> Zēnith
>  by ZenithStar
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Part 1: The Odd Arrival
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hot.
Why is it so hot?
Holy hell, it’s hot. You’re sweating buckets here!

“Gaahhh!”

You gasp, sitting up quickly, and flinging the heavy blankets from your bed as you stumble to the window, throwing it open to let in the cool breeze. The midmorning sun glares in at you through the trees, making you squint.

“What the hell. Why was the room so...”

You trail off as your gaze finds your quietly humming beast of a computer sitting on your desk.
On.

“Oh, right.”

You must have accidently left it on again; last night had been a long one. There was a big order to process for some office building in town — 20 brand new workstations — and you really needed the cash.

You had been trying to save up to move out of this one-horse town since you got your hands on your very first clunker of a computer at age 10. It’s not that you didn’t love your parents, but they were the simple type, and awfully wary of new technology. Five years ago, after your 18th birthday, you got your own den, trying to make a living on what you saw as a growing industry, though to date it still hasn’t let you escape “the sticks,” as “them city slickers” call it.

This place has little appreciation for technology, so the fact that you have any business at all is only because big banks and the like were pushing the local stores to go digital, at least in part. Checkout systems, inventory terminals, and the occasional cubicle station were all you could sell. All mundane to the extreme compared to what you were interested in, with low-end hardware to match. Thank god for the fact that they -always- needed tech support, or you probably couldn't afford to eat. The only thing that makes you think twice about leaving is the mountains.

Breathing the cool air of the Sierras as you hike, taking in the vast glacial valleys that stretch for miles from the very tip of a dizzying peak, or even just sitting by a lake and drinking a fresh snow margarita on sun-warmed granite... there really is nothing like it. That stark openness of nature was a calming break from all problems, electronic and financial. It was a way to escape the endless error codes, bluescreens, and incompatible drivers; the bills, invoices, and bank statements. It was easy to pack up the backpack and leave for a few days, maybe a week, if you had the time, and just walk. You could walk as long as you cared too, and sleep where you chose, enjoying the scenery along the way. It gave you plenty of opportunities to take notes on all sorts of fantastic aspects of nature, or just free time to record your own musings. It was a fantastic hobby, and it soothed your soul like almost nothing else, but there was no money in it, and one has to eat. All too soon the other half of your life would reel you back in to resume all the day to day tedium required to keep some little number stored on some server from running negative. It reflects your power to acquire food, water, and shelter, along with everything else, and while most people call it an account balance, you prefer to think of it as more of a mana pool. With life being in hard mode, it of course wouldn't just refill itself.

Speaking of which...

You notice you’ve been staring out your open window at the distant mountain peaks in nothing but boxers for a while now, and you’ve got work to do today. One good thing about this shack of a house: not many neighbors this far out on the back roads.

You gather some fresh clothes from the dresser and take a quick shower. Clean from the heat of your rude awakening, you sit back down at your computer, ready to finish what you’d been so busy with the night before that you’d completely forgotten to turn it off. Shaking the mouse, you see a shutdown dialog box, stating that notepad.exe wasn’t playing nice, and asking if you wanted to force a shutdown anyway.

Well, that would explain it; you’d been so tired you didn’t notice the prompt and fallen straight asleep. Odd, though; you don’t remember doing anything -in- notepad. Must have been a parts list or something.

You move the shutdown prompt off to one side, and pull up the offending note.  It looks like a postal order confirmation, like you get for computer parts, marked “Delivered” at the top. But this one is oddly blank, it’s missing the package tracking number, the price, and even the company that shipped it. In fact, aside from the long strings of #INTERNAL_USE_ONLY numbers, the only information it has is the weight (1 kg), your address, and the delivery date and time, 9:30AM... today.

You glance down at the computer clock just in time to see it flip from 9:29 to 9:30 as you hear the sound of tires throwing gravel in front of your house and a car motor roaring. You jump at the noise, right hand jerking the mouse wildly across the screen... and right onto the OK button of the shutdown dialog.

“Fack, no! Wait!”

The computer calmly proceeds to do exactly as you told it, and starts shutting down, the sound of the motor outside moving away from your house and down the hill.

“Dammit! Stupid gorramn piece of —“

You finish telling the walls what you think of your computers blind obedience as you jump from your chair and leap out the front door into the driveway, seeing dust settling on the dirt road as the engine fades off with distance down the hill.

“Who the hell...”

You turn to stride back inside, ready to dismiss whomever it was as having been late, or lost, or something, and catch your foot on a small wooden crate, sitting right in the middle of your front step.

Your bare toes jam into the hard wood painfully as it catches on the doorway, sending both you and it tumbling through your front door and across the cheap linoleum of your entranceway.

“Ohfackmytoejesusthathurts—“

Mystery visitor forgotten, you get up and limp to the kitchen, yank open the freezer, and snatch a cold pack from the ice shelf. You limp back past the entranceway into your living room, which almost doesn’t merit the title. It’s not much more than some milk crates of junk, a crappy old couch, and a TV that gets two channels, both of which are fuzzy. You limp around a few bins of old or spare computer parts, and sit down heavily on the couch, holding the ice pack to your aching foot.

You inhale sharply as your foot cools. “Ahh, schhhh... gah, that hurts! The heck was that thing doing there, anyway?”

You wait a minute or two, then, inhaling again, you gingerly lift the cold pack from your toes to check the damage. Not as bad as you expected, only a little bleeding and still plenty painful, but it should be better in a few hours. You turn your head back over the couch toward the front door, and see the tiny crate lying where it had landed, not noticeably cracked or dented, owing, as your foot attests, to its durability.

“What the hell box. Not cool man.”

In apology, the wooden crate does a five star impression of a wooden crate.

“Fine, be like that.”

You stare at the crate for a few more moments before getting up and limping over to grab it, taking it with you back to the couch. You set it down on a convenient box, and balance the cold pack back on your foot. Turning the ~15cm wooden cube over in your hands you see it’s made of thin planks, four to a side, all nailed together, and doesn’t weigh more than a kilo, all told. On one side is a piece of paper, stapled to the wood on both ends, with your address written across it in astoundingly neat handwriting. A gentle shake hints that it’s filled with straw-like packing material and a soft-ish object. You attempt to pry off the labeled end with your nails, but the box resists your efforts.

Grumbling you go grab a flat-head screwdriver that was lazing about with some dusty floppy drives nearby and limp lightly back to the couch. Jamming the screwdriver between the planks along the edge of the crate gains you a small gap, which you work at, moving around the lid, until the small nails finally pop free and the side comes loose. Inside is a mess of tan straw, packing the crate from wall to wall, and cushioning its still unseen cargo from any run-ins with rouge toes.

You dig into the rustling straw and your hands quickly meet with a minky velvet soft fabric object, slightly squishy to the touch, and shaped like a... pony?

You slowly pull your prize from the box, its orange coat and multi-hued blue mane and tail in stark contrast with the dull tans and browns of the couch where you place him, your hands trembling slightly. His blue eyes are expertly sewn, as are the small marks on each of his flanks; a tiny pair of snow-capped mountains with a trail leading away between them.

A unicorn.

Your Unicorn.

“... huh?”

He sits there, a slight smirk across his muzzle, while your mouth hangs slightly ajar, your brain not quite able to reason how in the world you came to be looking at what is quite clearly a fluff-and-stuff rendition of your very own pony-shaped creation: Zēnith. You barely browse MLP merchandise — well, maybe more so recently — let alone order a custom made plushie, — though the pictures from people who did -were- pretty awesome — but for one of such especially good craftsmanship to just show up...

“How in the world did you get here, my little pony?” You can’t but chuckle at the reference as you contemplate your quandry.

Well, there -were- the forum posts, but that was mainly for finding awesome pics and discussing episodes. And you suppose you -did- originally create Zēnith because you wanted to have a unique pony for your avatar instead of just using one from the show— as awesome as Twilight was. And you -guess- you might have gone a tad overboard with the details (In hindsight a cutie mark and explanation behind it wasn’t really required for a picture of his head, but it had been fun to do).

All that aside, you had never told anyone online more than your timezone, and certainly no one in town knew you watched the show, never mind what Zēnith looked like. And what the hell had been up with that notepad with the delivery info on it? It must have been open when you ran shutdown last night for it to interrupt it like that, but it already had been marked “Delivered”, and the time was for this morning. It was even accurate to the second! And on top of all that: who the hell was it from?

The show, like your hikes, was a welcome break from the tedium of life, but you hadn’t got much more into it than that. ‘Suppose you had just been forced further into it than you’d planned, but surely a present like this couldn’t be anything but good in the long run. It’s not like someone who was out to get you would go through all the effort of making you such a nice plushie, especially someone who appreciated the miniature equine form, right?

Carefully placing plushie Zēnith back in the straw, you limp him and the box back to your desk, tossing your hot compress — a sock filled with lavender-scented rice — in the microwave to warm up.

Your ever obedient computer comes online with a quick press of its the power button, and setting aside the crate you lift Zēnith for a closer inspection while it boots.

“Alright little guy, where are you from..?”

You turn him over, looking for any tags.
None.

You check the box for a card, packing slip, return address, or anything.
Nope.

You see if the address paper yields any clues.
Nada.

