> Threshold
>  by mushroompone
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Part I: Chapter One
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a curious way, we expect there to always be noise buzzing around our ears. There is a constant babble in the periphery of our lives, either floating in from an open window or caught it snippets as others glide past us. Finding true silence is a quest which few will ever complete.

There is something paralyzing in the moments when the silence creeps up on you. When you expect noise, so your brain is puttering along at its usual pace, ignoring the world around you. Silence falls like a cherry blossom fluttering to the ground. Nothing remains.

I remember the first time I felt this. With a woolly scarf draped over my snout, I trotted along to the market through a blanket of freshly fallen snow. My mind had been whirling with to-dos and meaninglessness when the nagging voices faded nothing filled the void they had left. There were ponies everywhere, all on a mission and moving as usual, all with little puffs of breath rising from their mouths-- but between the flurries at their hooves and the scarves around their faces there was no room to make a sound. My panting breaths rushed through me, and I became afraid to sniff or shiver or even step too loudly and break the silence. Nothing but the hum of the universe in my ears. It was like realizing I was in a dream.

The second time I experienced this happened much later. It is a memory with no pretense, as though I had read one page out of the middle of a book, never bothering to skim the rest. The air was hot and sticky, and the buzz of cicadas rolled out of the forest.

“I’m waiting for you!” called out through time and space and eternity. This time, it was like waking up from a dream. A very long dream.

The cicadas silenced. The wind froze. I was very aware of myself as I stood in the still and oppressively humid summer air. The town was nearly invisible in the fog which hung around its head.

Almost involuntarily—no, entirely involuntarily—I recited a few facts to myself in a harsh little whisper: “I am Rarity. Today is Thursday. I am alive.”

I stood in dew-covered grass near the edge of the Everfree forest. The air smelled of rain, and the sunlight of the early morning filtered through the thick cloud cover. No shadows were cast in this otherworldly light. The world seemed as an unfinished painting.

I wish to Celestia I could remember where I was going or what I was doing so far from town, but I think that is a mystery I will never solve. But here I was, sweating and bleary-eyed, standing near the edge of the forest and looking right at a well-hidden structure which looked as if it had sprouted from the ground overnight. Moss, vines, and other vegetation veiled the building; some had grown there, but some dangled from outcroppings and overhangs with rootballs and dirt still clinging to their stems. 

As far as I could tell, the building was an abandoned shopping center which I had simply never seen before. One outer wall was solid glass, through which I spotted an old fountain and a set of escalators. Everything which wasn’t covered in moss and vines had black mold creeping across its surface.

A form shifted inside. Rising? Bracing? Cowering? It was difficult to tell, little more than a dark smudge beyond the dingy glass.

I squinted and watched as the crumpled shape of a pony hauled herself to her feet, fell, vomited, and righted itself. Without thinking, I broke into a run towards the strange building and the clearly injured pony within it. As I galloped, the pony’s head snapped up at attention, looking, it seemed, directly at me. In a flash, it disappeared.

Despite this, I reached the dilapidated structure and stepped gingerly through a shattered hole in the wall of windows.

A shopping mall. I was certain, now. A shopping mall which looked ancient and yet brand new-- not a single neon sign hung above a storefront, no hint of merchandise or even display furniture anywhere. A building which had only just been finished, and now stood abandoned, never used. Saying that it made me uneasy would be an understatement… just standing in the place filled me with unshakable dread.

“Hello?” I called into the emptiness. My voice did not echo back to me. “I saw somepony in here… are you alright, darling?”

I stepped slowly and carefully through grass so thick it may as well have been a meadow untouched by ponykind. “If you’re in trouble, I can help.”

Soul-crushing silence.

I could feel my chest constricting in fear. It had been a long time since I had last faced the supernatural like this. But nothing had ever truly felt like this. My head was swimming from lack of oxygen and there was a strange buzzing sound gathering in my ears. A hum. The hum of the universe.

Quick breaths were hitching in my throat as I stumbled backwards and--

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Falafel, Pickle, or Avocado. Silly me. It must be the lack of sleep. The buzzing in my ears wasn’t anything but this broken fluorescent light illuminating the sandwiches in the Kwik-Grab. Silly, silly me.

The sandwiches were all busted up pretty badly. Wrapped in paper and stamped roughly by minimum-wage workers, you couldn’t ever expect them to be in good condition. But these were the last dregs of the day, laying there in the bottom of the bin like crumpled bits of paper in the bottom of a wastebasket. Falafel, Pickle, or Avocado. Nightwhisper hated all of them. He liked a plain tomato and cheese. Which one could I pick everything else off of and leave the least amount of flavor behind as possible?

I suppose this was why I had so quickly lost consciousness. The stakes were high, but the entertainment so low. Part of me wanted to tell him to just pick it off himself and deal with whatever he thought that kind of back-talk deserved. The rest of me remembered what happened last time.

Falafel was the way to go. Less sticky, less flavorful. Surely he wouldn’t notice if I removed the patties and ate them myself. 

I lifted the sandwich with my magic and turned to face the rest of the establishment. Places like these were almost non-places-- never a destination, always an unexpected rest stop. Built from a kit, practically, without any touch of uniqueness or life. Just a few rows of low shelves and buzzing lights and the fuzzy, dull tones of radio fizzling beneath everything else. Everything a nasty shade of lifeless blue-green. Everything artificial, even the air pumped in at an optimal temperature. As I said, a non-place place.

I carried the battered parcel to the front of the store and dropped it on the counter. The young colt standing there looked just as dead-eyed as me. 

“Could I get a pack of Marlburro, too?” I asked softly.

He barely reacted. He wasn’t looking past me, precisely-- it was more of a glazed and vacant stare in eyes which refused to meet my own. I couldn’t be sure if this was due to the hour, or the influence of something else entirely.

I cleared my throat. “Marlburro? Please?”

The bell on the front door tinkled gently. The colt’s eyes flicked over to the door, then back down at the magazine he had open on the counter. 

I sighed deeply. “I’m not sure why I’m being treated this way but I would really appreciate it if--”

“Hooves on the desk no funny business,” a gruff voice beside me spat. 

I jumped to the side and shrank away from the stallion beside me. He did not stutter. He had a spell charged on his horn and ready to fly… a terrifying dark red that sparked and sputtered.

Once again, fear clutched my chest and I stumbled backwards and into a cardboard display. Still, neither pony made any notice of me. Thank Celestia.


In a whirlwind of panic and fear, I somehow made my way into one of the aisles and cowered against the shelves, desperately trying to come up with a plan. I closed my eyes and knocked my head against the shelving in the hopes that it would snap my out of whatever it was I was trapped in.

“Rarity!” A sudden hoof on my foreleg made me gasp. “We need to get out of here, come on!”

Large, sparkling eyes. A familiar shade of magenta, flickering frantically across my face. Familiar, yes-- but, at the same time, radically different.

“R-Rainbow Dash?” I mumbled.

Her eyes flashed with an emotion I couldn’t quite place. Her breath spread warmth across my cheek.

“Let’s go, Rares! Come on!” she hissed. She gave my foreleg a swift tug and it slid cleanly along the linoleum. My chest collided with the floor and all the air left my lungs with a thump. 

“Hurry, please!” she begged, now dragging me along the floor as I tried to catch my breath.

The sound of a magical blast knocked the sense back into me, and I was on my hooves in an instant. Then I was running, with Rainbow’s front hooves clutching my chest and hoisting me off the ground the slightest bit. There was an odd ropiness to the muscles in her legs as they flexed against my flanks, I thought. It was difficult to form any sort of rational thought just yet.

There was sand beneath me. Cold sand which looked grey in the light of the moon. It rushed past us like a river. There was nothing to focus on but the motion as I hung limp in Rainbow’s grasp.

Once Rainbow’s panic-stricken heart slowed its beat to a more usual pace, she released me and came to a reluctant stop. The Kwik-Grab was barely a dot on the horizon.

“Wow…” Rainbow said, chest still heaving from the hasty escape. “So. I guess you live in San Palomino now?”

“Are you kidding me, Rainbow?”

She rubbed her foreleg nervously, eyes flicking from cactus to cactus in the distance. “I mean, I--”

“I’m not going to let you just waltz back into my life like this,” I said, and started off at a trot back towards town. I could feel a lump creeping up my throat.

After a moment of what I assumed to be stunned confusion, Rainbow kicked off the packed sand and glided back to my side. “I just saved your life back there!” she reminded me, her voice cracking repeatedly.

“That’s arguable,” I said.

Rainbow sputtered something at me, but I don’t think she had a true response.

“I don’t have time for you right now.”

She stopped moving. I did not.

I had things to do and places to be. It wasn’t my fault she had been missing for a year. It wasn’t my fault I had to—

“Please?” Rainbow said. “Don’t I even get a chance to apologise?”

“If you had given us better than radio silence for a year, I might consider it.”

She broke into a gallop, catching up once again. I didn’t even cast her a glance, just kept my eyes trained forward and my gait as sure and steady as I could. It wasn’t easy to shake off the adrenaline pumping through me, and my hoofsteps slipped and slid in the drifts of sand. 

“It’s not that I didn’t want to, Rares. I just didn’t have the time. It was always rallies and races and press and between all that I was just…” she trailed off. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? You have to believe me, I am. I came back to make up for all the time I missed and you’re the very first pony I had to see.”

I scoffed. “Yeah, and why’s that?”

She shrugged. “Well, I dunno…”

“Did you somehow ignore me more than the others?” I suggested.

“No…”

“Was your betrayal of me more intense?”

“No, but I know everypony has like… stuff going on…”

“Oh, so you pity me?” A cold, empty laugh fell from my lips. “I’m done just fine, Rainbow Dash. I don’t need your pity.”

“Rares, stop!” With a sudden flash of movement, Rainbow Dash came to stand before me, her wings spread to their full length to block my path. “I have a lot of regrets, okay? I wasn’t off having a grand old time, it was hard for me, too. I knew you all for, like, ten years then I was just… alone. That’s hard.”

The setting sun filtered through her feathers and fell at my hooves like dappled light through leaves. She was such a small pony, nearly a full head shorter than I, but the way she stood held so much power and authority. Even in her vulnerability, she was so strong.

“I did a lot of things that weren’t like me,” she said. Her wings were starting to slowly drift back to her sides. “And I did a lot of things that I wouldn’t have done if you guys had been there for me. I know the others are doing awesome, but it’s kind of hard for somepony like me to just change their loyalties like that, you know?”

I let a wry chuckle escape me. Rainbow’s mouth twitched to a smirk ever so slightly.

“You gotta give me a chance, okay? I promise, this is the last chance you’ll have to give me.”

“Oh, Rainbow…” I sighed heavily, shaking my head and doing my best to avoid Rainbow’s eyes. She had a haunting gaze. Such a little pony, but such big eyes. “Dear Celestia, don’t let me regret this. Walk with me, Rainbow.”

Rainbow’s eyes twinkled, and she fell in step beside me. At first she was very quiet, unsure of how to proceed now that she had been invited in. For a while, it was nice to just walk beside her in the rapidly cooling desert air. I noticed she had cut her mane in a style somewhat similar to her old hero, Spitfire; a harsh style which swept back from her face, giving the odd impression that she was moving at great speed even as she stood still in front of me. I wondered dimly if this was an enforced style of the Wonderbolts, or yet another attempt to appear as one of the herd.

“I like your mane,” Rainbow said suddenly, as though she had read my mind. “It covers your face less.”

“It got to be too much of a hassle, I suppose.” I dipped my head, letting the smaller, tighter curls fall forward.

Rainbow grimaced a bit, swallowed loudly.

“How was the tour?” I asked.

“Long,” she said. “Just… just really long.”

“Was it everything you hoped? Fame, fortune, Wonderbolts?”

“It was definitely… as much as I’d hoped,” she corrected.

As much of what?

“I sent you letters,” I said. “Did you ever get any?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah, I did-- are you still with that Nightwhisper guy?”

I forced a laugh. “You remember him, do you?” I asked. “Yes, we’re still together. And… I live here now.”

“With Nightwhisper?” Rainbow asked. There was a strange little waver in her voice.

“Yes.”

Rainbow said nothing. She bit her lip a bit, chewed at the corner of it, and squinted into the distance. “So… you live there?”

The town now peeked out from behind a butte, a dusty little place where very few ever ended up, and even fewer stayed. 

“Shit. I left that stupid sandwich on the counter…” I kicked the dirt with my front hoof, letting dust cloud around my legs. 

“Is there somewhere in town you could buy another?” Rainbow suggested.

“Not one that Nightwhisper likes,” I said. I then quickly added “He has very particular, erm, dietary restrictions.”

Rainbow watched me carefully. “What about you? Did you get dinner for yourself?”

It was my turn to bite my lip, and force another laugh. “I guess I forgot. Silly me. I’ve been in a daze all day…”

“Rare.” Rainbow took my forehoof in hers. “You know you can talk to me, right? Is something going on? You don’t seem like yourself.”

“Well, to be quite fair, you haven’t known me for over a year,” I said. “I think I’m allowed to grow a little while you’re away on tour.”

Rainbow heaved a great sigh and slowly relinquished my hoof. “I deserve that. But, seriously-- you’re out here kickin’ dirt around and worrying about sandwiches? I never would have thought you to go for such a needy guy.” She chuckled a bit.

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Rainbow.”

“Sure. Maybe I don’t.”

But maybe she does.

“Look, I’ll just go back and get the sandwich, okay?” Rainbow offered.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “It’s dangerous back there. I just wish I hadn’t put that down on the counter, I might’ve left with it by mistake.”

I looked back in the direction of the Kwik-Grab, pondering my options. I ran through what I could remember of the ingredients in mind my, organizing places I could get them, wondering what I would tell Rainbow when she inevitably asked more questions about Nightwhisper. As my mind ran in circles, I could almost feel myself slipping away. This very next moment of calm and I was falling asleep on my hooves. Just as the humming sounds of sleep were beginning to consume me, Rainbow’s voice came floating back to me.

“Oh… You mean this one?” she asked, brandishing the rumpled sandwich. 

I stuttered something in confusion.

“You were holding it when I came in so I… I took it from you. I’ve been holding it this whole time,” she explained.

I squinted at her. “You… did what? How?”

She pressed the sandwich into my hoof with the earnestness of a pony passing down a family heirloom. “Just take it, okay?”

It was still so cold, almost freshly plucked from the display case. I looked down at the sandwich, then back out to the Kwik-Grab, and when I turned around to thank Rainbow Dash she had simply disappeared.

“Wh…” I whispered. “Rainbow?”

I whirled about in a circle, searching for the missing pony, waiting for her to jump out at me from… well, somewhere. I threw my head back to look at the sky, as well. Nothing there but twinkling stars and that bright, round moon.

“Rainbow?” I called, this time a little louder. The echo that had been missing before returned. I could somehow hear my voice bouncing back to me from across the vacant deserts of San Palomino. “Rainbow!”

Only my own voice came back to me. It may have been in my head, but it seemed to be warped as it returned to me.

The tears which I had so studiously held back now started to bubble up from my chest once again. I stood there, in the middle of the desert, holding a stupid sandwich wrapped in its stupid sandwich paper, crying tears for a pony that I couldn’t be certain had been there at all. 

And the funniest thing is that the thought which stopped my tears wasn’t carefully questioning my current mental state, nor was it wondering which events of the past few minutes had actually occurred. No, the thought which returned me to the zombie-like state I had been in this past year was “Nightwhisper won’t be happy that you’re crying over anypony but him.”

Silly, silly me.
> Part I: Chapter Two
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nightwhisper lives above a gas station. I suppose that means I live above a gas station, as well, though I don’t like that thought. There isn’t anything less pleasant, pretty, or homey than a gas station. 

The light was still on over the self-service pump, a beacon which may have been called angelic under different circumstances. Nightwhisper and his crew made decent money, being that they were the only station around for miles in every direction. The ubiquitousness of the new gas-powered vehicles (auto-carriages, as I had heard them called once before) still baffled me, in all honesty. Strange machines in a strange place at a strange time. It made me so uneasy.

I circled around the back of the station to the fire escape, the only access to the lean-to on top which Nightwhisper called home. It was barely even a dwelling, but ‘home?’ He he strange ideas of most things. I have never known a pony to be attached to a place like this. Then again, Nightwhisper seemed to be attached to very little.

No matter how lightly I stepped, the metal framework always rattled and clanged under my hooves. It wasn’t yet rusty, but the wrought iron sometimes screeched with contact like claws down a chalkboard. I winced with every calculated step I took, pausing on the landing to listen for movement.

“Rarity?” Nightwhisper called. “That you?”

I cleared my throat. “Y-yes, it’s me! I’m back!” I hurried up the second flight of stairs with quick trots.

He didn’t come to the door. He never came to the door. 

I pushed against the frail wood and into the tiny apartment beyond. It felt as though I hadn’t been here in years, somehow, and yet the place showed no signs of change. Not dirty, exactly, but certainly not up to the standards of living which I used to adhere to so rigidly. Minimal furnishings, everything pale shades of colors which might have been beautiful in the right light. It seemed as though I viewed the entire world through a grey lense— it was all dingy, pallid, and lifeless.

Nightwhisper sat on the sofa to my left, his form as unchanged as the rest of the scenery. Not exactly out of shape, but not exactly in shape either; he was lounging over the couch like some sort of aging celebrity, the tiniest hint of a cider pouch melting into the upholstery.

“You were gone a while. Where were you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Just got held up at the Kwik-Grab.”

He peered at me, almost squinting but not quite. “Held up doing what?”

“Just held up,” I said, excusing myself to the tiny kitchen at the back of the apartment. As I unwrapped the sandwich to prepare it, I heard Nightwhisper roll off the couch and come clodding in behind me.

He sighed deeply, clumsily disguising a belch. “What are you doing?”

“They didn’t have what you wanted so I had to get you something else. I’m fixing it up for you now,” I explained, my voice low and unassuming.

The stallion towered behind me, his breath heavy on my cheek and smelling of booze. After a moment’s hesitation, he leaned down to give me a sloppy kiss on the cheek interrupted by brutish stubble. “Thanks, babe.”

Ugh. Babe.

I so delicately scooped the falafel patties out of the sandwich, leaving a gaping void between the roll and filling. Nightwhisper never noticed the lack of filling, though. I crushed the roll closed over the meager portion, sliced the sandwich down the middle, and carried it back out to the stallion waiting in the living room. He took it without looking me in the eye.

My dignity officially wiped away for the night, I sat on the couch next to Nightwhisper. He munched on the sandwich without an ounce of thankfulness towards me, just staring at the wall and looking moderately pleased with the quality of his meal. Before I knew it, it was gone.

“I’m going out. Thunder Wing’s expecting me,” Nightwhisper muttered. He struggled to his hooves. “Don’t get into any trouble.”

He left, the thin wooden door clapping shut behind him.

I let out a breath and sank back into the couch. For a good minute or two I just sat there with a hoof on my chest, trying to calm my heartbeat and process the day’s events. I was already having trouble remembering what had happened with Rainbow Dash… was it a memory of her back in Ponyville? Had she really been there with me? Both? Neither?

There was such a strange, dream-like feeling following me lately. A haze which disguised truths and made even the most familiar things seem foreign to me. I had found myself barely able to distinguish days from one another, weeks from one another… it all seemed to be getting away from me so quickly. When was the last time I had sewn something? The last time I’d thought about seams and hems and a needle and thread. It all felt so far away; like another life I had lived in some happier world.

My eyes drifted closed for a moment and I breathed deeply, the musty scent of the cool sands mingling with the poisonously alcoholic odor of the gasoline. The buzz of the fluorescent. The chatter of cicadas. My own babbling thoughts all faded to static-filled snow at the back of my skull. The silence closed in around me, and I started to feel warm and safe.

“I’m waiting for you!” called out through time and space and eternity.

I opened my eyes. “I am Rarity. Today is Thursday. I am alive.”

The buzzing sensation in my skull dispersed. Strangely, though, it seemed to refocus between my eyes, growing and growing in intensity as I tried to shake my head and clear it away. When I finally looked in the right direction, it stopped immediately.

Through the window which overlooked the gas station I could see a light flickering. I sat forward a bit, watching the light cut in and out, in and out. It was difficult to see from this angle, but it looked like there was a figure standing at the pump. It wasn’t touching it, just standing nearby, the unnatural lighting casting sharp shadows across its face and an equally imposing shape on the ground. A slinking sensation of deja vu crept over me as the shape turned its head to look directly at me, then darted away as fast as it could.

“Hey!” I shouted, jumping to my hooves. “Who’s out there?”

I scrambled to the door, throwing it open with a bang and sprinting out onto the fire escape. Down one flight, colliding with the rail on the landing, then down the other flight and I was sprinting across the pavement in the direction of the darting figure. It had run out into the desert, and all-out dash which seemed impossible. 

The light from the gas station lit my way for a few yards, then cut out entirely with a great mechanical groaning sound. With that light now gone, I saw something new: a dimmer light, with a green hue, peeking out from behind the butte which overhung the town. That had to be it. That’s where the figure went.

My gallops became easier and easier the closer I got to the light. I felt as though I was running on air, across clouds or mist.

As I rounded the butte, the source of light greeted me with sarcastic glee. The sagging and vine-covered shopping center, the one which sprung right out of the ground in the Everfree forest. Sand ran from its sloping surfaces with the speed of a faucet. This building had truly risen from the ground mere moments before. 

“Hello?” I called. No echo. The air was so still here it seemed unreal. Even with light pouring from every pinhole in the building, nothing near me cast a shadow. 

Steeling myself, I marched towards the building as if I expected it to march back. The automatic front door of the building was wedged in the open position, and I simply stepped over the threshold and into the vestibule beyond it.

The wave of warmth I felt was indescribable. It was the most real I had felt in Celestia knows how long — and I’m not even entirely sure what I mean by that. I forgot about the chase entirely. The feeling of cold tile on my hooves and lush greenery brushing against my legs was enchanting. I felt drunk with the light which flowed over me as I drifted through the grand room with the high ceiling.

It was then that I saw her. A burst of bright cyan in amongst all things green, she stood on the upper level with her wings spread. The green light through her blue feathers looked like stained glass.

“Rainbow!” I said, breathless.

Her ear pricked at the sound, and she looked back over her shoulder at me. “Rarity?”

I lost all words as Rainbow turned to look at me, her wings folding to her sides with the halted motions of a young filly who had been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been. Her eyes were wide, glittering… but at the same time veiled with a milkiness that I couldn’t understand or place.

“Where the hell did you go?” I demanded.

“Rares, I—” Rainbow started.

I scoffed. “I can’t believe you! Coming back after a year of nothing, saving my life and giving me a stupid sandwich, and then just disappearing again!”

Rainbow’s ears flattened against her head.

“Where did you go?” I repeated. “Where in the hell did you go?”

Rainbow vaulted the rail and fluttered down to meet me. “Rarity, I can explain.”

She stood before me, her chest heaving with tears uncried and, worse, a fear that I would reject her for good.

I grabbed her with both hooves and pulled her into my chest. “Don’t you leave me again.” She stiffened at the touch, unsure of how to react. Her fur was soft and prickly, but it meshed with mine ever so neatly as I embraced her with all I had.

The tears came again, and this time I knew they wouldn’t stop for anything. “Don’t you ever leave me again, Rainbow Dash.”

Rainbow ever so slowly unfurled her wings and sheltered us both under them. A tiny sanctuary in this unfamiliar and yet so familiar place. She leaned into me, her cheek rubbing my neck as she settled into the hug. I could feel tears running down my face, tracing my jaw before dripping down into her mane. She seemed to shiver as I held her, her own silent way of crying the tears she had to cry.

When the last of my tears ran out, Rainbow pulled away and nuzzled under my chin. “Rares, I’m sorry.”

I didn’t ask what for. She knew it was for whatever I needed. It was an apology for everything.

“I’m sorry, too,” I said. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Rainbow pressed into me a little further. “I’ve missed you too.”

“So many strange things have been happening,” I said, adjusting my head to rest on top of Rainbow’s. “Just the past day has been so odd. Least of all this building. Do you know anything about this?”

Rainbow stirred. “N-no… I came in here because I heard somepony.”

“You heard a voice?” I held Rainbow out at arm’s length. “I heard one too. What did it say?”

She looked down at the floor and rolled her shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. “I dunno, I couldn’t really make out any words. What did yours say?”

“It said…” I had to focus for a moment to bring the words back to me. “It said ‘I’m waiting for you.’”

Rainbow squinted at me. “What do you think that means?”

I shook my head. “I wish I knew. The voice sounded so familiar, too… I wish I could place it but I just…”

Remembering anything from the times with the buzzing was like trying to remember a dream. The harder I focused, the more it slipped away from me. Had I not told Rainbow what the voice had said to me, I would have certainly forgotten that by now.

“Should you be going somewhere? Where are you staying?” I asked.

“Oh! Uh…” Rainbow’s eyes flicked around the room. “I’m staying at the motel?”

“Ugh…” I grimaced. “That is not a nice place, darling. Make sure you keep your bits on you.”

Rainbow chuckled. “Will do, boss.”

Silence fell between us, but not an unbearable one. This silence was warm and loving, just like that omnipresent light of the shopping center. We walked with patient, careful steps across the courtyard of a room to the broken-down escalators and dried-up fountain. After admiring the massive quantities of bits discarded at the bottom of the fountain, we found a spot on the rim which was empty of shrubbery and made ourselves comfortable.

“So how about this place, hm?” I said. “Believe it or not, this is the second time I’ve seen it. Although I can’t quite remember if the first time was a dream, or if…”

The memory flared, flickered, and fizzled before I could capture any part of it.

“Are you doing okay, Rares?” Rainbow asked. There was a genuine concern in her voice. “Like, really okay? You’re not acting like yourself.”

I closed my eyes to consider the question. “This is me. This is how I’ve been for months now, I’m just growing and changing.”

“But you’ve been with that Nightwhisper guy for months, right?” Rainbow asked in a low voice. Her implications were clear.

“I don’t know why you’re so quick to blame him,” I said. “You’ve never met him. You don’t know anything about him.”

Rainbow looked up at me, her eyes shimmering in the otherworldly green light. “Yeah, but I know what I’ve been like the past few months and it’s definitely not me.”

“You keep saying things like that.” I tossed my head to throw a lock of mane out of my eyes. “You’re loyalty, Rainbow. Loyalty means loyal to yourself, too. As long as I’ve known you, you’ve never changed for anypony.”

Rainbow swallowed hard. “Well, you’re generosity. And as long as I’ve known you, you’ve never given anypony anything they don’t deserve.”

I chuckled. “When did you get so wise, Rainbow?”

“Probably that past year we keep mentioning,” Rainbow said, laughing.

I laughed with her for a moment. The sound was clean and clear, ringing back from the fountain with a peculiar tone.

“So… Nightwhisper?” Rainbow asked as our laughter faded.

I chewed my lip thoughtfully. “He’s not a bad pony.”

Rainbow peered up at me, her eyes wide and vibrant. “But?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he--”

The buzzing was back. It came back so quickly and violently that I couldn’t finish my thought, just throw my head back in pain. Rainbow grabbed my shoulders, shaking me gently and I think calling my name, though I could barely hear her voice over the buzzing.

My eyes drifted shut, snapped open, drifted shut again. The light of the shopping center grew brighter and brighter and at last I had to shield my eyes against it. As soon as my hooves met my face, the light dimmed completely. I lowered my hooves slowly, peeking over them in fear of what I might see.

I was still in the shopping center, but the light was gone, as was Rainbow Dash. The greenery was much thicker now, intertwined with every bit of the structure as though they were the very veins of the building. This shopping center was different, though. Here there were signs of storefronts and shoppers everywhere, long since gone. An abandoned stroller here, a dead neon sign there; the lack of real, true life in this place made my skin crawl. All that was left was plants choking each wire and coating every inch of the place.

Outside the windows was darkness. The buzzing? Cicadas. I wasn’t fast enough to realize that this was the version of the shopping center in the Everfree, and I heard the figure dart away before I could spot them.

“Come back!” I shouted in vain. “Come back! Who are you?”

The sound of the cicadas swelled in my ears, clustering in the back of my skull and building to impossible volume.

“I’m waiting for you!” called out through time and space and eternity.

I closed my eyes and ducled my head, throwing both hooves over it in an attempt to defend myself against the unendurable screaming in my mind. “I am Rarity! It is Thursday and I am alive!”

“Rarity!” Rainbow screamed.

The buzzing stopped, and my every muscle was finally able to relax. I was in the fetal position on the ground, my hooves clamped over my ears in a feeble attempt to stop the noise which seemed to come from inside of me. Rainbow was beside me. She had her hoof on my side, gently shaking me to get a response. 

“Oh, Celestia, Rarity!” Rainbow shook me a little firmer.

I shushed her weakly. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

Rainbow choked out a little sob and fell down onto to me in a powerful embrace. “I thought you were having a seizure, but then you yelled… I didn’t know what to do…”

“I’m alright, darling. Everything is okay.”

“How can you say that?” Rainbow sat up. “It’s not true, even I know that.”

I rolled onto my back. “You’re right. You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for, Rainbow Dash.”

“So then… what’s wrong?” She sniffled lightly.

I shook my head, not wanting to admit it. Just one word, but it seemed stuck in my throat. 

“You can tell me,” Rainbow said. She rested her hoof on my shoulder, and I felt a tingling warmth spread through me.

“I know,” I said. “Nightwhisper. It’s Nightwhisper.”
> Part I: Chapter Three
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I’m waiting for you!” called out through time and space and eternity.

I remember standing before a foggy mirror (not the friendly fog of steam, but the parasitic fog of unwashed grime) in the dingy bathroom of the Open Doors Diner. It was a charming, if kitschy, establishment that I had no memory of entering. 

Even standing still I could feel that my hooves were stuck to the floor with Celestia-knows-what. 

Before moving, I slowly tilted my chin upward and gazed into my own face.

There wasn’t much to see.

My front hoof pulled away from the tiled floor with a gummy smack. It sent a chill up my spine. I slowly washed my front hooves, avoiding eye contact with my reflection as I did so, and made it to the door without touching the floor again in a terrific balancing act I’m not certain I could duplicate.

The main space of the diner was not unlike any other. The furniture had chrome trimmings. The waitstaff (all mares) wore little blue dresses with white aprons. I didn’t wonder about their construction, or the fabric choice. I simply noticed they were blue.

It appeared to be near dawn, and thus a few traveling groups and most of the town’s working population were feasting in exhausted silence. One small foal was asleep in her breakfast. It would have been sweet, had I not felt like I had been run over a few times.

“Miss?”

I opened my eyes, not realizing they had been closed. “Mm?”

“You alright?” the waitress asked. I could barely register a face in my groggy confusion.

I blinked one slow blink. “Oh! Yes, fine. Just… ran in to use the little filly’s room.”

She looked me up and down, put a gentle hoof on my shoulder. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Oh, I’m not…” I paused, gazing out at the rising sun. Ponies were starting to clear out already, needing to start their journeys once more. The quiet grew quieter. “Sure.”

The waitress led me to a booth near the window. The butte, behind which I could be almost certain I had spent an emotionally healing night with an old friend, showed no signs of supernatural invasion.

The thick ceramic mug thunked down on the table in front of me. The waitress, whose name badge I simply could not focus on hard enough to read, expertly poured me a cup of hot coffee.

I lifted it to my face with my magic, feeling the hot steam curl through my nostrils and the scent of the coffee cut through my psyche.

“You’re Rarity, right?” the waitress asked.

I sighed. “I suppose.”

“I don’t mean to pry, but…” she shuffled her hooves. “Well, don’t you have friends in Ponyville?”

“It’s a long story.”

The bell at the door gave a soft chime as another customer left.

“I got the time,” the waitress said. She slid into the booth across from me. “I’m Moss.”

The letters on her name badge suddenly made sense.

“Mossy Bridge. But Moss is fine.” The way “fine” slid off her tongue was so soothingly reminiscent of Applejack… 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Moss,” I said. “But I don’t think I’ll be sharing anything that personal today.”

Her mouth twitched up in an almost-smile. “I understand.”

I set the mug back down on the table. “I’m sorry. You seem like a sweet girl, but I think I need a moment to myself.”

Moss pursed her lips a bit. A lock of her mane hung frazzled against her cheek, clearly being chewed in times of thought and anxiety. “Of course, miss. My apologies.”

She stood up in an awkward, halting motion. I tilted my head away from her. My mane fell against my own cheek in a gesture of shame and shielding. There was a time when I would have gladly given myself to any young fan or curious follower of ‘The Mane Six.’ That time had long since passed.

I picked my coffee back up and my eyes drifted back to the window. The rising sun illuminated San Palomino in an eerie, almost otherwordly light. Not in the traditional sense, of course. But the elongated shadows and the strange green-tinged hue of the light which spilled over the landscape always made me want to hunker down indoors.

I took a long, slow sip of the coffee. It was decent. Certainly the best in town.

A light breeze blew through town. It was normally quite difficult to tell when this happened, as there was little to be ruffled by the wind.

Today, however, the flutter of a piece of highlighter-yellow paper caught my eye.

It was stapled to a telephone pole across the street. I set down my mug and leaned towards the window, my muzzle scrunching up in a squint.


MISSING


the paper proclaimed. There seemed to be a portrait of a pony below it.

As soon as I had processed this information, the wind snatched the paper off the pole and sent it tumbling away into the desert.

I tapped my hoof lightly on the top of the table.

“I am Rarity. Today is Friday. I am alive.”

Goodness, I’d made it to Friday.

The bell above the door tinkled lightly.

“Mornin’, sunshine!” a waitress proclaimed.

I turned to glance over my shoulder, got halfway there, regretted it. None of my business, really. My business was coffee. Little else.

Delicate and gentle hoofsteps tap-tap-tapped closer and closer to me, and I finally felt something graze my shoulder.

“Mind if I sit here?” The voice was raspy and small.

The tip of a bright blue feather brushed against my shoulder a second time. My breath hitched in my throat.

There she stood, once again. 

“Rainbow…” was all I could manage.

She laughed a little. It was a familiar little “heh-hyeh!”, but strained all the same.

“Think you can stay awake long enough to fill me in this time?” she asked, sliding into the booth across from me.

“Awake?” I repeated.

She squinted at me. “Yeah, Rares. You got crazy tired last night and conked out on me. Basically in the middle of a sentence. I had to carry you home. Remember?”

I rubbed my eyes with both hooves. Splotches of color danced before my eyes. “I don’t remember that at all…”

“Jeez. You doing okay?”

I paused. “Wait. You carried me?”

Rainbow scoffed. “I mean-- Well, I helped you walk. I’m not Supermare.” She laughed again. “I’m flattered, though.”

I must have not had the appropriate reaction to this, as Rainbow cocked her head slightly and gave me a curious look.

“Have you been having a lot of trouble remembering things?”

I sighed. “Goodness, I suppose I have.”

“Hm…” Rainbow was rubbing her hoof in a little circle on the countertop. “Say, you think I could get some coffee, too?”

She looked past me then, over my shoulder and into the rest of the diner. One of her eyes twitched slightly, imperceptibly, and she shook her head lightly. 

“On second thought, why don’t we go somewhere else?” she asked, already halfway to her hooves. “This place is a little hot for me.”

I turned around, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it was Rainbow had seen. There was only an empty diner, an empty desert, and empty sky.

“I don’t--”

“C’mon, Rares,” Rainbow held out a hoof to me. “Let’s go for a walk.”

It’s difficult to explain, but there was a sinking feeling in my gut as I considered leaving the diner. This place seemed very safe, calm, quiet. A part of a life that might not have made me happy, but at least a life I had.

