in the head than he even knew, and his brain had decided he was sufficiently desocialized that even Bugs Bunny was starting to look like valid company at this point. Which he supposed was possible, because you were always supposed to be the last one to know.

So operating on the assumption that he was not, in fact, insane in the membrane, he had to face facts. A magic slinging unicorn from a society which obviously didn't get out much was following him back to his camp, and he had probably traumatized her for life.

He risked a glance at her. From what he could see, she was obviously on autopilot. Refusing to look at anything, dragging her hooves. Even her tail was drooping.

She refused to look at him.

She just looked so... lost. Forlorn, and scared, and frankly, just plain downtrodden. He shouldn't have forced so much on her so quickly.

He frowned.

Here they were, just met, after he nearly killed her in a trap meant for small animals, and the first thing he did was kill something in front of her. Where ever she came from, they obviously did things differently than they did on Earth. She looked so horrified. It was like he'd killed a PUPPY in front of a twelve year old. Hell, unless things had drastically changed back home, a twelve year old these days was sufficiently desensitized by the internet, TV, and the video game industry that they probably wouldn't have batted an eye if he'd taken a CHAINSAW to the damn thing.

He'd technically saved her life, damn it. If she'd continued wandering around in the jungle by herself, those damn dinosaurs would have probably bushwhacked her but good and made a quick meal of her. Oh sure, she might have gotten one with that Jedi bullshit, but she'd have never seen the other one coming, and then it was good night, Gracey.

So why did he feel... cruel? Why did he feel like a world class heel? A bully. Like a know-it-all adult who had just told a happy child that there was no Santa Claus because it made him feel big and superior?

He sighed, and before he could consider some possible fix for the problem they were there.

Home sweet motherfucking home.

This place was one of the reasons that he was convinced there was something screwy going on on this island. It was just a little too useful, it smacked of artiface. Oh sure, it was just a cave... but it was almost perfect, when he found it.

A little hobbit burrow waiting to happen. The place practically had a neon sign over it saying, "Hey fucker, you should build here!"

A big tree sticking out of a modest amount of top soil and the meadering foothills that eventually turned into Mount Fucked If I Know and a babbling little stream had created a perfect little hidey-hole that stayed dry in the wet and had sufficient space to store his not inconsiderable arsenal of shit. Salvage and construction over the years had turned it into the next best thing to a fortress.

He wasn't being too much of a blowhard to say that he was more than a little proud of it.

He watched Twilight Sparkle approach and wondered, not for the first time, what to do next.


Despite everything that had happened today, despite all she had to think about, despite the aches, pains, and general malaise of the spirit, she had to admit, Marshall had outdone himself. Before her lay what she could only imagine represented untold hours of labor.

A ten foot tall palisade fence that ringed a hill, higher in the back as it followed the hump, with an over looking tree rested in natural fold of a foothill. From here she could see that a small observation post, just a platform with a little three foot rail and a removable canvas covering had been built onto the limbs of the tree. Marshall glanced back at her, his expression a little smug, but she was too busy wondering at what he'd built to be irritated.

Grasping a plank that rested across a closed gateway, he lifted it out of the way and pulled the gate open with a little grunt of effort. The hinges, she noticed, looked like left over bits of some far more advanced piece of machinery, obviously adapted to this purpose from salvage. She stepped into the enclosure and he closed the gate behind them, placing the plank firmly into the slots provided on the inside.

She shook her head, slowly, glancing around her at the interior.

Several stoutly constructed outbuildings of wood abounded the inside of the palisade, some with obvious purposes, others less so. Most appeared to be organized storage buildings, with numerous wooden pallets stacked with supplies. Nestled back against the hill, almost directly under the tree and framed by roots was what appeared to be a grey metal door, again, obviously repurposed from some other piece of machinery. This obsessive attention to personal safety both reassured and worried her.

He grinned at her tiredly, and a trifle sadly, she thought, unless she had completely misread his eyes, and gestured about him.

"Welcome to Casa Del Bailey. Pool hours are from eight to six, dining hours are from six to ten, and we would request that guests refrain from getting hammered and pissing in the ice machine."

She snorted, which told her how tired she was, if his decidedly off-color humor was getting anything out of her.

