Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Octave

Where had it all gone... How had it all gone? Well? Wrong? Too early to tell? But it was definitely going somewhere, and she could tell where it had started, maybe. It wasn't the day she'd discovered it, and it wasn't the day she'd started testing it out either. It was at least a week after, and maybe two. It definitely wasn't that night or that day, or the day she'd taken the job either for that matter, it was sooner than that. It was either the day she'd decided what she wanted to do with it, or the day she'd actually started looking for ways to do so.

She couldn't honestly quite decide between the two. There was an argument to be made that she could have still stopped at some point in between, changed her mind and not followed her original plan. At the same time she knew herself well enough to know the likelihood of her actually doing that was past being slim and into straight up nonexistent territory. But something still could have happened between the two. Then again something could have happened at any moment, that wasn't really a valid excuse. What could have happened too was her deciding to wait one more day or one less, and then she could easily have ended up somewhere different. Or maybe not. Maybe the ponies she'd found had been looking for long enough for it not to matter.

A better way to look at it, maybe, was whether or not she could have stopped after a certain point, even if she wouldn't have. It didn't quite answer the question, or at least she didn't think so, but it was definitely easier to pin down. Of course to a certain degree she always could have done something different, but it was more about there being risks associated with it past a certain point. The moment she'd met the other? Yes. The moment she'd arrived there? That too. The moment she'd accepted the job? That one for sure. That was as far back as she could go with certainty. After all, if she'd turned it down then there wouldn't have been consequences. Sure, things may have gone similarly with whatever else she'd have picked, but she couldn't actually know that for sure. That was her first job of that kind.

Maybe it was going to be the last, too. Maybe not. It depended on a lot of things. How she would feel at the end of it, and whether or not it would go successfully, and a bit about what her colleagues said was better. They clearly had experience in the field. She really hoped she wasn't going to mess up and get them in trouble, or look bad in front of them. The thought of embarrassing herself to them by doing a bad job was actually worse than the consequences she could face if she failed. Maybe that meant she was the right mare for the lifestyle. Maybe.

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