Rainbow’s eyes, while shaped in a smiling squint, had a milky film of an emotion that I simply couldn’t place across their shimmering surface. Her lips seemed to curl up in a soft grin with a difficulty that I couldn’t understand.

I took Rainbow’s hoof.

She pulled me up out of the booth and we walked, together, towards the front doors of the diner. 

There wasn’t anybody in it.

The chrome had lost its shine, and vines were squirming across the surfaces of the tables. They exploded through the vinyl seats. Silently.

I drew closer to Rainbow, and the windows became slowly, slowly, slowly covered with moss and grime and more vines, moving like snakes, moving like the tentacles of a monster which lay beneath the sand.

Rainbow looked straight ahead, chewing one trembling lip. Otherwise, unfazed.

She pushed through the door. The bell did not chime. The ribbon which held it to the wall disintegrated with the small motion, and the bell clattered across the floor.

In the vestibule now. There was a small display of brochures in the corner. As we hurried past it, every brochure said the same thing:


GODDESS!


Black paper. Large, white text.

“R-Rainbow--”

She gave me a shove through the final door, and we were back in the desert.

It was… unchanged.

I whirled about. The diner, too: unchanged.

Mossy Bridge was clearing our table.

Rainbow’s breath whistled gently through her teeth. Even just thinking about how solidly and clearly she stood there made me want to cry. Her form was real and palpable and my fury at that very concept stirred in my chest, a rumbling force as powerful as an oncoming storm.

For the first time in a long time, I remembered the box.

Clearly expecting a question of some sort, Rainbow’s eyes flicked over to look at me a few times. She said nothing.

I didn’t say anything, either. I turned away from her, slowly, and began to plod out into the desert. 

It took Rainbow a few moments to decide to gallop to my side.

“Rarity?”

“You’re not real,” I said.

“No, Rares, I--”

“I was an idiot to think that you would come back,” I continued, barrelling over whatever it was that this utterly convincing mirage was arguing.

“If you just listen--”

“I’m all alone out here. I’ve been alone for quite a long time, now.”

“I know, but--”

“Not that it’s anypony else’s business, but I’ve been doing really well out here!” A little bit of a choked sob slipped out. “I’ve been doing really, really well, and that’s my place to judge.”
+
“Well--”

“Everypony left me. Everypony ignored me. And here I was, alone, missing all of them and nopony even cared!”

I threw myself down into the sand at the base of a gnarled fan cactus. Normally my need for the box was slower and more calculated, giving me time to prepare myself, but not this time. 

I snapped one of the paddles off the cactus with my magic and began to dig furiously at the soft sands. You would think it would be difficult to keep track of something so small in shifting desert sands, but this box always stayed stuck right here under this prickly guardian.

Rainbow Dash, now silent, knelt in the sand across from me. She folded her front hooves under herself like a cat and gazed at me with a vague mixture of emotions I couldn’t place. Through the flurries of flying sand, out of the corner of my eye, she really looked like she could have been a trick of the light. A solar flare in the eye which made the air dance with pulsing rainbows for a moment.

The cactus caught something and drew out a bit of clear plastic bag. I tossed the makeshift tool to the side and lifted the bounty out of its hiding place.

Here was a plain little cardboard box stamped all over with old shipping labels. It had probably been used to carry some sort of expensive thread to my workshop.

The box was inside a bag held shut with a clothespin. The bag had held a ball of yarn at some point.

I removed the clothespin, gently tugged out the cardboard box. The flaps popped open a bit once they were free from their prison.

Rainbow Dash swallowed hard.

I sniffled, partly against the sand.

“This,” I said, lifting out a piece of smooth paper, “is the first advertisement I ever saw for Pinkie-- excuse me, for Rock Pink’s comedy hour. Not that anypony bothered to tell me about it. I saw it one day in a magazine I bought at the Kwik-Grab. I didn’t know she was doing stand-up at all. Funny way to find out.”

I looked down at the ad a little longer. Pinkie’s trademark hot-pink curls towards the bottom, her silhoutette looking out at crowd which was dark against the spotlight.

I folded it back up, tucked it away. Pulled out a metal tag.

“This is Opal’s nametag. She had to be put down… something wrong with her pancreas. Fluttershy wasn’t even available, so busy with her clinic. Some Canterlot vet put her down. She sent me a card and some information on adopting a new kitten.”

The tag was dull with years of wear. The letters still caught the desert sun when you tilted it the right way.

I dropped it back in the box, reached in a third.

A curled-up label. I uncurled it, sniffed again.

“Applejack’s Apple Jam. Her own recipe. I bought at a market from one of her employees. Tasted delicious.” I cleared my throat to swallow down the tears threatening to jump out. “I wrote her to say so, but she never responded.”

The paper curled back up with a snap, fell hollowly back the box.

Rainbow’s lips thinned as I fished for the next item.

I had to take a breath before I spoke. A shaking, rattling breath which nearly collapsed. “A commemorative pin. Twilight’s Coronation. Needless to say, I wasn’t present.”

This one hit the inside of the box with force.

“This last one is yours.”

Rainbow straightened up.

“This was your tour announcement. Do you remember it?”

I held the paper up for her to examine. It was a poster that had been stapled to nearly every telephone pole in Equestria. Everypony loved the Wonderbolts, and everypony sure loved Rainbow Dash. Her prismatic mane streaked in a lightning bolt down the paper, flanked by Spitfire and Soarin, their stylized and graceful forms dive-bombing the words “WONDERBOLTS WORLD TOUR.”

Rainbow tore her eyes away from the sand with visible difficulty.

“Yes.”

“All of you just disappearing on me, refusing to answer my letters. Ignoring me. Deliberately avoiding me and anything to do with me!” I huffed through my nose. “With no explanation.”

Rainbow blinked hard. A tear slid down her cheek, cutting a track in its peach-fuzz fur.

I stuffed the announcement back in the box, forced the flaps closed over the messily-packed items, crammed it back in the bag. With one messy swipe of my hoof it was back in its rightful place at the base of the cactus.

The box held my gaze still. “It’s no wonder I imagined you here.”

Her hoof slid against the inside of my front leg. The cool surface of the shoe grazed my ankle, made its way up to my knee. It left a trail of mussed fur as it went, gliding against the grain with ease. She wrapped it to the outside of my leg and pulled herself forward a bit.

I looked up into her eyes. Real eyes.

And here she was. Real as ever, present as ever, but finally cemented in my mind as somepony different.

Time had not stopped for her, as it had for me.

There was a film of age, of sadness, of something entirely foreign over her wide eyes.

Her tongue poked out, pulled in her lower lip. She just held it there for a moment. Her eyes shimmered and flickered ever so slightly as the ran across my face.

She opened her mouth, drew a breath.

There was a pang of fear in my chest.

“Rares, I gotta be honest…”

The buzzing. Like a thousand powered saws, like a million chittering changelings, like an infinity of garbled radio signals hammering in eardrums. It pounded desperately at my skull, threatened to collapse.

Or perhaps explode outward, release something I had buried.

“Some stuff got a little mixed up.”

“M-mixed up?” I stuttered. 

The noise and the sun and her mane and the goddamned noise.

I closed my eyes against the invasiveness of it all, feeling no calmer as stinging grains of sand pelted into my face. 

“Rarity?” Rainbow’s hoof wrapped a little tighter around me and I felt the world slip away even further. “Rarity, what’s wrong?”

I heaved a ragged breath. “What do you mean, mixed… mixed up?” I barely managed to get the words out.

“Oh, Celestia, Rarity you don’t look so good.” I felt her other hoof against my shoulder.

Everything stopped.

“Ah, shit…” Rainbow muttered.

My eyes were still closed. The sun was gone, replaced by a soft green light which didn’t much try to pry them open as gently beckoned me to look.

Back in the shopping center.

Rainbow was looking up, up at the glass ceiling which was covered in dirt and sand and roots. Little dunes were piled around her, like a pedestal.

I followed Rainbow’s gaze and saw darkness beyond our little encampment. Everything inside was bathed in green light which came from nowhere and everywhere. It should have made me uneasy. It should have made me sick to my stomach, made me want to run away and cower in fear and confusion, but it was like a pleasing warmth on a decades-old ache.

I looked back to Rainbow.

“What stuff?” I asked.

Rainbow blinked, swallowed, avoided my eyes. “Hm?”

My lips tightened into a very thin line. “What got mixed up, Rainbow?”

Her muzzle twitched.

“What do you have to do with this?” I asked.

She scrunched up her nose at this implication of guilt.

“You have something to do with it. This isn’t just coincidence, is it?”

She breathed in, nostrils flaring. Her eyes met mine and locked there. She released her breath. It caught in her throat, and the wheezing edge of a cry escaped her lips.

“Some stuff changed.”

I looked, tilted my head.

“And some… some bad things happened,” she added. “I’m just trying to fix it.”

“So you’ve said.” I shifted my shoulders a bit, pushed them back, sat up straighter. “If this is about leaving for tour--”

“I haven’t made it yet.”

I stopped short, practically frozen. “You haven’t--”

“Nothing bad has happened… yet,” she said. “I came back to fix it. Only I think I did something wrong.”

No buzzing, and yet I couldn’t understand what was being said.

“Rares, none of the stuff in your box has happened yet,” she said, with an unexpected force. “You shouldn’t have it. None of it should have happened.”

“I don’t--”

“I fucked up, Rares…” She bit her lip. “I fucked up time. And you’re in the middle of it.”


END OF PART I

> Part II: Chapter One
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I’m waiting for you!” called out through time and space and eternity.

I am Rarity.

Today is Saturday.

I am alive.

The motel room was in total disarray that morning. Newspapers and magazines and pamphlets across every surface. Rainbow Dash was dozing peacefully in a chair, a copy of the Appaloosa Bugle draped across her chest in place of a blanket. The morning sun fell over her face, dappled not by leaves but by the busted-up Venetian blinds which clung to the window with unprecedented tenacity.

Her face was so delicate now. The face of an entirely different pony than I had spoken with the day--the night--before.

I shifted under the covers of the motel bed, stretching first one hind leg, then the other. The sheets were rough and frayed, stained with Celestia-knows-what kinds of disgusting foods and drinks and bodily fluids. I did my best not to think about it.

“How long have you been here?” Rainbow asked.

“I’ve told you, Rainbow,” I said. “I’ve been here a year.”

“But how many days do you actually remember?”

I remember things, yes. Trends and traditions. I remember days feeling monotonous and endless. I remember… dreams. But days? Only three days; Thursday, Friday, today. How can that be?

We had left the shopping center quite soon after our discussion, still early morning (had time been telling the truth), and yet when we left the sun was setting. 

“It should be morning,” I said. “I only just woke up!”

“Do you remember waking up?”

Rainbow Dash stirred under her newspaper, her hooves rustling its creases with a sudden and jolting sound. 

She rolled over. The paper drifted to the floor and exposed her tiny racer’s body, curled up in the armchair like a foal against their mother’s warm stomach.

I lifted the paper with my magic. It was dated nearly four years ago. This wasn’t nearly as strange, of course, as the paper from about seven years in the future.

“What about the mayoral election. Remember that?” Rainbow asked. She held up a local tabloid with a picture of a unicorn mare standing at a podium.

“Of course I do. That’s Misty Shores.”

Rainbow chuckled a dry, humorless chuckle. “That was six years ago.”

Facts I could recall. Useless, meaningless facts about events and ponies who lived here before me, after me. It was experiences that were fuzzy, even nonexistent. I knew the facts of the election, but I could not remember being present for it, hearing of it, even reading about it.

I sat up, flattened the paper, re-read the headline at the very top of the front page: “Shores Found Dead, Police Suspect Dusk Guardian Resurgence.”

I blinked, rubbed my eyes. 

“Shores Found Dead, Police Suspect Political Motivation.”

I gasped lightly, then leapt out of bed and began to search in the drifts of paper for anything to write with. The name was already slipping from my mind faster than I could chase it. Dawn something? Day…

As I darted about in a frenzy, papers and bedding flying in every direction, there was a sudden clatter and smash.

I froze up, whirled about. The lamp from the side table now lay on the floor, its light bulb shattered. The cord was looped around my hoof.

Rainbow Dash was now sitting straight up in her chair.

“Good morning?” she murmured, unsure of the exact state of my day thus far. “Everything okay?”

I heaved a great sigh. Why had I jumped up like that? What had I been looking for?

“I…” I swallowed hard. “I’m not quite sure…”

Rainbow cleared her throat, settling a bit. “Was there a reason you smashed the lamp, or were you just really feelin’ it?” A tentative smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

I ran a hoof through my hair, tugged at the loose curls. My self-care routine now waning, the curls hung slack against my neck, rather than snapping back against my cheek as usual. “I don’t remember.”

Rainbow’s brows twitched. I could see the little shadow of a wrinkle starting between them. Was that because of me? A worry wrinkle?

“We should get you some food,” Rainbow said, standing up. “You’re lookin’ a little, uh…”

I lifted my chin and looked down my snout at Rainbow, eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

“Radiant,” she finished. Her eyes darted to the floor. “But also a little woozy. You hungry?”

My goodness, food. When was the last time I had eaten? I couldn’t remember eating at all in these past few days. How could that be?

I shuffled my hooves, tried to start a sentence, failed miserably.

Rainbow smiled timidly. “I’ll take that as a yes?” She chuckled. “How about that weird diner place from yesterday?”

I managed to laugh a bit myself. “I suppose it’s true what they say: ‘weird’ is a relative term.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes and turned to leave. “No, no, I just mean-- well, who in the hay named that place? ‘Open Doors?’ It’s a diner! The doors should always be open!” She let out an exasperated sigh. “I think Twilight’s been rubbing off on me a little. I didn’t used to care about junk like that.”

Rainbow’s wings were tucked tightly at her sides. They moved in a steady, wave-like pattern with her shoulders as she walked into the desert. The light of the rising sun ringed her head and vibrant mane with an angelic glow, a shimmering aura which should have washed out her color entirely, yet somehow made them shine all the brighter.

I trotted to her side. “Oh, you’re just growing up, darling. It’s a good thing.”

Rainbow Dash stopped, turned back to look at me. As she did, the radiant halo fell away, exposing the scorchingly bright sun. I winced at the sudden pain of it.

“You think so?” Rainbow said softly. She was guarding her own face from the sun with one hoof.

“Of course I do,” I said, doing my best to match her own softness. “Growing and changing is always good. As long as you’re changing for your own sake, that is.”

“Hm.”

The irony was not lost on me.

“That’s all we ever did before, isn’t it?” I pushed. Stop digging yourself in deeper, you fool. “Did our best to grow and change on our own terms, and worked together to be accountable to each other.”

Rainbow scratched her head. “I mean, I guess. I always just thought of it as learning not to be such little shits all the time.”

I chuckled. “Close enough.”

We continued on our way.

The soft crunches of our hooves in the sand and the low moan of the wind. I was finding it easier to hold onto where I was, who I was, when I hung onto these little details. The past few days seemed to be nothing but brief and confusing conversations in my shattered memory, but even that was more than anything of the past few weeks or months.

I had never had to work so hard to make memories before. It was a strange feeling.

For the most part, the buildings in this little non-town town could be seen from each other’s doorways. That few, that close. The diner wasn’t far; just far enough to shimmer in the heat.

Rainbow left neat hoofprints as she walked. For a little while, I tried to walk in them precisely. She may have been small, but her hooves were a little bigger than mine-- great big things for mighty takeoffs. I felt fragile in comparison as I stepped carefully in the depressions she left. 

She stopped in front of Open Doors. I nearly bumped into her, my focus was so fully on that shadow of where she had been.

“Dang, Rares.” She laughed, knocking the sand out from under her shoe against the doorframe. “I’ve never seen you so out of it.”

With that, she gave the door a shove and pushed into the diner. 

The bell tinkled. The place was mostly empty. I suppose there weren’t many ponies passing through this early on a Saturday. Most liked to get a slow start.

“Gosh, I’m starving,” Rainbow said. “Let’s get a seat!”

She trotted to her right, picking out a booth under a large windowpane.

I followed her haltingly. It was hard to ignore what my mind’s eye so desperately tried to remind me of; decay, overgrowth, confusion.


MISSING



GODDESS


Rainbow ran her hooves in wide circles over the tabletop. “Pretty nice, if you ask me! Come sit, Rares.”

I shook myself out of the daydream and slid into the seat across from Rainbow. I remembered what she was like at that time, too. Nothing like this. Yesterday, she had been wound tight and panicking. Today, she seemed like her old self.

Her eyes were so clear and bright. Such a striking shade of magenta there as she scanned over my face, flicking from curl to curl, from tip of horn to tip of ear, from eye to eye with speed and vivacity.

How could she change so much in a single day?

“Mornin’, fillies,” a waitress said, sidling up to the table. “What can I get for y’all?”

I looked up at her. A tall pony, her mane done up to be even taller. I didn’t recognize her in the slightest. She didn’t look at me, just slid two menus onto the table, silently and with greater concentration than was needed.

“Could I have a hot tea?”

“Coffee.”

“Hm?” I looked over at Rainbow.

Rainbow chuckled. “She’ll have a coffee. Me, too.”

I looked past the waitress. I couldn’t see any other waitresses working.

“Miss?”

“Mm?”

“This may sound strange, but could you do me a favor?” I asked.

Rainbow studied me from across the table.

The waitress smiled a thin-lipped smile. “I sure can try.”

“If you see Moss, could you tell her I said hello?”

The waitress stiffened. Her jaw tightened, and she seemed to be struggling not to roll her eyes. 

“For your own sake, miss, you’d best be seriously confused,” the waitress said. Her nametag caught the sun as she shifted her position: “Blue Moon.”

I blinked. “I suppose I must be.”

Rainbow leaned across the table slightly, squinted at me. 

Blue Moon sighed deeply. “Mossy Bridge has been missing since Wednesday. Or hadn’t you noticed the posters up all ‘round town?”


MISSING


“I just talked to her yesterday,” I said. I’m not sure why.

“That’s not a very funny joke, miss.”

I blinked. “I--”

The waitress turned and left without another word.

“I-I don’t understand…” I stuttered. “I just talked to her yesterday!” I repeated, hitting the tabletop with my hoof just hard enough to make a sound.

Rainbow squinted. “Are you sure it was yesterday?”

I closed my eyes, bowed my head. Yesterday-- yesterday I had woken up and made it to the diner… somehow. For some reason. And Mossy Bridge had served me coffee. I was certain, absolutely certain that this had happened.

“I’m not sure…” is what I actually told Rainbow.

She grimaced. Said nothing.

“I saw the ‘missing’ poster the same day…” I murmured.

Rainbow’s hooves dragged back across the tabletop, and she dropped them into her lap. “The what?”

I shook my head. “It’s silly. I saw a ‘missing’ poster the same day I talked to Moss. It was far away, though. Could have been anypony’s poster.”

Rainbow squinted at me.

I struggled to meet her gaze. “Let’s order some food, alright?” I lifted the menu, holding it between us like a shield.

Rainbow’s head peaked around my improvised guard. “Did you maybe see anything else weird over the past few days I should know about?”


GODDESS


Not at all smoothly, I shifted the menu to block her face once more. “I don’t think so, dear.”

Her hide squeaked against the pleather seat as she leaned around to the opposite side. “So you’re saying there’s absolutely nothing else you want to tell me about?”

I retreated further into the booth, the menu coming with me, effectively creating a neat set of blinders. “Ooh, they have yogurt parfaits. Do you think--”

The edge of a blue hoof crept over the top edge of the menu and pulled it down. Rainbow’s other front hoof was in the center of the table, her wings and one back leg artfully outstretched as a counterbalance.

“Darling, please get off the table.”

“Not ‘til you tell me the truth.”

I sighed, gently folded the menu and placed it on the table in front of me. “Rainbow, the honest truth is that, as it stands, my memory is less reliable than a single-stitch seam. Everything is frayed and falling apart… it’s not worth me overcomplicating things for some notion of integrity and openness that I’m honestly not certain I owe you.” I shot her a look over the top of the menu, which she expertly ignored.

Rainbow’s wings drooped. “Damn. Been quite a while since you talked to AJ, huh?”

“Very funny,” I said, lifting the menu again. “I’m not you, and you’re not me, and you can’t know what it’s like to be inside my head right now. Any number of inconsequential things could be important, but could be equally useless. Recalling things is quite the emotional task right now. I’d rather not dredge it up before I’ve even had breakfast.”

Rainbow said nothing. She slid slowly back down into her seat.

“Speaking of, how do you think the Early Bird Tofu Scramble sounds?”

Rainbow lifted her own menu. “Gee, I dunno… I’m more of a flapjacks gal.”

We both fell silent after that. Rainbow took several starting breaths, ever so quietly, as though she were about to jump in and say something. She never did, instead releasing the breaths in a steady, hissing stream. 

The clatter of dishes from the kitchen, the light kicking of Rainbow’s back hooves on the seat. Even with constant noise, I couldn’t help but realize the once-overpowering buzz of fear and confusion had been reduced to a dull hum of vague uncertainty, only there when I thought about it. Or when I thought about the things I wasn’t supposed to think about. 


GODDESS



Dusk Guardian


My heart skipped a beat with the memory. I clawed at it, tried to hold onto it, failed miserably. Keeping my mind on topic was a nearly impossible task as of late.

The waitress came back. I barely heard Rainbow’s voice as she ordered. A few words tumbled out of my own mouth, I suppose. My mind was elsewhere, remembering the way that poster blew across the desert and into the distance. 

So strange, how I had only just noticed it before it disappeared.

Stranger still, how I had such a perfect picture of Mossy Bridge in my head, a portrait, when all the world seemed to think I shouldn’t know anything about her at all.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

Rainbow looked up at me, eyes wide. “Gee, I thought you were phased all the way out.”

“You didn’t answer me,” I said. “How did you get here? You’re from somewhere--or when--or something, aren’t you? So how did you get here?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does if it’s what caused all this trouble, don’t you think?” I tucked my hooves into my lap, sat up very straight and tall. “If you caused something so catastrophic as the universe itself crumbling to bits, I should think you would want to take at least a little bit of responsibility. Isn’t it your job to clean up your messes?”

Rainbow tucked her ears down close to her head. “I already was trying to fix stuff, Rares. Trust me, in the grand scheme of things this is way better than what actually happened.”

I squinted hard at her. She was being expertly evasive, but she couldn’t elude me for long. “So then you are from the future?”

Rainbow was quiet for a long time. She dared not meet my eyes, would rather trace the marbled pattern of the tabletop with her lingering gaze.

Blue Moon came back, this time with two dishes, and slid them onto the table in front of us.

“Fruit parfait and flapjacks. You gals let me know if you need anything, alright?”

Rainbow looked up into her face. “Thank you.”

I kept my eyes trained on Rainbow.

She lifted, with some difficulty, the small cup of whipped butter Blue had provided her with and began to spread it quite generously over her pile of pancakes.

“I’m from a future.”

I perked up.

Rainbow kept a laser focus on her pancakes. “I’m from one of many futures that could happen. For whatever reason, this is the spot when all the different futures happen. At least, all the differences I care about.”

“What do you mean?”

“I came back because something bad happened, and I was able to trace it back to here and now. I just want to fix it,” she said, ignoring my question. “It’s like…”

Rainbow tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling for a while. Then, as if from a sudden burst of inspiration, she grabbed the syrup dispenser from the other end of the table.

“It’s like this: when I first start to pour, it’s all together, I know where all the syrup’s gonna go.” She demonstrated for me, pouring it out and watching it fall slowly through the air. “But then it hits the top of the pancake, and everything breaks apart and goes off in weird directions. We’re right at the spot before it all breaks apart and time starts going different ways. Y’know?”

I smirked a bit. “We’re at the threshold.”

Rainbow’s eyebrows knit together.

“It’s that point just before you embark on a journey. The little strip of wood at the bottom of your door that divides home from everything else.”

“Damn, that’s a way better way to put it.” Rainbow chuckled sheepishly. “But… yeah. You get it.”

I looked away from Rainbow, out into the desert. The sun was up. The sky so light a blue it was nearly white. There were no posters today, only a feeling that something else entirely was about to happen.

The threshold. Everything before now a dull and predictable monotony, everything after a mystery. All I had to do was take a step.

“We need to find out more about Moss.”
> Part II: Chapter Two
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I feel like we might be getting distracted,” Rainbow said.

I scoffed. “You’re one to talk. All you’ve been is distraction since you got here.”

“Rares, I’m here for a reason. I got shit to do.”

“Fine. What was that reason again?”

Rainbow looked down at the table sheepishly, a little bit of a blush creeping onto her cheeks.

“Right,” I huffed. “So, until you feel as though I deserve to know what’s going on, I’ll do as I please.”

Still nothing.

There was something about Rainbow’s obsessive silence that was eating a hole in my stomach. She wasn’t exactly a vault of secrets. I couldn’t imagine how terrible something would have to be in order to keep her as quiet as she was.

Rainbow shuffled her hooves anxiously against the tabletop. Her eyes were jumping from point to point about the diner, doing everything should could to avoid landing on mine.

At long last, she let out a harsh sigh. “Fine. We’ll do what you wanna do.”

I nodded. “We’d better get the bill.”

“Mm.” Rainbow started to slide out of her seat. “I’m gonna hit the head real quick before we go, alright?”

She scooted off and I flagged down Blue Moon.

“Ready for your check, darlin’?” She asked, the soothing Southern twang hanging heavily off of her words.

“Please. And, if you don’t mind…” I craned my neck around her and watched the bathroom door close behind Rainbow. “Could I just ask you one more question?”

Blue snorted a little. “Best be a good one.”

“D-do you know anything about a…” I checked one last time, making sure Rainbow was out of earshot. “A Goddess?”

“You’ll have to be more specific, hon.”

“I suppose I just mean… well, does anypony around hear talk about a Goddess? Or-- or perhaps consider themselves a Goddess? Anything like that.” I stuttered my way through my description with the confidence of a confused old mare.

Blue all but rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

“You’ll let me know if it does?”

“Just how often are you plannin’ on grilling me, ma’am?” Blue asked, punctuating her question with the sharp tearing sound of the bill coming out of her booklet.

I looked down. “Nevermind.”

Blue froze, the bill held in the air with her gently tinkling magic. Her lip trembled slightly. “I’ll let you know.”

I raised my eyebrows and peered back up at her.

“Look, it’s not like I’m not worried about her,” she said. “Moss, that is. She’s… she’s real gentle. Not the type to spring anything on anypony. Not the type to stand up to anypony, either.”

I cleared my throat.

“I know who y’all are, I’m not stupid,” she continued, crumpling up the bill as she spoke. “You help ponies. You fix things. If anypony can bring Moss home, I’ll bet it’s you two.”

She tucked the crumpled piece of paper in her apron pocket, then lifted the dishes from our table and stacked them with a clatter.

“Breakfast on the house,” she said. “I hear an awful lot around here. I’ll help you out if I can.”

She trotted off just as Rainbow was returning.

“All set?” she asked.

I tore my eyes away from Blue and looked back at Rainbow. “Think so.”

“Where to?” Rainbow asked, already on her way to the door. She sniffled a bit.

“I wish I knew for certain,” I said. “Why don’t we start with the newspapers? Maybe there’s an article we missed.”

Rainbow practically kicked open the front door of the diner, the bell above it shaking with unprecedented force. “Dude, your special vibes about stuff are practically useless.”

I was taken aback by Rainbow’s sudden rudeness. “I’m doing my best, darling.”

“Whatever. Let’s just get back to reading a million newspapers, I guess.”

She set off at a trot which I could hardly keep up with. Her hooves bounced off the packed sand trail with newfound velocity. 

Rainbow was, at times, a difficult pony to pin down.

This thought, sneaking into my mind with little to no intent, caused me to skid to a halt. A cloud of sand kicked up behind me, floating slowly forward and enveloping me in an itchy and cloying mass.

“Rainbow,” I said.

She stopped, turned to look at me. Her eyes looked as though they were covered in a film again… an otherworldly distance from what surrounded her. I could discern very little emotion there.

“I haven’t been home.”

“What?”

“I haven’t been home in--” My breath caught in my throat, and I choked on it for a moment. “In a whole day, I haven’t been home.”

Rainbow blinked.

“Nightwhisper.”

This hit her. There was a flash of something in her eyes-- something akin to sadness. I could barely comprehend what was going on around me, let alone begin to untangle this perplexing response. My heart was hammering with the force of a boulder against the inside of my ribs. 

“I…” My chest was hitching and rasping without my control. “I need to go home.”

“Rarity--” Rainbow took half a step towards me.

I backed away the same distance. “Don’t follow me, okay?”

“But, Rarity, I--”

I turned and took off at a run. “Don’t follow me!”

I wish I could explain why I felt the need to run back into Nightwhisper’s den with such urgency. Truth be told, I remember very little between taking off at breakneck speed and actually arriving. As I remember it, I started off at a run and arrived mere moments later.

And here I was. At the gas station. This time, in the brutal daylight. What was once an oasis of light in a sea of darkness was now just the opposite-- a harsh dark shadow thrown across the desert sand. I stood at the edge of this shadow. My hooves were edged right up to it, an imaginary boundary which separated me from a very real danger. 

Not danger. Don’t be silly. Just a stern lecture, perhaps a look of disappointment or an expression of frustration. That wasn’t truly danger, was it?

I stepped into the shadow.

Nightwhisper wouldn’t do anything as bad as all that. Wouldn’t do anything I didn’t deserve, that’s for certain. He took care of me. Took me in when I was lost and confused. And I felt so much myself when I cared for him. That’s who I am. Generosity. Giving and giving and giving…

The shade of the gas station’s overhang was almost unbelievably cool when compared to the direct heat of the sun. I suppose that was the point. To an attendant. It must have been welcoming and refreshing. But the comparative cold and darkness sent a shiver up my spine.

One attendant, a skinny little colt wearing a beat-up trucker’s cap pulled all the way down over his eyebrows, paused in the process of counting out bits to watch me pass.

“Well, holy shit.” He spat a wad of disgustingly grey spittle onto the pavement by his hooves. “If it ain’t little Miss Prissy, back from the dead.”

I whipped my head in the other direction. I wouldn’t dare give this goon the pleasure of meeting my eyes directly.

No matter what I did, my hooves would always clatter as I climbed the back staircase. Hollow metal mesh held on by the shear will of the building alone, always loudly announcing my presence to all in the vicinity.

Normally, Nightwhisper would listen to my every pounding step, never bothering to get up and let me in.

Today, of course, the door flew open on the third step.

“Rarity!” he bellowed.

I winced away from the sound of it.

He said nothing else. He stood at the threshold, watching as I climbed the stairs as slowly and quietly as I could. Each step like claws down a chalkboard. 

When I reached the top, there was barely enough space for me to stand. My back hooves were still on the stairs, one front hoof daring to inch into the space which Nightwhisper occupied.

“Where were you?” he said. There was very little emotion there. So little that I wouldn’t dare to label it.

I opened my mouth, struggling to call up the words to explain what I had been doing.

“Rarity…” he leaned forward, towering over me. My front hoof slid backwards as I scrambled to keep my breathing spaces. The metal squealed as I shifted my weight backwards. I teetered on the edge of the stair.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come home.”

Nightwhisper huffed a warm and sickly breath down onto my face. I stumbled back further and nearly lost my balance, nearly tumbled down the long wrought-iron staircase and onto the firm, hot sand below.

“That’s not an answer.”

I drew in a sharp breath.

“Do you realize what it looks like if I can’t keep track of one mare in this plotfuck-nowhere town?” he asked, barely above a whisper. Not threatening. Almost a whimper.

“I…” There was nothing else there.

“Come inside.”

Nightwhisper turned and entered the small apartment.

I followed.

The door swung shut behind me with a light clap.

“Nightwhisper, I--”

“I get it,” he said. He would not face me, just kept walking away through the apartment and into the kitchen. “I knew this would happen. You’re Rarity. Everypony knows who you are. Nopony knows me. I’m not enough for you.”

Never once had he even implied that he knew who I was before this moment.

He started to shuffle things about in the sink, as if he were about to wash the dishes. His magic, a dark grey fog which collected about his horn, was unsteady. It wavered and faltered even as he jerked things about. 

“You spend all this time helping ponies and giving things to ponies and I just…” He shuffled a few more things, then slammed a pot down with an excruciatingly loud clatter. “Damn it!”

I scuttled backwards a few steps.

He did not turn. Merely stared into the sink at the pile of dishes. He sighed, but a deep and rumbling sigh which bubbled up from the depths of his chest. A growl.

“Like I said. I get it. I’m not the goody-goodies you used to hang around with back in Ponyville. I’m a big brute with no redeeming qualities, and I deserve to be abandoned.” He nodded to himself, sniffled lightly. “Don’t know why you’d choose to hang around a guy like me in the first place.”

I swallowed hard. 

“But you’re so good to me, Rarity.” He sighed again, this time wistfully up at the ceiling. “You’re so good to me. So I know you love me. Even if you don’t always act like it. I know there’s a lot of things that I handle for you, but it’s only because I want you to know that I love you, Rarity.”

“I love you, Rarity.”

The words barreled into me like a battering ram.

“I love you, Rarity.”

“I-I know…” I said.

“I love you, Rarity.”

Nightwhisper turned to me, his magic still faltering as he held a wooden spoon by his side. The sound of it, typically a gentle tinkling, skipped and dropped in tone like a bad record. 

“Well?” He said.

“I love you, Rarity.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Nightwhisper’s mouth. He took another step towards me.

“I love you, too.” They came out. They came out, and I didn’t mean them, but now they were there. They were hanging in the air above us and I didn’t know what to do. “Of course I do.”

Nightwhisper closed the distance between us, resting his cheek against mine and letting out a shaking sigh. I drew a breath in and held it firm. Heavy and thick smells rolled off of him like waves on the sand. Alcohol, aftershave, cologne, gasoline.

“Oh, I knew it.” Meant to be reassuring. It wasn’t. 

He rubbed his cheek in circles against mine.

I said nothing.

He pulled away quite suddenly. “You know we can’t have this happen again.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Well, I can’t have you scaring me like that again.” His eyes. Wide and innocent, pleading, almost. Almost. “I need to know where you are. I need to know you’re safe, where I can come get you if I need you”

I was silent. Nightwhisper’s magic surged stronger for an instant, the wood spoon rising a bit.

I took a step backwards, into the living room. Over the threshold. 

“Of course you do.” 

Stop talking, Rarity.

The spoon lowered.

“From now on, I’ll need you to tell me where you’re going before you leave.” Such wide, honest eyes. “That way, if you don’t come home, I know where to look for you.”

I nodded. Why?

“And, of course, if you’re going to be with anypony else I’ll need to know who.” Shimmering, blue eyes. “Just to… to give me a little security. Can you give me a little security?”

“Yes…”

Stop Talking.

“You will?”

“Mm-hm.”

Just shut up, Rarity.

“Good.” Nightwhisper smiled.

I swallowed again. “Yes.”

“I love you, Rarity.”


MISSING


I didn’t want to be missing, did I?

I wanted somepony to look out for me, didn’t I?

I wanted to be safe. He would keep me safe.

This is what I wanted.

He always gave me what I wanted.

“So, where were you?” He asked.

I didn’t think it possible, but my stomach fell even further.

His magic surged again. The spoon hung at his side. “Where did you go, Rarity? You were gone all day, all night. What were you doing?”

“I-I was…” All of my focus was on my breathing. Just keep breathing, Rarity. Don’t let your heart pound, Rarity. Don’t let your voice waver, don’t be weak.

“Yeah?”

“I was…” My mind couldn’t work. It was stuck, stuck in a loop of fear and confusion. 

The magic surged even louder, the sound of it rushing against my ears. “Where were you, Rarity?”

Then, clarity.

“I was helping a friend.”

The spoon lowered. “Who?”