Hm, well, there is the writing... maybe it can be identified? But without access to some giant police database or something your hopes of finding a match are slim to none, it sure doesn’t look familiar to you...

Actually, it kinda does; the exact spacing, the even lines... The computer now on you pull up a new word document, type out your street address, highlight it, and in the font drop down select Monotype Corsiva. Well damn, that’s it. Somebody probably just traced it with ink onto a new paper.

You blow out a long breath as you sit back in your chair, staring at the crate with little Zēnith smirking back at you from the pile of straw beside it, his tiny orange horn poking up through the cobalt blue fabric of the mane right beside one of its lighter, sky blue, stripes. A quick glance at the clock shows it’s just past 10am.

Just for kicks you pull up the recent file listing for notepad, and much to your pessimistic expectations, it doesn’t contain anything like what you saw just half an hour ago. Even a search for .txt file extensions in the temp cache doesn’t turn up anything but logs and config files.

You pick up Zēnith and lean back again, gazing off into the distance in thought, and gently stroke his coat and mane. It’s oddly therapeutic, the material is indeed of superb quality, and you resign yourself to the fact that the mystery will have to wait. You still have to finish that order from last night.

Several hours of price hunting, review reading, and spec-checking later, you have what you pray is a list of compatible hardware for the order, and enough copies of the needed software packs to cover them all. You steel your resolve and press “Submit Order” on no less than seven different websites order forms. Oh to have a wholesale account, what a wonder it would be! A quick phone call to the office manager who placed the order with you and it was done. Until the parts get here there was nothing left to do, and by the shipping forms he had at least 4-8 work days. And since today was Thursday, they probably wouldn’t get here until almost a week from now, enough time for a most excellent trip!

The clock reads 2pm, and your stomach makes a strong point in favor of it being lunchtime. Hurt Foot complains that it’s still in pain, and that sitting is fine, but Other Foot to agrees to carry more of the load, and Hurt Foot begrudgingly agrees. You stand, stretching your arms above your head, as something falls from your lap to the floor. Looking down you see Zēnith, legs a bit askew, laying on his side. You reach down and pick him up, dust him off, and set him back on the desk. You go check the fridge, pulling out sandwich fixings as they catch your fancy.

As you move ingredients to the counter you notice the “End” on your microwaves display. You click the door open to find your not-so-hot compress. Right, so much for twenty minutes cold, twenty minutes hot. You set it to reheating as you compile your sandwich. 

Mustard, tiny bit o’ mayo, turkey slices, avocado, provolone cheese, lettuce, pepperoncinis; the works! You mangle together your sandwich and bring it back to the computer to eat, planning on browsing the MLP forums to see if you recognize the handiwork of one of the plushie makers there.

Funny comics and reaction images abound, but no leads on the source of your mysterious plush. By about 5pm you call it quits. Lots of people make plushies, but none that look quite like yours. You even checked your credit card’s recent purchases to see if you could spot any that might have been a sleep-deprived good idea, but no luck there either. That and your “high-speed” internet connection speed is driving you crazy. They just don’t offer anything better out here, and it -still- takes forever for pages to load.

A bit tired of all the ultimately unfruitful runaround of today, you decide to make good on the idea of a trip up the mountain. Practiced hands find all your gear and furnish it snugly into your trusty backpack, leaving the bear canister empty for food shopping early tomorrow morning It’s getting too late to go all the way to the store tonight, and it’s on your way to the mountains anyway. As you finish stuffing away your clothes little Zēnith catches your eye from his roost near your keyboard. You walk over and bring him up for inspection once again, admiring the level of detail paid to his cutie mark.

“Somebody really spent a lot of time on you, didn’t they?”

His blue eyes silently regard you with that same warm, lopsided, smile.

“Well why not bring you along? Your special talent was exploration, and I’m feeling adventurous!”

You carefully tuck him into a side pocket of the pack, making sure not to pull any stitches or tweak any joints, then sit down to plan out your route for tomorrow.

Perhaps you’ll go up that valley on the north side of the range? It had the most fantastic waterfall, and feeding it was a crystal blue lake, perfect for swimming. It was a bit farther from home than you normally go, but you -did- have the time to spare. You decide to go for it, and print out a travel itinerary to file with state parks. Thirty kilometers or so on day one was harsh, but powering up to that lake would be worth it. That way you could enjoy a few days swimming, doing day hikes, and generally lazing about lakeside. By now it’s almost 8 o’clock, and you’ve got an early morning tomorrow if you want to be on the trail on time.

You fetch some leftover pasta from the fridge and go to microwave it — discovering your now twice forgotten hot compress, and give up on it; deciding the food takes precedence. Your foot hardly hurts anymore anyway.

Settling down in front of your computer with your hot pasta, you look over the topographic maps of the lakes surrounding terrain. There are several good paths from it leading farther up the mountain that would make some pretty fun day hikes. One leads up to the saddle to the next valley over, and switching to satellite view (augh, so long to load!) reveals a wide, gently sloping plain, awash with wildflowers, and some small buildings off to one side. An old pioneering cabin perhaps? What a view they must have had!

Satisfied, you close the maps, and shutdown the computer. Dishes washed and drying, window closed, and your clothes stripped off; you’re ready for bed. You climb between the sheets and lay on your side, your gaze landing on your pack.

Feeling a little self-conscious you get back up, go over, and remove Zēnith from his side pocket. You haven’t slept with a stuffed animal in forever, but today had been long and weird, and he is ever so -snugly-soft-, yes he is~! Ahem. Back between the sheets you curl up, Zēnith’s tiny form tucked in your arms, his horn and ears tickling your cheek.

You speak quietly to the darkened room,
“Goodnight Zēnith, tomorrow will be a new day, full of exploration and adventure!”

With that, sleep lightly creeps over you, warm and comfortable, and whisks you away to the land of shapeless thoughts and pleasant dreams.
> Part 2: The Ascent
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ding dong.

“Mrmph...”

Ding dong!

“Nhh, go awehh...”

Ding. Dong!!

“Argh, fine... Be Right There!”

Modding your doorbell to get louder with each subsequent press seemed like such a good idea on paper...

You slowly roll out of bed in your sweats and a t-shirt, trudging your way to the door. It’s -way- too early to get people trying to talk to you. Better not be someone trying to sell you magazines...

You unbolt and open the front door.

“Good morning sir, package for you. Please sign here.”

Oh, it was just Zēnith delivering the mail. He hovers a quill and parchment out of his saddle bags, holding them out to you, enveloped in a light blue aura of magic.

“Hey, morning to you too Zēnith.”

You mutter sleepily, yawning. You blearily sign the proffered parchment, and both it and the quill disappear back into the bags, and out comes a small wooden crate.

“Here you go, have a good day!”

He hovers the crate over to you, and turns away, trotting back down the driveway.

“Thanks, you too,” you reply, taking the crate and turning back inside. 

Well that turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It’s always nice getting something in the mail, even if it was early. And the something is beeping. Wait— beeping?

The small crate in your hands is indeed beeping, softly at first, but louder and louder with each passing second. Oh-God-What-If-It’s-A-Bomb?! You quickly put the crate on the floor, careful not to jar it, and back away. Ahh, the beeping is still getting louder!!

Uh, uh, quick, what to do in case of bomb? Right: Stop, drop, hammer time! You drop and roll into the kitchen and grab the sledgehammer from its normal place in the freezer, but trying to run back to the crate is proving more tricky than you expected. Your foot now hurts quite badly, and the floor seems to be made of ice. The beeping seems to be reaching a crescendo, and you’re in full panic mode!

You slip and slide, managing to get into position over to the crate, raise the hammer mightily, and bring it down with an ever so satisfying crunch on the incessantly wailing box.

You’re laying in bed, covered in cold sweat, hand resting firmly on the large snooze button atop your now silent alarm clock. Its digital face glows an even 5am, and its light illuminates the dark outline of the Zēnith plushie lying next to you.

What. The hell. Brain. Your crazy dreams aren't usually -that- crazy.

Heart rate returning to normal, you sit up and swing out of bed, walking straight to the shower. You stand beneath the shower head and crank the water all the way on, not even waiting for it to warm up. AH! Ah! Cold! Okay, awake now! You kind of wish you had waited, it’s like liquid ice on your bare skin; clawed tendrils of winter rending the heat from your very flesh!

You sit and shiver, and after a few torturous moments the hot water finishes its journey from the heater to the shower.

Glorious warmth inches its way back into your frosted bones, and you regain control of your furiously shivering muscles. You take a minute to relax, then reach out and grab the shampoo, measuring a dose into your hand, then lather up your scalp. Man, sure is nice to have relatively short hair, it’s so easy to take care of. You rinse, shave using the small mirror suction cupped to the tile, and take a minute to relax under the water before shutting it off and stepping out onto the floor mat.

You towel off and stretch slightly, why were you so sore this morning? Going back to your room you toss on your lightweight hiking clothes and a thick jacket over them, it would be cold out this early, but you knew it wouldn’t stay that way all day. Be prepared: Dress in layers. That’s what they taught in boy scouts, wasn’t it?

You eat a bowl of cereal with the last of your milk and lace up your boots, munching on a granola bar as you heft your backpack into the back of your muddy red honda SUV.