Tossing the canvas bag of star fruit next to a crude wooden barrel, he shifted the murder turkey carcass onto his shoulder and walked into one of the outbuildings smelled strongly of woodsmoke and faintly of blood. For several minutes she just rested, not knowing what he was doing in there, and not really wanting to know. Smoke began to billow out of the room. A little later he came back out sans carcass.

She was amazed at how relieved she was not to have to look at it anymore. Like if she couldn't see it, it wasn't there. She wondered if that made her a hypocrite. She felt like she should care more about it, but right now she just felt numb. Now that they were closed off from the jungle, completely wrapped in a place he obviously thought was safe enough, all she wanted to do was collapse in on herself.

Ponyville already felt like a lifetime ago.

"How long have you been here, Marshall?" She asked quietly.

He frowned, considering her question thoughtfully as he removed his gloves and the rifle on his back, set them aside, then dunked a large rag into the crude barrel of water and began scrubbing himself. He tossed her another wet rag and she caught it with her magic, gratefully using it to scrub the day off of her coat and mane.

He watched the levitation trick with fascination before her expression prompted him to return to the conversation at hand.

"Five years."

She stopped and stared at him, eyes wide. "Five... five YEARS?!"

"Give or take a month or so. Things were-" He shuddered, his expression far away before he jerked back to reality. "Hectic, when I first showed up."

"How do you stand it?" She whispered. She felt like breaking down after a DAY.

He shrugged. "You focus on the day to day. Focus on the now. It's not so bad, really." The forced nonchalance of his posture, the slightly wooden set to his face, and most of all his gaze told a her a different story.

"Like I said, it was probably close to a month before I found this place. Since then, I've been keeping track of the days on one of the back walls."

He gestured vaguely towards the metal door.

"Not much else to do. I call it my "Fuck You Universe" wall. Each day is a point in my favor."

She blinked. "You seem awfully obsessed with keeping score, Marshall."

He shrugged again. "Only way to tell if you're winning at life. You done with that?"

She glanced down at the rag and nodded. Her mane and tail were an absolute mess, but without a brush that was a lost cause. He reached tentatively into her magic field and took the rag, his expression bemused.

"Huh... feels tingly. I better not get cancer from this, Sparks."

She smiled tiredly. "Only in about one in five cases."

He blinked.

"Two to one, Marshall. My lead."

He sighed. "Yup. Getting my ass handed to me by a pint-sized equine. Not my best moment."

He looked at her seriously. "What about you? You can't have been here long."

She sighed. "That obvious, huh? I just got here this morning. Went to sleep in my own bed, woke up... on a beach, actually."

He nodded. "Could have been worse. A lot worse."

She waited for him to elaborate but he simply picked up the rifle and the canvas bag of fruit and opened the metal hatch set into the hillside with a grating sound of metal against rock.

She didn't press him for more. She simply followed him into the side of the hill.

It was dim inside the cave, the glowing embers of a dying fire providing what little light there was. He stoked the fire back to life with some kindling and a few pieces of dry wood, then used a small stick from it to light several jars with small amounts of some flammable liquid in them.

This provided a surprising amount of illumination, revealing a comfortably sized room with just enough height that he didn't have to hunch over to get around. What little smoke there was from the fire drifted up into a shielded hole in the cave roof, no doubt disappearing into the night sky. The room was an odd mixture of high tech salvage and crude jungle survival practicality. A metal chair with a wooden base rested in the corner next to a wooden table constructed of the remains of several pallets. A mattress of some silky material with a few crude pillows and a folded grey blanket with an odd stencil on it. She was delighted to find that it was in common Equestrian.



"PROPERTY OF US GOV'T NAS JACKSONVILLE, FL"


"VR-62 NOMADS"

Several shelves had been braced onto the walls, and she realized with growing excitement that they held at least ten or fifteen different BOOKS, training manuals, judging from their spines, along with three or four dog-earred paperback novels, the spines spiderwebbed with creases from repeated readings.

He walked over to the table and did something complicated with the rifle, removing some pieces from it before setting it down. While she watched he went through a few bags, setting out some bowls and crude cutlery.

"Uh... don't have a huge selection for the equine palate, I'm afraid. I've got some dried fruits, some fresh star fruit, some tubers and such. Sorry. You probably don't want what I'm eating."

She shuddered. "It's ok. I'm not hungry."