“B-Blue Moon. At the diner.” I shrank back from Nightwhisper as best I could. “She and some of the other girls needed hemming done on their uniforms. I was just helping out. I had to do it by hoof, you know. Since I… I don’t have a machine.”

“And why don’t you have a machine?”

I exhaled sharply through my teeth. “Because you don’t want me working. Because I give too much, and it’s not good for me.”

He smiled. “That’s right. I make the money, and the only pony you have to help is me. But I don’t really count, do I?”

I whimpered.

“Why don’t I count?”

“Because you do everything else for me. Because I owe it to you.”

“That’s right.” Nightwhisper dropped the spoon on the floor. “I had to make myself dinner last night after working all day. Do you have any idea how hard that was for me? I was so tired from working to make you money so that you could buy anything you want.”

Yes. Anything in town, that is.

“When you really think about it, making me food isn’t that much work at all,” he continued. “And you’re Rarity. You’re generosity. You love giving ponies stuff, don’t you?”

So hard to keep the tears down. I swallowed again. “Yes.”

“Yeah.” Nightwhisper moved to the couch, sat down with a flop. “Now, since you scared me so bad, and since I didn’t eat good last night, why don’t you whip me up something to eat?”

He did not look at me. He looked past me, feeling proud of himself for having survived a night on his own. 

I stood on the threshold, all four hooves together, my mane a limp mess and my coat a dull, sandy color. For a moment, I saw myself from the outside. Small, vulnerable, scared and confused and so so tired. Unimaginably tired. A tiredness that was so heavy and palpable, it was like a weight on my very soul. My soul was achingly exhausted. 

And I merely stood on the threshold.
> Part II: Chapter Three
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are few smells I can call to mind that are quite as insidiously disgusting as dishwater.

Oh, there are sharp and harsh smells of garbage and manure, rotting fruit and dead things. There are overwhelming smells from which you need to escape, like an onion. But there is nothing I hate more than the way the smell of dirty dishwater lingers and lingers, clinging to your hooves and soaking into the soft locks of hair around them. False cleanliness-- the smell of soap which barely masked the smell of old food and grease. It smelled dingy and grey, just the smell of it. 

Yet here I stood, doing my best to clean with magic and failing miserably. My focus was terrible, which I suppose was no surprise, and my shaking grip splashed the dirty water all over my chest. Rather than have such a nasty scent wafting up with every breath, I elected to douse my hooves in the unsightly substance.

If I’m honest, though, it was the least of my concerns. It can be convenient to compartmentalize emotions and self-generate distractions.

And so I slowly and methodically scrubbed the dishes, being sure to keep up a convincing clatter of dishes. As long as Nightwhisper though I was busy, he would leave me be. I just needed to be left alone for a moment, put my mind back together.

My foolish, shattered mind.

There was a window above the sink, and a light. It was the kind of window which had no real purpose and didn’t offer a very nice view, it just happened to be there above the sink. The light attracted moths which thumped softly against the glass. The glare of the fluorescent bulb against the window pane made it nearly impossible to see the desert beyond. 

I allowed myself to sink into a deep daze, mindlessly gazing into the light on the glass as I scrubbed plates and bowls and forks. 

I almost didn’t realize that I was looking into her eyes.

I gasped softly and dropped a spoon into the depths of the dishwater. There she was, Rainbow Dash, peering at me as she hovered outside my window.

At first I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t speak to her. I couldn’t get to her. She seemed stuck, as well, not having expected to make it as far as she did and now lost as to her next step.

“Rarity…” she whispered. I could just barely hear her through the glass.

I looked into her eyes, hoping to communicate a need to be left alone. Did I want to be swept away? Of course. Could I possibly disappear right now? Absolutely not.

She didn’t seem to get the message and started to wave her hoof at me, checking for a response. I intensified my glare.

Still not getting the message, she reached out and gave the window pane a gentle tap. 

I shook my head, firmly and slowly.

This appeared to hit Rainbow like a pang of grief. She faltered in the air, her usually steady wings not quite able to take the idea that I didn’t need her.

It wasn’t so. Of course it wasn’t. But what else could I do? I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t risk Rainbow being hurt or chased away. 

And this stupid window pane! 

Rainbow’s eyes were no longer glazed. They were clear and they were hurt, and they looked so deeply into my own that I was certain she would see the truth of my situation. Surely, surely Rainbow Dash, of all ponies… Surely she could see that I needed her and was incapable of asking. 

Surely she could sense my undying loyalty.

The buzzing. The buzzing was there as I looked into her eyes and saw that loyalty reflected and magnified. She could feel I needed her, how badly I needed her because if I didn’t have her then I might--

I smashed the dish down into the sink and it wasn’t a sink anymore. It was the great, dried-up fountain which was set in the center of the shopping center.

This time, there was about an inch of water in the bottom, and it splashed up onto my chest. It smelled of chlorine, one of those overpowering smells from which I needed to escape.

But the buzzing was gone. And so was Nightwhisper. All that was left was Rainbow, hovering before me and looking into me.

I ran to her. I ran to her and pulled her down into the water with a mighty spray of chlorinated water. She submitted to my embrace much easier this time, even squeezed back a little. Burying myself in her was so much more lovely, more intoxicatingly wonderful, than even being near Nightwhisper.

Her mane smelled of berries.

“How do you always know just when I need you?” I mumbled into her neck.

Rainbow chuckled hoarsely. “Hate to break it to you, Rares, but this one wasn’t all that tough.” She stroked my mane with one hoof, and I could feel her gently taming it into a more familiar shape. Just like the old Rarity, but not. “I’ve told you that I like your mane short, right?”

I made some sort of noise, meant to be a laugh but more like a gasp. “I think you have. I like yours short, too.”

Rainbow’s stroking slowed to a stop, and she blushed a bit.

I pulled away from her hug, somewhat reluctantly, and looked her in the eye. “How are you doing this?”

“I-I’m not!” She insisted, her voice reaching pitches heretofore unheard of. “I don’t know anything about this place!”

“What are you doing, then?” I asked.

Rainbow struggled not to roll her eyes as she sighed. “I’ve told you, Rarity. I’m from the future-- I mean, a future. Things went bad and I’m trying to fix them. I can’t tell you anything else.”

“You said ‘can’t’ that time.” I pointed out.

“I-I did?” Rainbow asked. Her eyes flicked nervously up to the ceiling. “I mean, I did before, didn’t I? I musta said something.”

“What can’t you tell me, Rainbow?” I pressed. I took what I could of a step forward, towering nearly a head over that compact racer’s body.

She scrambled backwards a few steps, swallowed hard.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with me, does it? I thought you told me that you’d made a mistake,” I said. “If it was you who made a mistake, what’s stopping you from telling me about it?”

Rainbow’s eyes were darting about the room, searching for a safe place to land.

I stopped my forward momentum and stomped my hoof in the water again. It splashed against my chest and wafted the chlorine smell up to me. “Why is it that I can’t get a straight answer out of anypony these days?” I said, more to myself than Rainbow. “I’m sick of being treated as if I would simply fall apart should anypony tell me something shocking or undesirable. Do I look that fragile?”

Rainbow held her tongue, wisely. I knew what I looked like. I looked thin and delicate and disheveled, most days. I looked as if I didn’t care anymore, as if I were falling apart at the seams and nopony was there to pick up the pieces.

I sighed. “I know it’s strange, but part of me wishes I could just let this all go back to being slow. Everything was so slow… and I could understand things. Now things are happening so fast that I can barely keep up.”

Rainbow opened her mouth, but decided to remain silent. She could have reminded me that this was a mysterious and confusing time for reasons outside of my control, that she was with me every step of the way, that everything would be okay. But she didn't. I’m not sure if that made me more or less angry.

“I just…” I took a shaking breath. “I need a moment. I need one moment and I can’t get it. My time is everypony’s but mine.”

This rang out through the silence. Rainbow dared not speak, merely shuffled her hooves imperceptibly in the stagnant water. The pool was not near as green as it had been the last time I visited, I noticed. It was newer.

I looked upwards. The whole building was newer, wasn’t it? Not by much-- still definitely disused for quite a long time. And yet… not quite as long a time.

“Well…” Rainbow cleared her throat. “If you feel like you need space, I’ll give you space.”

The buzzing came back. Perhaps it had been hanging in the fringiest edges of my mind all this time. Rainbow was retreating, headed for the door, never to return.

“Wait, Rainbow, that isn’t--”

“No, you’re right,” she cut me off, harsh. “You need time alone to figure things out. I sprung this on you and that’s not fair. Take your time. I’ll be back when you’re ready.”

“But I--”

The buzzing was growing, mounting, becoming a shrieking wind which tore at me, over which I could hear nothing else. It took sand with it, and jabbed at my skin with the force of a thousand tiny needles. My mane whipped into a frenzy, and I had to pause, cringe, let the wind wash over me in agony until it finally settled, dropping from hurricane force to nary a breath in an instant.

And there was no more shopping center.

And there was no more Rainbow Dash.

And I was alone. I stood in the middle of the desert, having disappeared right out from under Nightwhisper’s watchful eye, having lost my only supportive influence. Naked to the world.

I stood still for a moment. A gentle breeze blew over me, ruffling my mane and tail. The way my mane writhed on my head was still so foreign to me. I supposed this was how Pinkie Pie’s mane must feel; topheavy, shifting rather than billowing in the wind.

Don’t think about the girls.

Please don’t dig up the box.

I couldn’t do that again. Couldn’t crumble and reminisce and long for the past. I was were I was. I couldn’t change that.

I didn’t cry this time. My heart had been tugged in so many directions today alone--

I am Rarity.

Today is Saturday.

I am alive.

Soon to be Sunday. Soon another day gone, I will have made it to Sunday and have absolutely nothing to show for it. Would have survived shear terror and true heartache and nothing left but an empty shell who wants to be alone. Alone, can you imagine?

Am I even Rarity anymore?

I don’t feel it. I feel like somepony entirely different-- although, no, that isn’t right, either.

I feel as though I have become somepony that I don’t recognize, in pursuit of the pony that I truly want to be. What a twisted and tangled up mess I had become.

What did I want? Did I want true love? Did I want somepony to care for me, to help me when I couldn’t help myself?

Because that certainly doesn’t sound like me.

The Rarity I know is a do-it-herself kind of mare. She doesn’t take no for an answer, slaves day and night to make something she’s proud of. She doesn’t depend on anypony else. She loves other ponies, of course. But she doesn’t need them.

Why Nightwhisper?

I had been too…

Too…


GODDESS


It hit me like a lightning bolt, all other thoughts forced out of my mind in a flash. Never in my life had a thought come to me with such power. It was barely even a thought-- it was a scream of fear and panic and then an explosive rush of emotion. It was somepony else who said it, not me. I very nearly recognized it.

But I needed to go back.

I needed to go home, to Nightwhisper. If I used my magic, I could sneak up the stairs and past the couch (where he was surely sleeping) and he would never know I had been gone.

And he wouldn’t do anything to me.

I set off back towards the gas station. I could see its heavenly beacon from here as it shined down onto the foreign mechanisms which Nightwhisper and his crew tended to. 

The word pounded in my mind like a heartbeat. I could feel it against my temples, threatening to explode outwards and spew whatever else came with it. With every step I took, it grew stronger. A chant. A spell, a curse. It pulled me. Pulled me along the path I already tread.


MISSING



GODDESS


Joined by its partner, now. The Missing Poster, the flash of neon in the drab desert which warned of something that I, perhaps, could have put a stop to. I didn’t like to think about that, though. An innocent soul like Mossy Bridge. Had I known, I would have done something. But there is no time for me to understand things anymore. There is endless information, thrown at me in flashes and snippets and shouts and lies… how could I have known?

Like the heartbeat of guilt in that old story. Warnings which I cannot understand, but should have heeded, pulsing through me. Not only these clear and obvious things, but nebulous feelings of dread which hover about me. Something in the newspaper that I can’t remember…


DUSK


Dusk. Of course, how could I forget? Dusk… it held no meaning at all. A single word, how could it?


MISSING



GODDESS



DUSK


Something of a song. A plodding rhythm to it as I walked through the desert. The wind was at my back, blowing my mane around my face like a set of blinders, my tail tickling my own flank. I struggled to keep a steady pace as the wind forced me along. I was in no rush. If I had a choice, I would walk on forever.

Wouldn’t that be nice? There was nothing stopping me. I could turn and walk out into the desert and be lost for eternity. I could fade away out there. 

A tempting thought.

I drew nearer to the gas station. The words thudded harder and harder, flooding my mind and blocking out everything else.

I saw a shape, yes. I saw a shape, but it didn’t mean anything. How could it have? How could such an unassuming mass mean something to me?

It dangled under the large roof of the gas station. In the very back of my mind, the part which the thudded words could not reach, I thought it was some new kind of pump. That’s all. Just a newfangled thing which would feed fuel into the auto-carriages that rolled in and rolled out every damn day.

Just a new pump, which kind of swung in the wind. A new pump which was lit from above like it was an angel sent from heaven, and it probably was. Lit from above so that everything else of it was cast in stark shadow. Lit from above by a flickering light which I had allowed myself to get used to but now shot cold dread up my spine.

And the words slammed against the inside of my skull.

Parts of this new pump hung heavily straight down, dead weights which swung gently from side to side. Parts of it were very loose, and billowed at a much greater rate. The shape had no meaning. The shape was just a shape.

I drew ever closer. I cannot say that this was the moment that realization dawned upon me, because it had truly dawned much earlier. This was the moment that I accepted it.

Moss.

She hung by a thick, heavy rope which ran up over the top of the roof and was probably tied to the spire of one of the old pumps. The real pumps. She hung, still in her waitress’ uniform, which waved and danced in the wind. Lacey trim. Stark, white apron which was yellowed by the light. 

Her body was dead weight. It swung and spun ever so slowly in the breeze. Like a plumb bob. Just a meaningless shape.

Her head looked down. Her mane, still working free of a tight bun, almost entirely covered her face.

And, for a moment, it was me who hung there.

And then it was Moss again.

My eyes drifted downwards, too filled with sick fascination to pull away, and yet too disgusted and horrified to keep looking.

And there was Rainbow Dash.

She stood below where Moss hung, her wings outstretched, looking up in fear and terror. The yellow light played down onto her, as well, turning her feathers a sickly green and her mane and muted rainbow. 

She was shaking.

Shaking, knees practically knocking. She looked as if she might vomit. And I couldn’t draw up any feeling at all.

Rainbow took a few steps back, still shaking all the while, out of the yellow spotlight.

She saw me.

“Rarity!” she called, breaking into a run towards me.

I stood silently, still gazing at Moss’ limp body, and waited for Rainbow to reach me.

She skidded to a halt in front of me. A cloud of sand rose between us.

I took a deep breath, though my voice was quite steady. “That’s Moss.”

Rainbow was panting heavily. She smacked her lips in an attempt to sigh. “You know her?”

I nodded. “She served us at Open Doors. Don’t you remember?”

Rainbow squinted at me, looked me up and down. “No… Rares, that was Blue Moon. Do you remember Blue Moon?”

I scoffed and pushed past Rainbow, trotting in the direction of the station. “The first time, Rainbow Dash.”

I heard Rainbow’s hoofsteps hurry to catch up with me after a pause. “Rarity, please don’t go over there! Y-you don’t need this right now, you need space and distraction and--”

I stopped as suddenly and forcefully as I could and turned, slowly, to look at Rainbow. “I am sick and tired of other ponies telling me what I do and don’t need. I decide what I need, Rainbow Dash. And I need to see her.”

Rainbow stood in stunned silence. I pushed past her a second time. She did not try to catch up.

Moss hung over an empty patch of asphalt. No gas canisters, no service stations, no pay stations. It was an overlooked place in the plans.

And there, written in chalk:


Now I am perfect


I blinked at the words.

Moss had not written them.

Or maybe she had. Maybe she had, and I didn’t want to believe it. Maybe she hated her life and needed to escape, and nopony would ever let her have peace even though she so clearly wanted it.

But Moss didn’t write it.

The Dusk Guardians did.
> Part III: Chapter One
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After so many days of waking up with intrusive thoughts bombarding me, it was oddly unsettling for my mind to be blank that morning.

I was in the flat above the gas station. Nightwhisper was beside me, his breath sour and hot on my cheek. My hooves were folded over my stomach. For a while, I merely stared at the ceiling and felt them slowly move up and down as I breathed.

The words were still there, humming about somewhere. But it was my own voice that whispered them.

I rolled over very slowly. My mane rubbed along the stained pillows, followed by the sizzle of static electricity. Nightwhisper’s breath was now concentrated on the back of my neck. I couldn’t be sure that this was better. 

Mostly, I was tired. Emotionally, mentally, physically… however else such a situation can be described. I couldn’t imagine getting out of bed and facing another day that may or may not matter at all. There is a deep and unrelenting exhaustion which comes from existential dread. I don’t feel guilty in the least in implying that my special brand might be worse than most.

And yet there existed a small part of me, very small, which felt differently. A tiny, flickering ember of something else.

I watched the window with the desperation of a prisoner gazing through the bars of their cell. Surely, in just a few moments, Rainbow Dash would appear there, in the darkness. She would whisk me outside and we would finally leave and…

She did not appear.

She did not appear, but the darkness was slowly gobbled up by encroaching rays of sunlight. Night was a safe, quiet time for me to rearrange my thoughts. And yet it was always lost. Daylight brought with it the need to… to do things. To be somepony. I was beginning to hate the light altogether.

The sun rose. The alarm blared.

Nightwhisper grabbed one end of his pillow and yanked it over his ear. He curled up into a ball and moaned softly. 

The alarm was for me, not him.

I rose from the bed with practiced precision. The springs didn’t make a sound. I walked around the bed, laid a hoof on the top of the alarm clock, and felt about for the button which would turn it off.

The blaring ceased.

I breathed a sigh of relief, as did Nightwhisper. The difference was that, while he was now settling deeper into bed, it was now my job to prepare a breakfast which he would find palatable. A nearly impossible task.

And as I went about my routine, a battle raged within me. Half of me wanted to eject completely. To leave my body and consider other things. Philosophize about my situation. Fret, if you will. The other half knew that, should I begin to threat, it might be quite difficult to stop. The other half wanted to lose myself in monotony. Don’t think too hard, darling. You just might lose your mind. 

And as I argued with myself, like I always did, I puttered about the kitchen, cracked eggs and separated yolks from white. Buttered a pan. Bread in the toaster. Moved about in relative silence as the world woke up.

The world may have woken up, but nopony here did. That was certain. The sun was for me alone. A reminder of times past. When I had a point, a purpose, a varied routine. Even as the events of the past few days churned to a muddy mess in my head, I found it impossible to tear away.

Was that because I liked it?

I paused to consider. No words in my head.

It was empty in here now.

I couldn’t remember the things I did, I could only remember what things had happened. There was such a monumental difference and it was oh so difficult to explain. I knew facts. No emotions. No memories. I had read of my own life somewhere, been told of it by somepony else. Like some sort of cruel history lesson.

They hadn’t told me about Moss.

They hadn’t told me, and that wasn’t fair.

No.

Not fair.

I paused once more, this time in body and in thought. 

Moss was not a fact.

Moss was a… a feeling. A memory. I knew I had seen it, but nopony had told me because it… it wasn’t a fact.

And I knew, deeply, intrinsically, that it hadn’t happened yet.

No rope had been knotted. No lifeless form had hung from the roof. No police had come to take her away. No water had washed away the chalk. Those things could happen. Would happen. But they hadn’t happened yet.

A prickle crept up my spine and into my shoulder blades. The little flicker inside me burned a bit brighter.

Whatever Rainbow had done… time was non-linear. Everything that has ever happened or ever will happen in the history of this dusty little town was happening now. All at once.

So Moss was dead.

But she was also alive.

So she was dying right now, but also pouring a cup of coffee at the diner.

And I looked down, and I was Moss. I was pouring coffee into a thick, white mug at the bar. There was a clatter of dishes behind me-- but not from my kitchen sink. From a fully-stocked diner kitchen, from a bustle of waitstaff and chefs all shouting. 

A voice cleared its throat.

“Uhm, miss?” it said.

I looked up. And there I was, pouring coffee for--

Pouring coffee on my hooves.

The shock of heat made me cry out, and I was back in my kitchen.

“Oh!” I jumped again, spilled more coffee in the process. “Oh, goodness…”

With shaking magic, I managed to place the coffee pot back on the table, continually retreating from the flow of liquid seeping across the floor. I grabbed a hooftowel and began to mop up the mess. In my haste to clear the area, my hip bumped the table.

Time slowed as the coffee pot rocked, then fell. It shattered on impact. Hot coffee exploded across the floor, splattering my legs and chest.

There was a loud creak from the bedroom.

“Rarity?”

Shit.

Even more frantic now, I began to scoop up shards of glass with magic and hooves alike.

The rough sounds of Nightwhisper emerging from his room echoed through the silence.

“Rarity? What’s going on out there?”

Emotionless. Should have been concern. Could have been anger, I suppose. But there was simply nothing there, and that was so much more terrifying.

“N-nothing!” I called back, as sweetly as I could. “Go back to bed!”

Nightwhisper growled. 

Not sweet enough.

His shadow, at last, passed over the doorway and fell onto the threshold.

My breath hitched.

He stood above me, his form grey and dark and overwhelming. He did not stand with pride, though. He stood with a sort of slimy self-possession. A winner who won by cheating.

He sneered down at me, doing his best to maintain a look of disgust.

“You stupid bitch.”

“Nightwhisper, I--”

“You can’t even make a fuckin’ pot of coffee without embarrassing me, can you?” He took a step forward.

I scrambled backwards. My hooves slipped in the mess. “I can fix it, I can--”

“There shouldn’t be anything to fix!” He roared, punching the doorframe with one hoof. “I shouldn’t have to fix things for you, Rarity! I shouldn’t have to follow you around making things better! I shouldn’t have to convince everypony I know that I’m the one in control!”

“You are!” I said. My back was against the sink, now, nowhere else to go. “You are in control! You’re in control!”

Rays of sunlight crept over his face. A shaft of light illuminated his eyes. For the very first time, I felt like he saw me. He looked into my eyes and saw me, Rarity, the element of generosity, a mare from Ponyville who was so giving and loving that no decent pony could possibly do a thing to her.

But that wasn’t really what he saw.

He saw a victim.

A punching bag.

“No, Rarity,” he said, his voice so horrifically even. He raised his hoof. “This is being in control.”

I didn’t even have time to put up my hooves in defence. His hoof bashed into my cheek, and my head whipped to the side. The sizzle of heat down my neck almost hurt worse than the flaring pain spread over my face.

“I wouldn’t have to do this if you just listened to me!” A twinge of emotion crept into his voice. So distant and strange, though-- could have been anger. Could have been glee.

He raised his other hoof, but no waiting this time. It slammed into my stomach, and I doubled forward. I could feel my organs lurching to recover from the blow. 

Why was this so real? Where were the facts? Why were these not just facts?

The facts.

Say the facts, Rarity.

I am Rarity.

I can’t remember the day.

I am alive.

Nightwhisper gets angry.

He gets angry when I do things he doesn’t ask me to do.

He didn’t ask me to break the coffee pot.

And so he was angry.

And he hit me.

He hit me six times.

Twice in the face, three times in the gut, and one kick between my legs.

When he was done, he opened the fridge. He drank three gulps of orange juice straight out of the carton. He put it back, closed the fridge, wiped his mouth with the back of his hoof.

“I’m going to work,” Nightwhisper said. “You’d better be here when I get back.”

And he left.

And those are the facts. That’s all I prefer to remember of the incident.

I sat on the kitchen floor for a very long time. Although, perhaps, it was very little time at all. I suppose I don’t have any way of truly knowing. 

I wondered what day it was. I wondered about the best way to clean up the glass and coffee. I wondered how late the diner stayed open. I wondered how many auto-carriages had come by the gas station. I wondered what Nightwhisper would want for dinner.

I didn’t wonder where Rainbow Dash had been.

I didn’t wonder who had killed Moss.

I certainly didn’t wonder how I would ever escape.

I didn’t wonder about those things because there was simply nothing to wonder about. The answers seemed clear to me.

Rainbow wasn’t here.

Moss wasn’t real.

And I wouldn’t ever escape everything. Not ever.

Maybe these things were true, and maybe they weren’t, but things seemed easier this way.

I stood up. My stomach lurched again. My face burned, my neck ached. It was difficult to stay standing at all. But I began to clean up the glass.

Because it was easier this way.

The flicker inside was dying down. I longed to go bury my head in the sand underneath that cactus, dig up my mementos, live in a memory for a while. The only memories I could trust, it seemed. And yet there was even a doubt about that, wasn’t there?

Don’t think that way, Rarity. Sweep up the glass, Rarity. That’s it. Mop up the coffee like a good mare. Listen to your coltfriend. Do as you’re told. That’s the only way to stay out of trouble, isn’t it?

My neck ached and burned. My hoof went to my throat for a moment, grasped at something which wasn’t really there. The feeling passed away as quickly as it had snuck up on me.

Back to mopping up.

The tiles on the kitchen floor… they were familiar one moment, strangely unfamiliar the next. Had they changed? Had I changed?

I stood up. The light here was so bright. The clatter of dishes was back. A pleasantly low buzz of conversation filled the space. The details of the landscape were so far away, though; all fuzzy and blurry, like looking through a lense smeared with vaseline.

“Moss, sweetheart, let somepony else do that.”

I blinked. It was so clear to me, and yet I could hardly take it all in. “I-I’m sorry?”

Blue Moon. She stood before me, looking somehow younger. “I said ‘let somepony else do that.’ We don’t need you all crouched over on the floor, now.”

“B-but I was--”

“And for Celestia’s sake, darlin’, pull down your skirt!” Blue hissed, giving my uniform a tug. “We don’t need nopony takin’ peeks. ‘Specially with your…”

I cocked my head. “My…?”

Blue bit her lip, seemed to struggle not to speak, then rolled her eyes. “Oh, nevermind. Forget I said anything.”

She brushed past me, and the light changed. The landscape began to come into sharper focus. It wasn’t the diner-- the ceilings were much too high. It wasn’t the apartment, either. This was someplace else.

I almost didn’t recognize. It was the shopping center, but brand new. Everything was shiny and bright, the lights were intact and glowing with an intensity which almost reminded me of a hospital. There were still no stores in the fronts, however. Everything was a blank slate, it seemed. 

I looked down at my hooves. White fur, splattered with brown. I could still smell the coffee, hot from the pot. My hooves were mine. My body was mine.

“Hello?” My voice was mine, too. “Hello there?”

Why was I always playing catch-up with myself?

I took several deep and calming breaths. I closed my eyes.

“I am Rarity. Today is… well, I’m not sure what today is. But I am alive.” I sighed lightly. “I’m alive…”

“Well, that’s good to hear.”

I jumped, a hoof flying up to my chest to clutch at my thudding heart.

Rainbow Dash. Of course, Rainbow Dash. She was standing up above me, as always, wings spread, as always, and wearing a somber smile. The light through her wings landed upon me with the power of a heavenly light. My guardian angel. My little blue pegasus.

The sight of her should have made me furious. Why hadn’t she saved me? Why hadn’t she--

And I couldn’t even make it to a second reason before a choked sob burst from my lips. I could already feel a large, hot tear cutting a furrow through the fur on my cheek.

Rainbow’s expression of warm welcoming quickly fell into a concerned frown. She practically dove from her perch down to the ground floor and came running to me.

“Rarity?” Her hoof brushed my own hoof out of my face, searching for a cheek to hold. “Rarity, what happened? What’s happening?”

I tried to blubber something at her--maybe a scolding, maybe a thank you--but very little comprehensible information actually came out.

Rainbow was doing her best to keep up with wiping away my tears and my mane and even my own hooves, but it took nearly all of her concentration and some of her quickest moves to finally catch that first glimpse of my face.

Perhaps I had started to bruise. But it must have been written all over my face.

“Nightwhisper,” Rainbow growled. But not like he had growled. “He hit you, didn’t he?”

I didn’t answer, didn’t nod, just bawled a little louder and buried my face in Rainbow’s mane.

She didn’t know what to do. I think she was fighting through anger, as she tends to. That little pony is a wound spring of pure fury. You need only point her in the direction of a target and fire. I expected her to pull away and march right over to beat the living hell out of that stallion herself.

But she didn’t.

Rainbow held it back. She held it all back, the easy way out, to embrace me gently. To stroke my mane. To listen to my sobbing and sniffling and coughing and retching, and do nothing but whisper the tiniest of affirmations.

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t.

“You’re okay.”

I wasn’t.

“I’ve got you.”

She… she did.

I snuggled in deeper, reaching for and grasping at little locks of her mane. Just trying to get a hold on something. On anything.

She was wonderfully patient. She let me tug at her mane and soak her chest with tears and snot. She let me blubber meaningless shouts of confusion and fear and hurt into her without missing a beat. 

Loyalty, indeed.

Eventually, the well ran dry. I was left with a sick feeling in my chest and throat, but no more tears to cry.

Rainbow’s embrace tightened for a moment. I pressed into her with all I had. She loosened her grip and held me at leg’s length.

“Alright, you know the drill.” Rainbow cleared her throat. “You point me in the direction of the bastard and I’ll kick his ass!”

I tried to chuckle, but the sound came out mangled.

“Or…” Rainbow rubbed the back of her head with one hoof. “I mean, I dunno. What would help?”

My heart ached.

“Nightwhisper is going to kill me if he finds out I’m with you again.”

Rainbow scoffed. “I’ll kill him first! He doesn’t even know who I am.”

I made a small sound of discomfort and looked at the floor.

“I mean…” Rainbow shuffled her hooves. “Look, I’ll protect you.”

“I should really just go home.”

“You’re right,” Rainbow said. “But that stupid apartment isn’t your home.”

“I can’t leave.”

“You can!” rainbow insisted. “You can pick up and go anytime you want! That crazy stallion doesn’t have any power over you!”

“I don’t know…” I murmured. “I think he does.”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes.

“I just get the feeling he would--” I swallowed. “He would do something. He wouldn’t give up. He would find me if I left.”

And the feeling of helplessness came crashing back onto me. There really was no escape, was there? There was only Nightwhisper, and running from Nightwhisper. There was only monotony, unless I wanted to live in fear for the rest of my life.

“Rarity, listen to me:” Rainbow put her forehooves on my shoulders and spun me to face her. “Nightwhisper has no power over you.”

I looked into her eyes. Clarity.

I believed her.

“Then, what do we do?”

“Well--”

“Wait.” I put a hoof up to Rainbow’s mouth to silence her.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “I was just--”

“Shush!” I pressed my hoof more firmly onto her lips. “Let me think.”

With a bit of concentration, the words came back.

MISSING

GODDESS

DUSK

The flicker warmed again, its glow casting harsh shadows over the darker corners of my consciousness.

“I think I need to find Moss.”

Rainbow cocked her head, but studiously said nothing.

“She’s still alive. At least, I think she is…” I wondered, for a moment, how valid my claim was. But the flicker burned through it. “And she didn’t kill herself, Rainbow.”

A flash of recognition crossed Rainbow’s face, and her features darkened as her gaze turned to the ground.

“You have to believe me,” I said. “She’s still alive, Rainbow, I promise. And we’re going to save her!”

Her pained silence lingered on.

“Do you believe me?”

Rainbow bit her lip, then looked back up at me. Her eyes shimmered with an emotion I couldn’t quite understand. Sadness? Longing? “I believe you.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, goodness, I knew you would.”

The feeling of solace which washed over me rushed me back into Rainbow’s embrace. This one was different, though. Try as she might, her strokes were stiffer. Simultaneously more distant, and yet begging to be closer. So reluctant in touching me at all, yet just as reluctant in letting go.

It was very close to being comforting.
> Part III: Chapter Two
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rainbow Dash and I left the shopping center in relative silence. I, now propelled forward only by the need to save this innocent mare from her untimely death, was doing my very best to block out other… unpleasantness. And yet, the pain would flare in my cheek. The hum of the universe would fill my ears. I could feel the heat of the blow travel down my spine, snake around my neck like--

“Rarity!”

“Hm!” I straightened up.

Rainbow was looking at me carefully, with an element of concern, but not surprise.

“Sorry, dear, did you say something?”

Rainbow swallowed. “I mean, did you wanna go in or what?”

Ah, yes.

The diner.

Rainbow brushed my flank with an outstretched wing, a literal feather touch. I could feel a shiver building just under my skin. It never quite came.

I wrinkled my snout at the sight of the diner. “Of course, darling, it’s just--”

Rainbow looked at me expectantly. Little strands of her forelock brushed her forehead.

“Well, it isn’t the nicest place, is it? To eat, I mean.”

Rainbow snorted. “Where else were you planning on grabbing a bite? Your place?”

My stomach sank into my hooves.

Rainbow’s face fell with mine. “Sorry.”

I shook my head. “It’s alright.”

Her wing reached out again, this time a little more sure. Her touch sparked its way through my fur and spread a tingling sensation through me. “Don’t you wanna look for Moss?”

There was an unfamiliar tone in her voice. Something like pity, but it simply couldn’t be. It must have been exhaustion. Either way--any way--it hit with a pang of guilt. I’m sure she didn’t mean it, but Rainbow was making it very difficult to forget that I was keeping her from something more important. Some other, unnamed mission which loomed in her periphery, just behind that sheen I sometimes spotted over her eyes.

Maybe she did mean it.

“C’mon, Rares. You got this.”

I drew in a deep breath, shot it out from my lips with nearly enough force to whistle. “Mm-hm.”

We approached the diner as one might approach shelter in a storm; we walked with plodding, yet deliberate steps, leaning into one another, trudging forward with ardent desperation against winds which did not exist outside of my imagination.

But when I blinked, they did. Fierce, sand-filled gusts which threatened to knock me clean off my hooves.

I let out a cry of fear and winced against the power of the winds.

The moment my eyes closed, the wind halted.

“Rarity!” Rainbow’s hoof flew to my chest to steady me. Her wing tightened protectively around my barrel. “Holy shit, Rares, what now?”

My eyes flicked from point to meaningless point across the landscape, looking for any remaining sign of the desert storm which had nearly torn the flesh from my bones a moment ago. Nothing was the least bit out of place, of course.

“Oh, damn…” Rainbow murmured.

Her muttering brought me back from my panic. I looked down at her, expecting to see a hardened grimace of frustration, or a sagging gaze of exasperation. Not so-- she instead was looking at me, chewing on her lower lip, already reaching up to tenderly poke at… at something.

“What is it?” I asked, instinctively trying to dodge her prodding hoof.

She was determined, however, and managed to ruffle my mane for a moment.

I could feel the sand pour down onto my shoulders. Sand from a storm which hadn’t happened, not really. The storm was in my mind, just like the other visions. It wasn’t really happening, it wasn’t real, it couldn’t hurt me. Dreams can’t hurt you, Rarity. Don’t be silly.

Silly, silly me.

“What the fuck…” Rainbow’s hoof reached deeper into my mane. More sand poured down, bouncing across my snout and gathering on my lashes.

“It’s fine,” I lied. A quick once-over with my magic worked my mane back into a more familiar shape. I shook the rest off my body like a mutt. The sand settled into the landscape. “I’m alright. Must have been the wind.”

“But you--”

“Just the wind. Let’s get on with it.”

Distractions. All distractions meant to throw me off. I couldn’t let myself get swept down the river and into the ruinous rapids of anxieties and paranoia. I had to focus. Staying focused would keep me here, would ground me. 

Save Moss.


MISSING



GODDESS



DUSK


“No!” The shout left my lips before I could stop it.

Rainbow chuckled nervously. “Uh, Rares? You’re starting to freak me out a little. Are you sure--”

“I’m sure!” I spat back with unwarranted venom.