What that old brute of a car of yours lacked in luxury it made up for in stubborn refusal to die. It had gotten you through some tricky mountain passes, and kept right on going, so it was fine by you.

All prepped to leave, you go back inside to lock up and turn off the lights. As you’re setting the bar in the track of your bedroom window you spy Zēnith lying on your pillow.

“Oh man, wouldn’t want you to miss out on this trip, would we?”

Despite the mysterious circumstances of his arrival you had grown somewhat fond of him. Perhaps it was a mix of the appreciation of effort that went into making him and the free-spiritedness that he represented. Whatever the reason, you tuck him into your jacket pocket, and finish battening down the hatches.

You finally climb behind the wheel of the car and pull out of the driveway, headlights illuminating the road and trees as early morning glow rises slowly over the eastern horizon.

It’s almost 5:45 when you pull into the parking lot of the local market. Good thing about rural communities, especially farming ones, is that they are up -early-. You grab your bear canister from the back, tucking it under your arm, and head inside. Your breath steams in the valleys morning chill as you pocket your hands in an attempt to keep them from freezing. You absently rub the soft plushie there, its stuffing returning a comfortable warmth.

“Morning Joe, sure is cold out.”

“Sure is.”

Joe was never one for words.

You grab the food you need, mostly dehydrated veggies, beans, and fruits, along with a sizeable bag of jerky, and another of granola mix. Considering it for a moment you also grab some packs of various dry pastas. Joe silently checks your items while you pack them into the bear canister.

“Takin’ a walk?”

“Yeah, got a good week till my order gets here, so I’m heading up to the falls.”

“Have a good one then.”

“Thanks, will do.”

At least he was pleasant.

You pay in cash and heft the now full bear can back to the car. You secure it to your pack and get behind the wheel, ready to make the somewhat long drive up to the trailhead.

The drive is mostly uneventful, but the view is pleasant as the warm sunrise fills the sky with pretty hues of pink and blue, soon fading to a nice, if partially cloudy, day. Traffic is light, so it’s only about 7:30 by the time you get to the trailhead.You pull past the empty kiosk and into the similarly vacant parking lot.

Finally free of the car you take a moment to stretch in the brisk mountain air, breath still summoning little clouds of vapor to dance in the morning sunbeams streaming down between the trees. You can’t wait to get out onto the trail and get properly warmed up!

You strip off your jacket — shivering from the chill, but knowing the discomfort would prove temporary — and deposit your trip itinerary in the drop box by the rangers kiosk. Your jacket finds a home back in your pack — and Zēnith, one of his own in a side pocket. You zip the pocket up over his face, stare at it for a moment in indecision, then unzip it again. You relocate him to an empty water bottle pocket, his front legs and head perching over its side.

“There we go. Wouldn't be much of an adventure if the explorer couldn’t see where we’re going.”

After a final check of its straps you heave your pack up onto your back, securing the buckles around you, and face off with the trailhead. Its old, tilting, wooden sign displays the text “Summit Lake 18 mi” You set off down the trail, two snowy peaks stand tall in the distance, the white line of the falls crashing down between them.

☽▐▓▒░☼░▒▓▌☾

The smell of pine trees, and of soft earth warming in the morning sun surrounds you, and you feel the relaxing rhythm of your footfalls carry you away into that special state of zen that trekking brings. The forest breathes around you, alive with sounds: the birds chirp and twitter in the treetops, the wind glides softly between the towering trunks, and even the occasional squirrel or chipmunk can be seen darting across the trail, or up a tree, as they go about their business.

You make your way along the tread-worn path, the foliage becoming thicker as you descend into the river valley. Overgrown grasses tug at your laces, their seeds trying to secure themselves to you in hope of being sown far and wide. Your legs seem to be taking longer to warm up then they normally do, and ache slightly with each step.

You finally reach the valley floor, and soon after the river can be heard through the trees ahead. A short stop seems welcoming, so when you emerge from the underbrush to the signature sight of the smooth stone of a glacial river valley, and the babble of a series of small waterfalls you know you’ve found the spot. You set down your pack and notice the wide, shallow, pool of crystal clear water between two of the falls, the stones that dot it make it an easy ford, while providing convenient access to the water as well.

You grab a wide brimmed hat from your pack and — straddling one of the large stones in the river — reach down to douse it in the water, placing it wetly onto your head. Zēnith seems to eye you from his perch ashore, and you return his seemingly sardonic grin, giving a shiver as the first few drops go down your back and soak your lightweight shirt.

You legs have started feeling better now, and you don’t fancy the idea of dallying too long lest they start cooling down, so you saddle yourself once more and quickly set off down the trail. The sopping hat keeps you cool from the sun — now overhead — as you climb up-valley, along the river. You look back over your shoulder to Zēnith in his pocket, a few drops from your hat landing on his head.

“See, good idea eh? You can stay cool too.”

The river burbles and splashes over its rocks as you move up the valley, the deep pools inviting you to stop and swim as the sun climbs higher. Fish can be seen swimming in their depths, and at one a dear on the far side of the river abruptly stops drinking to stare at you, immobile, as you pass. 

By 1pm you are thoroughly ready for lunch; your body aches far more than it should for this strenuous of a hike, and your legs are burning with the strain of lifting you up the large rocks that were scattered by the valley’s long melted glacial sculptor.

You knew that trying to get all the way to the lake today would be rough, but whew, maybe it had been a bit too long since your last hike. 

You break out some dried fruits and jerky and set up your hand pump purifier in a river pool to refill your water bottles.

“Maybe I should be getting more exercise between trips, huh Zēnith?”

He stares off in the vague direction of the small waterfall that feeds the pool you’re seated by.

Heh, talking to yourself again? People gonna think you’re crazy if you keep that up. Good thing you haven’t seen another soul all day on this trail. You’ll probably have the lake all to yourself tonight, if you can make it up there.

You grab another handful of food and readjust your position next to the pool, making sure to keep the purifier tube underwater as you pump.

Man your legs hurt... that last three km up from the bottom of the falls to the lake are gonna be a killer.

You finish filling your water bottles, put away your food and pump, and take off your footwear. Seated on a rock near the pools edge, you roll up your pants and dip your legs into the cool water.

Ooh! That’s definitely high sierra snow runoff, no doubt!

The cold helps to relieve some of the aches, and you sit like that for about ten minutes, enjoying the scenery, before you start getting seriously chilled. Moving to the sun-warmed stone riverbank, you let yourself dry off before pulling your socks and boots back on. You eye the position of the sun and check your watch. 

Welp, it’s just past two, so you guess it’s time to get moving again.

You recheck the straps and make sure Zēnith isn’t in danger of falling out before lifting the pack once again to its place on your back. The trees have started to thin out considerably since you first reached the river, the altitude and rocky ground finally starting to impede their ability to grow.

You feel bad for those poor trees... if only they could be just a bit more hardy you wouldn’t be hiking under the hottest sun of the day with no freaking shade! Stops to wet your hat in the river become more and more frequent as the heat climbs, but even so you find yourself soaked with as much sweat as river water.

You trudge up a particularly steep, barren, and rocky section of trail with the sun blazing down on you, panting, body on fire with the exertion. Your legs and feet hurting you could understand, but the burning ache of protests from everything else, that was starting to get you worried. You’d love to dip your hat again, maybe soak in the cool water for a minute or two, but the river’s out of reach below you by about 30 feet of hillside.

As you zone out into auto pilot, taking brief breaks to pant and rest, you start to hear a faint sort of white noise in the background. It almost sounds like wind in the trees leaves, but with so few trees you realize it couldn’t be. You near the top of the climb and the sound becomes a dull roar, a very welcoming breeze washing over you — and better still — tiny flecks of moisture blowing against your face! Could it be?!

You hasten your pace, invigorated by hope, and upon rounding the next turn your dream comes true: before you stands a vast stone cliff face, several hundred feet tall, and down its middle a mighty torrent of water slams off mammoth boulder after mammoth boulder, cascading downward before crashing with a mighty roar into a wide, frothing, pool.

Spray from the falls is carried by the heavy downdrafts it creates forward and down the valley, creating a small area of lush coolness in which trees, ferns, mosses, and flowers grow, and in which you now bask, thankful for the break from the oppressive heat.

You sit on a rock by the pools edge with your eyes closed, pack propped against another nearby, and try to let your burning muscles relax, reveling in the wonderfully cool mist between wafts of warm air. After a moment you switch to laying down in the mossy grass and lift your legs to rest on the rock. While you watch wisps of mist dance with the sunbeams in the branches overhead you contemplate your bodies unusual aches.

The fact that your condition was worsening is starting to get troubling. If you couldn't make it up to the lake tonight, so what? But the fact that you hurt this much wasn’t normal. It was like you had been run through a washing machine on ‘Heavy’ a few times and just never noticed. You slowly stretch your arms and back, popping a few joints. Why did your arms even hurt? It’s not like you were walking with them!

“Okay, okay, under 5 or over 30.” The old hiking mantra dictating the length of stops sprung to mind automatically. If you took more than five minutes the muscles would start to cool down, and if you then didn't wait at least half an hour all the lactic acid they would normally release would just lock into them as you tried to warm them back up.