He looked doubtful, but shrugged. "Suit yourself. I've got some left over material from one of the 'chutes, a few cushions I salvaged that I'm not using. I can rig you up a place to sleep, if you'd like."

She nodded absently, staring up at the books. Something occurred to her suddenly.

"Actually, Marshall... I'd like to get a look at the stars, if it's all right with you. I'd like to see if I can get a fix on our position."

He frowned. "Sparks... I think..." He shook his head. "Nevermind. Sure. Observation deck is upstairs."

He scratched his bearded chin. "You know, actually, I'm not entirely sure how I'm gonna get you up there. Never rigged it for someone with hooves."

She gave him a silent, pleading look.

He rolled his eyes. "Alright, we'll figure something out."

Her grateful smile obviously embarassed and pleased him.


The evening was turning just a little bit cool, and consequently Marshall had thrown on a desert camo BDU top with the sleeves rolled up and the front unbuttoned as they made their way outside. Grabbing a lit stick, and his set of binoculars in their case, he ignited the outside alcohol lamps, and they made their way up the back side of the hill, where he'd cut a path. Staring in consternation at the back side of the palisade, he made a mental note to clear cut the kill zone on that half of the area surrounding the back wall, as it was starting to creep in again.

Experience had taught him you didn't want anything sneaking up on you at night, even if you were behind a palisade.

Once they'd arrived at the base of the tree, they stared up at the tree with its eight slat steps, framed in a night sky still just a bit too early to get a good look at the stars.

Considering the problem logically, he decided she probably wasn't ready to be hoisted into it with a rope, nor was he entirely confident of his ability to do so without hurting her. A sinking feeling in his gut told her that regardless of what he did to get her in the tree, when she made her observations she was in for some pain anyway. Still, he kept his suspicions to himself. Sure it wasn't Earth's night sky, but it might be hers, and there was no point in getting her worked up if it was.

He got the impression she was just a tad fragile right now.

Getting her up onto the "observation deck", turned out to involve what Marshall would later refer to as "the most ironic bit of grab-assery this side of where ever". Hooking her forelegs over his shoulders, her ears laid back in embarassment and distress, he hooked her back hooves into his belt and just muscled his way up the slat ladder too quickly for them to get awkward enough to slip. Once up top, it was a little cramped on the platform, with the two of them, but it did have a hellaciously good view of the night sky, and he'd cut the jungle back enough to provide a clear space.

She frowned up at the night sky, muttering something to the effect of, "Luna's taking her sweet time tonight."

"Might be a little easier with these." He said calmly.

She practically yanked his fingers off when she saw the binos. Once again he was treated to that fascinating purple glow of hers. It felt odd, less like his fingers had fallen asleep than like a mild electrical shock. Not unpleasant, just weird.

She looped the strap behind her head and telekinetically lifted them to her eyes, scanning the night sky.

The moon was there, big and completely unlike the one he was used to. This had been the first inkling he'd gotten that something really screwy was going on back when, aside from going from landing at an FOB in Afghanistan to a jungle island in less than an eye-blink that was. The moon was plainly artificial, as it was just a big white globe way up there, with no craters or shadows to make it distinct. It looked like a photo realistic moon made by a lazy eight year old, actually.

She frowned. "No... no that's all wrong. What is she thinking?!"

He raised an eyebrow. "What is who-"

She spun, hooves clopping on the wooden boards and panned east, then over west. The stars were coming out more and more clearly as the light faded completely, and while it wasn't HIS sky, it was pretty. The lack of any real light pollution really made it jump out at you.

"No, no, no..." She panted. "It's all wrong! Nothing is where it's supposed to be-"

She dropped the binos, clearly distraught, and he caught them before they could hit the railing hard enough to do some damage.

"Hey, easy there! These are the only pair I have!"

Then he caught a look at her face and any thoughts about the binoculars left in a rush.

She was terrified. It wasn't the fear of disorientation, of being lost. It was deeper, much more visceral. This wasn't the fear of the unknown, it was a desolation of the soul. As though one of the fundaments of her reality had been stripped from her.

It was like watching someone lose their FAITH.

She'd laid her ears back, and her eyes rolled wildly. She tensed, and it suddenly occurred to him that he was on a little platform fifteen feet above a steep rocky incline with what was looking to be a panicking equine.

"Oh boy." He muttered.