Rainbow cringed into herself, away from me. Her wing snapped back to attention at her side. I hadn’t noticed she had been touching me all this time.

I marched forward, holding onto the flicker in my chest. A flicker of what, I still wasn’t quite sure. But it was tangible. Could be stoked. Could be followed, should it be allowed to glow bright enough.

The bell above the door tinkled brightly as I pushed into the Open Doors Diner. Hot sand crunched under my hooves and against the cool linoleum, leaving a sure trail between the door and the long counter, where I now stood. In my mind, it was powerful. In reality, it probably looked as if a sigh might tip me over. As if a fall from here to the ground might shatter me into a million little shards of milky glass.

Rainbow pushed in behind me.

The diner was, as usual, completely empty.

Was it usually completely empty?

I couldn’t remember.

Blue Moon was wiping down the counter with a faded red rag. Her motion slowed to a stop as she took in my appearance: a raw glare worn across a broken face, a mane battered by the elements, a breath quicker and heavier than should be reasonably expected of a diner patron in the early morning.

“Well, looky-loo, it’s our local PI,” Blue Moon said. She flipped the rag over her shoulder.

“I don’t care for your tone, Ms. Moon.”

She held up a hoof in sarcastic defense. “Well, pardon me, ma’am.”

“How is Moss?”

“Still missin’.” She scowled at me. “How’s Nightwhisper?”

I ground my teeth and prepared to spit back, but Rainbow spread her wing in front of me like some sort of shield.

She chuckled nervously in a poor attempt to diffuse the tension. “Could we get a booth?”

Blue shrugged and gestured to the open expanse of restaurant before her. “Take your pick.”

Using her wing to heard me along beside her, Rainbow shuffled towards a corner booth. She ushered me into my seat with the practiced care of a mother guiding her foal.

“What can I get y’all?” Blue shouted from behind the bar.

“Two coffees.” Rainbow replied, almost on instinct, barely loud enough to be heard. She looked down at the tabletop and seemed to be doing her best to not be seen by either of the two ponies currently in the room.

Blue nodded and disappeared into the kitchen through a shimmering metal door. 

At first, Rainbow made something of an effort to communicate with me. Not so straightforward as actually asking me a question or prompting a conversation, of course; Rainbow was awkward, and opted for throat-clearing and nervous whistling. I'm not sure how exactly she expected me to respond to this, and so I simply didn't.

The longer things went on, the more agitated Rainbow became. As I wondered idly how long it could take to make two  cups of black coffee (especially when there was not one other living soul in the building to serve), Rainbow’s hooves tapped out an unfamiliar rhythm on the table. Her back hooves danced, as well, making soft thuds on the plush seat. Too short to reach the floor, it seemed.

Then, with no warning, she sat up ramrod-straight. “I gotta hit the bathroom.”

She shot up and out of the booth before I could get a word in.

An odd feeling surrounded me when she departed-- one of disobeying a strict rule. The diner wasn’t a place I should be when I was alone. By some unwritten law, there should always be some other patrons or some member of waitstaff in sight. Yet here I was, breaking the rule. Alone in a place that must always, always be outrageously overpopulated.

In an effort to stave off the unease, I let my gaze wander to the window.

Rainbow was right. There simply wasn’t another place to really eat in town.

The convenience store came to mind. Not technically in town, though. The road into town. It was hard to figure out what even made this a town, what counted. It seemed to be at the will of any random inhabitant.

Did this town even have a name?

It had a mayor.

Has a mayor?

No. Would have a mayor. Misty Shores, elected in six years.

No. Six years ago.

A mayor of only three buildings? How--

“Haven’t you gotten your coffee yet?” a sweet little voice interrupted my thoughts.

I looked up.

A short green mane, shorter near her mouth where she chewed it. Frizzier, too. A dark, rich, brown coat, brushed well but not too well. Her dress and apron looked untouched. And her nametag--

“Moss?”

She smiled a little. “Sounds like you remember me.”

My mouth hung open. I found myself completely unable to form a sentence, just staring at the filly as if I were seeing a ghost. Although, by technical terms and definitions,by time’s usual rigorous forward march, I suppose I was.

What do you do in a situation like this? Do you tell a ghost that they’re dead? Do you ask for help, for clues, in solving their murder? Is it a chance for anger and resentment, a chance to tell them exactly who to curse and haunt? Or is it a time to mourn?

How could I say anything at all to her face? Her sweet, innocent, living face? How could I tell her that she was about to die, by her own hoof or anypony else’s?

Did she deserve to live without that knowledge? Or was it only right to tell her?

Which was the greater sin?

Her smile faded the longer I stared. “Would you like your coffee?” She asked this so softly, so hesitantly, so sweetly.

I don’t even think I could blink.

“I-I’ll get you some.”

She grabbed a mug off the table which I could have sworn was not there before. She tried to stutter out something else, but didn’t quite manage a word. She turned away, took two steps, and tripped.

Moss fell all the way to the floor, clearly flustered and embarrassed. The mug hit the tile and shattered into a few large chunks.

“Oh, fiddlesticks…” she whispered. 

In her struggle to stand, her right back hoof caught on the inside of her skirt and hiked it up. 

And I understood why Blue had told me--told Moss--that she absolutely had to keep it pulled down at all times. It had very little to do with decency, it seemed. She was hiding something.

“Here we are.” Like clockwork, Blue brushed past the image of Moss sweeping up bits of broken mug. “Two coffees. You fillies want menus?”

“Erm…” I did my best to drag out my decision-making while I craned around Blue. “I think we’ll…”

The further I leaned, the further Blue leaned with me.

“What in the hay are you lookin’ at?!” Blue exclaimed. She took another sharp breath, preparing to fire away with her most recent thoughts and feelings about me, but quickly gave up. “I’m not sure why you’ve been terrorizing me over this missing pony business, but if you could drop the crazy-pony act while I’m trying to serve you it would be much obliged.”

I looked up at Blue shamefully. “Menus?”

“Right away.”

She bustled off. Moss was gone, not a trace of her or the mug remaining. I could almost sense her shadow, almost hear her timid little voice. Wishful thinking, of course.

It didn’t matter. I knew, now. I knew something important.

I hoped it was important.

The information swirled in my head, trying to form into words, but mostly just sitting as a massive block on my chest. It was so hard to make it tangible, even as I actively combed my mind for words, pictures, anything at all to explain this revelation.

The restroom door clattered shut and Rainbow Dash emerged. She looked a little woozy for a moment. I wondered idly if she had bolted up so quickly because she felt she would be sick.

That wasn’t quite it, though. She didn’t look ill. She looked… disconnected.

As she got closer, I could see more clearly the sheen over her eyes. That little barrier between myself and the easy readability I so completely associated with Rainbow. One which seemed to be something of a common occurrence these days.

“Rainbow,” I whispered as she grew closer. 

She looked through me.

“Rainbow, you won’t believe it. I just saw her.”

“Saw who?” Rainbow asked. She cocked her head, but mechanically. Like a not-pony impersonating a pony, or an undercover spy pretending to be my friend.

What other ‘her’ could I be talking about? “Moss!”

Rainbow reached up to scratch at the back of her head. “You… you saw Moss?”

“Yes! She was right here. And I--”

Rainbow sniffed hard, and the disgusting, phlegm-y sound echoed through the diner. “Uh, no offence, Rares, but that sounds impossible.”

“Rainbow, listen.” I looked back over my shoulder for a moment to see if Blue was around. She wasn’t. “Moss was a blankflank.”

Ah, there were the words. They tumbled forward so easily, how could I not have thought of them earlier?

The moment they left my mouth, though, I wished I had bitten them back. Plenty of ponies were blankflanks, Rarity. That didn’t mean a thing. So silly of you to suggest.

Rainbow nodded slowly. “And that has something to do with her being missing because…?”

The sheen in her eyes was melting back, now. Not disappearing, exactly, just letting a little bit more Rainbow through.

“Well, she--” My brain froze up completely. Why was that so important? “She…”

Rainbow looked at me with concern. “How do you know that for sure, anyway?”

“I saw it. Everything else I’ve seen has been true.”

“Except her death, right?”

“That will be true, Rainbow.” I nodded definitively, knocked my hoof on the tabletop. “It will be.”

“Alright, alright.” Rainbow waved away my seriousness with a blase hoof. “So you’re sure. I still don’t get what her being a blankflank has to do with anything else.”

“Who’s a blankflank?” asked a familiar voice, an accusing tone sneaking into the question.

Our heads whipped up to look at Blue, who stood over us holding two menus.

“Just a-a friend of ours. From back home,” I stuttered.

“Mm-hm.” Blue dropped the menus on the table rather carelessly. “I’m sure.”

She didn’t move.

“I--”

“Y’all should be more careful who you talk about.” Only Blue’s mouth move as she spoke. The rest of her body was like a statue. No, like a wound spring, ready to explode. “Whole town’s got ears. If you think you can get away with that kinda gossip in here, I can’t imagine what you’re saying in when you think you’re alone.

“I’ll be back in a few to take your order.”

Blue turned and trotted off, her tail swishing with every step.

I shuddered. “I hate lying to that mare.”

“Why’d you do it, then?” Rainbow asked.

“Blue doesn’t want anypony to know that…” I watched the nosey waitress push back into the kitchen. “Well, you know. She’s trying to keep it a secret.”

Rainbow snorted. “I think that cow’s outta the barn, Rare.”

My ears flattened against my head. “And to think I pride myself on keeping with social norms. Manners and respect, pillars of my pride. I don’t seem to have either, anymore, do I? I’ve become a bit of a ruffian out here.”

Rainbow shrugged. “It’s not your fault. Being a blankflank is never great, but I know loads of ponies who didn’t get cutie marks ‘til late. That’s what I always told Scoots and them. It’s not like it’s super rare or anything.”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t taboo. It just means there are more ponies with things to hide,” I explained. “Unlike Ponyville, something being common here doesn’t make it acceptable. The further South of Canterlot you go, the more traditional things get. It's about keeping up appearances, fitting in. The settlers of this area were one group of many to view getting one’s cutie mark as a pivotal experience, and that ponies without them were no better than foals.”

Rainbow opened her menu. “That’s fucked up.”

“More than that,” I said, opening my own menu with a flourish. “It’s a motive. A small town trying to get its name on the map, housing a pony who embodies non-traditional values, who signifies poverty in the area? It could be enough to warrant societal hatred.”

“In Ponish?” Rainbow asked.

I sighed lightly. “Moss’s lack of a cutie mark proves that this area isn’t worth expanding into, since it is clearly devoid of the enriching experiences she would have required to earn one. It might be enough to blight the local economy, since it is so reliant on through traffic. Nopony wants to stop in a backwards little town like this on their way to Las Pegasus.”

Rainbow blinked one long, slow blink. “That was barely better, but thanks for trying.”

That pried a tiny smile out of me. “Let’s just say that we have a few pretty solid suspects in the murder of Mossy Bridge.”

Rainbow closed her menu very softly. “I dunno, Rares. All that cutie mark stuff mighta made her unpopular, but I don’t think anypony would have… you know…”

“Killed her over it?” I finished for her.

“I mean…” Rainbow gulped, looked at the ceiling. “Yeah.”

She was right. I had gotten all spun up in my history and my facts. These were things I knew to be true about this strange little pocket of barely-civilized ponies. But clues to this case might not play in my mind as facts. In truth, very few of them probably would. As far as I could tell, Moss’s death was ruled a suicide. There had been no further investigation, and therefore I probably wouldn’t find the answer in my little mental encyclopedia.

“I suppose you’re right.”

Rainbow let out a sigh of relief.

“Although it would be an excellent cover, wouldn’t it?”

She sucked in the breath again.

“It was made to look like a suicide, wasn’t it?” I murmured, more to myself than to Rainbow. “The suicide of a young mare without a cutie mark, one who would surely face ridicule and discrimination based on that fact.”

Rainbow blinked.

“If somepony wanted to kill Moss for some other reason, and they knew she was a blankflank, then setting it all up as a suicide might be enough to halt investigation,” I proposed. “Nopony would bother looking into a murder so perfectly staged as a suicide.”

“Are you sure?” Rainbow asked.

“Very nearly.” I closed my own menu definitively. “This town doesn’t have its own police. It would be the Appaloosa department being called in… I doubt they’d do any more than the bare minimum on a case like this.”

Rainbow digested this for a moment, then began to nod along slowly. “Yeah, I guess so.”

I allowed myself to show the hint of a triumphant smile. “It’s not motive, but it’s something.”

“Sure is!” Rainbow tried to say this cheerfully, but the sentiment was largely lost.

My smile faded.

Rainbow’s face fell back into grim neutrality, as well.

It was difficult to celebrate as one unraveled the finer details of a murder. As much as I believed that I had been given the opportunity to halt this tragic crime before it happened, I couldn’t help but feel a stone of doubt dragging my stomach down into my hooves. The stone whispered my own insecurities back up to me, echoes of fear that I couldn’t save her. That I had been gifted this chance, given all the tools I needed to put the pieces together, and I still wouldn’t save her.

“So…” Rainbow broke me out of my anxious loop, but the stone remained. “I guess that only leaves one question.”

“One?” I asked. “We still have a very long way to go before we solve this mystery, Rainbow.”

“I mean, I think that depends on how many ponies know that Moss is a blankflank.” Rainbow’s eyebrows twitched up almost imperceptibly. “Right?”

Of course. The suspect list was only as long as those who knew Moss’s secret, wasn’t it?

“You fillies ready to order?”

The shiver which had been building at the base of my spine released at last. My back stiffened, my shoulder blades shifted towards one another. I could see the color drain from Rainbow’s face, certain that any anxious blush to my cheeks had washed clean away, as well. 

Our prime suspect loomed over us, holding a little pad of paper and a disposable pen so innocently over our head. It was probably my imagination, but I could have sworn that her name tag glinted menacingly at me in the low morning sun.

Blue Moon.
> Part III: Chapter Three
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wet, bloody, metallic taste of anxious bile crept over the root of my tongue. I could feel my heart rate increasing at an utterly unnatural rate, each beat clenching my entire chest in an iron grip. The diner was silent. Blue Moon looked down at me with eyes that hardly ever seemed to contort or blink. They just stared right into me, no hint of emotion.

Blue Moon was a murderer.

Or, at the very least, something very close to a murderer. An apologist. An accomplice. Something, something awful.

I did my best to swallow. The taste did not leave my mouth, instead spreading down the back of my throat and sticking to every surface it felt along the way. 

I knew that Blue Moon was guilty of something. I knew this in a manner very different than I knew other things. It was not a programmed fact, not a memory of the future or the thoughts of somepony else. I knew this because I knew ponies. I knew this because I knew that, yes, sometimes ponies spoke harshly out of grief. Mostly they spoke that way out of fear. I had thought it was fear for Moss. This was not so.

Blue was afraid for her own sake. Afraid of being found out. Afraid that the shadows of her transgressions were whispering secrets to me, like the beating of her victim’s heart thudding under the floorboards.

“Well? You two look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Blue spoke as she usually did, but I was seeing it in a new light, now. It was mechanical. It was false. It was the bare minimum of real contact she felt like she could get away with. A script she could follow. A caricature she could play the part of. It’s not like anypony else around here had an accent.

I tried to swallow again. The fear clung harder to the back of my throat. The moisture left my mouth.

Rainbow Dash cleared her throat, straightened up. “We’ll both get the pancakes.”

“Suit yourselves,” she said. She scooped the menus off the table, turned, and trotted away in one clean arc to the kitchen.

The metal door swung open, swung shut, swung open, swung shut. It made a soft shush shush shush as it settled, a sound which neither of us could have picked out individually had the diner been behaving normally. 

Rainbow reached gingerly across the table. Her hoof brushed mine, just lightly enough to get my attention.

The door swung open, swung shut, swung open, swung shut. Each time it grew softer, moved less.

At the instant it had closed enough for Rainbow, she jerked her hoof away from mine and bolted out of the booth. I followed suit, unable to keep perfectly with her smooth motions, but thoughtful enough to silence the tinkling bell above the door with a magical muffler.

We burst out into the early morning heat and sun, and flew across the sand. I let out an enormous breath, drew one in, choked on the bloody taste in my throat.

Rainbow held a dead focus on a point in the distance which I couldn’t discern. Her hooves beat along the sand at a pace I simply couldn’t match. Every so often, she would kick off and blast forward a few extra paces on the wing, the land again with a sound much gentler than the action.

I found myself getting left behind. 

I was usually so good at keeping it together. The old Rarity was brilliant under pressure, a real team asset who could push through the scariest of things without batting an eye. That wasn’t how most ponies thought of me, of course. I certainly knew how to milk the drama. But I know it’s how Dash thought of me. “Cool as a cucumber,” she would say.

But the whole world was collapsing in on me, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Every heartbeat was like hot tendrils of dark magic cracking my ribs. Every breath brought with it the taste of fear and realization and betrayal, and I physically could not think of anything else.

There wasn’t a single pony in this town who was on my side.

And that fact scared me more than everything else put together. The fact that I was surrounded by enemies. That even Rainbow Dash seemed to be slipping away from me, putting me off as best she could in order to get to the heart of whatever else it was she was here to do.

Even Rainbow Dash was keeping secrets from me.

I stopped running. My breathing was loud and hot and ragged. Rainbow sped on, her mind disconnected in such a way that I wondered if I would ever be able to retrieve it.

Although, to be fair, I’m sure she felt the same way about me.

“I’m waiting for you!” called out through time and space and eternity.

The shiver went up my spine again.

Rainbow skidded to a halt, looked to the sky for some sort of answer.

She turned around and saw me, then broke into a run twice as fast as the one before it, barreling towards me at top speed.

“Rarity!” She shouted to me as she ran. “Rares, let’s go!”

The world was closing in. I knew this, knew it was my fault, and yet I couldn’t make it stop. My vision was contracting faster and faster. Everything swallowed up in black.

“Fuck, Rarity…” I felt a warm embrace gather me up. “It’s alright, I’ve gotcha.”

With what little strength I could muster, I reached up and wrapped my forelegs around Rainbow’s neck. I knew my eyes were wide open, but I couldn’t see anything at all. Just swirls and blotches, shadows of color, dark masses. I hung there, held by Rainbow as she flew me to safety, hovering on the line between conscious and unconscious.

I remember very little of the journey, but I do remember Rainbow Dash lowering me into her rented bed. 

“Ah, shit…” Rainbow was puttering back and forth. “Hot or cold, hot or cold…”

Had I been able to respond, I would have.

She eventually broke her pacing pattern and dove into the mini fridge, grabbed the largest hoof-full of ice cubes she could, and brought them over to the mattress. She dumped them out beside me. 

“Here ya go, Rares,” she said, more to herself than to me.

She held one cube to the base of my horn, and pressed one to my lips. I took it graciously and began to suck the cool moisture off of it. I could feel the taste of fear being washed away, however temporary the solution may be.

When I finally regained some semblance of sight, I looked up at Rainbow Dash.

She put a hoof to her chest and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, thank Celestia you’re okay.”

“I’m sorry I worried you, dear.”

Rainbow let out a harsh breath. Her eyes rolled back in pure relief. “Just don’t do it again, ‘kay?”

I let a smile dance over my face. “I’ll try.”

For a moment, her gaze lingered on me. The shadow of a smile graced her lips as she watched me come back. Something in her eyes said mine, and I was okay with that. It was a soft claim, not possessive like Nightwhisper’s. More protective and trusting. Thankful, even. Loyal.

“Damn, Rares, you need to sleep. O-or eat.” Her eyes scanned my body quickly, taking in the drabness of my coat, the pallidness of my complexion, the exhaustion of my joints. “Shit, I dunno. You need to take care of yourself.”

I chipped a little flake of the ice cube off with my teeth and swallowed it. “You’ll notice that taking care of myself isn’t one of my strong suits.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Dude, no. You’re the queen of spa treatments and fancy foods and beauty sleep. You’re dogshit at prioritizing yourself.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s a… crass way of putting it.” I was silent for a moment. “However accurate it may be.”

Rainbow smiled a weathered smile. She held a hoof out to me. “Generosity.” She drew her hoof in to her own chest. “Loyalty. We do the same dumb stuff. Getting all caught up in other ponies’ crap. We forget to look out for ourselves.”

“I suppose I never thought of it like that.” I murmured around the ice cube.

Rainbow shrugged. “You do a lot of thinking when you’re alone that long. I thought I did something wrong to lose touch with you guys. I was always trying to figure out what it was, y’know?”

I thought for a moment, then nodded.

Rainbow stared at the carpet for a minute. I couldn’t see it from where I was, but I doubt it was as interesting as she needed it to be.

After a long pause, she looked back up at me. “Feeling any better?”

Another nod.

Rainbow let out a sigh of relief. “Keep scaring me like that and I swear I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

“I’m sorry.” I reached out weakly. “You’re right, I’m not taking care of myself and it’s making everything worse. I can’t remember the last time I ate…”

Rainbow perked up. “Want me to pick you up something at the Kwik-Grab? I can get there in--”

“Ten seconds flat?” I finished for her.

She smiled at this. “Sandwiches still cold, soups still hot!”

My hoof stroked her shoulder, grazing the tensed flight muscles and mussing her fur, unnoticeably so to all but me. She was so eager to help, and I suppose I was so haggard by now that it was all she could think about. Not a smudge of makeup on my face, my mane undone and unwashed for at least a few days. She had never seen me like this before.

Even as I imagined how delightful it would be to bite into a warm sandwich stuffed to the gills with roasted vegetables, how good it would feel to have anything at all in my stomach, I had a hard time sending her away. I convinced myself it was because I felt guilty for sending her on an errand in all the chaos. But that wasn’t it.

“Oh…” I hooked my hoof back a little further, around the base of her neck, and pulled her the tiniest bit closer to me. This made Rainbow blush, almost imperceptibly. “I suppose it would do me good.”

Rainbow beamed. “Alright, I’ll be back in no time.”

She closed and locked the door behind her.

My heart ached in her absence.

I rolled onto my other side and curled myself up. The blankets were all pushed off the end of the bed, no doubt from a fitful night of sleep by its previous occupant. I couldn’t remember if that was Rainbow or me.

There were two pillows on the bed, one under my head and another which seemed to be floating listlessly towards the center of the mattress. I remembered our night of fervent research on this room, the stillness which could only be broken up by endlessly rotating positions which just barely staved off the bedsores. I remembered laying on my stomach, the pillow in front of me, a newspaper from two months in the future open on it. 

I grabbed the pillow and drew it close. All four of my legs felt around it, searching for safe ways to snake to its far end. When all of my hooves poked out the other side, I clamped down on the pillow with all my strength, which was probably barely strong enough to restrain a gerbil. I buried my face in it. It smelled like motel shampoo and cheap perfume.

A shower would be heavenly, motel shampoo or not. But I was afraid that, if I stood, I might collapse in a heap of broken unicorn right there. Might fall through the floor and into my unconscious mind. Might have to face dreams I didn’t want to see.

So I waited for Rainbow to come back. Waited for nourishment and strength to drag myself to the bathroom and scrub myself clean.

It occured to me that I was trying to solve a murder. That I really didn’t have time for this kind of nonsense. But Rainbow’s words echoed. You’re dogshit at prioritizing yourself. Generosity, loyalty… we do the same dumb stuff. I listened.

It was not the first time somepony had told me so. It was a lesson I had supposedly learned many times. It’s okay to take time for yourself. Sometimes ponies ask for things they don’t really want. Sometimes generosity can be smothering. Sometimes you need to give to yourself. 

Somehow, though, this was the lesson that never stuck. After a letter to Celestia, I would spend a few days visiting the spa, treating myself, spending more time alone, or even just being a little more critical of how I gave my time to others. And those days were good. But, eventually, I would fall right back into my old patterns. Giving and giving and giving, refusing to receive. Refusing to admit how broken and empty I felt. 

“You’re dogshit at prioritizing yourself.” I replayed the echo over and over. My mind was such a good tape recorder these days, I barely had to try. The more I played it, the more familiar it sounded. Not the words. The voice.

I hadn’t ever thought about the voice. Words were words, and there were so many foreign ones buzzing about in my head. 

But the softest ones. The most comforting ones.

“I’m waiting for you!”  called out through time and space and eternity.

My eyes fluttered open. I hadn’t realized they had closed. “Rainbow…”

It was just then that my old friend kicked down the door of the motel room. She was holding two plastic shopping bags on each foreleg.

“I’m back!” she announced. “Told you I’d be quick!”

I smiled weakly and sat up a little.

Rainbow’s triumphant face softened to a gentle smile. She came to my bedside and started to put her bags down. “I, uh… I forgot to ask what you wanted. So I bought, like, everything.” She chuckled nervously.

The bags fell open as they hit the carpet. Paper-wrapped sandwiches, cartons of soup, blister-packed salads, bags of snacks (both salty and sweet). Beverages in bottles and cans rolled out, too, in all directions.

I laughed lightly. “Well, you certainly know how to spoil a mare.”

Her ears flattened against her head and she looked down at the bounty she had gathered. “Anything look good? ‘Cause I can go back if--”

“Rainbow.” I held up a hoof to stop her. “Darling, please relax. You’ve done your duty.”

She breathed a light sigh of satisfaction.

“This is going to sound a bit gluttonous,” I said, rising a bit further from my repose, “but I don’t think I’d have any trouble just now eating everything in these bags.”

She grinned now. Such a contagiously genuine smile. “What first?”

I scratched my chin and looked over the wide array of foods below me. Most things were packaged in such a way that it was difficult to tell just what was inside. I was about to reach down to sift through the pile myself-- but a better idea came to mind.

“Rainbow, darling, there is only one possible solution:” I straightened up as best I could, still feeling more than a little woozy. “We must picnic on this disgusting mattress.”

Rainbow chuckled. “Don’t gotta ask me twice!”

She bowed down, deftly gathered the most of the items in a single plastic bag, and scooped it up in her mouth. I levitated the rest in a cloud of magic and dumped them out in front of myself. 

Rainbow leapt into the air and landed on the mattress across from me with enough force to send the lighter snack items flying. She plopped down in an awkward seated position, her wings relaxed at her sides, already pawing through her bounty for something equal parts delicious and nutritionally vacant. 

To my surprise, she cracked open a container of hard-boiled eggs and popped one into her mouth. It filled the whole of her maw as she chewed, but she made an effort not to spray little yellow crumbs every which way.

I cocked my head. “Always full of surprises, aren’t you?”

Rainbow mirrored my motion of confusion. She muttered around her snack.

“Swallow, dear.”

She did. “Whaddaya mean?”

“I mean you’re sitting before a mountain of junk food, and I’ve never known you to be particularly fond of eggs.”

She scoffed. “Rares, I’m a Wonderbolt now. Spitfire really gets on my flank about my diet.”

“In what way?” I pressed.

Rainbow shrugged and took a bite of a second egg. “Too much sweets, not enough protein, too many calories, not enough calories. Y’know. Sports stuff.”

“Seems controlling.”

She shrugged again, took another bite. “I don’t really care. As long as I get to be a Wonderbolt, right?”

“I suppose.” My head was starting to hurt too much to pursue the topic any further.

Rainbow Dash, even in her incredibly rushed shopping trip, had managed to pick out some of my favorites. I quickly found a bottle of sweet iced tea and exactly the sandwich I had been yearning for: warm roasted veggies on a whole wheat roll. 

I did my best to be ladylike, gently popping open my chosen beverage and taking a leisurely swig. The ice cubes may have helped in dulling the horrible tastes in my mouth, but the rush of tea and sugar swept it away almost completely in just one gulp. I couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief.

After that, all bets were off. It was the fastest, the most, the best I have ever eaten in my life, at least as far as I could recall. 

“Damn, Rares.” Rainbow chuckled awkwardly. “I’ve never seen you eat so much.”

“That’s not polite in the least, Rainbow Dash,” I scolded around a hoof-full of potato chips. “A lady never eats too much or too little.”

“No! I’m, like… impressed!” She rubbed the back of her head. “I don’t think I could eat that much if I tried.”

“Well, I am a mare of many talents.” I smiled my best sweetest smile, knowing full-well there was an abundance of crumbs and smears on my snout. “If only one of my talents was not gaining a pound after a binge like this…”

I laughed. Rainbow laughed. For a moment, things were normal. I was upset after bad luck with a stallion, eating ice cream out of a tub, all the while draped delicately over a couch and still looking fabulous as can be. Rainbow was there to laugh and help me shrug it off. It was no big deal to her. She never cared for the interest of colts. Romance was a bit of a foreign concept to her, it seemed.

Then her laughter faded, replaced by a worn smile. She looked at me as one looks at an aging photo album, full of nostalgia and a strange sort of pain that I could almost understand.

“Damn, I miss you,” Rainbow murmured.

I grabbed a napkin and very quickly cleaned my muzzle. “I miss you, too.”

Rainbow’s cheeks burned for a moment, and she looked away.

“But I think we’ll have each other back soon.” Rainbow didn’t look up. “I mean I-- I hope we will. Don’t you think we will?”

Rainbow took a breath and looked back up at me. “I dunno, Rares. A lot of stuff’s changed. I don’t think things’ll be just like they were before we all left. I mean, I’ll still love you ‘n’ stuff…”

I blushed.

Rainbow’s stomach dropped visibly, her eyes widening and the color leaving her face. “I mean, like, ‘you’ as in-- like you and Twilight and… you know!” Her voice cracked and I suppressed a giggle.

“I know what you mean. I still love you, too.”

A smile danced at the corner of Rainbow’s mouth. “Yeah?”

“Of course.”

“Even after--”

“Always, dear.”

Rainbow was silent, just looked into my eyes for a moment. There was an odd sort of concentration in her face; a little knit of the eyebrows, a tiny flicker of her gaze across my face. It was as if she were trying to memorize me. After about a minute, she nodded to herself, and slowly pried her eyes away from mine. 

“What makes you think it’ll be soon?” she asked, her voice low.

“Hm?”

“That we’ll have each other back, I mean.” She looked back up at me. “You said soon.”

I sighed. “Well, I certainly hope we’re closing in on an answer.”

Rainbow hesitated.

“For Moss,” I said. “I can’t speak to your own, erm, goals.”

She nodded. “Right…”

“Do you think you’re close?” I asked.

She scoffed. “Celestia, I wish I knew…” So wistful.

I didn’t know what to say, so I simply waited for the moment to pass. I could almost see the gears turning in Rainbow’s mind as differing emotions passed her face; a little chuckle, a shake of the head, a nibble of the lip.

She snapped out of her musings and looked back up at me. “What’s the next step with Moss?”

I blinked. “Oh. Right, yes.”

Rainbow blinked back at me. “So… what are we doing, exactly?”

I sighed. “We have some citizen’s records in here somewhere. We should look for a record of Blue Moon, try to figure out where she might be living. If she has Moss, that’s where she’ll be.”

“You think?”

My eyes scanned the room, taking in the disparate piles of papers and trying desperately to think of any other useful information they may hold. “I’m honestly not sure. But we have to start somewhere.”

“We’d better get started, then.”

She was right. My hunger was waning, and my head was feeling a little more in order. Some of the newspapers and magazines we had collected still littered the room, but it looked like around a third of them had disappeared. Room service was my first thought. But nopony had made the bed. It must have been something else. Probably something mysterious that I would never quite understand.

Even with papers missing, the sheer amount of information this room contained made my stomach turn over.

Rainbow slid off the bed and trotted across the room. She grabbed a random chunk of paper from the middle of a pile and pulled. Some newspapers, some magazines. Other things, too. She brought me the stack and went to fetch herself one.

The papers included all manner of points of interest. Stories about vanishings, old and new. Records which seemed to show expansion attempts quickly foiled. Vague nods to unmentionable happenings being readily ignored by the townsfolk going years back and years forward. As interesting as it all was, however, very little of it offered any help in finding Moss.

Rainbow Dash worked on the floor, her tail sometimes swishing in concentration, accompanied by an occasional rustling of paper. Otherwise, she was nearly completely still and silent.

Our work was sometimes interrupted by a disconnected question.

“Could Blue be going by a different name?”

“Perhaps. But how could we possibly guess her real name?”

Or

“Is there any chance Moss left on her own? Are there any trains out of here?”

“Maybe. I found a list of train delays a while ago, let me see if I can find again…”

Or sometimes

“We could be wrong.”

“Of course we could.”

And so it went, plugging along with little progress. No mention of the Dusk Guardians. No mention of Moss going missing. No mention of Blue Moon anywhere.

After a few hours of this, I crawled out of bed for a stretch. I had gotten so caught up in a forward-thinking, forward-moving, clear and helpful mind that I had neglected the soreness in my legs and sides. 

Rainbow snorted. “What are you doing?”

I struck a pose. “Stretches, darling.”

“That doesn’t look any stretched I’ve ever done,” she said with more than a bit of skepticism.

“It’s called yoga, Rainbow, and it’s--” A shiver jolted up my spine as my back hoof grazed a stack of papers. I froze completely, letting the feeling run up and down the length of me, pulsing and throbbing and electric. A familiar buzzing suddenly filled my ears.

Rainbow jumped to her hooves. “Rares? What’s going on?”

I drew my hoof away from the papers, and the jolting and buzzing sensations ebbed. “I’m not sure.”

I turned around to look at the papers I had touched. A lot of boring things, really, and had been sorted accordingly-- requisition forms for lot renovation, requests for loans from larger cities in the area, historical city-planning maps, even simple letters government officials complaining about “the state of things.”

“I mean, are you hurt? You look--”

“I’m fine, dear. But I think…” The sentence died in my mind. I didn’t know what I thought.

Tentatively, I reached out a hoof and touched the top of the stack. The buzzing roared again in my ears.

I ran my hoof, slowly, down the stack of papers. The buzzing grew, grew, grew-- then died down again. My hoof trailed back up, playing hot-or-cold with the strange sensation until I finally landed on an unassuming, folded-up map. Once my hoof stopped on it, firmly, the buzzing stopped, too.

“Hm.”

Rainbow didn’t say anything, just shuffled her hooves nervously.

I tugged the paper out of the stack and unfurled it before us with a bright surge of magic.

“What is this?” Rainbow asked.

I squinted at it. “Well… I’m not quite sure.”

The paper was a light green, with squiggling, nested lines printed onto it. Each section between the lines changed in shade very slightly, the darkest part being smack in the top center.

“I think it’s a topographical map,” I said, hesitatingly.

“Then what’s all the drawings on it?” Rainbow asked.

She was right. The paper itself had been a printed topographical map of the area (which, in itself, was not especially interesting-- it mostly served to notate the relative position and size of the butte), but there were some light pencil marks which formed much neater shapes on top of it.

“It must be a planning map,” I said. “You see? There’s the diner.”

I pointed to a rectangular shape in the leftmost part of the map, labeled “O.D.D.”

“Oh yeah!” Rainbow leaned over to point to another shape in the upper right. “That’s the gas station!”

“And the motel,” I added, gesturing to the bottom right.

I squinted again, however, as did Rainbow as we examined a fourth shape. This shape was tucked up quite close to the butte, on its leftmost side. As far as I could remember, there wasn’t a building there at all.

“Then what the hell is--”

“Oh, Celestia…” My focus on the paper weakened and the map rustled in my grip. “That must be--”

“The shopping center.”

The paper began to shiver like a leaf, and I had to drop it right where I stood.

“Rarity?”

“That’s where she is.”

“Moss?” Rainbow asked. She brushed my side with her wing. “At the shopping center? She can’t be, she--”

“It was supposed a shopping center.” 

I don’t know where that came from.

“Huh?” Rainbow make a little nervous whimper. “I-I don’t understand.”

I shook my head. “Rainbow, there were never any stores in there. It was just an idea. An idea that wasn’t ever supposed to happen.”