You check your watch and gauge the sun for how much time it would take it to dip behind the high western ridge. Only another two hours or so of daylight, then maybe a few more of twilight from the sun reflecting off the eastern wall, if you’re lucky... Then again, it’s only another three km; a quick pop up over the hill, as it were. Maybe a quick nap, and then you’d be feeling right as rain.

You set your watch’s alarm for half an hour, and pull your jacket from its place in your pack over yourself, the little plushie falling from its pocket as you do so. Picking him up and brushing the moisture from his coat you snuggle him under your makeshift blanket with you, and relaxing in the blend of warm sunbeams and cool breeze.

“Sorry about that, you can nap with me. Don’t let me *yaawn* oversleep...”

☽▐▓▒░☼░▒▓▌☾

Bee-Beep! Bee-Beep! Bee-Beep! Bee-Be—

You let your hand fall away from the snooze button of your watch and roll over under your jacket, willing the wakefulness away.

“Come on, stand up, it’s late enough as it is already. Your watch says it’s nearing 5 o’clock, and with the valley sundown will be all too soon.”

You groan as you uncurl painfully, rolling your joints and stretching stiffly; trying to free yourself from sleep’s grasp.

Wait. Was someone talking to you just now?

You’re suddenly much more awake.

You scramble to a ready stance, managing to catch a boot on your pack in the process and throwing gear everywhere, but when you scan the clearing you see only what you brought with you, and what was there already there. You think about calling out to the voice you thought you heard, but decide it would be too cliché — not to mention creep-inducing — and chalk it up to the last remnants of dreamland.

Shaking the idea from your head you stand up straight and stretch again, properly this time. Your legs may not be burning anymore, but -everything- ached, maybe worse than before.

By the rapidly setting sun, this is about as lame as lame gets! Still though, whether the nap was helpful or not, if you want to get to the lake tonight it’s time to hit the trail.

Note to self: Work out more. Seriously.

You gather your panic-strewn gear and systematically pack it away, but when you’re nearly done you notice little Zēnith isn’t in your pile.

You check the ground around you increasingly frantically, scared that you’d lost him.

“Dangit! ‘Never take anything you’re not prepared to lose’,” you quote to yourself in frustration as you search.

You’re almost ready to start checking the bushes to see if he’d been tossed in your startled awakening when you suddenly notice him sitting on his tiny haunches on the rock you first sat down on, watching you.

You freeze, locking your eyes on his as you stare at each other.

You blink.

No, wait, right, he couldn’t be watching you. Stuffed. Right... You must have absentmindedly put him there when you were picking up.

You slowly reach out and scoop him up, placing him back in his pocket, careful to draw the neck of it just a little tighter around him so he couldn’t fall out.

You stand and regard him silently for a moment. You really don’t remember picking him up off the ground... 

Shaking your head again you get your mind back on getting to the lake before what little light you have left disappears completely, and don your pack.

The first few steps after a break were always groan-worthy, and this time was no exception. You force your limbs into movement, powering though the muscular distress with not much more than sheer strength of will, and plod one step at a time along the darkening trail towards the nearly sheer cliff face and its infernal switchbacks.

☽▐▓▒░☼░▒▓▌☾

How fucking tall -is- this hill?!

The path stretches away from you as it curves around the cliff that leads up to the falls’ crest. The tread of the trail’s only about two feet wide, and the steep drop off on your left only gets a little longer with each step. The shadow of the western ridge rests over the pool at the bottom where you had your nap, and is slowly making to chase you up the cliff as the sun nears the horizon on your left.

Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot.

God your legs hurt, sweat’s pouring off you, and your stomach turns over and over. Last time you checked you weren’t out of shape, out of practice maybe, but not the tottering mess your body was currently proving you to be!

The crawl up the trail all runs together, one plodding footfall bleeding into the next. At some point you notice the ridges shadow has caught you; the sun is setting.

Doesn't matter. Just need to get to flat land. Need a place to eat. Need a place to sleep.

“Some explorer.. I turned... out to.. be... huh Zēnith?”

You say between heavy breaths. You don’t dare turn to look at him, not with the drop off that close and your head as fuzzy as it was, but even so you can feel his gaze. He’d never let a stupid hill get the better of him! He’d plow right up that damn thing, hell, he’d take notes on it, not wheeze like some pansy!

You grab a water bottle from a belt loop and drain what was left of it, jamming it back into the loop and steeling your gaze on the trail ahead. The bottle misses it’s catch and clatters to the ground, rolling over the side of the cliff unnoticed.

You feel an angry clarity come over you; a grimly focused resolve. You draw your breath from deeper in your chest, making sure to use of your diaphragm. You straighten your posture, stepping more evenly and with purpose. Your pace quickens, and a look of determination builds across your face. Your arms, legs — and generally every other part of your body — complain loudly, but all are met with a solid wall of endorphins as you set your jaw and zero your eyes in on the trail ahead of you.

“Screw the pain, screw this queasiness, and Screw! This! HILL!”

From barely being able to get one foot in front of the other you accelerate to a respectable hiking pace, then faster, and faster. Your strides lengthen, carrying you faster still. Going about 7 or 8 km per hour without actually jogging isn’t easy, but jogging take too much energy with the weight of a pack, and even through the haze of your endorphin high you remember the basics.

You can nearly hear Libera Me from Hell playing in the back of your head as you match your rhythm to its own, using it as fuel for your fire, your ‘left foot, right foot’ mantra fading to a repeated “row, row, fight the power’.

“Do the — 

Ground is eaten up beneath your feet; the cliff bottom dropping away, and the lake drawing ever nearer. The crest of the falls comes into view over a hill in the trail. Wait, that's not just a hill, that's the top!

You charge ahead — your legs on full stage three burn — surmounting the peak in the trail and beginning the sweet descent toward that sapphire blue jewel of water, the last rays of sun reflecting golden light off of it onto the surrounding rocks and flowered slopes. The clouds in the sky are awash with a reds and golds between the two peaks that mark the top of the valley. Combined with the golden light gleaming divinely off the lake, only one thought crosses your mind as you finally reach the shore.

“Zēnith, our’s is the drill that has pierced the heavens!”

And with that you collapse backwards into a patch of thick grasses, out like a light.

☽▐▓▒░☼░▒▓▌☾

“Owww...”

Slowly waking, you find yourself sore beyond belief, shivering madly from cold, and huddled over in a fetal position out of instinct.

The sweat from your previous exertion had done its job in lowering your body temperature, along with help from the lack of sun, and the cold nocturnal sierra breeze. You ache down to your very bones, and your joints pop and snap painfully as you arduously uncurl and sit up, unclasping your pack from you. 

Your jittering hands fumble with the buckles, eventually digging out your first aid pack. You rip the pack open and grab the mylar space blanket, its thin plastic capable of reflecting almost all of someone’s body heat back to them. You wrap the sheet around you, tucking into it as best as your stiffened body will allow.

Crouching there, shivering in the dark, hurting all over, and suddenly quite hungry, you have a hard time remembering why you thought this place was so heavenly.

You look over at your pack, and at Zēnith lying near it in the dewy grass. For a moment you almost seem to grasp some sort of connection between the tiny unicorn and all the weird events of the past day and a half — but as quickly as it came it blinks away again, back into your subconscious as you’re overcome by a raw wire of pain down your left side.

The droplets on his horn and eyes catch the meager moonlight and seem to twinkle at you in sympathy and comfort as you gasp, the pain receding. Well, if you ever needed sympathy and comfort now would be the time. You reach out and grab him, huddling with him beneath the slowly warming blanket.

You eventually get your shivering under control, the tiny fabric form clutched to your chest radiating warmth — at least it feels like it to your still freezing skin. You gather your sleeping bag and bedroll from the mess you pulled out of your pack, along with your stove, fuel, and bear can. You lay out the bedroll, and try to make yourself comfy in the sleeping bag atop it, pulling the space blanket in with you for extra warmth.

“ah- aH- aCHoo!”

Your nose runs, and your head throbs painfully from the sneeze. Freaking great, as if you didn’t have enough problems. You set up the stove and fumble with the lighter, eventually getting it lit.

Ahhh yes, warm hands, that really rocks right about now.

You dump half a water bottle into the pot, toss in a random pack of dehydrated food, and add a handful of jerky. While it heats you retreat back into your layers of clothing, feeling feverish. It’ll be okay, you can just eat and go to sleep; you’ll have plenty of days to get better, and everything you need it right here. In the morning you can —

“Arhhgh-!”

You grunt and clench your teeth, gasping and doubled over in pain as it shoots through you; lancing from nerve to nerve. It was similar to what your felt earlier, but this time it sent after shocks branching outward, the pain fuzzing out into a burning that seems to fill every part of you at least once as it washes through your huddled form in waves. It ebbs gradually, the last ripples slothfully calming to a dull throb in your skull.

Fevers normally give you horribly sharp, bone searing, full body pains, right? Right? It’s nothing, it’ll all be better by morning, you just need some food, and some rest, that’s all.