Rainbow was silent for a moment. “I don’t get it.”


GODDESS


“I’m afraid I don’t understand it, either.” I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping the buzzing would clear away. “But that’s where she is, Rainbow. The shopping center. The almost shopping center.”

The timelines, the facts, swirled in my head. I thought back to the syrupy paths on Rainbow’s pancakes, how I stood at the source, at the threshold. I could see everything, and it was all getting muddled up. Which facts were true? I knew today was Sunday--was it really Sunday?--but Sunday when? Sunday now? Sunday two years ago? Sunday eight years from now?

I put a hoof to my head. Little sparks of magical energy were spraying out of my horn in a display of pain and loss of control.

“Shit, Rares, are you--” Rainbow put a hoof on my side, and everything stopped.

I opened my eyes. So many papers. Some newspapers, some magazines. Other things, too. Official things. Hard-to-get things. Things which we certainly shouldn’t have.

“Where did we get all of these papers, anyway?” I asked. Even I was a little frightened by the sudden and sickly calm in my voice.

“Huh?”

“The papers,” I repeated. “Some of them are things we could have bought at the Kwik-Grab, but some are… are government papers.”

Rainbow’s eyes darted towards the floor. “Uh… yeah, I guess.”

“So where did we get them?”

“You don’t remember?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Should I?”

She shrugged. Her forelock fell over her eyes. “I dunno, Rares. There’s all kindsa stuff you don’t remember, right?”

“Where did we get the papers, Rainbow Dash?” I demanded, my teeth pressed together.

Rainbow huffed a big breath out through her nose. She flipped her mane back and looked right into my eyes. “Rarity, there are things I can’t tell you yet, and this--”

“Why do you have government papers?” I asked again. “Where did you get these?”

Rainbow tried to stand up tall against my interrogation, but behind the ever-present film in her eyes I could see it. A flicker of guilt. A flash of regret.

“You were in the shopping center when I found you.”

Rainbow swallowed. “Was I?”

I took a deep breath, and mustered all the calm I could. “I am going to ask you a question, and I don’t want you to even think about lying to me, Rainbow Dash.”

She set her jaw, but did not respond.

“You know something important that you aren’t telling me.” I said. “What is it?”

She stared at me. Her eyes, a piercing magenta, were faltering slightly. There was something there that wanted to tell me. And yet she remained silent.

I didn’t know what to do. She was like a perfect, obedient soldier. A Wonderbolt running drills. 

“What is it?” I repeated.

Her gaze was stone, but the movement of her chest accelerated.

I took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and did my best to release it softly. I did this a few more times, hoping it would steady my voice. It only made everything happen more intensely; the silence elongated, my body shook harder and faster.

At last, I swallowed my rising anger. It was something I was rather good at by now.

“Fine,” I said. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll simply have to investigate it myself.”

I moved to the door.

Rainbow’s eyes went wide, and she dove to block the path between myself and the door. “Don’t, Rares. Just leave it.”

“Why?”

No answer.

“Then you leave me no choice.”

I opened the door. It was not the desert on the other side-- it was the shopping center. All green light and no stores in the storefronts. An idea. A plan that had never happened, had been halted for an unknown reason by an unknown decision.

The light invited me further, and I marched into the building.

“Now, where is it you usually stand?” I asked, gazing about the room. “You know, when you pop in on me. It’s always the same place, isn’t it?”

My eyes landed on the upper level, a spot right above the fountain. The desert sun, filtered through the glass roof, fell on this place quite beautifully. It had made Rainbow Dash look as an angel many times.

Rainbow grabbed my side. “Rares, please don’t--”

“I’ve never been up there, have I?” I plowed right through her protest and began to trot towards the stairs. “I’ll bet that was convenient for you.”

“It’s not like that, I swear!”

I whirled about to face her right where I stood. “How can I believe you?!”

Rainbow shrunk away from me.

I snorted lightly. “I have no reason to trust your word, Rainbow Dash. You’re clearly hiding things from me. If I hadn’t told you not to lie, would you have?”

Her eyes slid to the floor. She let go of me.

“As I thought.”

I began to climb the stairs. Rainbow watched me from below, watched me climb all the way to the top. Just as I was about to pass into the patch of light, however, she had a change of heart.

“Rarity, no!” She rocketed up from the ground level.

The light hit my eye, brighter and more powerful than i ever could have guessed. I reflexively curled away from it and closed my eyes.

Rainbow collided into my back.

But it wasn’t Rainbow.

The light had changed, even though I couldn’t see it. No longer natural and green-- no, this was fluorescent. Indoors.

Other things had changed, too. What had once been a blissfully silent space was now filled with noise. Rushing water. Clattering-- no, slamming metal. A low chatter in the background of it all. It smelled strange, too. Unfamiliar at this strength, and yet I couldn’t help but think I may have caught a whiff of it before.

“Nice job out there, squirt.”

The voice, too. Not Rainbow’s, not familiar so close. But there was something about it which struck a chord with me.

I kept my hoof to my head and moaned a little, although this didn’t quite feel like my choice.

The voice chuckled. “Yeah, you took a pretty good beating out there. Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us.”

I still couldn’t bring myself to remove my head from my hooves.

A hoof clapped me on the shoulder, and the voice chuckled again. “You’re tough, kid. We’ll make a Wonderbolt out of you, yet.”
> Part IV: Chapter One
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“We’ll make a Wonderbolt out of you, yet.”

I reluctantly drew my hooves away from my face. It wasn’t me, though. I hadn’t decided to do that. If I had been in charge, I would have been frantic, heart pounding, already searching for a way out of this strange place I had suddenly found myself in.

But it wasn’t me.

If it had been me, I would have told her that not to call me “squirt,” that I was a mare deserving some manner of respect. I would have told her I wasn’t a Wonderbolt, that I’m not even a pegasus! And I would have run away.

But it wasn’t me.

I--or rather, the body I was in--slipped out of the skintight lycra suit and ran a loving hoof over its surface. The hoof which grazed it was a powdery sky blue, and it smoothed the wrinkles out of the deep blue fabric with practiced care.

My wings spread slightly, with some pain, as I swiveled about on the cold metal bench. Had I been in control of this body, the realization that I had wings might have caused a variety of physical and verbal reactions. But I was not in control, so it didn’t matter. 

They were Rainbow’s wings. And I was hanging up Rainbow’s uniform in her locker, closing it, scrambling the lock. I caught a brief glimpse of a group photo she had pinned inside-- Myself, Twilight, Pinkie, Applejack, and Fluttershy. I remember taking it. It had been Pinkie’s idea.

My head was pounding, despite it not even being my head.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” the voice from earlier said from the door.

I looked up. Spitfire, with her shoulder leaned coolly against the doorframe, gestured to a bucket of water and a mop nearby.

“Aw, what?” I complained, in Rainbow’s voice.

Spitfire shrugged. “It’s not like you have a concussion. Worst flyer of the day cleans the compound. Them’s the rules.”

She left with a flick of her tail.

Something told me that Spitfire was never the worst flyer of the day.

Rainbow Dash grumbled to herself as she shuffled over to the mop and bucket. Even though she couldn’t manage to form coherent sentences, I knew what she was saying: “Can’t even take a damn shower. Why would I shower when I have to mop everypony else’s sweat off the floor? Have wander around all covered in dirt and shit. Disgusting.”

It was amazing how much I related to Dash in that moment. I suppose becoming an athlete had changed her perspective of the world a bit-- she had to take good care of herself. She was being seen by hundreds, thousands of ponies a week. Studied and photographed. Self-care routines can quickly become a necessary element of one’s mental and emotional wellbeing.

At least, that was my experience.

There wasn’t much to think about or understand as Rainbow mopped the floors. Her head was mostly full of flight patterns and failure analyses that I could barely comprehend in the first place, much less through this poor telekinetic communication I seemed to be experiencing at the moment. 

I was starting to wonder how Rainbow had come back, though.

It was clear that the magic she used was powerful, but somehow unfocused. Sure, it could transport ponies through time. But it was easily muddled, confused.

I remembered the shape I first saw in here, at the edge of the Everfree. The way it could barely stand. This magic was powerful, but dangerous.

A sudden outburst of laughter caused Rainbow’s ear to flick and her mopping to halt. She tilted her head slightly, repositioned her ears, zeroing in on the sound of a conversation somewhere within the compound.

“Everypony should have gone back to the barracks by now. What are they still doing here?”

We set the mop back in the bucket as silently as we could. Our ears continued to rotate about their mountings, keeping the sound of the conversation as clear as we could. It was impossible to understand any of the words from this distance.

We began to sneak closer. As we moved against the rows of lockers and towards the shower, Rainbow began to recognize the voices:

“Silver Zoom”

“Misty Fly”

“High Winds”

A raspy voice shushed the group, and the volume died down.

“Was that Fleetfoot?”

A quick spike of rage in Rainbow’s thoughts made her heart beat just the slightest bit faster. I understood that, in some manner, these ponies were at fault for the accident which occured today. An accident which had injured her and saddled her with manual labor.

My own anger blazed. How dare they treat my Dashie that way.

We came to a stop just a few steps from the showers. The floor was a little slippery here, no doubt from the careless stallions who meandered about the place with properly rinsing the soap from their coats. Although, I suppose the mares here might not be much better. Tomcolts, every one.

“It looks like we’ll need a replacement for Sunshowers sooner rather than later,” Silver said. “She said something the other day about moving in with a marefriend. You know how that always goes.”

Fleetfoot scoffed. “Damn, that might have been even shorter than what’s-his-face.”

“Cerulean?” High Winds reminded.

“Yeah, yeah. Never liked that guy. He was so jittery,” Fleetfoot murmured. “Well, do we have somepony else lined up?”

There was a long silence.

“Oh, please don’t tell me we’re high and dry again. Nopony has any leads on a replacement?”

Silence again.

Rainbow was concerned that somepony may be talking, and we were still too far away to hear it. We snuck closer to the gathering in the showers.

Our hoof slid through the lingering soap on the tile floor. We went all the way down to the floor with a thud, knocked all the wind out of our lungs. 

The heads of the whole gathering whipped around to stare at us.

“Ah, shit.” A male voice. One that Rainbow recognized immediately.

“Soarin?”

“R-Rainbow Dash?” Fleetfoot stuttered. There was genuine panic in her eyes. “Why are you still here? High Winds was on cleanup today. Right?”

She looked to High Winds, who did nothing but shrug.

Rainbow wheezed softly. “Spitfire told me to do cleanup.”

Fleetfoot let out a strained sigh and rubbed her cheek with one hoof. “Dammit, Spit…”

We struggled to our hooves to stand before the group. They all looked more than a little guilty, and none but Fleetfoot would even look at Rainbow Dash.

“Look, it’s cool, guys,” Rainbow said, taking a step forward. “It was kind of a clusterfuck out there, and I think we all deserve some blame for what went down, but I’m the Newbie. I don’t mind doing this kinda stuff. You don’t need to be all weird about it.”

The gathering was completely silent.

“Wait…” Fleetfoot  looked to her teammates for help. “Are you talking about the botched flight maneuver?”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes. “What else would I be talking about?”

Silence consumed the space once again, though it was an artificial sort of silence. Every little cough or shift of weight echoed off the tiled walls. The fluorescent lights above the lockers buzzed in the background. The silence was, for lack of a better word, loud.

Fleetfoot was chewing thoughtfully on her lip.

“What are you guys doing here?” Rainbow asked. She nearly tacked on a joke about broken showers, but rethought that. This was a serious meeting she had interrupted. Serious for what purpose, she didn’t know yet. But serious nonetheless.

“You used to be a weather pony, right Dash?” Fleetfoot asked in response. A few of the other members of the gathering seemed to wince at this question.

Rainbow chuckled nervously. “Yeah? What does that have to do with--”

“Did you ever actually work in the factory?” Fleetfoot pressed. “Or did you do more cloud-carrying?”

“I mean, all the trainees get a factory walkthrough,” Rainbow explained. Her tail flicked nervously. “Why are you asking?”

“Fleet, I’m not sure--”

“Shush.” Fleetfoot silenced one of her group members with a wave of her hoof. “You know anything about what goes on in the factory? On a personnel level?”

“Like, what the factory workers do during time off ‘n’ shit?”

“Yeah.”

Rainbow took a step back. “What’s this all about?”

“Do you know any of the factory workers?” Fleetfoot closed the distance that Rainbow had created.

“Sure.”

“Still on good terms with them?”

“I guess?” Our eyes flicked back and forth between Fleetfoot, who was beginning to get a little scary, and the more comforting Soarin, who was starting to look incredibly guilty. “Soarin? You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Soarin swallowed. “Look, Fleet, don’t make her--”

“She’s gonna find out sooner or later,” Fleet spat back over her shoulder. Soarin shrank away.

“I don’t get it. Why do you wanna know all that stuff about the weather factory?” Rainbow asked again.

Fleetfoot straightened herself up. “There’s another… let’s say, ‘export’ of the Cloudsdale weather factory that the team tends to make use of. Our usual supplier might be unavailable pretty soon. We’re looking for a replacement.”

The word “supplier” struck Rainbow and myself in the same way: our stomach sunk to our hooves, and I’m quite certain it was all over our face.

“Are you talking about, like…” Rainbow swallowed back the taste of fear and anxiety which bubbled up in her throat. “Drugs?”

The party visibly shifted. Evidently this was not how they liked to refer to their recreational activities.

Fleetfoot rolled her eyes. “Not, like, party drugs. I’m not asking you to bring crack or something in here. But have you ever heard of Thew?”

“Thyoo?” Rainbow repeated.

“Close enough,” Fleetfoot said, like trading around drug names was the most casual thing in the world. “It’s a muscle builder. Helps you lose a little weight, too. We-- well, all Wonderbolts tend to use something like it. We don’t stay fit forever, you know.”

“Steroids,” was all Rainbow could say.

“Sure, kid. Steroids.” Fleetfoot shrugged. “Point is, there’s a lot of suppliers in Cloudsdale weather. Lotta old folks looking to keep it tight so they don’t lose their jobs, or something like that.”

Rainbow was stricken completely unable to respond. I didn’t blame her.

“You said you know some ponies still working there, right?” Fleetfoot pressed. “Think you can put us in touch with a new deal-- supplier?”

There were so many things going on in Rainbow’s head right now that I was finding it difficult to even see a few meters in front of me. All of these little details swirling about which added up to one enormous and crushing betrayal, not only from her heroes but from her personal friends. She kept looking to Soarin, trying to see “addict” in his face and coming up empty.

At last, she found her voice. “If you think I’m going to run drugs for you, you’re--”

“Hey!” Fleetfoot hissed. “Keep it down!”

“Why?” Rainbow asked. “Why should I keep it down! You all need to be reported! O-or something!”

The walls were closing in. Rainbow’s breath was picking up speed, her heart pounding against her ribs as she tried to make these two stories fit. She tried to connect the dots between the amazing, talented, heroic ponies she had been watching since foalhood and the group of greasy addicts meeting in the locker room shower. These were not the same ponies she had written home about. These were not the same ponies she had idolized, surely.

Fleetfoot sighed again. “Look, kid: I don’t like this any more than you do. You’re a goodie-goodie, and I hate to put you in this position, but reporting us isn’t going to do you any good.”

Rainbow’s eyes scanned the whole group. They all seemed to agree, even if they couldn’t pry their eyes up from the floor. “What are you saying?”

“I think you know what I’m saying,” Fleetfoot said. “We would really appreciate it if this stayed off Spitfire’s desk. She’s got enough to deal with, you know?”

“But I--”

“I don’t think she’d take kindly to an undeserved attempt to sabotage the team.” Fleetfoot tilted her head, almost coyly, but did not smile. “Or move up in the rankings.”

The swirling black hole of doom and betrayal reared up again. Rainbow Dash seemed physically on the brink of passing out, but the thudding of her heart and the rush of adrenaline trying to make this decision for her were keeping her awake. She was actively trying to calm her breathing, and getting nowhere.

“So…” Fleetfoot turned off the threats like a tap, her usual relaxed demeanor returning from the depths. “Think you could put us in touch with somepony? Let’s say tomorrow, 1700?”

Rainbow was frozen, mentally and physically. I wanted so badly to take hold of her mind and beat Fleetfoot to a pulp, to beg Soarin for an explanation, to just break this little chain of abuse and carry Rainbow out of there on her own two hooves.

But I couldn’t. All I could do was watch as Rainbow nodded, as the gathering walked past her and out into the sun, as she stayed behind and cleaned the compound alone. She didn’t cry.

Then things sort of… sped up.

Time passed more quickly, now. I experienced it all--at least, I think I did--but at such an accelerated rate that i could hardly keep track of it. 

I watched, helplessly, as Rainbow met with seedy ponies at the weather factory. She planned meets, carried illegal substances between old friends and new, attended the strange little meetings they held after hours to medicate and swap incomprehensible stories. All of these things were against her will. All of these things were her worst nightmare. All of these things had been carefully buried in her subconscious.

Things slowed down as we neared what must have been an important memory. That was how this worked, I decided. I saw everything, but only stopped on the important things. Important to Rainbow, that is.

Rainbow was in her barracks alone, reading Daring Do instead of meeting in the mess for dinner. She hadn’t been eating lately.

We didn’t see him arrive, but Soarin cleared his throat.

We put down the book. He was standing in the doorway, his head down. This was how he looked now, at least around Rainbow Dash.

“Hey,” he said. “Can we talk?”

Rainbow growled under her breath. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

Soarin shrugged and started towards us. He reached her mattress, hesitated, then plopped down on the mattress across from us.

“What do you want?” rainbow asked.

“I just wanted a chance to… I dunno, explain, I guess.” He rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully. He and Rainbow really were two peas in a pod. “I’ll bet you were surprised when you found out I… y’know…”

“Surprised?” Rainbow repeated. “Try crushed. Try betrayed! Try--”

“I know,” Soarin said softly. “We’ve known each other a long time, and I just wanted you to try to understand what happened.”

Rainbow hesitated, put but a bookmark in her novel and closed it.

Soarin breathed a sigh of relief. “I dunno who exactly started this whole trend, but I know that it’s been going way longer than any of us have been on the team. It’s just how things have always been done.”

“That’s a really bad reason to keep doing things,” Rainbow added. I could practically hear the Twilight in her voice.

“Please, Dash?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes.

“By the time I found out, I was the only one on the team who wasn’t involved,” he explained. “Like you. I found out because Fleetfoot let me into her locker one time to borrow her lens cleaners. She was pretty sloppy at the time when it came to hiding the stuff.

“She pretty much begged me not to tell, and I didn’t, because I didn’t want to see kicked off the team. We’re teammates, y’know? We belong together. We need to have each other’s backs, even when we screw up.”

“But why did you start doing it, too?” Rainbow asked.

Soarin shrugged. “I was falling behind. The younger flyers are faster and stronger. I wanted to stay on the team.”

Things sped up again, conversation unfinished. The pieces were already falling into place in my mind, but I didn’t want them to. I wanted them to be wrong, like when the key turns but the door won’t open. Everything seemed right, but that wasn’t the answer. There was a better one. There was a better ending to this story. There had to be.

Rainbow kept running Thew for the Wonderbolts. It was a good deal for them-- they didn’t have to rely on outside help anymore. Rainbow knew most of the weather factory employees. It was easy to keep it going, on and on.

A year passed. Two. The ruse pushed on, and Rainbow stayed a member of the Wonderbolts. She was a celebrity! She was following her lifelong dream. But she did it all with a fake smile, a fake camaraderie, a fake team. Fake friends.

It wasn’t long ago that Rainbow Dash would have had absolutely no trouble kicking fake friends to the curb, and I was almost confused by how she just let these hooligans treat her like a punching bag. But there were two important facts about Rainbow Dash that I had not, could not, forget:

First, she is the element of loyalty. And that’s wonderful most of the time. But when your team walks all over you, it starts to become more of a curse than a gift. You’re dogshit at prioritizing yourself. Generosity, loyalty… we do the same dumb stuff. Truer words were never spoken.

Second, and arguably more important, Rainbow didn’t have us anymore. Her old team had left her. She was desperate for a new one.

It didn’t surprise me in the least when time slowed again, this time with Fleetfoot’s hoof slung about Rainbow’s shoulders. It was like a scene from a movie, the way Fleetfoot sweet-talked Rainbow Dash. The way she showed off her musculature, advertised the thing which would utterly destroy my best friend.

And Rainbow took it,

Because she is the element of loyalty. Because that is who she is, and it’s not her fault that other ponies are awful and take advantage of her. It’s not her fault that the world is a mess, that genuine goodness is treated as weakness instead of as strength.

She took it because we weren’t there to protect her. We weren’t there to show her the lesson. We weren’t there to show her the right thing to do, to be the team she needed.

She took it because I didn’t give her the team she needed.

“It’s not your fault!” I blurted.

The sound of the voice, my voice, echoed through the air, mingled with Rainbow’s mirrored exclamation.

Back in the shopping center, Back in the blink of an eye. The filtered green light fell on our heads as we sat up on the balcony. The cool, crisp smell of the plants which grew over every inch of the place filled my nose. The smells of the locker room were chased out in an instant, and left no trace behind.

Rainbow looked at me. There were tears in her eyes, tears which broke through the film of manipulation and betrayal and spilled down her cheeks in great shimmering pools.

“D-did you see--?” She tried to ask, but her voice broke.

I nodded. My own eyes were overflowing, so much so that I could hear the gentle drips of my tears hitting the tiled floor below us.

Rainbow swallowed down the lump in her throat. “I saw… I saw you and Nightwhisper.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I saw how you two got together,” she said. She sniffled hard. “He manipulated you. He made you feel like you had to give him… I dunno. Everything. You.”

I sniffled, too.

Rainbow grabbed me quite suddenly by the shoulders, but not angrily. It was firm. It was reassuring. “You don’t owe anypony anything. You-- you don’t owe him shit!”

I chuckled.

“And I’m so sorry, Rares.”

“Whatever for?”

“If I’d just been there,” she said, wiping away the tears on her cheek. “If I’d just been there for you. You’re generosity! You needed somepony to give to who wouldn’t take advantage of you. A teammate.”

I smiled softly. “I was thinking just the same thing about you.”

Rainbow’s ears pricked up. “You were?”

“Those ponies manipulated you, too,” I said. “You need a good team. Somepony you can be loyal to who won’t use that against you. You need somepony to give you support when you give loyalty.”

Rainbow ducked her head down to look at the floor. “That sounds like you, y’know.”

This was where time should have stopped, with Rainbow so loving and gentle and fiercely devoted, albeit too sheepish to admit it. It was at once intensely nostalgic and incredibly hopeful; this was our past, but it could be our future, too. We could grow and change and falter and improve, all the while strengthening the bond between us. We could do what we did when we were young all over again. We could keep learning.

I reached out with one hoof and brought it to Rainbow’s jaw. The touch made her shiver under my hoof. With the slightest bit of force, I tilted her chin up so she was looking at me. Her eyes were wide, glittering with tears still threatening to flow.

“Darling, I don’t think there’s another pony in this world better suited to be my teammate.”

A smile so deep and genuine overtook her then, and the tears spilled out anew, running through the already-established tracks in her cheeks and onto my hoof as I held her.

“Oh!” I tried to wipe away the flood of tears with my hoof, but I was not nearly fast enough. “Dashie, don’t cry! It’s alright, dear, it’s alright.”

Rainbow batted my hoof away from her face and pulled me in for a hug. She buried her face in my mane and squeezed with all her might, crying all the while.

“Darling!” I stroked her mane with one hoof. “What is it? What is it?”

Rainbow buried herself even deeper in my mane. She slid closer to me, closing what little distance there was between us. I could feel the hitching rise and fall of her chest against mine. I could feel the heat of her breath on my shoulder. If I concentrated, I could feel her heart fluttering.

“I just--” Rainbow’s voice was broken by a light sob. “I got my Rarity back. I got her back. Sweet Celestia, I got her back…”

If I wasn’t already crying, I started crying then.

“Oh, Celestia, I am never lying to you again,” Rainbow was saying. She said this, and other similar things, over and over. She snuggled in deeper and deeper, refusing to let go.

I began to lower us to the floor. As we drifted down, so did our surroundings. The green light of the shopping center shifted to the comforting blue-black darkness of night. The smells of the plants faded to the smell of cheap cotton sheets, convenience food, and newsprint. Under my touch, the tile floor transformed into the pillowy softness of Rainbow’s mattress back at the motel.

Back at the motel. Yes, the shopping center had returned us there, safe and sound. Rainbow hardly even noticed, she was already nearly asleep.

I pulled the blankets up over us and tucked it around us. The blinds stayed open, and the light of Luna’s moon fell over us both.

Even as Rainbow drifted off to sleep, she did not let go of me. Even as I drifted off to sleep, I did not let go of her.
> Part IV: Chapter Two
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was probably the best sleep either of us had gotten in several days. Even with everything that was going on, I found it impossible to stay awake as Rainbow lay beside me, her chest gently rising and falling, the fur moving with it in waves. 

I woke before she did. The sun had not yet risen.

To wake Rainbow Dash from this, her deepest sleep in Celestia knows how long, would have been a cardinal sin. I had considered it for hardly a moment before deciding to let her sleep, no matter how completely she had trapped me.

At some point during the night, Rainbow had changed position. Her face was no longer buried in my mane or chest-- she now laid facing away from me, her spine pressed firmly against me from tip to tail. My right forehoof was trapped under her neck. My left was still wrapped tightly around her lower barrel, drawing us together until the fur on her back and the fur on my stomach meshed. The feeling was pleasant, if a bit foreign. I couldn’t remember a time Nightwhisper had held me so close, or wanted to be held so close.

But I didn’t want to think about him, and I certainly didn’t have to.

Her wing was splayed forward. She looked as if she were in the middle of a mighty downstroke, despite the peace in her sleeping face. I supposed that Rainbow might always look this peaceful when flying. It didn’t seem impossible, at least.

I could feel myself stiffening up, and so shifted the slightest bit to ward off the bedsores. My snout mingled with the silken strands of Rainbow’s cropped mane. There was a time when she only dared to use generic shampoos with generic scents and mediocre cleaning power. Being a Wonderbolt had caused her to upgrade her self-care routine, it seemed. She smelled like colt-ish styling gel, with faint underscores of greenery. 

There was a peace here that I don’t think I have ever known before. A safety. It was the comfort of a friend, the protection of a guardian, the fullness of a lover.

I felt myself smiling at the idea and burrowed deeper into Rainbow’s withers. She nickered softly in response, but did not wake.

I was grounded. The past few days had been nothing more concrete than a whirlwind, aggressively swirling about me, never letting up, never allowing me to stop for a breath. But now I was here. I was here, I was safe, I was alive.

My name is Rarity.

Today is Monday.

I am alive.

Monday was when things happened. Monday was when plans began. Monday was when ponies were in danger, wasn’t it?

The comforting haze of sleep--or rather, I suppose, the inbetween of consciousness and unconsciousness--was melting away like frost in the morning sun. Memory of the world beyond our bed seeped back in from the abscesses of my mind, a sickly dark thing which tainted the rosy sweetness of holding my recently-returned and dearest friend.

All at once, my responsibilities and my anxieties came rushing back to me. I sucked in a small breath, tried to hold it, pushed it out. Stay calm, darling. You were breathing so easy just a moment ago. Just stay there, stay where it’s safe. Breathe. Breathe.

My heart was back to its racing, rhythmic drumming against my chest, hard enough that I became convinced Rainbow could feel the vibrations on her back, even as she slept.

I continued taking in deeper and deeper breaths. What was the trick mother had taught me? How long, how deep? Something about counting the seconds? Oh, goodness, how is anypony supposed to remember those little breathing exercises when they’re in the middle of a panic attack? The concept was flawed from the outset.

Rainbow’s ear flicked. My rapid breathing was tickling her, of course. I turned my head away as gently as I could, but the combination of sounds and feelings was enough to wake Rainbow from her slumber.

“Rares?” she slurred, drunk on sleep. “What’sa matter?”

“Oh, hush,” I said. “Go back to sleep, dear.”

Rainbow made a noise of disagreement and fluffed herself up. Before I knew what was happening, she had transformed into a great writhing mass of limbs, desperately trying to turn herself over in her semi-conscious state of being.

“Darling, be careful!” I warned as gently as I could, despite the panic in my chest.

It was hard to imagine a less-graceful behavior than Rainbow turning over. Her wings fluttered about, seemingly outside of her control, while her hooves pawed at the mattress and kicked the covers into a more pleasant shape. 

“Oh!” I caught the lamp off the bedside table moments before it tumbled to the floor.

My partner wriggled herself back down after what seemed an eternity of flailing, spasmodic motions. She was back in her place, it seemed, nestled between my forelegs and snuggled into the fluffy fur on my chest. She let out a light, contented sigh.

Just like that, she was asleep again.

I brushed her mane out of her eyes with my snout. Perhaps those ponies were right to saddle her with the nickname “crash.” She certainly loved to bring things crashing down around her, even when she was unconscious.

The sun was coming up. There were things to do, lives to save, history to change. But it was so hard to wake a sleeping Dashie.

I nuzzled her cheek. She broke a smile and let forth a sleepy, dopey chuckle.

“Oh, for Celestia’s sake…” I muttered, giving her a more insistent push with my snout.

Rainbow reached up to wave away the unwanted wake-up call, still with a smile and chuckle.

“Rainbow?” I pushed at her again, enough to make her head loll to one side. “It’s morning.”

Rainbow’s own snout crinkled up at the implication that she might have to wake up. “So? Jus’ go back to sleep.”

I cleared my throat. “We have more important things to do than sleep today.”

Rainbow moaned softly. “Just five more minutes…”

Her eyes snuck open a crack. I’m not sure what she expected to see, but a motel room littered with impossible newspapers must not have been it. They snuck open a little further and rolled over to look at me.

This was evidently the straw which broke the camel’s back. Her eyes opened wide and she actually jumped away from me a bit.

“Oh,” was all she said.

“Oh?” I echoed.

Rainbow rubbed her eyes. “You’re here.”

“Where else would I be?”

Rainbow harumphed to herself and pushed away from me. Her warmth began to leech out of me almost instantly. I drew my hooves in towards my chest, hoping in vain to capture some small part of it.

“Sorry I, uh… I dunno, trapped you all night,” Rainbow said. She was not looking at me.

I pushed myself up into a sitting position. “It’s quite alright, darling, You needed the company, it seemed.”

She shrugged. “Guess so.”

She stood, facing away from me, and began to inspect her wings. She did this without an active involvement in the act, more a habit that she simply couldn’t break if she tried. A few feathers were tugged gently back into place, and Rainbow gave her wings a powerful pump to test this new positioning.

Evidently satisfied, she trotted towards the washroom and shut the door.

Her warmth was gone. I pushed myself back against the headboard and into a sitting position. I listened as Rainbow clattered about the washroom, clumsily waking herself up in her own way.

It was then that a stab of grim reality struck me.

Rainbow used the washroom to…

Well.

That would explain her urgency from time to time. The sheen over her eyes when she returned. Her confusion, her antsiness. It explained a lot of things.

Ponies don’t just give things like that up overnight. She was probably--

I was out of bed in a moment, dragging the covers with me as I trotted to the washroom door. I lifted my hoof, about to knock, but hesitated.

You can’t quit overnight. What was I supposed to do? Scold her? Help her?

Yet I knocked anyway.

“Rainbow?” I murmured as sweetly as I could. “Everything alright in there?”

There was a long silence. Nothing moved, breathed, even sniffled.

I cleared my throat. “I-I just mean…” I bit my lip. “Well, I need to freshen up.”

There was a light shuffling behind the door. “Yeah, uh… few more minutes.”

“Alright, dear.”

More shuffling. “You still there?”

I whimpered softly at being caught.

“Little privacy, please?”

I hung my head. “Of course.”

I turned, gathered up my comforter cape, and moved back to the mattress. This is how things would be now, I supposed. There was a bond, but with bonds come tension. I knew something Rainbow had not truly been prepared for me to know. I had to expect that things would be strained for some time to come.

The only thing to do for now was ignore it. There were other things to handle. Moss, for one. Rainbow’s mission, for another.

Not that I knew anything about that.

It was going to be an uphill battle. Trusting Rainbow, that is. I felt deceived. I wondered what her mission could be, what else she may be hiding from me. I considered the possibility that she was hiding something not just from me, but about me.

But I was grounded now. In good mind. And one who is in good mind mustn’t fret over what-ifs. Not when there are things to be done.

The washroom door squeaked open. My eyes were drawn to the motion, but I dragged them back as Rainbow skulked back into the common area.

“All yours,” she said.

I slid off the mattress a second time and hurried into the washroom, avoiding eye-contact with Rainbow all the way. Knowing what she would look like, knowing only a fraction of what she might be feeling… she didn’t need me gawking at her to top it all off.

The door clicked shut behind me, and I was left facing a mirror.

Whatever I had been planning to do in the washroom fled my mind as I stared into my own reflection. I could hardly recognize myself, although I had no inkling why this would be the case. I looked as I always looked in the mornings: my mane bedraggled, my complexion pale, my eyes droopy and ringed by tiny lines which had, at one point, caused me a great deal of stress.

Oh. Well, I suppose that was it, wasn’t it? Not the way I looked. The way I saw myself.

Because I looked very much the same as I always did, the way most mares looked when first dragging themselves to the mirror in the morning. Before, though, I would have gently tugged out every knot and snare in my mane. I would have carefully painted on make-up, fretted over the little lines around my eyes. I didn’t feel that way anymore.

I still wanted to be beautiful. I still wanted to take care of myself-- of course I did, that’s who I am! But this wasn’t… ugly. It wasn’t fearful or wrong, wasn’t a source of shame as I walked down the street, wasn’t something to hide away like a dirty secret. 

A little smile teased at my lips. It was a confidence in myself I hadn’t felt before. A new Rarity.

And I think I quite liked her.

I’m not an animal, of course. I pulled a brush through my bed-head and watched my natural curls spring back up to my jawbone. Not styled, not magically-corrected, just little ringlets which gathered where they pleased.

That, a little splash of water on my face, and I felt ready. As ready as I could be, that is.

Rainbow was sitting on the mattress when I emerged from the washroom, a newspaper held up like a shield.

“Rainbow?”

She visibly stiffened. “Mm.”

I swallowed. “I’ve been thinking…” I paused, hoping to elicit a response.

None came.

“Well, we’re fairly certain that Blue Moon is our number-one suspect, correct?”

Rainbow turned a page in the newspaper. Her act was poor. “Yeah, I guess.”

I took a few steps closer. “So, we should probably try to move forward on that lead, shouldn’t we?”

Rainbow lowered the newspaper a little more than an inch, the top of her own rumpled mane showing. “Uh… sure?”

“Mm-hm,” I agreed, taking a seat on the end of the mattress.

The newspaper came down a bit more. I could now see the top sliver of Rainbow’s forehead. “And…?”

“And we should be looking for clues,” I added, unhelpfully.

I could sense the debate in Rainbow’s muscles. She wanted to look at me, but she didn’t want to be seen. A conundrum, to be sure.

At long last, the paper came down far enough for her to peek over it at me. She didn’t say anything, just looked at me. I looked at her the way I had looked at my own reflection: familiar, despite the change. Just hopeful and happy, teasing a bit. I didn’t care that she was looking at me through a cloud of something else. Or, at least, I tried not to care.

“I think,” I said, “we should look through our records to find out where Blue Moon lives, and go find some clues.”

Rainbow still said nothing, but her eyes spoke for her: You’re not going to ask where I got them? You trust me?

I didn’t really have a choice.

Rainbow wouldn’t hurt me.

“Come now, Rainbow.” I rose from the bed to fetch a sheaf of papers. “Are you going to help me, or not?”

There was no response, but Rainbow held out her forelegs to receive the stack of records I brought to her. Her clouded eyes gazed up at me with unspoken gratitude. Unspoken because speaking it would disrupt the balance we needed to keep. Differences could be worked out any old time, couldn’t they? Secrets shared, lies corrected…

That’s not your job, Rarity. Give her time. She is giving you loyalty.

“Here, Rainbow: I’ll check the citizen records for the nearby towns, and you check the dates in the real estate papers. We’ll work together.” I climbed up onto the mattress across from her.

“Alright,” Rainbow agreed.

We worked slowly, referencing and cross-referencing, questioning possible pseudonyms (What about Blue Star? What about Hunter Moon?), carefully poring over crumbling documents to ensure they were thoroughly cleared. The magic of the previous night was distant, turning false. We had to work together, now. Couldn’t let tensions rise.

But it wasn’t all bad. The longer we sat together, the more confident Rainbow became that I wasn’t going to scold her for continuing to, erm, “use.” She was relaxing, and I couldn’t have been more thankful.

As we passed into hour two of early-morning research, empty snack containers already littering the floor surrounding the mattress, Rainbow was starting to get restless.

“Dammit, where’s Twilight when you need her?”

“Pardon?”

“It’s just--” Rainbow threw her head back in disgust. “Ugh, this is taking forever!” She laughed at her own drama.

I chuckled along with her. “Yes, I’m sure there is a much easier way to do this, but I certainly don’t know it.”

“Who knew detective work was so much reading?” Rainbow complained. “And not even fun reading!”

I merely shook my head at this comment. Rainbow seemed satisfied in the level of comfort she had managed to attain.

My eyes drifted back down to the ledger before me, which claimed to be a record of all tenets of this motel during the current calendar year. Although, I suppose “current” was a relative term. My fact-or-fiction sensor seemed to tell me that this was the case, although “fact” seemed to be relative, as well.

And there it was. In simple, neat hoofwriting at the bottom of the page.

“Oh!” I could do nothing but point at the find. “Oh!”

Rainbow’s head whipped up from her own reading. “What?”

I tapped the page rapidly. “She’s--! Oh, she’s--!”

Rainbow quickly realized that not much would come of my abbreviated exclamations, and she swiveled the ledger around to face herself.

Her eyes widened when they fell on the name at the bottom of the page. “Holy shit. She’s in the room next door.”

We both, in eerie symmetry, turned to look at the wall which our headboard rested against. A wall behind which a murderer seemed to be living.

“She lives in a motel?” Rainbow said.

I shrugged. “Most ponies who work in town do. The commute from Appaloosa is near forty minutes.”

Rainbow’s head whipped back to face me. “Well, let’s go! We can dig around in there all we want right now!”

She leapt to her hooves, still standing on the mattress.

I frowned. “You don’t even want to check with the landlord, be certain she’s here?”

Rainbow frowned back at me. “Rares. Not to up the drama, but a life hangs in the balance.”

“Yes, but--”

“No time to dawdle!” Rainbow announced in her best impersonation of myself.

She jumped off the bed and bolted to the door, then paused with her hoof on the knob.

“What is it?” I asked.

She looked over her shoulder at me. “Do you have a credit card?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Whatever for?”

“Never mind-- I’ll use my ID.” Rainbow grabbed the card from the table by the door.

Trust her, Rarity. Just trust her, she knows what she’s doing. She needs your trust right now.

Rainbow pushed the door open and turned sharply to the right. Blue Moon’s door, Room 3, was right there, as promised. Just another unbelievable thing. Another strange coincidence which I doubted would ever be explained.

“Alright, you gotta be real quiet while I do this,” Rainbow instructed. “Just trust me.”

Trust her.

I said nothing, just nodded.

Rainbow crept to the door, and pulled out her ID card. With a few awkward and amateurish moves, she wiggled the ID between the doorframe and the latch. It settled in with a click. Then she turned around and reached out with one back hoof to tap gently on the door.

“What are you--”

“Shh!” Rainbow cut me off, three words into a broken promise.

I put a hoof over my mouth and listened carefully. If Blue was there, she hadn’t called out. I could tell Rainbow was tensed, waiting for something, her eyes on the peephole. What would she do if Blue opened the door? What--

“No shadow,” Rainbow said, relaxing. “She’s not there.”

She pushed the door open, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The ID card fell to the floor. 

“Where in Equestria did you learn to do that?” I asked.

Rainbow shrugged. “Read about it once. I always wanted to try it!”

I smiled proudly at her resourcefulness.

“You can tell me how cool it was later, okay?” Rainbow reached out and grabbed my hoof. “We gotta get in here.”

She pulled me into the room by my hoof and closed the door behind me. 

I was struck by how bare it was. This had to be at least a semi-permanent solution for Blue, but you wouldn’t know it looking. There wasn’t a single potted plant, stray photograph, or cheesy trinket to be seen. Even her closet, which had been left open, held nothing more than three aprons for the diner and one dark bathrobe.

“Damn. Spotless in here,” Rainbow commented.

“That makes things simple, doesn’t it?” I said. “Let’s get to work. I’m nervous somepony spotted us.”

“Oh, relax, Rares…” Rainbow was already burrowing under the bed. “She’s probably working today, anyway.”

“I suppose…” I muttered. 

I moved to the washroom to rummage about, and found a room just as bare and lifeless as the one I had come from. It looked exactly like Rainbow’s, but somehow with less bottles. That didn’t bode well for possible evidence.

I checked the medicine cabinet, for posterity, and found nothing.

Rainbow’s chuckle floated in from the common area.

“Find something?” I called.

“Blue keeps all her money in a shoebox under the bed!” Rainbow informed me. “There’s a safe in the closet and she uses a shoebox. Talk about balls.”

I trotted out to investigate. Rainbow was correct-- she was holding what appeared to be a rather large sum of money in a shoebox on the floor.

“And that was under her bed?” I asked.

Rainbow nodded. “This is, like, way more than enough to be living in… not a motel.”

“Hm…” I considered the size of the small fortune before us. “I think you may be right. Why would Blue be staying in a motel like this if she could afford to be living elsewhere?”

Rainbow scoffed. “You want all the reasons, or just the top five?”

I cocked my head.

Rainbow sighed. “She’s been stalking Moss, she clearly has no life, she likes working a job with no background checks, she sets up deals or meets here, the landlord doesn’t keep good records of who stays here… how many was that?”

I chuckled. “Five precisely.”

Rainbow grinned. “Yet again the noir thrillers have trained me for this exact moment.”

I pawed around in the money to see if anything else was hidden in the stash. Nothing turned up.

“Good find. Tuck it away.”

Rainbow did just that. “Anything in the toilet?”

I wrinkled my snout at her crudeness. “No, barely enough to live on, let alone commit crimes with.”

“What is with this pony?” Rainbow got to her hooves. “It’s like she’s purposefully avoiding having a life. Actively trying not to have a life.”

I got to my hooves, as well. “Rainbow, just because your own bedroom walls have disappeared behind layers of posters doesn’t mean everypony else wishes to live the same way.”

Rainbow scoffed. “They should, though.”

I pulled open the drawer on the right-hoof bedside table. Nothing but a promotional brochure for the Open Doors Diner, which was an interesting find, if not incriminating.

“Wow, she reads, too!” Rainbow pulled the brochure out from the drawer. “I love this one! Not as good as Hayburger, Ponyville Location, though.”

I snatched the brochure out of her hooves. “Be serious, Dash.”

Rainbow merely smiled and shrugged, then went to the closet to continue her search.

I tossed the brochure back into the drawer and closed it. There was a second bedside table on the opposite side of the bed, despite it being no bigger than a standard full size. Even in crisis, it was difficult not to question the interior design choices at work.

This other bedside table had two books in it: the first, a phonebook for the greater San Palomino area, which was appallingly thin for an area of its size. The second was a small, brown dayplanner. A few pens, pencils, and highlighters also rolled forward from the back of the drawer.

With the gentlest glimmer of magic, I teased open the front cover of the planner and peered at its contents. Written in the same nea, simple hoofwriting as the sign-in book: Blue Moon.

I pulled the planner out of the drawer and looked over my shoulder at Dash. “I found her planner, Dashie. It’s just about the only personal item in here.”

Dash’s tail flicked as she stepped further into the closet. “And the most boring. Let me know if you find anything in it, okay?”

I sighed and settled onto the mattress to browse.

The planner was bare bones, as the rest of the room indicated it might be. Blue had marked her shifts in long strokes of a dried-out yellow highlighter, writing “ODD” in blue pen on top. I took this to stand for “Open Doors Diner.” The acronym had not occurred to me until now, and while I may have found it ironically funny at one point, it hardly made an impact on me now.

She spent all day there, every day. Six-thirty in the morning until eight at night. Unsettling, although not impossible for ponies in this area. At the very least, it meant that Rainbow and I were safe in our hunt-- at least until eight this evening, that is. 

Blue seemed to have a fondness for acronyms and shorthoof, always in block capitals, which was strange to me. All evidence seemed to point to this day planner being her only hobby, after all.

Here and there, in red pen, she notated “DR APPT” with an associated military time. In green, there was the occasional “MB” and an associated location, which indicated she was meeting with Mossy Bridge outside of work. Whether these meetings were mutual or one-sided remained a mystery. For the first few weeks, that is.

The further I read, the more often Moss’s initials were scratched into the little labelled blocks. “MB, APT”, “MB, ODD”, “MB, UNIV”. Not meeting. Tracking. A comprehensive weekly schedule of Moss’s whereabouts.

“She was tracking Moss,” I called to Rainbow Dash. “Working out her schedule.”

Rainbow’s head poked out of the closet. “Shit, really?”

I nodded. “She knew exactly where she was going to be nearly all hours of the day.”

Rainbow grimaced. “That’s… creepy.”

I turned the page. Moss was no longer spending time in her apartment, but seemed to have moved into the motel. 

Another page. Less time at University, more time at Open Doors. Was she working harder to pay for school? Skimping on studying to cover extra shifts?

The more pages I turned, the more her life changed: I watched her time at the motel dwindle, watched her drop and fail classes at the University until she simply no longer attended. She became absorbed by her time at the diner, prodded along by Blue Moon all the while. These events fell into place like photos in an album of misery and loss, a story that I didn’t want to read and couldn’t bear to know.

It took me some time to notice, but there was a new acronym now. It was hiding in the margins beside the days, scrawled in light pencil and hasty letters: “DG,” accompanied by a location.

I skimmed back through the pages, playing hide-and-go-seek with the carefully hidden note. Sure enough, there it was; appearing at least once a week since Moss moved out of her apartment and into the motel.

My magic faltered and the planner fell to the bed.

“Rainbow!” I called out.

Her head poked out of the washroom. I hadn’t even noticed she had moved on from the closet, no doubt bored by the lack of, well, everything.

The look in my eyes must have communicated more than I thought, or perhaps all the color had drained from my face.

“Rares?” Rainbow trotted to my side. “What is it? What did you find?”

I pointed at the planner, the little note scribbled in the margin. “DG.”

Rainbow cocked her head at me, her eyes narrowing.

“Dusk Guardians,” I murmured. “Blue was a Dusk Guardian.”
> Part IV: Chapter Three
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rainbow’s eyes darkened as she scanned the dayplanner herself. The same story seemed to play out for her, as well: Blue Moon spying on Moss, stalking her, and at last kidnapping and murdering her. 

“I mean, ‘DG’ could mean something else, right?” Rainbow chuckled nervously. “It could be initials, y’know? Do we know anypony--”

“Rainbow,” I said softly. I put a hoof on her shoulder, and her form bristled and stiffened under my touch. “I know I’m right. The Dusk Guardians are here, and Blue Moon is one of them. You have to trust me, Moss is in danger but we can still save her.”

Rainbow’s eyes stared unblinkingly at the letters in the margin. They were hardly even written there, it was something more akin to carving. Information that was more felt than read, scratched gently with a toothpick into the paper, shadows of graphite clinging to a chosen few curves. I hoped that it was shame which hid the letters so delicately on the sides of the pages, but it was more likely fear. Fear of being caught.

Evidently gripped by some new motivation, Rainbow snatched up the planner, turned decisively to a new page, and dropped it back on the mattress. The instinctive part of me knew that this page detailed Blue Moon’s movements for this week.

Rainbow scoffed and pointed at the “Monday” block. “Of course there’s a meeting today.”

I squinted down at the page. She was right-- scrawled next to the day was the little “DG,” accompanied by two other, more mysterious letters: “SC.”

“Hm…” I ran my hoof over the surface of the paper, hoping in vain that something about the message would make itself clear.

“Did this mare ever write a full sentence in her life?” Rainbow commented. “Learn some bigger words, dammit.”

Instinct fluttered in the pit of my stomach. There was something to find here, but it was hidden well. A buried fact. A secret. But the way my mind talked and talked--wondering, guessing, aimlessly panicking--buried it even deeper. Instinct couldn’t be heard over the ruckus.

I sat back, away from the planner. My back was straight as a board, my jaw set and my head held high. I closed my eyes and tried to listen to the whispered secrets.

All I could hear was the buzz of the air conditioning.

“Rares? Are you--”

“Hush, Rainbow,” I said, softly but firmly. 

After another moment of air conditioning and soft sandy winds, I summoned a bit of magic and used it to plug my ears.

And there it was. The hum, the buzz, the all-encompassing sound which had delivered to me so many strange facts and moments, so much hardship. Had kept me distanced from the horrors of this abandoned desert town. It was the sound of magic.

The magic pushed away all but the empty hum of its own power. It filled my ears, my mind, with its grand vibrations and parted the seas to let through one tiny whispered thought:


The Shopping Center


I knew that voice.

Something touched me. It touched my shoulder and I jumped away from it, my eyes open, magic dissipated from the broken concentration.

“Rainbow!” I cried.

She shrank away from me, her hoof withdrawing in guilt. “I was just--”

I put a hoof to my head. “The shopping center.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What about it?”

“That’s where they’re meeting!” I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Of course!”

My excitement rubbed off on her and her eyes brightened a bit. “Well-- well, when?”

We locked eyes, gazes at once sparkling with triumph and steely with resolve.

“Dusk,” we said together.

The feeling of accomplishment buzzed around us, swirled with anxiety and fear. There was only the hum of the air conditioning, the drone of the wind across the desert. We drew away from one another, myself back onto the mattress, Rainbow down to the floor.

A few breaths to steady myself. That’s it, darling. Nothing to worry about. You know what to do, now.

“We need to put every little thing back precisely where it was,” I said.

“Shouldn’t be hard. There weren’t many things to move.”

Rainbow and I moved together to tidy the room, tucking the few hidden items back in their poorly-disguised hiding places. I didn’t wonder for a second if we had missed anything. It simply wouldn’t have mattered if we had. We knew where the Dusk Guardians would be, and so we knew where to find Moss.

We slipped out the room with as little fuss as we had entered. The door clicked shut behind us.

“Well, now what?” Rainbow asked.

I looked to her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… It’s morning. We gotta wait for dusk to roll around. What do we do until then?”

It was a fair question. I already felt like a wound spring-- waiting until dusk to act might be enough to drive me crazy. Then again…

“I have a feeling it might not take as long as we think for dusk to arrive,” I said, looking up at the sky and taking note of the sun’s already impossibly low position in it. “Time hasn’t exactly been behaving normally.”

Rainbow followed my gaze, shading her eyes with a hoof. The shadow which fell across her face was enough to draw out the bleariness of her drug-addled eyes.

“Huh,” was all she said.

We wordlessly moved back to our motel room and began to pack. Rainbow’s saddlebags were spacious enough to hold a weekend’s worth of camping supplies at least. We needed only enough to sit atop the butte for a few rapidly accelerating hours, waiting for the arrival of the shopping center and its Guardians.

The remaining food from the Kwik-Grab went in, as did some scattered supplies from around the room. A firestarter, hooffuls of crumpled newspaper, a multitool, a pocket knife. It wasn’t hard to imagine what sorts of things might require a sharp edge. Or a few sharp edges.

Rainbow hefted the bags onto her loin and turned to me. “Ready?”

I nodded.

We set out across the desert. The day may have been growing shorter, but this distance never did. It was a sweltering trudge across the vast open space, ending in a climb up a nearly vertical rock face. We couldn’t even talk as we went, could hardly open our eyes against the sandy winds. 

I have never felt so vulnerable as I did then; the whole town my enemy, my hooves slipping in the sand, my eyes screwed shut against the sand. Rainbow and I were like rabbits loudly and erratically wandering through the den of a timberwolf. We had not been subtle in our fears these past few days. Timberwolves could smell fear. So could townsfolk.

Rainbow continually looked back at me, her wing out to shield my from as much sand as she could. It was such a gentle and silly thing to do. She protected me from what she could, even if it amounted to a few grains of sand in a windstorm.

The windstorm. Of course.

The sand in my mane and my coat. A vision from the future, delivered to me as I approached the truth.

We were close.

Just as the thought passed through my mind, we were at the base of the butte.

“Oh! Goodness…” I shook my head at the suddenness of our arrival.

“You okay?” Rainbow asked. Her wing reach out to tenderly brush my side.

I looked over at her. The feeling of disruption and discontinuity faded away. “Mm-hm.”

“Alright.” Rainbow turned back to face the butte, all business. “We can hike together up the slanty part. Then I’ll fly you up the rest.”

I gazed at our new obstacle. The butte, a landform which all but defied imagination, rose from the desert like a threatening and ancient monolith, its significance lost to time. 

It honestly looked as if it had been born from the sands, pushed forth by some ferocious power beneath the planet’s crust. The rock itself stood perfectly straight and tall, massively wide, with a flat top. Around its base, however, was an inconceivably enormous pile of sand, seemingly displaced when the mighty thing was forced up to the surface.

I sighed lightly. “We should start hiking, then.”

Even taking careful, slow, planned steps set us back constantly. The sand shifted, our hooves with it, and we were back several paces.

“Rainbow, this is silly,” I said between huffs. “Just fly up ahead, I’ll meet you.”

Rainbow shook her head. “Nope.”

A fury first bubbled up within me at Rainbow’s insistence to push through such a useless task. But it softened quickly. This was loyalty. Let her be loyal to you. Give yourself company. Learn your lesson this time, darling.

Seeing as time lately had defied explanation, it’s hard to say how long it took us to reach the actual rock. The sun was still up, but what did that mean anymore?

All I knew was that I was utterly exhausted. Looking up at the butte only leadened my limbs all the more.

“Okay,” Rainbow interrupted my thoughts. “Just put your forelegs around my neck, I’ll fly you up.”

“Oh, darling, no!” I shook my head furiously. “I’m sure I can-- well, I could use magic to-- I mean--”

“Rares,” Rainbow said firmly. “I’m literally sticking my neck out for you. Just accept it, please. It’s nothing I haven’t done before.”

I whimpered, glancing up the treacherous rock and back to Rainbow’s face over and over.

“Don’t have all day, Rares…” Rainbow said, tapping her hoof.
Put out and weary, I huffed, stomped my hoof, and wrapped my legs around Rainbow’s neck.

She flared her wings and reared onto her hind legs, scooping me up with her forelegs in a protective hold. After a few clumsy flaps to stay upright and get me comfortable, she crouched down ever so slightly, raised her wings in preparation, and pumped them downward with all her might.

I shrieked in surprise at the power behind the downstroke, which carried us off the ground at least a meter. It was amazing how quickly she could get herself off the ground. I had been around her long enough to know that pegasi were supposed to need a runway, supposed to feel the way the air moved around their wings and take off gently. With Rainbow, it was as easy jumping into the air. The instant her hooves left the ground, she was flying.

We soared past the dark orange stone of the butte, its bumps and crevasses blurring to nothing more than blotches of ever-changing color. It was impossible to draw your eyes away from it. I couldn’t move this quickly if I tried.

Then, as suddenly as we had taken off, the stone fell away, and we were above the butte. Rainbow wasted no time in lowering me to its rocky upper surface. My hooves revelled in the feeling of solid ground beneath them. 

Rainbow touched down beside me. “See?” She squeaked out between pants. “No big.”

I giggled a bit. “Yes, big. That was incredible, Rainbow.”

She blushed and looked down at the ground.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Eh.” Rainbow waved away the compliment.

I wandered towards the edge of the butte and gazed down towards where the shopping center usually emerged.

“Hmph. It’s not there.”

Rainbow shrugged. “Maybe it only appears at dusk?”

“I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?”

Rainbow chuckled and rubbed the back of her head with one hoof. “Wanna set up camp?”

I nodded.

It took us only a few minutes to clear a small spot of stray dirt and pebbles. The height, combined with the wind, made our position quite a chilly one. Rainbow was prepared, of course, with her firestarter and the newspaper. She set a quick fire and used her wings to protect it from the occasional breeze.

I sat down across from her. Rainbow shook her head at that.

“What is it?”

“I’m already blocking the wind, Lady Rarity,” Rainbow teased. “Come sit next to me. You’ll be warmer.”

I looked to the sun, which was inching lower and lower in the sky. Soon, perhaps in only a few minutes, its light wouldn’t reach us up here.

That was enough for me. With a disguised grin, I scooted across the rock to lay under Rainbow’s outstretched left wing. She was right, it was warmer already.

Rainbow sighed contentedly. She tilted her chin up, letting the fire warm the fluff on her chest and light up her features with its flickering dance. 

Somehow, the fire did not make her look frightening or strange. I pictured her telling scary stories and making ghoulish faces for the little ones on our occasional outings. She was wonderful at holding their attention, but it never quite managed to spook me the way it did foals. Not that I frighten easily, that is. Rainbow was just a very genuine pony, bad at hiding herself. It was too easy to see through her macabre acting to the glee with which entertained her little Scootaloo.

I looked up at her face, the bliss with which she experienced this moment of waiting. This frozen instant of time which moved in unpredictable ways. I couldn’t imagine feeling comfortable in such a non-place, at a non-time; and yet I did feel comfortable. It somehow felt that this is where I belonged, in a strange way.

“Why did you come here?” I asked. I didn’t mean to ask it. The question came out strained, as if I had been silent for hours, not the few minutes it seemed to me.

Rainbow’s wings drooped.

I looked down at the rock under my front hooves. “I’m sorry. I just want to understand.”

“I told you, Rares. I messed up, now I’m here.”

“But how?”

Rainbow looked down at me, already chewing on her lip. “How?” she repeated.

“What I mean is, how did you get here?” I asked. “You time traveled, yes? You told me you’re from the future--”

“A future.”

“--a future. That means you’ve traveled back in time. That’s…” Memories resurfaced briefly, distantly. Twilight’s tangle with time travel. The one-use spell. “Well, it’s impossible, isn’t it?”

Rainbow looked away. She made a sound in her throat, a gentle and longing whimper, which meant that she had something to say and decided she couldn’t say it.

“That would take incredibly powerful magic, wouldn’t it?” I pressed. “The magic of a Princess, perhaps?”

She would not look at me.

I shuffled my hooves aimlessly. Little clouds of dust colored them orange. Come to think of it, there were a lot of things about her story which didn’t add up. Little details, niggly things dropped in casually that had passed me right by in my detachment. They were becoming clearer, now. Rising back to the surface from the murky waters which had submerged me these past few days.

“You said you--” I swallowed. “You said you made a mistake, and you came here to fix it. But, Rainbow, I’ve seen your mistake. You can’t possibly be here to fix that, it’s not the right place.”

Rainbow scoffed. “Believe me, I’m capable of making more than one mistake.”

This took me by surprise, and I did a double take. There was something else?

Rainbow winced at the unwanted openness of her own comment. 

“What else--”

“I don’t wanna talk about this.” 

The wind whipped through the fire, threatening to quench it.

“But, Rainbow, I--”

“No,” Rainbow said. “I don’t want to.”

“But I could help!” I insisted. “Let me help you. If I can. I want to.”

My eyes pleaded with her to just look down, to see me and to know that, whatever she had done, it could be fixed. I could fix it. 

She refused, but only barely. I could sense the quiver in her muscles, the twisting of her tongue behind her teeth as she nearly blurted out the things which she was trying so diligently to hold back.

“Are you here to help Moss?” I asked.

“I am helping her.” A non-answer, in a non-place, at a non-time.

“I know that,” I said. “Is that why you came here in the first place? To save Moss?”

Rainbow rolled her shoulders. The shadows shifted with her movements. “Kinda.”

I latched onto the information, rolled it about in my mind and did my best to absorb whatever clues it teased me with. Was she here to stop the Dusk Guardians, saving Moss as a result? Was saving Moss part of a larger mission? Was she saving Moss simply because she was here and needed saving?

Was there, perhaps, an entirely different motive at work? Would Moss’s death lead to some other truly awful event?


“Do you feel responsible for Moss?” I asked. “Because you shouldn't. Goodness, I don’t even know why you would. Did you… did you know her somehow?”

“No, Rares!” Rainbow stomped her hoof. “I didn’t-- Celestia, I don’t know Moss! Now, would you quit grilling me?”

I swear I could feel the campfire’s heat blaze brighter with Rainbow’s outburst. The shadows grew harsher against her features, and the wind blew harder against her back. She steadied herself as best she could, but not before nearly falling over.

“I’m just trying to understand,” I murmured. “Aren’t we in this together, now? What’s the good in keeping secrets anymore?”

Rainbow gritted her teeth. The wind blew harder still, and the sky darkened. “Some secrets don’t work that way.”

“What in Equestria does that mean?” I demanded. 

Rainbow stiffened, her wings bristled. She tried to force me out of her line of sight with one wing.

I got to my hooves, now a full head taller than Rainbow Dash. She, dutifully, kept her wings outstretched to defend the flame.

“I can’t believe you’re trying to pick and choose which things you share with me,” I shouted over the now roaring winds. “I am not a puzzle, I do not require a strategy to be dealt with! I am your friend, and not a fair-weather friend, either!”

She was doing well to hide it, but Rainbow could sense where this was going. She was trembling, very slightly.

“What happened to loyalty, Rainbow Dash?”

Her wings flared open wider and stronger. It was a powerful motion which made me jump back from her. 

“Don’t you dare!” she spat at me. The fire moved with quick and angry stabs over her face. “Don’t you dare pretend to know what I have and haven’t done to protect you!”

“P--” I took a step back. “Protect me?”

Rainbow’s lips tightened to a thin, colorless line.

“Why would I need protecting?”

“That’s not what I--”

“It is what you meant.” I leveled my gaze to meet hers from across the fire. “From what do you deign to protect me, Rainbow Dash? Was it a year of abuse at the hooves of a disgusting and ungrateful stallion? A year of losing myself in the monotony of this tiny town? A year of being lower than the stomach of a rattlesnake, believing I was no better than dirt?”

The fire was in Rainbow’s eyes, now.

“Because you were too late for that.”

Rainbow’s wings lowered. She folded them delicately to her sides. One more gust of wind, and the fire was extinguished.

“You seem to know everything, don’t you?” I continued. All the little details were amassing into one great lump of bile in my throat. “You know every little thing that happened to me, every little stumbling block along the way. But you’re here now, not then. What could possibly be worse than the hell I’ve already lived through?”

She was looking me right in the eye. Her gaze was steady and cold. She had come to a decision; a decision, perhaps, that I had fought for. I was starting to regret that battle.

Rainbow steadied her breathing, then closed her eyes. “When I first told you what would happen, you didn’t believe me.”

The wind was dying down. The coolness of the breeze which brushed over my cheeks made me shiver.

“I told you before you even met him, and you thought I was being controlling.” She scoffed. “Which is funny because… I mean, not funny. I’m sure Twilight would know what it was. Not funny. Some other thing.”

“I don’t understand.” But I did, somewhere.

Rainbow sighed a deep and weary sigh. “So I tried again, came in a little later. And once I told you, you were so determined to make it work that the same thing happened.”

My breath caught in my throat. Something like crying, but not. More like there was something stopping me.

“And I kept trying. Later and later, doing my best to catch at just the right time.” Rainbow shook her head. “I mean, I get it. If you had come and tried to stop me from… well, from my mistakes, I wouldn’t have believed you, either. But I guess that’s the bad part of being an Element Bearer, right?”

“And what’s that?” I asked. The feeling of grabbing at my throat happened again. I gasped for breath.

“Sometimes it’s too much,” she said. “Not, like, stress. Too much of the Element. Especially around the wrong ponies, y’know?”

My forehoof reached up on its own and traced the line of imaginary pain along my neck. Nothing there, of course. Don’t be silly, darling. There's nothing there. You couldn’t do that.

“Anyway.” Rainbow kicked at the dirt with one limp hoof. “This time, I thought maybe I could… well, I dunno. I thought if I helped you save Moss, you’d wanna save yourself.”

“Save myself?” I repeated. But Rainbow couldn’t hear me. The words barely squeaked out, and she wasn’t listening, anyway. I could have sworn there was something--a leg, a collar, a snake--tightened around my neck. It pressed on my esophagus. I could feel it with every breath, but even as I ran my hoof along my neck there was nothing there.

Don’t be silly. There’s nothing there. You wouldn’t do that, Rarity. 

“So I researched.” Rainbow chuckled dryly. “I gathered up all these papers, I read about the Dusk Guardians-- found all this stuff and dragged it here. I wanted us to solve the mystery so you’d have something. Just the two of us, like old times. Remember?”

Rainbow managed a weak smile. I did not.

“And I try really hard. I always try to be there for you, not to tell you how the story ends. Because I think me telling you is part of what makes it happen,” Rainbow explained. “But you’re so fuckin’ nosey, y’know? You always get it out of me. And I just have to try again.”

I tried to start a sentence several times, but ended up making some sort of sputtering, growling sound. The feeling of tightness around my throat intensified.

Rainbow’s ears pulled back as she took in my expression.

“What--” I was seething, now. I had to steady my breath to continue. “What exactly do I get out of you?”

She wouldn’t look. The wind, what little wind there was left, ruffled her feathers and her cropped mane. I could practically feel the tension in her muscles from here. A physical symptom of internal struggle, writhing and pulsing just under her sky-blue fur. As I watched, though, she relaxed. The muscles released all they had been holding back. She gave in.

“It was never Moss who hanged herself,” Rainbow said, her tone deadly even and cold.

And I felt it. The weight of the rope around my neck, the way the desert wind blew across my face as I stood at the edge of the gas station roof. I smelled the nauseating smell of the gasoline and I tasted the bloody taste of fear. And I felt the drop… the drop through the air, and the fall. The way I hung there, the way my silhouette looked just like a pump.

I felt the fall an infinite number of times, felt the snap at the end twice that. I felt the gentle swaying motion of my corpse as I struggled, twitched, and finally died.

The wind stopped. Just like that. Stopped dead in its tracks, because it simply couldn’t top that. It could have blown us both right off the Butte, sent us tumbling through the air like little ragdolls, and it wouldn’t have been able to lessen the growing pit in my stomach a bit.

The words never actually left her mouth, which almost made it worse. Less real for not having been said, yet all the more real for its utter incorporeality. Words could never be put to it. It was a concept which hung over our heads, in just the way that I had hung over the concrete at the gas station in a million different splintering universes.

I suppose Rainbow could tell from the look in my eyes that I had put the pieces together. She stood, throwing nothing but cursory glances my way.

“We can try,” she said. “But, y’know… don’t feel bad if this turns out the same way.”

She moved to stamp out what little glowing embers of the fire still remained. I found that I could not move at all, could not speak. I could still feel myself in all of those worlds, hanging from the end of a rope. I had lost my grounding.

Rainbow trotted to the edge of the Butte. She peered over the edge, and merely said, “They’re here.”

And then she was gone. Just like that, gone like the fire and the wind, with nothing but a final, mortal shriek so quickly silenced that it might not have happened at all.

“Rainbow!” I found my motion again, although the deadly pendulum swaying of my other selves rocked my every step. I stumbled my way to the edge and looked down. “Rainbow! Rainbow?”

Eyes flashed in the darkness, and the pressure around my throat was so suddenly real.

Hooves. Grabbing me, dragging me down. Down to the Church of the Dusk Guardians.
> Part V: Chapter One
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

And I looked down, and I was Moss. 

How much time had passed was… unclear. The feeling of hooves around my neck-- why, had that even happened? It didn’t seem right, didn’t seem real at all. It was like a dream.

I was pouring coffee into a thick, white mug at the counter. There was a clatter of dishes behind me, the sound of a fully-stocked diner kitchen, of a bustle of waitstaff and chefs all shouting.

The dark and enchanting scent of the coffee wafted up to my nose-- Moss’s nose-- our nose. Even the smell of it seemed to relax us. It was familiar, it was warm, and it wrapped us up in its comforting embrace. With a smell like that, it was a little easier to forget the stress of starting anew.

We turned to place the coffee pot back on its little pedestal, then leaned down to retrieve a large, grey, plastic tub filled with dirty dishes.

A voice cleared its throat.

“Uhm, miss?” it said.

We paused, turned to face the voice. 

She smiled at us. “Sorry to bother you, but I don’t seem to have any cream for this. Would you mind too terribly bringing me some?”

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry!” We shook our head. “That was silly of me.”

We reached under the counter again, pulled out a little basket filled with those tiny, plastic-encased half-and-half servings. We slid them over to our customer, who sat with her hooves folded politely in her lap.

And we paused again.

She was utterly plain. A dusty purple coat, a long, straight, dark blue mane. She was a unicorn. Those were really the only remarkable traits about her. She wasn’t especially tall or short, not noticeably wide or thin. Her eyes were clear and warm. Her smile was…

Yes, that was it. Her smile. It wasn’t the forced smile of most customers. It was different.

“I’m sorry, you…” We cocked our head. “You look very familiar to me.”

A blush rose in her cheeks. “Oh, I get that a lot. I just have one of those faces, I guess.”

“What’s your name?” we asked.

“It’s Dusk Shine,” she replied. Her voice hit the higher notes in a way which nearly caused her voice to break. That was familiar, too.

We smiled at her. “It’s nice to meet you, Dusk Shine. My name’s Mossy Bridge, but most ponies call me Moss.” We tapped our nametag.

“Moss,” Dusk repeated, rolling the sound about in her mouth. She tossed her mane over her shoulder, and there was a shimmer there. Some sort of foreign glint, more than a well-styled mane. Almost like a star. “That’s a lovely name.”

“Moss, let’s get those dishes clean!”

Our ears flattened. “Excuse me.”

We returned to the bin of dirty dishes and lifted it carefully, then pushed through the doors into the kitchen.

It was a madhouse in the back. There were dozens of ponies rushing to and fro, cooking eggs on enormous griddles, flipping pancakes with practiced skill. The whole place sizzled with an electric energy which I hadn’t felt in quite a long time, filled with smells so heavenly that I could almost feel myself floating through the kitchen. I--Rarity, that is--had long been deprived of crowds and commotion. It had not occurred to me that I would miss it.

We dumped our bin into the industrial washer and pulled the lid down. The whole beast began to hum as warm water filled its cavity.

Then we turned, and just observed for a moment.

In all the times I had visited this diner, I had never seen it so lively. I really had no idea that this many ponies even worked here, let alone seen them all working at the same time, ducking under plates and pouring unknown liquids over the griddle with reckless abandon, chopping mysterious forms at dizzying speeds. 

I wondered where all of these ponies had gone.

“Moss, honey, think you could help me out?” It was Blue Moon, sidling up to us. She looked innocent and frazzled, a completely different pony than I had ever known. “Table four ordered something I didn’t quite understand and I couldn’t…”

“I’ll go figure it out for you,” we said, warm and comforting. 

Blue Moon looked relieved.

This was not the dichotomy I had come to understand. 

We wove back through the kitchen staff and out into the general space of the restaurant. It was packed out here, too. Screaming foals, families stopping the middle of long road trips. Haulers sat alone, caps pulled low over their eyes. There was an unusually large number of construction workers here, as well.