You shakily reach out your arm, the muscles stiffly resisting, and the bones seeming to creak, but you nevertheless manage to lift the lid of your cooking pot. You lean forward, smelling deeply of the delicious mea-

Oh god that reeks! Even through your stuffed nose you can tell that something in that pot is rancid! You heave dryly, but get it under control before you puke out whatever you -do- have in you. You move the pot off the stove, setting it on an out of the way rock where it won’t get tipped over, and reach out to grab the jerky bag, and sniff lightly. Oh, yep, definitely the jerky, dammit. You almost heave one more time before tossing the bag off to the side in frustration — overeager to be rid of it — but the sudden tension across your back causes it to seize up in the worst muscle cramp you ever remember.

“FUAAAHHHHH-!!!”


You are pulled backwards into an arch as the muscles along your back do their best to free themselves from their bone and ligament prison.

“Fuck fuck fuck, owwww!”

Okay, things might not be as good as you keep telling yourself. The cramp calms down as you lie on your back, panting, but things may very well get -much- worse. Was this some kind of seizure?! Was there a self-test for that?

“Quick, Zēnith, am I speaking in gibberish?!”

Fuck, right: plushie, okay.

Maybe I’m just going insane, maybe it’s not some chest-burster bone parasite!

Or what if it’s both?! No one in their right mind would believe a story like that, and I’d be too crazy to convince them!!

“You’re breathing too fast...”

Oh god and then they’d get a face full of alien wing-wong, and it’d reproduce, and we’d all be screwed — AAH, Okay! What is that thumping in my chest?!?

“Too fast. Calm down...”

Oh Please, No!! Ahh! AAH!!

“You’re hyperventilating now...”

AHH, No! Not Like This!!

“Relax. I’m warning you...”

You feel your senses sharpen, your lungs hauling great gulps of air in and out, your whole body tensing in fight or flight. You feel torn between the instincts, equal parts terrified and hopeless, as both options hold little promise of salvation, and the urge to act driving at you relentlessly.

Calm.

Suddenly... utterly... bewilderingly... calm.

“Why am I calm?”

“Because you just went into shock,” Zēnith replies matter-of-factly, poking his head out from your sleeping bag.

You look down your torso at the unusually animate plushie, and your neck hardly even complains from the movement.

“You were hyperventilating, and tense, and in general that’s not healthy for your condition.”

He’s fixing you with a rather annoyed look, like he had to clean up your mess.

“Oh. Okay, um, is that also why I just heard you speak?”

“No, that’s signifies your tentative grip on what you humorously call your ‘perception’ of the nature of reality slipping from your psyche.”

He climbs all the way out and sits down on your lower chest, looking up at you in sympathy and contemplation.

“Oh... Well. Impoliteness aside, does that mean everything -isn’t- going to be better in the morning?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘better’. Things are about to get... interesting.”

“Define ‘Interesting’.”

He puts a fuzzy little hoof to his chin with an expression of mock thought. If you weren’t so unstable you’d find it wholly over-adorable.

“An adjective meaning ‘arousing of curiosity or attention’, ‘difficult or involved’ — as of a problem, or a conversational term used to ‘avoid admitting inattention, express indifference, or for no reason whatsoever‘.”

“Ah huh... what about ‘Oh god, oh god, we’re all gonna die’?”

”Ehhhhh...?” He raised his brows with a guilty grimace, not looking terribly sure either way.

“...Ah. Okay. One second.”

You dig around in the remains of your first aid kit until you locate a small cellphone sized device, the words “Emergency Personal Locator Beacon” stenciled on the side in bold red letters. You undo the latch and flip open the front cover to reveal a single thumb sized red button simply labeled “ON”.

You press and hold the button, and three seconds later the device beeps loudly, then lets out a building whine that ends a second later with a flash from the strobe light on top. The audible whine and flash repeat as you set down the device and pick up a bag of granola. You slowly chew a handful. Zēnith looks up at you, expression pensive.

“Forry, chou wvant shome?” you say, mouth full.

“Sure, thanks,” he replies, tail seeming to wave happily a few times at the offer.

You pour out a small pile in front of him, and you both eat for a few minutes — you watching him, and he with his eyes closed, legs folded beneath him. You wonder how he’s eating, since as far as you know his mouth didn’t even open, let alone connect to a digestive tract. But then again it was already established you were going insane, so you suppose that’s a fine explanation for this as well...

All your muscles seem to be trying to wiggle oddly, and joints all over your body are making disquieting pops whenever you move.

“Umm, Zēnith? I think I’m going to lay down for a bit now, maybe take a quick nap. I’ve been feeling unbelievably under the weather lately.”

“Alright. Remember, human: tomorrow will be a new day, full of exploration and adventure.”

His outline fades and blurs, slowly filling your vision with oranges and blues. Your body moves as if of its own accord, laying you down on your side, the shifting sounds and feelings from within you being pressed from your mind as something else blooms in their place.

It slips in around your mind, an unknown thought surrounding you, filling your entire perception with its nature. Your link to the outside world, to your body, is slowly severed as you’re wrapped in its caress. You waltz with it, laying your head against the warmth of its core, melting into its welcoming embrace.

It’s so happy, and kind, and understanding. Its strength offers you reprieve from the cold, and the pain, and the uncertainty. All you could ever need, provided, and in turn you provide for it, giving whatever you can, knowing the unconditional warmth of companionship in its truest form.

You soar with elation, sublimating into the delightful dance of such an intelligible and efficacious concept as this.

‘What are you?’, you query through your phantasmical thrall, holding yourself tight against the dreambound nebulae.

Suddenly, as if awoken from its slumber by your request, a darkness sweeps over your periphery, darkening the corners where once there was but light. 

The warmth holds you lovingly, soothing your fear with its presence, settling you into its grasp. As the shadows draw near you can hear their chatter; chittering clicks and tones that spread their cold sovereignty ever closer.

You quaver, pushing further into your protector, supplicating yourself for sanctuary. Yet, it does not shield you as it did before. Adoration flows from it, but it’s sliced with heartache. Its touch means serenity, its breath gentle repose, and you drink of it with faith, trusting it would not lie.

The umbral spectators gather before it, echoing chirps probing you, dissecting you with scrutiny. Their cold tendrils creep over you, but you look instead to your seraphic guardian, imploring it to give you its name, to protect you. It rests an olive branch against your lips, and swirls with ire at the unrepentant shades, its warning of silence implicit.

The gelid antennae withdraw, and from the mass of forms around you a boreal wind arises, swelling as it prepares to strike. With the resilience of your nameless keeper at your back you dauntlessly meet your assailants charge, bearing its incursion into your soul without fear.

The forbidding gale is within and without, but even as you feel your spirit wane, a warm breath against the back of your neck drifts to your heart, giving you happy peace as it resounds with a single echoing whisper.

“I am... Magic.”

Sleep comes for you, cold and fast, like a wraith on darkened wings.
> Part 3: Adventure and Exploration
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hot.

Why’s it so hot?

Like, -really- hot!

You roll over with a crinkly crunch.

And it’s noisy. And wet; eaauughh...

The light of an early morning sun shines through your eyelids, and light breeze brushes past your cheek. You squirm, stretching out your front legs, but something stops them; a cloth wrapped tightly around you. It crinkles loudly when you move, and the inside feels wet and crumpled against your hooves. Your tail is bound uncomfortably tightly against your hind legs, and your coat is matted with moisture all over.

You open your eyes and are greeted by a cool, clear, sky. The barely risen sun is just peeking over the eastern ridge, but even its fresh rays spread warmth to the scene around you. Squirming in your bedding you look about and find a placid blue lake nestled against the mountain cliffs, flanked by flowered spreads of greenery. A light wind flutters through the sparse pines and birds chirp happy greetings to the new day. It would be a very serene local, and just the kind of thing to wake to, if not for your oven of sleeping spot.

It appears as though you’re wrapped up in cloth, a layer of some shiny crinkly material, then even more cloth. The noisy silver layer is wet on the inside, soaking the inner cloth unpleasantly, and the whole thing reeks of sweat, both yours and... not. Plus: the whole thing is really, uncomfortably, unreasonably, hot!

You squirm harder in frustration, but the multiple layers of material bind your movements, and your legs don't seem to want to do what you tell them. Dumb fabric! You add a bit of magical force to your struggles, your horn aglow with energy, and are rewarded with a slight popping sound as threads snap under your pressure. Grunting and doubling the force rips the most inward cloth apart, then shreds reflective crunchy stuff, then finally sunders the thick outer fabric, freeing you from your roasting dungeon. Ahhh, that's more like it!

You stand up on all four legs, shaky for a second, but feeling much better as the light wind cools you and dries your coat. All around you strange objects are strewn haphazardly; a large bag of some sort with straps all over it, smaller bags filled with unknown objects, some of which seem to be food, and many small clear bags containing various odds and ends. A quick sniff at the food bags makes you think twice about eating them; they all smell like they’ve been left out a little too long, even the one that smells like oats and dried fruit of some kind seems... weird. You catch a horrible stench coming from a metal cylinder on a rock nearby, and you -know- no further investigation is needed to know you don't want to open it. You’re not sure what most of the rest of it is, but before you can think on it too long a small whine and bright flash steal your attention. It came from the grass a short distance away, and you move to investigate.

Nestled in the thick grass is a strange orange object, not quite a hoofs width across, with red markings on it. It’s enveloped in a field of strange magic, one that seems to be moving! The small crystal on one end — also strange in shape and in the way it catches the sun's light — is drawing the odd magic towards it with a high pitched whine. As you peer down at it the whine slowly builds as more and more of the magic is moved into the crystal, but then it apparently had had it’s fill.