Dusk Shine’s eyes lit up when I emerged from the kitchen. “Oh, Moss! I was wondering--”

“One second, please!” We flashed her an apologetic grin. “I’ll be with you in just a second.”

Dusk nodded.

The customers at table four were rowdy, but not unbearably so. We took the best notes we could, catching Blue’s mistake, and listening to an unrelated personal story from one of the patrons.

Moss was very good at listening to these kinds of ponies. She was able to find something to care about in every story, in every pony, a skill which was grossly undervalued and practically undefinable. She just truly liked other ponies-- and, when she didn't, she found a way to.

When the pony finally wrapped up her long and meandering story, we smiled. “I’ll be back with food for you all real soon, okay?”

We trotted back behind the bar and passed the order through the window to a waiting Blue Moon.

“Thanks, sugar. I owe you one,” she said.

We merely shrugged.

We took a step back, looked up at a clock on the wall. It was nearly ten, the time Moss normally took a small break to eat an egg salad sandwich in the back. Nearly, but not quite.

Dusk was quiet, but I could feel her watching us, waiting patiently but attentively for us to return to her.

We huffed. “I’m on break! Watch my tables, Blue!” we called through the window after the strange mare.

The apron she always wore came off over our head, and we draped it over the bar right next to Dusk. The egg salad sandwich, hiding under the bar and wrapped in clingy plastic, was tossed beside it.

“Mind if I sit with you?” we asked.

Dusk smiled. “Please do.”

The familiarity washed over me again as we moved to sit on a stool beside Dusk. The world beyond us began to fade away, almost; the noise from the kitchen and the customers and the radio all retreated. The colors and motion seemed fuzzier, now, as if seen through a lens smeared with petroleum jelly. 

“You’re not from here, either, are you?” Dusk asked.

“Wow.” We chuckled. “That’s right! I’m actually from Canterlot. I moved here because…” Our hoof twitched towards our empty flank. “Just because, I guess. I wanted a change of pace.”

Dusk giggled, and the sound was like the delicate tinkling of crystal. “Well, that sure is a change of pace, alright.”

We were unwrapping our sandwich now. It was nice to have something to focus on. “Where are you from? Nearby?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. I’m from Canterlot, too. I’ve been travelling recently.”

“Where to?”

She sighed, stared into her coffee cup. “It’s hard to explain. I’m just sort of… wandering. And when I get a feeling about a place, I stop. When I get a feeling about a pony, I make sure to stop them, too. For a chat.”

“Did you get a feeling about me?” we asked.

“It’s strange.” Dusk turned to look over her shoulder, out at the desert beyond. “This town has given me quite a few feelings. That construction zone, first of all. What are they building over there?”

“A shopping center,” we responded. “It’s supposed to boost the local economy or something. With these new autocarriages, the town stands a real chance at growing. We already have a gas station, did you know that?”

“Is that what that is?” Dusk asked, her gaze shifting from the construction to the already-established gas station. The noonday sun gleamed in her eyes. “I don’t have much experience with those things yet. I suppose I will soon.”

“What else gave you a feeling?”

“Hm?” Dusk turned back to face us. “Oh! Right. Well, it was actually this place. Open Doors Diner… it’s a very odd name, don’t you think?”

We laughed. “I think it’s kinda friendly!”

Dusk giggled again, like sparkling sunlight on water. “I hadn’t thought of it that way!”

We smiled.

Dusk sighed wistfully. “You remind me of an old friend of mine. Always looking on the bright side, always so cheerful and energetic.”

“An old friend?” we asked.

Dusk nodded. “All friends are old sometime, you know.”

“I guess.”

A silence hung between us. Dusk seemed to be fighting off a dark cloud as she stared down into her mug, the light cream swirling with the darkness of her last sip of coffee. Her eyebrows knit together the slightest bit. A shadow passed over her face, and for a moment I saw somepony else. It was less than a second, blink-and-you-miss-it kind of change, but it was there. 

At long last, she lifted her mug with twinkling magic and delicately sipped out the last swallow. “I’ve actually been looking for someplace to stay for a few days. Is there a motel nearby?”

“There is!” We pointed behind her and out the windows, in the general direction of the motel. “It’s actually where I’m living right now. I bet, if you let me come with you, I could get the owner to give you a discount.”

Dusk’s eyes were brimmed with glee. “Oh, would you? That would be just perfect.”

We smiled back at her. “I have a good feeling about you, Dusk. I think we could be good friends.”

“I think we could, too.”

That filled us with a feeling I couldn’t quite name. Hope for the future, but, at the same time, a desperate longing for the past. Comforting familiarity coupled with daring new ventures. To call it confusion would be an oversimplification-- We felt all of these things at once. Perhaps it was a symptom of two minds sharing a single body. 

But then that would mean that I should know. I should know… something. I was missing something, something which had once been very close to me but now seemed far enough away that I could hardly even narrow down its origin. Was this a memory? A dream? Should I have known this plain, little mare? Should I have known somepony else, some other occurrence?

I wanted to shout out for help, to demand that somepony stop this parade of madness and answer my questions. That wasn’t my job, though. My job was to observe, for some looming and unknown examination.

We looked up at the clock on the wall. Still a good fifteen minutes left before we were expected back at work. “Why don’t I walk you there now? I could use a break from all the commotion.”

“That sounds wonderful!” Dusk clapped her hooves once, decisively. “Thank you, Moss.”

“It’s no trouble,” we said. “Coffee’s on me.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” 

Dusk dropped a few bits on the counter, though not with the carelessness of most customers. She placed them, almost without thinking, in a very neat pile beside the mug. The small and precise action brushed against familiarity once again, though I was still merely grasping at the barest bones of evidence.

As we left the diner, I couldn’t help but notice how mild the weather was. For noon, in the San Palomino desert, it was practically freezing. The air was still and the sky was littered with clouds.

“Wow! The pegasi here must be very talented,” Dusk remarked. “It’s so beautiful out here, don’t you think?”

“Sure is,” we agreed.

After spotting the motel in the distance, Dusk quickly overtook us. Her strides were long and purposeful.

Her mistake was in taking the lead. She was exposed, especially to us. And what else were we meant to do, anyway? Look away? Was there some sort of etiquette rule here I had simply forgotten to obey? Not that it would have helped; Moss was very much in control. 

Dusk, walking with a blissful smile on her face, allowed her spells to fade. All she wanted was to spread her wings under the warmth of the sun. What winged pony wouldn’t want that?

The wings melted out of her sides, seeming to emerge from the fur itself. 

We, to my surprise, didn’t do a thing. Our heartbeat accelerated, and we sucked in a breath, but said nothing.

Dusk spread her wings further and further, the feathers slipping over one another with the grace and ease of silk on silk. In only a few moments, her wings were spread like little umbrellas over the sand, casting ghostly shadows across the rippling desert.

We bit our lip and steadied ourselves. Our eyes coasted over Dusk’s body, searching for anything else which seemed out of place. She wasn’t a blankflank, exactly-- she had a cutie mark, but it seemed so unremarkable that the moment we looked away we couldn’t remember it. Her coat and her mane, while seeming quite ordinary, hid an unmistakable rippling motion which seemed out of synch with the wind, with her steps, with anything that might realistically be the cause.

She was taking unusually deep breaths, as if trying to capture the scent of the landscape around her. We, curiously, sniffed along with her. Under the smell of gasoline mingled with diner food, there was an undertone of cracked asphalt, of dust, of undisturbed water and cleaning products. It was the smell of an empty--yet distinctly used--space, somehow hanging over the desert.

The longer we sniffed, the more it seemed to be coming from Dusk.

A lock of mane fell out from behind our ear, and we took it into our mouth to chew on thoughtfully. 

Moss had never met Luna or Celestia. Few ponies had-- even those who lived in Canterlot. But she had read many an artistic retelling of meeting the princesses. One thing that seemed to stand out in such discussions, without fail, was their smell.

Celestia smelled like orange juice with a pinch of sugar. She smelled like freshly sharpened pencils, like gently washed linens, like roses just cut from the garden and placed in a crystal vase. All clean, all bright, all carefully arranged.

Luna, on the other hoof, smelled more like the depths of a forest, or the waves which washed up on the shore, or the rushing waters of a stream from the mountaintop. Her smells were natural, undeveloped, uncontrollable.

Thinking that way, it was quite obvious that “Dusk” wasn’t Dusk at all. Celestia was the pony-made, Luna was the untouched, which left the unregarded.

“Twilight?” we asked.

She bristled, seemed to realize that she had given herself away, and snapped her wings into her sides. They disappeared as easily as they had first emerged.

“It’s okay, I know it’s you,” we continued. “I’m not scared or anything.”

Twilight stayed frozen, facing away.

“What are you doing here?” We took a step towards her. “Don’t you have better things to do than wander around in our little desert? I mean, a school to run, or classes to teach, or something?”

Twilight kicked up a little cloud of sand.

“I mean… are you alright? Do you need help?”

Twilight chuckled dryly. “I guess I do, don’t I?” She turned to face me, looking almost guilty. “I’m still new to this. I’m not a very good liar. That used to be a good thing!”

As she spoke, the illusion she had been holding began to melt away. Purple and pink streaks unfolded from her once-muted mane, her cutie mark now bold against the lavender hue of her coat. Her wings once again unfurled from her sides, this time to stay.

We said nothing, merely watched as a princess took form before us. Her mane, now long and smooth, undulated gently against her shoulder.

Twilight seemed uncomfortable, now out of things to say. “Why don’t we have a talk? In your room? I feel like I owe you an explanation.”

We scoffed. “You do?”

Twilight shrugged. “The one thing I’ve been told to do is follow my gut. My gut says I should talk to you.”

She turned, her long and elegant tail dragging through the sand with the weight of a snake. We fell in behind her and following the serpentine trail she left behind. The two of us trotted through the sand at a steady clip, and the doubling sensation set in once more.

Moss was, understandably, confused. Otherwise, her mind seemed strangely empty. There was little excitement, little fear, little of anything at all. She seemed to be following her gut, too.

My mind, on the other hoof, was desperately trying to catch up. There was a great joy in relief in having found Twilight just as I had left her. Of course there was. I would me mad not to miss my friend.

But there was a little voice in the back of my head just whispering the same word over and over…


Dusk



Dusk



Dusk


Twilight was Dusk, and Dusk was Twilight. But Twilight would never--

We slipped the key into the lock and gave it a gentle turn. The motel room door swung open to reveal what was, unsurprisingly, exactly like the other two motel rooms I had had the pleasure of exploring. Same bed, same closet, same end tables, same lamp. 

This room was not buried under a mound of stolen government documents, however. Nor was it disturbingly… undisturbed.

There was an open suitcase at the end of the mattress. It had some clothes in it--the bottom ones folded, the top ones tossed in a pile--but not much else. There was a book on the closer of the two end tables, with a business-card bookmark. The armchair was empty except for an apron tossed over the back.

“Um…” We moved to close the closet, suddenly all too self-aware of the presence in our room. “You can take a seat. P-princess.”

Twilight smiled. “Thank you.”

She curled up on the chair like a dog in a bed, her elegant mane and tail draped over the upholstery and puddling onto the floor. Her wings were tucked tightly against her sides.

We sat on the end of the bed, our hooves in our dirty laundry.

Twilight looked at me expectantly.

“What--” We stopped ourselves, took a steadying breath. “Well, pardon my bluntness, but what’s a princess doing out here?”

Twilight giggled, like birdsong. “Consider yourself pardoned. The sort answer is, I’m not a princess yet.”

We narrowed our eyes, said nothing.

“I mean, I--” Twilight opened her wings a bit, gazed at them as one might observe a scar or a tattoo. Some foreign and unwelcome object. “I have these. I had a coronation. But I’m not a princess yet.”

“I don’t understand.”

Twilight sighed, but not in annoyance. It was more wistful than anything. “I didn’t, either. Because there’s a lot about the princesses that doesn’t exactly get shared, you know?”

We shrugged. “I guess I don’t.”

She giggled again, like the call of a spring peeper. “Touche. What I mean is… well, there’s  lot of complex and powerful magic at work in royalty. It isn’t often talked about because it isn’t easily understood, and, in the grand scheme of things, means very little to the general Equestrian population.

“Luna, as you know, is the Moon Princess. She raises the moon at night, lowers it in the morning. She rules over the night. But she has other domains.”

“Dreams?” I asked.

Twilight nodded. “That’s precisely right! She can enter the dreams of ponies and alter them. But that’s only part of her greater magic, it just so happens that most ponies can see that part of it.”

“What’s the rest?”

“It’s--” Twilight struggled to find the words. “Well, you see, her powers are to ponies as they are to the planet. Ponies have their own nights, and she is there to watch over them in the darkness.”

“Their own nights?” we repeated. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“I think it only truly makes sense to Luna.” Twilight smiled to herself. “She’s not exactly the sharing type.”

“What does this have to do with you?” we asked. We then looked down at our hooves. “I’m sorry, I’m just confused.”

“Well,” Twilight said, “ponies have their own dark nights. They also have their own shining days, which means that there must be an inbetween. A twilight. Right?”

We were chewing on our mane again.

Twilight appeared to be visibly struggling towards a satisfactory explanation. “There is always a transition, however small. We cannot be in the darkness one moment, and in the light the next. Something must happen to make this change-- a catalyst. And, sometimes, the change takes so long that it is its own stage. The change, the inbetween, is its own place. Don’t you think?”

“I dunno.” We were shifting uncomfortably on the mattress. This was starting to get personal. “What kind of changes?”

“I don’t know, either,” Twilight said. “Not yet. That’s what I’m doing out here. I’m trying to find the places that are in-between. And the ponies.”

“In disguise?”

“Yes, in disguise.”

“Why?”

Twilight shrugged. “That’s how Luna and Celestia did it, when they were my age. They travelled Equestria looking for ponies who needed their help. Just following their instincts.”

“So, wait--” We shook our head. “Is that why you wanted to talk to me? You think that I need help? Your help?”

Twilight shrank away from our accusatory tone. “I don’t know, Moss. If I am supposed to help you, it isn’t a judgement. It’s a fact of the universe. I think I’m meant to walk with you.”

Our hoof ran back over our flank, bare under the skirt we wore.

“And you’re the first pony I’ve met that I felt this way about,” Twilight added hastily. “I-I could be wrong. But if you need somepony to be by your side right now… I think I could.”

The smell washed over us again. A smell of empty places, uninteresting places. Places which nopony would ever want to be in, and yet so often find themselves in. The smell of transition, of the inbetween.

We stood up and began to un-tie our apron. The cloth slipped off over our head and fell to the floor with a gentle and final sound.

Twilight watched, her head cocked. It was a strange scene: undressing for a pony who only seemed confused.

We took off our top, the one with the name tag pinned to it. The plastic scraped against our cheek as we tugged the garment off. It fell to the floor beside the apron.

Last, the skirt. This was the thing which did the true disguising. It was funny to think that the both of us--Twilight and Moss--were in disguise. For very different reasons, and yet reasons which were tangled together.

The skirt slipped down to the floor in a ring around our back hooves. Only smooth, brown fur was beneath it. No cutie mark to be seen. A shameful emptiness where destiny should have been written.

Twilight stared for a moment, then nodded. “That seems right to me.”

“So you’re here to… to help me get it?” We hiked our skirt back up.

“I don’t know,” Twilight said. “Maybe. I’m not quite sure what my job is. I just have the feeling that I’m supposed to protect you.”

We blushed. “I’m not certain I need protecting.”

“Why hide, then?” Twilight asked. “Isn’t that skirt a form of protection?”

“Well, isn’t the skirt a more sensible one?” We were struggling our top back on as we spoke. “What would you do, exactly, to protect me?”

Twilight looked down. “I guess that’s fair.”

“It’s very kind of you to stop by, Twilight, but for now…” We paused to sigh and smooth our apron. “Well, for now, I think it’s enough to know that I’ve got an angel on my shoulder. And a princess, no less! That... that helps.”

“It does?” Twilight asked.

“Well, sure,” we said. “Sometimes it’s enough just to know somepony’s on your side.”

“Huh.” Twilight nodded. “That’s funny, I think I may have missed that lesson growing up.”

“You never run out of stuff to learn, do you?” We glanced at the clock. “I’ve gotta get back to the diner. Break’s nearly up. Thanks for talking to me… although it kinda seems like you needed it more than I did.”

It was Twilight’s turn to blush. “That might be true.”

We shrugged. “I don’t mind. Why do you think I work at a diner?”

Twilight and Moss parted ways at the door of our motel room. Twilight said something about ambling on, looking for other ponies to walk beside. She made some joke about doing better next time, staying Dusk instead of giving herself away so easily. It was half-hearted, at best.

There was a sorrow in leaving Twilight’s side and trudging back across the desert. I think that Moss and I felt it equally, as silly as that sounds.

And then things began to change.

As we walked back to Open Doors, each step grew longer, heavier. We pushed into it, through it, but could not overcome the unseen force and finally stood frozen in the sand. Everything around us seemed to be doing just the opposite: speeding up, careening out of control.  While we were trapped in one place, we seemed to watch several years of development happening in only a few minutes.

Bright forms of ponies brushed past us, nothing more than a single color in a great smear.

Construction on the shopping center accelerated to breakneck speeds, completing the exterior and… halting. No branded trucks pulled up to unload their wares, no “grand opening” banners were hung. Sand blew through the structure, and it started to sink into the desert.

The smears of color grew fewer as time pushed on. The telephone poles flashed all sorts of colors as they were covered over and over again with missing signs, torn down in anger and misery, or perhaps just by the wind. 

Darker smears appeared, as well. Only occasionally, moving carefully in groups like a pack of timberwolves. Slipping in an out of shadows.

And, suddenly, there I was! I, Rarity, standing in the sand in front of Moss. We just stared at each other for a moment, and then I began to change, too.

At first, I had looked like my old self. Almost hard to recognize, if I’m honest. The long and healthy mane, flowing over my shoulder in only a few great curls. The brightness, the life in my eyes. How exciting! Such a small town. So inspiring. I would be a big fish in a little pond, here. Wouldn't that be nice?

But the ponies saw me differently, just as they had taken notice of Dusk. The smears retreated further and further, gave me greater berth, as the shopping center sank. 

My face melted from a peppy grin into an expressionless board. I wore less makeup, worked less on my mane. At some point, I cut it off. Less mane was less to deal with, and all of my time was now taken by Nightwhisper. I needed to make time for him, needed to give him my time.

The shopping center was completely gone, now. Never filled. A place between pony-made nonsense and natural wonders. A place built and abandoned.

And then I was myself again, in an instant. I was looking at Moss, standing in the desert, not ever changing. Stuck at the threshold of herself, of what she could be.

She didn’t get her cutie mark. Which should have meant that Twilight, my Twilight, was still watching over her.

Why wasn’t she?

Because… well, wasn’t she the Goddess? Wasn’t she Dusk? Wasn’t she Missing?

“Twilight!” I cried, my voice at last my own, under my control. “Twilight, where did you go? You were supposed to protect her!”

I fell into the sand and began to cry. These tears were wild and completely unstoppable, pouring out of me at such a rate that I feared I might drown.

As I sobbed and wailed, the other things slowed down. The light dimmed. The wind died down. The intensity of everything receded, and I was left with only my tiny, fragile body in a great wasteland of loss. I had never felt so exposed. I had never felt so lost and scared and angry. And yet, my intensity faded, as well. The exhaustion of crying was enough to soften things.


Dusk Goddess


“Shut up!” I screamed, my throat ragged. “Don’t you dare! I know, now! Don’t you dare taunt me!”

The Dusk Guardians. They were Twilight's, weren't they? Little minions of darkness that she had created and abandoned. She couldn't even be bothered to complete the holy task she had been given.


Please accept our offering...


I lifted my head. The desert was shrouded in such complete darkness that it seemed my eyes were still closed.


...of the Eternal Pariah...


My mane was practically glued to my face with tears and snot. I wiped it away, hoping it would somehow allow me to see. Darkness remained.

“Hello?” I murmured.


...forever on The Threshold.


“Rarity?”

My head whipped towards the sound, but I could see nothing.

“Rarity!” the voice hissed again. It sounded far away, through a tunnel or over a poor connection. 

I moaned softly. Pain was beginning to register across my body-- just dull aches, but growing in intensity. “Rainbow?”

“Rarity, wake up!” Rainbow commanded.

I opened my eyes.
> Part V: Chapter Two
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I told you it was a stupid idea to keep her around!”

My vision rolled and tumbled like the sea as I tried to focus on something--anything--which could ground me in my surroundings. I could barely open my eyes entirely, partly from the pain in my head and partly from pure fatigue.

“Fucking idiot. I never should have listened to you.” The voice, though it sounded as if it were emanating from a tape recorder submerged in a lake, was familiar. The tone, however, was not; Blue Moon, sounding like somepony entirely different. Somepony angry and scared beyond belief.

I was staring down at the tiled floor of what I could now recognize to be the shopping center. Nothing else in town had quite the same shade of pale green with the little swirls of white curling through them. Much more noticeably, nothing else in town had little plants growing in the grout.

The sound of a hoof stomping on the tile floor rang out through the empty building. “You agreed that she’d be useful to keep around!” Nightwhisper, of course. Just as angry as always, those the helping of ear in his voice gave rise to a flicker of hope in my chest. “I didn’t know she was gonna drag her little dyke friend into this shit.”

Rainbow couldn’t even muster a reaction.

Rainbow!

I did my best to sneak a look at my dearest friend, now tied to a column in an abandoned shopping center. Her head hung down at the neck, and a little trickle of dried blood cut a trail through her fur under her nostril. Her face, slack and defeated, seemed not to move at all.

“Rainbow!” I hissed.

No response.

“Oh, not now, not now!” I thrashed a bit, but gave up quickly. Thick bounds of rope held me to mine own pillar, it seemed. “Rainbow, please!” The desperation brought out something wholly unrecognized in my voice.

Her eyelids flickered.

“Rainbow?” I asked. My breath hitched.

Her eyes cracked open, a telltale flash of magenta peaking out before they drifted shut again. “Mn,” she grunted.

“Oh, Dashie, thank Celestia you’re alive!” My voice strained not to rise above a harsh whisper.

She managed a glance in my direction, and a half-hearted smile. “Back ‘attcha, Rares.”

My limbs pulled against the restraints again in an effort to reach her.

“What’s happening?” I hissed. A lock of my dirtied mane came loose from its place behind my ear. I watched Rainbow’s face fall through the stringy bits of purple hair.

She did not respond.

“It’s fine. It’s all fine, I’ll handle it.” Blue Moon’s voice was drifting from another section of the shopping center entirely, and I couldn’t see her or Nightwhisper at all. “Like I handle every other damn thing.”

With the all of the echoes and the ambient sound of the raging windstorm, it was nearly impossible to pinpoint the source of our kidnapper’s voices. I scanned the mall for any sign of movement--a glimpse of a tail, the flash of a passing shadow, anything. As I searched, I spotted one more form slumped against a column in the distance.

I breathed in a quick gasp of air. “Moss.”

She wasn’t tied quite like we were. Her bindings were looser and lower, perhaps an assumption based on physical strength or magical prowess. Or, perhaps, it was a sign that she had been beaten to a point even closer to death than we had been.

But still alive, just as I had thought! Only barely, but certainly alive. I could feel it, deeply and intrinsically. And I, her supposed savior, was tied to a post.

Or perhaps Twilight was still meant to be her savior.

Oh, yes, the way the glowing white light of the full moon filtered through the glass overhead and fell, dappled and green, right onto her head. The way her crumpled and defeated form still looked somehow holy and sacred. The way the sand floated through the air like heavenly dust motes in her patch of dimmed sunlight. 

She was Twilight’s little angel, wasn’t she? Twilight’s little pawn in a disgusting, incestuous, backwater conflict that nopony decent had any business partaking in.

I grit my teeth so hard at the thought I nearly shattered a tooth. Twilight’s betrayal burned so horribly in my memory that holding onto it for even a moment too long would surely cause me to overflow, to scream, to set fire to my very mind.

Twilight had murdered my friend. And she would get me murdered, too.

Not to mention Rainbow Dash, another pony who commanded my love and attention so completely that I was consumed with nothing but thoughts of keeping her safe and warm. Twilight’s little henchmen would see to Rainbow’s death, as well.

I thrashed against my restraints. Some rope, which burned. Some tape, which tugged.

“C-cut it out!” Rainbow ordered, her voice weaker than I’d ever heard it. “Just stop, you’ll hurt yourself!”

“I am not dying here, Rainbow Dash, and neither are you!”

“You’re wrong.”

We froze and silenced in an instant as Blue Moon’s voice floated down from above us. I knew without hesitation that she now stood in the same place that Rainbow Dash had stood many times, her body framed by the unnatural green light filtering through the rooftop windows, her wings casting stained-glass light forms across the floor…

Neither of us could turn to face her. We waited, stewing in fury, for her to come down the stairs and stand before us. Her steps were not slow, did not make savor the moment; no, they were hurried and stumbling.

She was wearing a dark robe. One that I recognized from her closet, come to think of it. I believe I mistook it for a bathrobe.

Otherwise, she was almost frighteningly the same. There wasn’t anything in her eyes that screamed for help, or seemed at all detached or confused. She was just the same old nervous, protective Blue Moon, only with the hood of a dark robe draped about her shoulders in place of an apron.

“Blue.” Rainbow spat blood onto the tile.

Blue looked her right in the eyes. “Rainbow.” She turned her head to look at me. “Rarity.”

“Blue, whatever she’s offering you, you can’t do this!” I shouted. “Moss was your friend! She protected you and helped you… how could you?”

“Because I have to,” Blue said. “I’m sure you’ve been too tied up in your own little mental breakdown to realize what’s been going on in this town.”

I scoffed. “You mean the missing ponies? The ones you’ve been kidnapping?”

Blue closed her eyes and turned her head just a few degrees away from me. It reminded me of the manner in which careful politicians react to ignorant hecklers. How poised, how diplomatic of her to stay calm and dignified in the face of our anger. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand. I just told you, you’ve been so tied up in your own private meltdown that you’ve missed near everything else.”

A twinge of doubt turned the tension in my chest one degree tighter. “Well, then… you owe us an explanation, don’t you?”

Rainbow managed a weak wink. Well done buying us some time, it said. Though I doubt buying more time would help us in the slightest.

Blue sighed. “I didn’t wanna do this. I didn’t wanna talk to you before the ceremony. I wanted to tape y’all’s mouths up and be done with it.”

“You didn’t,” Rainbow added. “Talk.”

“I’m gonna regret this…” Blue shook her head. “This town used to be lively. Bet you didn’t even know this, but it used to be called Autumn’s Peak. Celestia herself came up with that one, on account of how the sand looks in the sun… and the butte, of course.

“We had good prospects. We had nice folks livin’ here, we had a motel for passers-by. Had the best damn pie in the whole desert at Big Joe’s Diner. ‘Specially after gettin’ the gas station, this town was in line to make some real money. Grow and thrive. Be someplace real, not a… a… a non-place.

“But, the day that friend of yours came… I dunno what She did, but everything changed.”

“Friend?” Rainbow asked softly.

“We know that part,” I cut her off. “Why are you taking ponies?”

Over her shoulder, I could see Nightwhisper approaching Moss. He, too, wore a dark robe with the hood around his neck. I hoped with everything I had that he was moving towards her to untie her, but I knew that was too much to wish for.

“Because!” Blue spat back. “We’re doing what She wants to get our town back.”

“Why is this what Twilight wants?” I asked, my voice low enough that I hoped Rainbow couldn’t hear.

“T-Twilight?” Rainbow moaned.

Blue growled, stomped her hoof. “I knew I shouldn’t have talked to you. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

I took a deep breath in through my nose. Blue Moon was scared. Twilight was making her do this, and I had to give her an out. I had to let her know that she was safe, that I could protect her. Maybe there was still hope for the rest of us, too.

I breathed out through my mouth. “Try me.”

Blue was now pacing back and forth. “After She left, other ponies started leaving. Not like… moving. Like disappearing.”

My eyebrows knit together, only the slightest bit.

“Anypony who was lost or confused or needed help… they disappeared. Overnight. Poof, gone! And we knew it had something to do with Her because-- well, because Moss told me all about Her visit and everything. About how She’s supposed to take care of lost ponies or something. It all sounded like a load of bullshit to me, at first, but then…”

Blue wasn’t even looking me anymore. Just pacing back and forth, the words spilling out of her faster than she could control.

“But it wasn’t so simple as just disappearing, It was--”

“What are you doing!” The roar echoed across the shopping center. Mine and Blue’s heads whipped towards it, and spotted Nightwhisper kneeling beside Moss at her pillar.

He was on his hooves in an instant and barreled towards us. Blue snapped into position.

“I told you not to talk to them, you bitch!” He struck her across the face. “Can’t you even listen to one fucking order?”

“Don’t talk back to me, you shit-faced bastard. I’m the one fixing this for us,” Blue shot back. “I’ll talk to whoever I like.”

Nightwhisper said nothing, merely towered over Blue’s tiny frame. I remembered being on the receiving end of that. Watching it from the outside made my stomach sink to my hooves and my heart rise into my throat.

Blue stood strong. “I’ll go untie Moss, since you couldn’t even finish that.”

She trotted back up the stairs, shaking ever so slightly.

Nightwhisper’s eyes passed over me, and he set his sights on Rainbow Dash.

He moved in just the same way, skulking over towards Rainbow and standing over her, chest puffed out, his breath probably rancid. “You little fag. Trying to take my bitch? I’ll teach you a lesson tonight.”

Rainbow’s head tilted up the tiniest bit, a twisted smile painted over her face. “She doesn’t belong to anyone.”

Nightwhisper fumed a moment in silence, then pounded one hoof against the column just inches above Rainbow’s head. She flinched, but only just. Nightwhisper took this as a victory, laughed a hoarse and demented chuckle.

His eyes slid back over to me. The look in them was poison, was daggers. I had seen that look before, and only the worst of nights followed. Nights of being used like a doll and tossed aside without a second thought.

“Rarity,” he said.

I tried not to vomit.

“What you’ve been through? What you’re going to go through to tonight?” His face was blank. His eyes empty. “It’ll be nothing compared to the life She’s made me live. This is the easy way out.”

Without another word, without even another second, his magic lit the air before me and he tore a huge swath of packing tape from my skin.

I shrieked in pain and surprise. This was one of few things that seemed to disturb Rainbow in the least, as far gone as she was. Sent a bolt of electricity up her spine, though it only lasted that long.

Nightwhisper, unfazed, continued to release me in this violent fashion, but I bit my lip and fought through the pain. Even as I watched huge patches of my snow-white fur be torn out by the roots, I didn’t make another sound.

Rainbow was functionally unconscious. Panic was beginning to resurge in my chest.

At last, the final piece of rope fell away and I was free. I don’t really know was I was thinking, but I tried to get up and scramble away while Nightwhisper was refocusing on Rainbow.

He was faster than I was, though. He grabbed my legs in his magic and hogtied me with the same length of rope that had just dropped to the floor. This was done without a word. I don’t know if that made things better or worse.

I was made to watch while Nightwhisper untied Rainbow Dash. My brain was too rattled, physically and emotionally, to even attempt a spell. Nightwhisper knew this, of course.

It’ll be nothing compared to the life She’s made me live.

His last words echoed in my mind. Not much else was coherent enough to form words at all.

“I asked why…” I murmured.

“Shut up.”

“I should have asked if.”

Nightwhisper’s ear twitched.

“Is Twilight making you do this?” I asked.

Nightwhisper froze for a moment, his magic faltering, the continued to untie Rainbow. “Of course she is.”

“But…” I coughed lightly. “Are you working for her?”

“Of course!”

“Does she know that?”

Silence.

Rainbow’s head lolled about, almost involved, but much too far away for words.

“You’re just guessing, aren’t you?” I pushed.

The ropes fell from Rainbow’s body, and she fell into a pile of bones on the floor, not even trying to escape. Nightwhisper secured her wings with one rope, hogtied her with another. The way he wrapped the rope around the base of her wings and tugged, the feathers sticking in every direction, the joints pulled back into an unnaturally deep upstroke-- even I cringed at the sight of it.

I gathered myself. “You have no idea what she wants. You’re guessing and you’re guessing wrong!”

Nightwhisper didn’t speak. He took our ropes in his mouth and started up the stairs, dragging us along behind him. The cold, hard edges of the steps dug into my already irritated flesh. Rainbow’s right wing was pulled and tugged about as it moved over the uneven terrain.

“She wouldn’t do this!” I insisted. “And she wouldn’t want you killing for her!”

We reached level ground again, and Nightwhisper continued to drag us over the sandy tile without acknowledgement.

Then, he flickered.

The ropes fell through the air and landed on the cool tile with a light plop. Right out of his screaming mouth, right through his immaterial body. It was here and gone in an instant, and he scooped the ropes off the ground as quickly as he had dropped them.

My breathing hitched in my throat. It was so much like Rainbow Dash, the way she seemed to appear and disappear, the way she seemed to bend time to her will.

“Let’s go, Blue,” Nightwhisper mumbled around the ropes. “Nearly dawn.”

Blue was still hard at work undoing Moss’ restraints. I had to assume she was still alive, though she didn’t look it in the slightest. 

“I-I’m trying,” Blue murmured. She was shaking terribly, now, barely able to stand upright-- let alone remove Moss’ restraints.

Nightwhisper sighed. “Take them.”

He dropped the ropes, and Blue ran to snatch them up. 

While Nightwhisper busied himself, I set my sights on Blue.

“Blue,” I hissed.

She pretended not to have heard me.

“Blue,” I repeated. “You can tell me. Why does Twilight want you doing this?”

Blue’s knees knocked, but remained silent.

“Please, Blue. I need to know. She’s one of my dearest friends, and I-- I’m going to die soon, aren’t I?” I asked, my voice as soft and fearful as I could make it. Blue shivered. “Just tell me. Before I die.”

Blue sucked in a breath, checked to see if Nightwhisper was listening. Apparently satisfied, she set our ropes delicately on the floor and stood on the ends

“She wants to find ponies to watch over, but She can’t. They don’t last forever--don’t even last their whole lives in transition--so She…” A powerful shiver overtook her and she had to focus on not swallowing her tongue for a moment.

“Yes, Blue?”

“She… She takes them. She steals them away at twilight. Which would be one thing, but you forget them!” Her voice was panicked, now. Words spilled out of her at an unbelievable clip. “You forget all the ponies you used to know and love a-and even the ones you used to really hate. ‘Cause she just takes ‘em right out of the universe.”

I nodded, as sympathetically as I could manage while lying on the tiled floor. “But… WHy are you taking them, Blue?”

“We kill them,” she said so simply. “We kill them all. Before they can finish their transition. That way… that way She gets them on our terms. And we don’t ever forget them.”

Hearing it said out loud was so much different than the nebulous thoughts which had been swirling about in my mind. Judging by the way the color drained out of her face, Blue felt the same way.

She sniffled strongly and tried to speak a little more evenly.“We’ve done it to a few, now, but they were just guesses. Thought we saw flickers or something. But Moss…” Blue’s head rolled back, and she stared up at the ceiling in an appreciative daze. “Moss is… special. We know for sure that she’s in transition because she doesn’t… have…”

She didn’t have to finish the thought for Moss’ blank flank pass through my memories.

She cleared her throat. “We think that… if we give Twilight enough ponies to watch over, she’ll stop taking ones that aren’t hers.”

I could barely even open my mouth, but some part of me managed to push forward in the interrogation. “Who did she take from you?”

Blue Moon sniffled, but didn’t speak. I could tell she was on the brink of collapse, and could hardly bring myself to do what had to be done. 

“Who?”

Blue let a choked sob escape. “My daughter.”

And, suddenly, it all made sense. Her protectiveness over Moss, despite her need to hide any and all information regarding her a secret. Her dedication to a group that she couldn’t stand to be in the presence of. Her fear of us being anywhere near her.

The others--Nightwhisper and his gang--were violent, and simply needed an excuse to act on it. But they had promised Blue her daughter.

In exchange for Moss, that is.

Blue was crumbling, now. “She took my daughter and I-- I can’t even remember her name! I can’t remember what she looks like, or if she had her cutie mark yet, or--” Another deep and powerful sob. “And the only reason I remember her at all i-is because I was saving money to… to send her to school.”

The shoebox of money hiding under her bed at the motel pulsed in my mind.

“See, everything she had o-or wore or made went away when she did. But I saved that money. I kept her alive and I hate myself for it because--” She broke down again, this time beat down to kneel on the tile in front of me. “Because it hurts!”

Snot and tears and spit dribbled onto the tile as Blue Moon knelt before me, defeated by a mere reminder of the stark reality beyond the shopping center.

“Blue?” I murmured in the most soothing voice I could manage. “Listen, Blue: Twilight didn’t take your daughter. She would never do such a wicked thing.” I was trying desperately to sit up, to give my words any connotation aside from desperate pleading. “Your daughter must be alive somewhere-- you mustn’t kill Moss for a chance to get her back! It won’t work!”

“Just try and prove that.” 

Blue sucked in a breath so hard it nearly choked her.

Nightwhisper killed her with a swift downward blow of his hoof. The sickly crunch of her skull and the sudden jolt which shocked her eyes wide open, then faded away as quickly as it had come… it made me want to vomit all over again.

But instead I screamed. I screamed bloody murder, I screamed far beyond my lung capacity and sanity should have allowed. But, even as I screamed, Nightwhisper knelt down in front of me, bent his head to my level, and looked at me.

The smell of alcohol on his breath. The smell of blood and brains on his hoof and oh Celestia make him stop make him go away I have had enough of this evil stallion this rapist this abuser and tormenter and murderer and--

“You wanna know why I’m doing this?” Nightwhisper asked.

My brain locked tight. The screaming ceased.

Nightwhisper smiled the sort of tight, businesslike smile you’re supposed to give a difficult customer. “See, I’m the only one left, now. I killed all of them. Left Moss, here, for last. And once I offer her up to Twilight, Autumn’s Peak will start again. And I’ll own it.”

I heaved a crazed, growling sigh. “Money?”

Nightwhisper shrugged. “And you. And her,” he said, with a glance at Blue. “You’re what the colts call ‘an easy target.’ Not like your little faggot friend.”

My eyes slid past Nightwhisper and refocused on Rainbow Dash, laying with every part of her torn to shreds in a pile on the floor.

She looked dead, too. She had probably died while I was talking to Blue. Slipped away after a night of brutal beatings and batterings at the hooves of a sadistic stallion that I had put in her life. In my life. Over and over-- how many times had she done this again?

But… as many times as she had done this, some things only once.

Nightwhisper set about cleaning up the blood and the brains left behind from his angry outburst. He hummed to himself, presumably out of some need to intimidate me. Still had to be the alpha dog, even when it was him and two tied-up, nearly-dead mares left in this whole dead town.

And, as much as that should have sent me into a tailspin, my mind had somehow righted itself.

The drugs, only once.

“Sh-she’s… loyal.” I said.

Nightwhisper ignored it.

She had only told me it all once. Only broke down and told me once.

“Too loyal. That’s what.” I laid back down onto the tile. The coolness of it radiated through my fur and, for the first time, felt refreshing. “Too dedicated. And too trusting, I suppose.”

I remembered the way she had sped in to whisk me away-- not just since we’d come to town, but always. Plucking me out of the air, stealing me away to solve mysteries, turning for every little thing I had ever asked of her and more. And that was what she had given the Wonderbolts, those selfish--

“She needs…” I took a shuddering breath. “She needs to be with somepony who won’t take advantage of that.”

“Just shut up already,” Nightwhisper muttered.

“I’m the same way, I think-- too generous, too accommodating. I gave you too much and you used it against me,” I said.

This made him prickle, though he said nothing.

“And that’s what I need, as well. Somepony who loves that about me… but won’t take advantage of it.”

And I thought, again, of all the things I had given Rainbow Dash. Every dress, every gemstone, every ounce of my attention, every second of my time, every drop of love I could. How it had all been returned to me tenfold because that is what Rainbow does! She is spontaneous and loving and--

“We were in transition,” I said.

“Oh, fuck off, bitch.” Nightwhisper took my rope in his mouth and began to drag me away to whatever nightmare he had planned.

I squirmed in my bindings, not through any misplaced hope that I might get free but rather to look up at the glass which encased us all. To watch the amber sunlight creep up over the horizon and shine through the windows, bounce off of every surface, to illuminate everything which had eluded me since we had arrived.

“We were in transition, and we got stuck here,” I said. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it, but that. That is what Twilight did. She must have meant it as protection and had something go wrong and--”

My horn sparked.

“Goodness!” I jerked away from it a bit. It had been many, many years since I’d had an uncontrollable magic outburst.

Nightwhisper brunted something I couldn’t understand. I didn’t try to.

I closed my eyes and reached out… out past the wide, wide world of Equestria. Past Autumn’s Peak, past the San Palomino desert, past all of the places and times that I knew how to reach. Out into the empty nothingness which lay between this world and the next. 

To me, it smelled like sand and cactus water and gasoline. It tasted like Qwik-Garb sandwiches and diner coffee and something metallic, like blood. It felt like the cool breeze in stagnant heat that you may have imagined. And it looked like Twilight Sparkle.

My horn glowed softly, casting its pale blue light through my eyelids and throwing a dazzling array of swirling shapes onto the insides of my eyelids. 

“Hey!” Nightwhisper shouted, though that was the last I heard of him.

The light grew brighter and brighter with each passing second, consuming everything around it, filling the shopping center and reflecting off every surface. 

I thought about Rainbow, how she had conquered that part of herself that needed to be liked and accepted to be happy. I thought about Moss, how she had worked so hard to love her blank flank in spite of herself. 

I thought of myself, too.

And I thought about us. The two of us. How I only loved her once. 

But she had loved me a thousand times.

And I sent these thoughts out into the empty spaces of the universes praying that they would somehow reach Twilight. Praying that I would not die before she came. Praying that she could fix things, somehow, some way… Praying that she was, in fact, Goddess of the In Between, and that her power meant something in a place like this.

My prayers were answered.
> Part V: Chapter Three
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not a day goes by that I don’t remember that sound. That horrid, tearing, wrenching, shrieking sound that pulled the town of Autumn Peak back into reality. So wretched, so mind-numbingly immersive was that sound… I’m honestly not sure that the word “sound” quite describes it. It assaulted every sense and threatened to send me careening backwards through the shopping center and out into the desert, never to be seen again.

Although, perhaps that is the natural drama queen in me.

In all honesty, the feeling which nearly whisked me away was something like… contentment. It was warm. It wrapped me up and held me safely-- the first time I had felt safe in as long as I could remember.

That first time, I don’t even remember hauling myself back to the motel. I suppose I was sent there by the very force of Twilight’s magic sweeping through Autumn Peak. 

I do remember the dream I had. Then, and every night since:

It starts in darkness. Not a scary darkness. Not the total, crushing, suffocating darkness dreams so often have. No, this darkness was as warm and friendly as the sunlight, as comforting and cozy as the moonlight. 

There are always these swirling patches of not-quite-darkness, where I can almost make something else out. The rolling green of a cemetery here. The winding black of an old road there. The proud, stoic outline of the butte just out of sight.

As I try to get my bearings in the darkness, she sneaks up on me.

“I didn’t mean to.”

I jump, and spin to face her.

And there she stands. Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship and Some Other Things we Can’t Quite Name, in all her glory. She seems ashamed, almost. Her face fallen, eyes cast downward. “I didn’t mean to put it… there. I was still figuring out my powers. Autumn Peak felt like the kind of place that time would never touch… or maybe I just thought that time shouldn’t be allowed to touch it. That it should stay in between.”

“In between worlds? Frozen forever?” I would ask, knowing the answer.

“Yes. And, one year from now, you’ll leave Autumn Peak,” she explains. “You’ll tell Rainbow Dash and I about everything that happened, everything that went wrong. And I’ll send Rainbow there, too. As many times as it takes. You know the rest.”

“That’s all it was?” I ask. “Just a fluke? Not a scheme, or… or destiny, or fate, or anything at all?”

Here, Twilight smiles softly, blushing a little. “Maybe it’s not the answer you were hoping for. I’m still the little filly who botches spells and makes mistakes. I hoped I would have outgrown it by now.”

“We all make mistakes. And I… I forgive you,” I reply. 

“That’s big of you,” Twilight says. “I’m not sure I deserve it.”

“Don’t you dare, Twilight. Of course you do,” I scold, but only playfully. 

Twilight only laughs a tired laugh in response.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”


“Why do I remember it all? If it happened somewhere else.”

“I let you remember. Just like I let Rainbow Dash remember.”

And I remember the sound. The air tears open, and light and sound and life pour through it. Everything that happened in the past year is reset in just a few seconds… Which included--

“I’m waiting for you, Rarity!” 

I look around, watching for movement in the darkness. “Rainbow?”

And then I’m back on the floor of the shopping center, watching Blue Moon and Nightwhisper turn to dust, watching plants grow in reverse and being blinded by the light of Twilight’s power. 

Rainbow grabbed my hoof and held it there, looking at me in desperation through puffy, tearful eyes. “Don’t forget, okay?”

“R-Rainbow, I could nev--”

“Don’t forget me,” she said, firmer this time. Not a judgement or a plea. A prayer, A wish. “I’m waiting for you!”

Called out. Called through time, and space, and eternity.

And I’d wake up from the dream. Just like that, every morning, for a year. 

It’s not as bad as it sounds. After the first few, it became a steady and predictable occurrence. Almost comforting, with the predictability of a very good alarm clock.

Of course, due to the mysterious nature of time and space, I wouldn’t see Rainbow Dash or Twilight for the entire year. I wouldn’t be able to tell anypony what happened in Autumn Peak yet because, if I did, things would change, and I wasn’t sure how.

It’s not my job to decide who gets what, and when. In fact, I suppose that’s Twilight’s job.

And she would decide soon enough. But I wouldn’t let the thought disturb my morning routine.

I awoke in a motel room, just as I had every other morning. The sun was no longer a sickly yellow, but a strong, bright gold as it shone through the curtains and onto my face. 

The questions I wished I had asked rolled back and forth inside my brain, even crossing my tongue expectantly a time or two, before I could finally shake off the dream. Having the same conversation over and over isn’t at all productive. I should be keeping a list of questions to ask Twilight when I finally see her.

I took a long, deep breath; the air smelled like orange juice with a pinch of sugar. Like freshly sharpened pencils, like gently washed linens, like roses just cut from the garden and placed in a crystal vase. Celestial smells, I thought of them. Finished smells. Smells that meant we had made it through the night, through the dawn, into the certain day. 

But there were undertones of plain, black tea, and sage, and sand. Little in-between smells that I had grown to associate with Twilight. A lingering memory of her time here.

Perhaps it was all in my head, though. It was hard not to think about these things anymore.

I rolled out of bed and moved to the bathroom. After flicking on the light, I took a moment to admire the progress on my mane. I had decided to leave it short, though not out of need. It was just different. I felt as if I should be a little different now.

I was still learning to care for it. My ever-so-particular routine was disrupted by the change. No longer the same amount of shampoo or conditioner, no longer the same spread or the same technique. Just another thing to learn about myself. I was getting there.

A long, hot shower woke me up entirely. I liked to sing in the shower now. Another thing that changed, I suppose. Always a Rara song. Rara songs always reminded me of my friends from home.

As I dried my mane, I stood in the door between the bathroom and everything else. I had packed last night. Just one suitcase, sitting expectantly at the foot of the bed.

And it shall have to expect for some time, I thought. I wasn’t leaving just yet. No need to rush it.

I left the motel room and turned to lock the door.

“Morning, Rarity!”

“Oh!” I nearly dropped my ring of keys, and pawed at my now rapidly beating heart with one hoof. 

Behind me was Inky Pier, the large and bumbling stallion who owned the motel.

I let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Goodness! Don’t sneak up on me like that, Ink!”

He laughed--part nervous, part hearty--and stroked his beard with one hoof. “Sorry, Miss. Wasn’t tryin’ ta scare ya.”

I shook my head. “It’s forgotten.” I steadied my breathing and finished locking the door.

Ink rocked slightly on his hooves, watching me fumble with the keys. “Still checking out today?” He asked, sensing the unbearable awkwardness of the encounter.

I nodded, turned to look at him with a friendly smile. “That’s right! I’m moving back home.”

“Dunno what we did to deserve somepony nice as you, Rarity.” Ink returned my smile, his eyes warm and thankful.

“Oh, stop it!” I gave him a playful shove and giggled. “I’m only this nice to ponies who earn it, believe me.”

Ink shrugged. “Still… we’ll miss you around here.”

“Thank you, Inky. Really,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to breakfast at the diner. Rumor has it that Moss was planning an absolute feast down there. Would you like to come?”

Ink shook his head. “Can’t. We have some checkouts this morning I’ll need to keep an eye on. See you soon?”

“Of course. See you soon.” 

I waved to Ink as he departed and turned to face the desert.

It was not at all like it was before, whenever and wherever that was. The rolling dunes of loose and shifting sand had been cleared or packed down for through traffic. It was a town, now-- a real, working town. Even as I stood here, early in the morning, I could see ponies on their way to work. A little gaggle of mares in matching aprons moved towards the diner. An autocarriage pulled up to a pump at the gas station. In the distance, I could make out some very large trucks backing up to the shopping center, no doubt filled with all manner of goods and wares to fill the empty storefronts.

It was amazing how much could change in such a short time.

The diner was a short walk on these good paths. The smell of coffee and pancakes and scrambled eggs reached me even before the sound of the kitchen did.

“Rarity!”

My ears pricked, trying to find the source of the sound.

Just a moment later, the door of the diner flew open, and Moss’s grinning face poked out. “Rarity! Come on, breakfast is ready!”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m coming, Moss!”

I broke into a canter and greeted Moss with a hug that was nearly a tackle. Her mane ticked my neck as she snuggled into my shoulder.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving today! I’m gonna miss you so much!” She exclaimed. With the way her cheek was pressed into the side of my neck, it was a miracle I could hear her at all.

I pulled her off me and held her at arm’s length. “Now, you won’t have to miss me if you visit like you promised, right?”

She laughed, though I think it was a little more cry than laugh. “I know, I know--”

“Well, then, swear it again!” I demanded, striking a fabulous and self-featuring pose right in front of her on the diner’s porch. “If I’m worth one swear, I’m worth two, aren’t I?”

Moss straightened up, closed her eyes, and raised one hoof in the air. “I, Mossy Bridge, do solemnly swear to visit my dear friend Rarity as often as my work schedule permits, with each visit lasting at least the length of one seasonal shopping trip.”

I did my best to suppress my mischievous giggles, though they escaped anyway. 

“Oh, what now?” Moss rolled her eyes and flashed a coy smile.

“I’m sorry, it’s just… Well, it’s funnier than I remembered!”

“Hey!” Moss stamped her hoof. “I’m making an awful lot of allowances, here! When does Rarity swear to visit me, hm?”

I lifted my snout in the air, cleared my throat as haughtily as I could manage, and raised my right hoof. “I, Rarity, Element of Generosity, do solemnly swear to allow my dear friend Moss to visit me in--”

Moss jabbed me in the ribs. “Hey, now!”

This time a snort snuck out with my laughter.

Moss tossed her head, though her very short and frizzy mane did not move with it. “Well, all I can say is you’d best get your butt in here and eat this damn breakfast I made you, or I might just get some ideas about ‘allowing’ myself to eat it instead.”

I gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Moss pushed the door open and held it there for me. “Do you really wanna take that chance?”

I began to walk past her into the restaurant, but she snuck a peak at me and happened to catch my eye. As anypony knows, eye contact in scenarios such as these can quickly send one into hysterics.

Moss and I settled for a shared giggle and trotted inside.

If it smelled good from the outside, it smelled heavenly from the inside.

Moss lead me to a booth by the front, one with a great view of the sunrise over the distant dunes, though I could hardly focus with the myriad of smells pulling me in every direction. Pancakes with maple syrup from one end of the building, hot and starchy potatoes from another, eggs fried in butter wafting from the kitchen… even the little cups of fruit salad seemed so fragrant that I could feel saliva rolling about in my mouth.

“Now, you just tell me what you want and I’ll bring it,” Moss aid as she ushered me into my seat. “Heck, you can have one bite of everything on the menu! I’ve got it all hot and ready in the back.”

I giggled. “Goodness, I feel like a little spoiled filly! Oh… could you bring me a plate of those pancakes? They smell just wonderful.”

Moss nodded and smiled brightly. “One stack a’ hotcakes, comin’ up!”

She disappeared, and I was left to stare out the window again. 

The gas station was across the way. A part of me still felt the rope around my neck, or heard the buzzing of the great unknown closing in on me as I looked at the pumps. But even now, just a year later, it was something I could seemingly shake off. Nothing more than a dim and blurry shadow of unpleasantness that I could choose to step out of and be okay.

I had a fracture in my mind, and I had patched it wonderfully. But that didn’t mean the fracture had never existed. It would be easy to break again, if I wasn’t careful.

“Hotcakes!” Moss shouted, interrupting my thoughts.

She placed a plate in front of me, and, goodness, if I thought the smell was intoxicating… 

“Oh, Moss, they’re just beautiful!” I exclaimed. Round, golden-brown, steaming away, topped with the most perfect scoop of home-churned butter I’d ever seen. “I almost feel bad eating them!”

Moss gave a humble chuckle. “It’s nothin’, really.” She turned to leave.

I grabbed the strap of her apron with my magic. “Oh, Moss, won’t you sit with me? On my last day?”

“Of course! I just need a plate of my own,” she said, nabbing a plate off a nearby stand and setting it down across from me. “You think I’m not sittin’ with you on your last day? You must not know me at all!”

I chuckled. “Silly me.”

Moss and I dug into our breakfasts, settling that top layer of primal hunger in silence before allowing ourselves the opportunity to chat.

“So… Rarity.”

“Mm?”

“Can I ask you a question?” Moss asked, her tone serious and businesslike.

I swallowed, nodded. “Of course, dear, what is it?”

Moss sighed. “Well, it’s just… Okay. I know you love the diner. I know you love the diner in ways I can’t quite comprehend, to be frank. But I’ve been thinking: I need to change the name.”

I cocked my head. “What’s wrong with ‘Big Joe’s?’ I thought you liked Big Joe.”

“Of course I like Big Joe! I like him plenty. But he’s gone now, and I can’t help but think that I need to… to give this place a more personal touch. Something that’s mine,” Moss said. She held a hoof over her heart and smiled. “Only problem is I can’t think of another name. ‘Mossy Diner’ ain’t exactly appetizing--”

“Well, neither is ‘Big Joe’s,’ if you ask me,” I added.

Moss giggled. “I ‘spose that’s true. I guess I was just wonderin’ if you had any ideas.”

I had an idea. I had an idea immediately. But I had to play it off like it wasn’t a big deal. I couldn’t possibly explain the depth and nuance of meaning behind the name of the diner I had known. “Well… What would you think of ‘Open Doors Diner?’”

Moss furrowed her eyebrows. “That’s… interesting.”

I quickly shrugged it off. “It’s nothing. Just an idea.”

Moss shook her head. “No, no. I like it, Rares. In fact, I think it might be just the thing. Kinda… warm and welcoming, isn’t it?”

I smiled, feeling a well of tears rise in my chest. “My thoughts exactly.”

“Open Doors, it is!” Moss pounded her hoof on the table emphatically. “Guess I’d better order some new neon, huh? Say!”

I swallowed quickly “Yes, dear?”

“While I’m at it, what would you say to some blue neon diamonds over the pie case?” Moss gestured to an otherwise empty bit of wall behind the breakfast bar. “It’s needed something. Might be the perfect place to keep a bit of you around.”

I sniffled, waving a hoof in front of my face to dry the hints of tears in my eyes. “Moss, stop it! You’re going to make me cry!”

“Good! I’ve already spent the morning cryin’, you’re not escaping this without a few tears,” Moss said with her own teary smirk. “Better get it in fast, too-- just when is it you’re leaving?”

I sighed. “Well, if I did my math right… around 10:30?”

Moss furrowed her brows. “Does it usually take you a lot of math to plan your trips?”

I chuckled. “Oh, it’s not that-- an old friend of mine is coming to pick me up. I’m not certain how long it will take her to get here, exactly.”

Moss gasped. “Is she another Element-Bearers? Gosh, and I didn’t even do my hair or--”

I held up a hoof to stop her. “Rainbow Dash can’t tell the difference, anyway.”

Moss put both hooves on the table and hoisted herself up to nearly a head taller than myself. “Rainbow Dash is coming here?! The Wonderbolt?!” Her eyes were wide, and filled with something between fear and awe.

“I’ve talked about her hundreds of times, Moss! Why would you be nervous now?”

“Well, that was just talk!” Moss insisted. “I didn’t know she was coming here-- do you think she’ll want to eat here? Oh, Celestia, I’m not ready…” She flopped back down into the booth, with hissed under her weight. Her head lolled back to gaze up at the ceiling.

“Mossy, darling, if I thought you needed warning I would have given it to you!” I reached across the table and put a reassuring hoof on hers. She tilted her head forward to glare at me in consternation. “It’s really nothing. Please trust me.”

Moss whimpered.

“Please?” I asked, pressing into her hoof a bit. “I’m sure she’ll love your food, dear!”

Moss grumbled something.

“Pardon?”

A deep sigh. “What’s her favorite?”

I laughed. “Asking Rainbow Dash her favorite food is like asking Luna’s favorite star!” I laughed some more, then settled myself. “Although, now that you mention it, she isn’t big on pie.”

Moss turned to look over the massive feast she had prepared for the two of us, including a few breakfast pies made of egg and tomato. “Well… I guess there’s enough…”

“There’s enough food here for a small army, Moss! Of course there’s enough for my friend.”

“Well…” Moss tapped her hooves repeatedly on the tabletop. “Fine, fine. Just let me get some more potatoes out here, okay? Does she like potatoes?”

“She--”

“Blue!” Moss was already up, shouting for her now-employee. “Blue, help me bring out some more potatoes!”

I sighed and settled back into the booth. Seeing Blue Moon was… well, it was indescribable. It couldn’t possibly make me angry, that wasn’t fair-- she hadn’t done the things that had made me angry in the first place. But I couldn’t exactly be her friend, either. Even knowing that she was capable of the things she had done was enough to turn our relationship sour.

Blue sensed this, I think. She knew I disliked her, at the very least. And maybe it wasn’t fair. But, then, maybe it was.

Blue Moon came out of the swinging double door which lead to the kitchen holding a tray of fried potato hash. She was wearing an apron, her mane pulled back in a tight bun. A little less hostile, but certainly not friendly like everypony else here.

“Hello, Blue,” I said.

“Rarity.”

I swallowed, paused. “I’m… Well, I’m leaving today.”

Blue was not looking at me, just arranging trays on the nearby tables. “So I heard.”

“Hm.” I nodded to myself. “Well, I just--”

“I’m sorry.”

I was so taken aback that it took me a moment to gather a response. “Excuse me?”

Blue sighed, turned to face me with a flick of her head. “Look, don’t make me say it again. I don’t even know why I wanna tell you that so bad, but I couldn’t let you leave without saying so.”

“That you’re sorry?”

“Yep.”

“What makes you think that you owe me an apology?” I asked.

That lingering image of a dark hood draped around Blue’s shoulders intensified for an instant. Her tired eyes, her nervous looks. The way she set her jaw before she lied.

“I’d tell you if I knew,” Blue said, very matter-of-factly for a pony in her circumstances. “Swear to the sisters, I would. But I just get this feeling that I… I did something I oughta be sorry for.”

I considered telling her, I really did. I wanted to. Wanted to tell her of the horrible things she had done, wanted to run her out of town just like Nightwhisper (or, rather, Jet Fuel, as I had discovered his given name to be) and his gang of brutes. I wanted to make her live with the knowledge of what she had done, because that’s what I was living with.

But… I couldn’t give her that.

“Sorry, dear, I’ve absolutely no idea what it could be,” I said. “You seem like a fine pony to me.”

“Yeah, well…” Blue shrugged. “It was more for me than for you, anyway.”

And, just like that, she breezed back into the kitchen.

I wouldn’t see Blue Moon ever again.

Moss came back out, bearing more potatoes. “This look like enough?” She asked between pants.

I giggled, a little snort sneaking out. “I already told you, it’s plenty!”

“Well, it’ll have to be! Rainbow Dash will be here any minute, after all,” Moss said, glancing up at the clock.

“Any minute?!” It was my turn to stand up in the booth. Moss was right-- just five minutes to 10:30. “Goodness, I slept later than I thought! I-I’ve got to go, I’ve got to meet her!”

I leapt out of my seat and darted towards the door. The little bell tinkled over my head as I blew through at lightning speed-- speeds that might make even Rainbow Dash jealous.

“Hurry back!” Moss called after me.

But I was gone. As quickly as I was out the door, thoughts of the diner were behind me.

Rainbow Dash. She was coming here, would be here any minute, any second! I could finally tell her all the things I hadn’t had the time for. I could finally be back with her, over our silly fights and past the endless nightmare of the empty desert.

I tore over the sand with the skill and grace of a cat. The butte came closer and closer as I did, memories flashing through my mind like photos in a slideshow.

The way Rainbow had appeared in that shopping center, when I saw it on the edge of the Everfree Forest in a dream. The countless times we had woken up inside, holding each other tightly out of fear and desperation. Our time there as prisoners, our time there as refugees.

The way the light had shone through Rainbow’s feathers like stained glass, had ringed her head like a halo.

She had been an angel, sent to me by the God of this realm.

And, with that, she was sent to me again.

I could hear the familiar explosive sound--oh, how had I not heard it before?--of Twilight’s teleportation magic echoing through the shopping center as I galloped toward it with everything I had. Shouts followed; cries of confused and terrified construction works, who yelled safety warnings and barked instructions at the visitor.

“Outta my way! She’s waiting for me!”

I didn’t have the breath to gasp. “Rainbow!”

Another familiar sound as Rainbow Dash shot through the air and out of the building, a rainbow streak of light trailing just behind her.

She froze just outside the doors. The remaining power of her flight kicked up a whole cloud of sand and ruffled her mane and tail.

She looked at me for a moment, not sure what to do or say.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Rainbow Dash!”

“Rarity!” she screamed back without a moment’s hesitation.

She wound up and rocketed towards me with the power of full-sized airship. I was knocked to the ground and backwards several meters through the sand. As much as I would have hated that just a few short years ago, I was laughing all the while.

“You’re here!” Rainbow was saying, over and over, as she burrowed into my neck. “Great Celestia, you’re here! You’re here, you’re fucking here!”

Laughter turned to tears as I returned Rainbow’s hug. “You told me to wait! You told me to wait, and I waited for you!”

Rainbow pulled away to look at me, and I gazed into her wide eyes. Wide and clear, without a trace of haziness.

The tears that spilled onto my chest as she looked down at me were clear, too. “You waited… for me?” Not really a question, but a statement of utter disbelief. “And you remember?”

I nodded and sniffled. “I remember.” I reached up and stroked her cheek with one hoof. The fur there was so soft, marred only by the tracks of her relieved tears.

Rainbow stared at me, her eyes tracing every curve of my face with the urgency of a foal scanning her notes before a quiz. All familiar, but ephemeral. Like it could go away in the blink of an eye and none would be the wiser.

I reached up with my other hoof and cradled her other cheek. “I’m not going anywhere, I promise. I’m here.”

Rainbow drew my right hoof away from her face and moved it to her chest. There, she pressed her own hoof against mine, as if trying to imprint the shape of my sole into her fur would keep me there more permanently.

I giggled. The way she looked at me with a longing that had finally been fulfilled… it made a fire grow in my chest.

She released my hoof. I let it fall into the sand. With my other, I traced backwards, admiring the new style of Rainbow’s mane. “You let it grow out,” I said. It no longer looked like Wonderbolt cut, not like a mini Spitfire. It was her own again.

“You kept yours short,” Rainbow said, handling one curl very delicately.

“I like it,” we said together.

Her hoof followed the curve of my head down to my jaw and tilted my chin upwards ever so slightly. There was something different in her eyes, now. 

Before I could figure out what it was, she lowered her head and kissed me.

I kissed her back.

We would have stayed there forever, I think, had our emotions not gotten the better of us. We both started to laugh, or maybe cry, or maybe both, and our kiss was broken.

Rainbow rolled over and flopped into the sand beside me, still laugh-crying. She reached one hoof around my barrel and drew me into an embrace, her face buried in the fluff on my chest. We laughed and cried together, holding each other all the while, until Rainbow finally managed words.

“I love you, Rarity. I love you so fucking much. I’ve waited so long to tell you that, years and years and--”

“Hush, darling.” I stroked her mane gently. “I know. I love you too.”

It wasn’t silence. There was the sound of the construction, which hadn’t halted. There was the sound of the wind, which hadn’t stopped blowing. There was the sound of our shaking breaths as we tried to stop crying and laughing and whatever else we were doing. 

But it shouldn’t have stopped. As much as I wanted it to.

Things can’t stay the same forever.

The shifting sands which had once held me back now cradled me so gently.
> SNEAK PEEK: Pathway
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The morning is when I feel real.

I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s because I’ve just woken up from a dream, and the real world is so much more real by comparison that I feel almost normal. Not that I ever remember my dreams, of course. 

Maybe I don’t dream anymore at all.

Or I guess it could be that the morning is the part of my day that feels most different. After all, I have my choice of greasy breakfast at a roadstop diner. The paper and the patrons can give me a little glimpse into the lives other ponies get to live. Things are loud and unpredictable, and I remember what it’s like to be part of a group.

It’s a way of looking back into the kind of life I used to live, I guess. Not that I want to.

Feeling real is a blessing and a curse, isn’t it? On the one hoof, it’s great to be real. It’s great to talk to ponies and touch things and feel like you’ll remember it all tomorrow. But, on the other… well, you have to be there, don’t you? You can’t be picky. You have to feel things. Have to talk. Have to consider things and make choices and exist.

I remember the way it used to feel to not exist. Back in Ponyville.

Early in the morning, I’d make myself breakfast. I’d go out to the orchard, before the sun was even up, but there was somehow a light that brightened everything without leaving a shadow. 

Sometimes I’d start working right away. But sometimes I wouldn’t. I’d sit back against a tree and watch the world. There were never birds or bugs or even wind; just an empty world. An unfinished world. One that somepony had forgotten, I guess. It wasn’t quite Luna, and it wasn’t quite Celestia. Not night or day. Just an empty time with no ruling deity and no purpose.

Now, non-existence feels like waking up in the cab of an autowagon.

In those few minutes before I open the door and enter the world, I do not exist. I could die, could fall off the planet, could get kidnapped and defect to an opposing nation. Nopony would have the slightest clue, long as I disappeared right then.

But I never did.

I’d get out, I’d wander into some diner, and I’d order an omelet with onions and mushrooms. Then ponies would talk to me, and I’d get to be real. 

Then I’d get on the road, and I’d lose that right once again.

Just like that. A vicious cycle of meaninglessness, all to deliver stupid cases of stupid apple jam to stupid distributers. 

Nothing could matter less than apple jam.

Drive, drive, drive. Stop for food. Drive some more. Always another few miles. Always a highway disappearing over the horizon. Always more ground to cover.

And, when the sun finally dropped below the horizon, sleep.

Even sleep had been taken from me. No more sleeping in a bed, or even on a futon. No more reading a few pages of the next great Equestrian novel before turning out the lamp and sinking into pillow. Just curling up on the overstuffed seat in the back of the autowagon’s cab and passing out from pure exhaustion.

Except tonight.

I rolled my hips to one side. My flank squealed against the vinyl seat cover.

The dirty, old blanket I had brought with me was more for looks than warmth. Why had I picked this one? Why not the worn comforter, or a hoof-stitched quilt?

I scoffed aloud. I knew why.

The pillow, not just old and stained but lumpy as a head of cauliflower, did nothing to soften the hard metal edge on which I usually propped my head. I sat up, mashed the stuffing around a bit, and laid back down. No better, and now the stuffing crackled in my ear as it expanded.

I sighed. A deep and affected sigh, which nopony at all would hear.

It had been years since I’d had such trouble sleeping. Some dim and distant memory of an ill-fated sleepover flickered in the recesses of my mind. But, otherwise… well, I had never been one for counting sheep, that’s for darn sure.

“End of the road,” she said.

Who said?

I sat upright and peered out the window, into the inky darkness of the woods beyond the autowagon. Somehow, without any sort of sunlight, the trees seemed to be oozing an eerie yellow haze. I scrubbed at the window with the back of my hoof, but the haze remained.

“H-hello?” I called. I couldn’t help but think how muffled my voice must sound from outside the cab, when the voice I had heard sounded so clear.

A creeping feeling snuck up my spine, and I leapt forward to check the front for unwanted visitors.

Nothing but empty seats.

“What in tarnation…” I muttered, flopping back into the seat. “Musta been my imagination.”

And I knew that wasn’t true, but what else could I do? Stay awake all night, hoping to catch some mysterious intruder, and then crash my autowagon into the median the next morning because I couldn’t keep my eyes open?

I laid down again, pressing my back into the cool metal wall at the rear of the cab. My hooves tangled themselves into the blanket and pulled it up to my chin. It wasn’t much more comforting than holding a bunched-up t-shirt would have been.

Adrenaline faded. Exhaustion overtook me, and I slept.

I dreamed about standing at the edge of the Everfree forest, sweaty and bleary-eyed. Cicadas buzzed around me, but not in the normal swelling and rolling way I knew from summers at the farm; no, it was more of a low and constant droning that at once roared in my ears and faded so easily to the background.

My hooves were covered in little dew drops. I lifted one hoof, shook it off. The drops did not release.

I looked down, shook my hoof again. Still nothing. Just cold and wet, clinging to my fur.

“What in the…” I mumbled, now stomping my hoof down in the grass. The blades seemed to compress under my hoof, yet did not lose any dew drops, either. “Consarnit!” I hissed to myself.

Then, I looked up. A familiar figure stood at the edge of the Everfree forest, having come from nowhere.

There was a suitcase on her left, and a ‘slow, curve ahead’ sign on her right. She was looking to her left, craning her neck and rocking just slightly forward and backward on her hooves. She suddenly stuck her hoof out, pointing to her right. Hitchhiking.

“Pinkie?’ I asked, more to myself than to her.

Her head turned slowly, as if watching some invisible autocarriage pass her. A silent wind buffeted her relaxed mane and tail as the imagined driver passed her.

She stamped the ground emphatically.

“Pinkie!” I shouted.

She looked up. Looked right at me, almost seeing me, when--

The extended blast of an autowagon horn woke me with the power of a physical blow. I grasped at my chest and tried desperately to get control of my breathing.

Yellow light filled the cab. Little specks of dust floated through the early-morning sunbeams. It didn’t smell like vinyl in here anymore. It smelled like rain, sand, and sage. Besides the sound of the vehicles passing me on the highway, there was nothing to be heard at all. No breath of wind, no rustle of leaves.

I couldn’t help but think that the dream had felt more real than the morning.






To be continued...



P A T H W A Y



Second Installment of The Chronicles of the In-Between