*Flash!* 

Aughh, right in the eye!

Force!

You stamp a hoof, picking the cursed object up in your magic and flinging it in a mighty arc over your back, sending it careening far into the air.

Oops. You watch it sail up... out... and clear over the cliff. Like the waterfall alongside it, it drops down the cliff face, most likely meeting the same fate on the rocks below.

You sigh, almost immediately regretting being so hasty. It seemed important for some reason, maybe a relic? Certainly something worth cataloguing in any case. You were short tempered on account of waking up trussed amidst this mess, but lesson learned. Maybe some morning exercise would get you into a better mood, this mountain air certainly is invigorating!

Heading off around the lake’s edge at a trot you feel the comforting impact of your hooves against the stone and soil, and relax immensely.

This was indeed -exactly- what the doctor ordered.

Your trot quickly gives way to a canter, which in turn yields to a gallop as you feel the wind whipping through your mane and tail. Cool air rushes down your nostrils and fills your lungs, the warm smell of wildflowers light on the breeze, and you lose yourself for a while to the simple joy of the run. You can’t remember the last time you felt so alive!

As you slow your pace you see that you’ve made it about halfway around the lake — not bad progress — but a drink would go a long way right now. You approach the shore and bow your head to the clean smelling water gently lapping against the granite, your reflection in the water’s surface catching your eye. Your two-tone blue mane is a bit disheveled both from your entrapment this morning and the run, and it hangs at odd angles around your orange horn. Your coat honestly doesn't look much better; it's dry, but still rather matted. You look down through the water’s surface at the unicorn peering back up at you, his eyes searching your features for... something. 

Something about your eyes sparks an odd feeling of discomfort within you. You shake your head and blink a few times, trying to clear the sense of strangeness, but to no avail. You step forward to where the water is a few hooves deep, then dip your head to drink, closing your eyes to avoid your own gaze. The water is cold, clean, and refreshing, as it slides down your throat, and you drink deeply.

Ahhh, wow, you were thirsty. Must’ve lost more fluids than you thought. Just how much did you sweat out last night?

Your thirst slaked, you reopen your eyes, once again peering down into your their reflections, and once again getting that strange feeling in your gut. Grrr, if you’re trying to relax this is -not- helping. You stamp your front hoof down on the reflection, splashing some of the cool water up onto yourself. Hm, there was an idea...

You back up from the shore several paces, paw the ground a few times for effect, and charge at full speed, leaping forward as you enter the water. For an instant you’re flying through the air, water droplets suspended beside you, catching the rays of the sun. With a resounding splash the moment is over, and you’re submerged in the lake's chilly depths. Whooa! That’s bit on the cold side! Nice though, no two ways about it.

You quickly start treading water to retake the surface, gasping slightly for breath when you do. Left fore leg and right hind leg, right fore leg and left hind leg, back and forth, back and forth. The easy stroke carries you around the lake’s surface, and you feel the water rinsing the dried sweat from your mane, coat, and tail. You dip your head beneath the water a few times, shaking it vigorously as you do, making sure your forelock is clean too.

You see some fish swimming amongst the large boulders resting on the bottom of the clear lake, and dive down toward them, eyes open. The view through the water is blurry, but you see them dart away as you swim over them. Heh, silly fishies. Water’s kinda cold down here though... maybe that’s enough swimming for today. You come back up to the surface, and paddle into shore.

Oh, yeah, definitely was enough, brrr.

Water streams from your fur and hair as you exit the lake, the slight breeze now a little too chilly for comfort. The cold and wet triggers a reflexive shake to run down your body, throwing water all over the stony shore, and you set about using your magic to press the remaining water from you.

Pony, Null, Tide, Twins, Foe, Force, Vessel.

You watch the spell as it’s woven from its components, feeling them flow through your horn as you align yourself with each in turn, layering them in with just the right connection to the ones before. 

You summon a sieve of magic, resolving it into a polarized scoop. The force scoop tugs lightly at your mane as it allows the hair to flow through it, but the water is repelled by its surface, and gathers in a bowl shaped blob within the scoop. After your mane comes your coat, then finally your tail.

Now merely damp instead of drenched you dump the captured water back in the lake and find a nice sunny patch of dark granite to plop down. You find a nice outcropping over the lakeshore, but it’s covered in dirt, which would assuredly cling to your freshly cleaned coat.

Plant, Time, Wind, Force.

You pay extra attention to Plant and Wind as you work them into the spell script, focusing on your hooves and mane as you do. The components associated other tribe’s were usually a sticking point for unicorns.

You watch with satisfaction as the dirt blows away in an unfelt gust of wind. Or, well, most of it does. You grab a fallen pine branch and shoo away the rest before settling down on the warm stone, basking in the sun above and letting its heat soak into you from below. Between the birds chirping, the warm mid-morning sun, and the post-exercise relaxation, you gently drift off into a nap.

☽▐▓▒░☼░▒▓▌☾

*Whup*whup*whup*whup*whup*whup*-

An oddly rhythmic sound wakes you from your light sleep. It seems to be coming from somewhere overhead, and a way down the valley, from a location somewhere over the western ridge. You tilt your ears towards the sound, trying to figure out what it might be. All you get is the return of that strange feeling in your gut. It was almost like deja vu, but not quite.

You decide you need this interruption to your nap and the weird feeling it brings about as much as you need a hole in your horn, so you rise, resolved to find a quieter spot. Behind you and to the north the twin mountains rise steeply; the lake’s mildly sloped shore quickly climbing to a rough rock face. But to the east is a nice grassy plain, rising gently upwards to bridge over to the next valley. Scattered bushes dot its green hills along with a most alluring selection of flowers, and you realize you are in fact, rather hungry.

Ignoring the constant ‘whupping’ that drifts back and forth over the far ridge you make your way up the eastern rise, stopping to try a tuft of the thick green grass. It’s alright, if a little tough, but you assume that it probably has to be to grow all the way up here, given the elevation. The same goes for the shrubs, but they did have a hint of some herb-like taste to them. Finally you close in on a patch of yellow and white blooms, growing on stalks to about knee height. You gingerly nip one of the blossoms from its stem, and slowly bit down into it, savoring the taste.

Oh, Buck. Yes.

You dive into your floral meal, and finish the patch off in short order — the poor things never stood a chance.

You walk away from the deflowered plot of hillside feeling very satisfied, and continue grazing lightly up the slope, nibbling at the different colored flowers and relishing each new flavor; lost in this world of deliciousness. The sun reaches its apex, and begins to droop toward the horizon, measuring out each step up the hill by inching ever closer to its time of rest.

In the distance behind you the ‘whupping’ sound circles over the messy remains of your camp — mostly drowned out by the wind across the field, and your steady flower munching as you move from one brightly colored patch to another. It circles the camp for some time, before slowly expanding its path. You hear it draw near and look up as you savor a particularly tasty patch of some little purple blooms.

You spot an odd red shape — the same red as that flashy relic! — flying in the distance, long and thin, like an insect, with a bulbous forward half. Several black splotches dot the nose and sides in what you can only assume are eyes, but they’re largely out of proportion with its body if that’s the case. Several large white marks along its flanks appear almost too regular to be natural, but even after consideration you can’t make head or tail of the six patches of coloration. 

Speaking of being unnatural, for a while you can’t fathom how it manages to stay in the air, until once during a banking turn to dip down over the small pool at the bottom of the falls you catch the sun's reflection off its wings, which sprout from a single point on its back. They’re beating so fast you didn’t see them until you knew what to look for! Insect like indeed.

What an odd sight... well, no matter, you suppose. Both it and it’s odd flapping gives you the heebie jeebies for some strange reason, but you try to keep a stiff upper lip and let it go about its business. No sense picking fights on account of simply being mildly off-putting. It would actually make a very good catalog entry if you had your scribe set with you.

Having reached level terrain, and quite happy with the food in your belly, you start to wander around the large, and unusually lush, mountain pass that provided your meal. Across its wide expanse you can see several rocks — ranging from about three to thirty times your height — jutting upward through the verdant landscape, and even several widely spaced deciduous trees in what seems to be a rough line, their large round forms promising shade. That annoying ‘whup whup whup’ fades in and out behind you, and resolve yourself to ignoring it, along with the feeling it brings. The broadening view of the next valley over as you take the saddle is almost enough to lose yourself in anyway.

Entertaining a passing fancy in geology you make your way over to the nearest boulder, a big one, and take a moment to inspect it. Its surface is coated in lichens and moss; pale pastel hues clinging to its rough grey surface in small patches of color. It sits evenly on the flat ground, but upon circling it you see it’s been split in two, the halves only falling a short distance apart. The gap is about 30 cm at the base, and maybe twice that at the top, but all along the interior small fern like plants flourish, gripping the stone tightly. You gasp slightly at the unusual sight, and excitedly begin to inspect the ferns, the rock’s interior composition, and the estimated amount of sunlight the gap allows in. 

You’re so engrossed in the mystery of the little plants in the rock you don’t notice the increase in volume of the noise you have carefully been ignoring, until it sounds as if it’s almost on top of you. With a panicked start you do the only thing you can think of at the moment, and run! 

Unfortunately you are still inspecting the ferns, and have your head squarely between the two rock halves, so your would be escape only serves to wedge you firmly into the gap in the stone, flanks scraping dirt and plants from the walls before you come to a rest several feet into the opening.

The term “between a rock and a hard place” couldn’t be much more applicable if it tried.

You panic a little more, unable to move, as the noise causes a sense of unbidden familiarity and wrongness to fall over you, not entirely unlike the feeling you got from your lakebound reflection earlier. You swing your neck wildly around and upwards, as much as the rock walls will allow, but the angle of the gap keeps you from getting line of sight to the source. What was it that could fill you with such unpleasant sensations from just its sound alone? The fact that you don’t know somehow just makes the feelings worse.

As it circles nearby you try to quiet your senses and to feel for it with your horn. Finding it was surprisingly easy, but not the only surprise. It felt like it was enveloped in that same strange magic that the relic you threw off the cliff this morning was using, but much more powerful. Maybe if you could find a pattern in all that humming...

But just as quickly as it came, the sound soon begins to fade, and your magical link along with it. Whatever the blasted thing was, it was moving on, and you calm your sense of unease. Forcing yourself to take slower breaths you worm left, then right, slowly backing out of the gap in the rock, taking more dirt and plants with you. Once free you turn, looking back over the lake valley for the source of that strange rhythmic beat.

You spot the big red... thing, drifting lazily forward over the ridge, turning slightly as it went. What was it? What did it have to do with that relic and why did they both use that same strange magic? Well, form usually follows function, so... Something about that multitude of overly large eyes... it must have extraordinary vision. But something that big wouldn’t need good vision to avoid any predators -you- know of, especially if it could fly. Well, excepting dragons of course, but there aren't any in these mountains. It could always be for predation, you suppose, not defense. Of course that would imply... uh oh.

You gulp as the odd feeling in the pit of your stomach is joined by a cold fear. Are you being hunted by this aerial terror? Maybe it’s looking for the relic... or whomever broke it. They certainly seem related. You’re lucky you made it this far up the slope without it swooping down on you! You back up a few paces, then turn and quickly take stock of your surroundings. The sun is only about four spans of its disc from setting, and grey clouds are moving in from the south, bad news for any flying vision-based predators. There’s the split rock right beside you, and while you -could- hide there, you’d be a sitting duck if it found you. There’s a low patch of bushes nearby, but they couldn’t conceal you much, not with your bright coloring. Farther away one of the trees you noted previously stands over a more grown in area of plant life; enough to hide in you bet!

You gallop over to it, noticing that the denser plants seem to run in a curving line up and down the slope between each of the trees you can see. As nudge your way into the cover of the high bushes beneath the tree you see why. A small stream, only a hoof deep, lies hidden from view in the overgrowth, feeding the larger flora. You take a leaf from this brook and lay down under a particularly leafy bush between the trunk of the tree and the water. Taking a drink from the stream and settling in to wait for whatever that thing is to leave, you fearfully hope that your hiding place will be good enough.

☽▐▓▒░☼░▒▓▌☾

The next couple of hours pass in a miserable crawl while you sit unmoving, covered in dirt and plant matter. *Sigh*, so much for getting clean in the lake; your mane and tail are tangled messes, sticks and leaves caught in their strong fibers. You daren’t use magic to try to clean yourself up. You know that whatever that relic-guardian thing is it uses magic, so bits to bagels it could sense yours if you let it. You lay your tail over your front hooves and bite a muddy twig from it, pulling it free with your teeth and spitting it out. Yech, how ever do earth ponies manage?

Today had been going pretty well too...

Whatever it was keeps making wider and wider circles, coming closer and closer to your place of refuge. With each pass that terrible feeling got stronger, like you know a legend or something about this hunter-guardian, but you can’t remember. The more you try the worse you feel, until you’re just about ready for a breakdown.

You probably should have been trying to sneak off while it was on the far side of it’s loop, but every time it gets close you can feel its strange magic thrumming through your horn, and it feels so tantalizingly familiar, yet so perturbingly alien. You know you’ve never felt magic like this before — relic aside — but something about it was so... augh!

The horizon is red with the setting sun, and the dark clouds now blow low over the high mountain pass. You peek out of the bush, looking across the lake for the hunter. You gasp as you see it flying over the far ridge; for as you watch a bright light shoots forth from its belly, lighting the ground below with a brilliant white glow. 

Oh ponyfeathers, it could cast light spells too?! Well okay, you’d just stay close to the tree, it didn’t seem to want to land, so even with the light it shouldn’t be able to find you right? Plus the wind was picking up, and the sun was almost down, so it would probably go back to its nest soon anyway. Somehow the self-comforting reasoning doesn’t make you feel much better. It meant you’d also have to be out in the wind at night instead of warm and comfy back at your... your...

Wait, where had you camped the night before?

Why couldn’t you remember that?!

Uh, okay, don’t panic! The place you woke up in would be the most logical conclusion right? But none of that stuff looked familiar at all! You try and think back on it, but the memories of those objects, that place, all seem fuzzy, as if you were in a daze. You concentrate harder, racking your mind for whatever it was you were missing. Where had you slept? Where were these mountains? How had you gotten here?

It all seemed so close, like the answers were floating just on the other side of a thinly mirrored veil; you could stare all you wanted but all you ever got was your own puzzled expression in return. You could feel that horrible sensation in your gut, building in power as you concentrated on it, and not just from the approach of the flying monster, though it -was- nearing your hiding place, sweeping the darkening ground with its blinding light. Did you really want to know what lay beyond it? The more you pushed the stronger the feeling of dread became, and your body started to feel wrong all over, like you were being twisted up.

You let out the breath you didn’t know you’d been holding and draw a deep new one, trying to relax your suddenly tense muscles.

A few drops of water fall from the low clouds and you huddle into a tighter position against the tree trunk. Legs folded under you, frowning with eyes closed, and brows furrowed in concentration, you push mentally, trying to reach that mirrored plane. What were all those weird objects?! Why did they feel so familiar?! Where did you even live?! Could you even remember your own name?!?

Wait, you knew that one, it was... Zee... Zē- something... Zēnith! Yeah, that was it, wasn’t it!

Wasn’t it?

Your momentary joy had the slightest amount of self-doubt stuck to the side, and it was growing. Was that really your name? Something about it felt all wrong. Wrong like the camp, wrong like the beast casting light down into the plants nearby... wrong like your eyes; your reflection.

The noise grows and the rain gets heavier, but you drive it out of your head, No, Concentrate! You push with determination towards that mirrored film, rippling like the surface of water seen from below. A feeling of cold intrudes on you, clawed hands seeming to pull you away as they twist your limbs around. You fight their grasp and stretch towards it, reflection looking back at you with fury written across its features. Your hooves are almost touching, shaking just out of reach of the barrier between you. With one final shove you thrust your hoof through — the claws digging into your flesh painfully — and feel not a hoof on the other side, not the icy claws, but something else. Something nauseatingly familiar. Something soft, and hairless, something lumpy that grasps the end of your leg with fat little, round, squishy —

*Cccrrraaaacckkkkk!*

A bolt of lightning splits open the night sky, leaping from the churning black rain clouds around the mountains peak to the stone below, the thunder echoing off the ridges to either side.

You snap your eyelids open, the red glow that had been coming through them materializing into twisting shards of light and shadows who dance as the bushes are whipped by the howling night winds under the inscrutable gaze of the beast above. The noise is deafening, the impossibly rapid beat of its wings hammering into you, the perception of its shape deformed by fright, and with a sinking realization, you see it has slowed its pace. It circles widely around your tree, fixing it with its paralyzing stare.

Had it caught a glimpse of your coat or mane through the leaves? You had forgotten to mask your magic, was that how it found you? Stupid! What sort of vengeance would it take for the relic you broke? Does it have claws? Fangs? Can it breath fire? Even now the beat of its wings is so fierce you feel as though it could rattle your teeth from your jaw!

You find yourself in a moment of panic, and make a wild bolt through the brush to the next tree along the stream, branches and overgrown grasses whipping at you in the wind, and to your horror the things sweeping light follows you. To make matters worse your path takes you across a stretch of rocky ground where the sparse wind-whipped vegetation provides far less cover than you first thought. You carry your momentum to the trunk ahead and skid to a stop, risking a peak out at the beast. It’s impossible to see it though it’s light spell, but you can be sure it saw you. You at least try to huddle on the brush covered side of the trunk to stay hidden as it circles.

You’re trapped here.

This being the closest it’s come, and since it’s obviously detected you, you reach out with your magic, feeling for the right set of components to help identify the strange spell effects it was using. If you could make even a basic counterspell for it you could hopefully survive long enough to get away. The glow from your horn is far out shone by the light from it’s own spell, but as you focus inward, aligning yourself, even that fades from thought. 

Its strange thrumming fills you, nothing like the melodic spells to which you were accustomed. A great wheel of its power pours in bent lines into what feels like a reservoir, but it was harsh and angular; polarized in conflict, not the harmonious swirling orb you expected. Several large paths connect to what you recognise from the relic as a light spell, but a much larger and continuous rendition. At least this seemed somewhat similar. The wheel of power seems to somehow draw its strength from a cage in the belly of the beast where what can only be a lightning storm and a forest fire seem to be fighting, with the lightning storm in turn feeding of the energy of the spell. Most of the bent lines are weaving into and out of a web of structured spell so delicately fine and complex you can make nothing of it! It’s more complicated than anything you’ve seen in even Canterlot, though it didn’t seem that sturdy.

Wait, when were you in Canterlot?

You’ve... never been there... have you?

You start as a scathing noise booms from the aerial hunter, the sounds strange and grating. Was that its voice? The noise repeats as it circles. What was it saying? Comprehension sits just beyond the mirror, and you feel more dread at breaching it now than ever.

Another bolt of lightning strikes the mountain top, closer than the last. You start as the power of it reverberates through your horn, and suddenly you recognise at least part of the strange magic: Lightning! That’s what all those lines of power were filled with! How it manages to cast spells with just that is beyond you, but that’s magic for you. Though it does explain the caged storm in its belly. So it eats lightning, though probably only in small amounts... given how complex that web of spell you saw was, a full bolt would probably overwhelm it’s magic, and even if it didn’t, maybe it would sate it’s hunger, and it would leave you alone. At the very least it should be surprising, and maybe would let you slip away.

Let’s see, you’d need to wait until the storm was about to send down another bolt, then make the hunter the best target around. Best way to do that is to fire a beam from it into the storm... unfortunately you never learned how to redirect your spells at a distance, so to get a beam from it to the storm you’d need to be... almost right under it. So not only do you need to cast the beam, but also prepare a lightning shield spell? Grand. You -really- wish you’d at least learned how to cast though your own shields.

The hunter repeats its message again, but with more urgency.

You stand, focusing inward, feeling the fury of the storm as it rages around you, supplementing your horn’s perception of the weather with your mane, your tail, even your coat, anything to better feel the building power in the air. You repeat the spell formulae to yourself, waiting... waiting... There!

Your eyes snap open, your legs working on adrenaline and muscle memory as you rush out of the wildly surging foliage, directly into the blinding white gaze of your airborne opponent and it’s pounding wing beats. It just seems to hang there, perhaps sizing you up, but you know you’re on the clock in more ways than one. You squint past the brilliant glare and give it what you desperately hope is a threatening and determined look.

Lightning and Earth, Storm to Stream, Twins made Foes by Betrayal’s Path, Unity, Beam!

The energy gathering in your horn’s tip suddenly erupts forth with a crescendo of melodious notes, weaving through your focal ring, compressing into a spiral, then lancing upwards in a bolt of brilliant blue light as it ionizes a channel of air from you to the heart of the storm, traveling just past the hunter’s nose. With less than no time at all to get it done you rapidly summon up the shield spell.

Lightning and Pony, Twins are Friends, Earthen Foe Unite, Shield, Vessel!

The magic chimes true, though you think you can hear a slightly off key note in there somewhere. Hoping for the best, you observe it weaving through the focal ring before folding inside out and expanding, interrupting the last of your beam with a teal bubble as it comes to perch around you.

The hunter, no doubt surprised, initially tries to veer to the side, moving away from your fading beam, but what looks to you like a dazzling blue white dot amidst the black clouds one moment explodes across your vision the next, turning your whole world white.

☽▐▓▒░☼░▒▓▌☾

Oh your aching head...

You awake to the cold rain pelting your face, and twitch your ears to shake the water out of them. Speaking of ears, the only thing you can hear is ringing, and as you blink you see your vision is all but obscured with a purple-blue-black-white splotch of light.

You try to stand, but your legs wobble and give way, splashing you back down into the muddy grass.

Knew there was a sour note in that spell... probably should have put a few more protective layers on the shield, like light and sound. 

You try the one useful sense left in you; scanning outward with your magic, thankful that your horn, at least, seems somewhat unscathed — a miracle in and of itself. Fuzzy wobbles aside, you can get a decent, if basic,  picture of what happened. The plan worked... kind of.

The hunter couldn’t evade your attack quick enough, and was laid out on the grass a ways away, all four wings still. You could feel it’s strange Lightning Magic stirring, so you guess that it’s about as stunned as you. The overly complicated spell-web was still there, but as you predicted, it was greatly disrupted. Impressive how quickly it was reforming it’s structure, especially for being so complex. Guess it wouldn’t make sense for something like that to really be as delicate as you thought.

What was it about that web that seemed so familiar? You try broadening the scope of your sensitivity, looking for some missed part that would explain it as you again try feebly to rise.

Several resonances suddenly leap into your widened scope, no longer overshadowed by the beast’s own substantial aura. Heartbeats, the ripple of thoughts in the the rivers of magic: Animals, inside the hunter! Maybe they had been captured just as it had planned to capture you!

You stand wobbly, shaking your head and blinking to clear your vision. It’s still hard to see, but at least the outline of the beast is discernable. No harm in using your magic now, so you form a basic light spell and make your way towards the thing, hoping to help free its captives before it awakens.

Your light flickers, wavering as your view is further obstructed by the downpour in it’s beam. Your magic feels all but spent, and you hurry onward, a blurry outline of one of the animals pulling itself free from behind a giant scale on the hunters side.

“Hey!” you yell over the wind, “Are you okay?! Let's get out of here!”

It looks like they heard you! The one you can see wavers, then finally manages to stand up on all fours... then stands up again... All the way up. You’re magic fizzles and pops, then fades out completely, plunging you into darkness.

You stop dead in your tracks not more than a few meters from it, now unsure of what exactly -it- is. With its outline in mind that terrible feeling of alien familiarity settles into you once again, stronger than ever, and you take a shaky step backward. A burst of lightning chooses that moment to sear one haunting image into your mind: A -perfect- view of what you’re dealing with, as illuminated by that one instant of ghastly light.

It had a simian build, like an ape, but lankier, more vertical, and much taller than you had thought. It was draped in a long white coat, clothes covering nearly every part of it. What was left exposed however was light furless skin, ashen in the brilliant light. It seemed a pale specter, standing in a slight crouch as it was before the hulking body and motionless wings of the now silent creature.

It’s face you will never forget. It was capped with a dripping mess of darkish curling mane, casting deep shadows over its sharp brow. A terrible jagged scar cut deeply across its cheek and nose, and into the dark pit where it’s left eye once sat. In its place was a sunken ring of metal that glinted with untold malice in the sky’s instant of light, and at its center a polished sphere of the darkest black, as if reality had simply forgotten it existed in the space of that one tiny orb, save for the piercing reflection of the lightning as it connected soil and sky. It’s expression was the worst, though: a terrifying amalgam of gleeful malice and... pride? It mirrored a soul as dark and cold as its eye, with a tortured past to match.

Just as quickly as it came, the light is gone, and taking two more steps back in fear you hurriedly try to read the ambient magical energy of the world. The perception wobbles and tilts, distorting around you nauseatingly. The animal before you takes a hunched step closer, then another, slowly closing the distance. It’s form resolves little by little as it nears, but with each step it warps frighteningly, becoming monstrous. Your heart races as you stumble backward awkwardly, tripping into a puddle, splashing yourself with water and mud.

You barely have the cognition to curse your legs for their treacherous timing, trying to stand, to run, anything to put distance between you and that -thing-! Your body feels odd and unfamiliar. Your legs want to move at angles they shouldn’t, and you feel like you’ve fallen over, even after you finally have all four legs under you. You scramble and pull at the muddy grass and rocks, filled with an instinctive terror of the unknown.

Suddenly the hunter thrums with power once again, re-casting it’s light spell. The dark sky angrily pours cold rain down into the thrashing wind, and it almost seems to be falling sideways as it passes through the grounded beast’s gaze.

The being that crawled from the belly of the beast stands before it, suddenly looking for all the world like the vile thing’s owner as it bayed from his ankles, casting its masters bipedal silhouette over you.

You eyes alone can’t discern any detail with the blinding backlight, but you can feel the being’s single dead eye as it bores through you; piercing you with yet another strange form of lightning magic. You stand, locked in fear, shaking uncontrollably as the hissing chitter of shadowy voices claw at the back of your mind, unable to move, to think. The figure slowly raises a forelimb towards you, holding something, and a bolt of ice runs through you, pulling sharply at every bone in body all at once.

The image swells, overflowing your view. The shadows creep from your mind into the corners of your sight, drowning you in their chitinous din. Their claws seem to be tearing at reality, leaving long black gashes across what’s left of your tremulous vision, through which you glimpse an obsidian void. It’s depths are deeper than any you can comprehend, and it’s frightful infinity is only eclipsed by the creeping umbral figures that pour from it to join their brethren. You feel yourself waver, on the brink of plunging into that expanse of night whose yawning maws gape with such a focused voracity as you have never known.

You cast about for a solid hold, anything to tether yourself to the shore of that cosmic ocean whose waves of freezing breath carry the hardened claws of your foes ever closer. Something, anything! Your hooves feel numb, and you can feel the winds whip at your mane as if trying to pluck you from the earth itself.

You think madly, but the closer the figures creep the more frantic and disarrayed you feel, like your mind itself were being slowly sliced apart; thoughts erupting and being smothered into silence by their frigid spread. Between the fragments of stable thought the darkened depths howl icily, but there, amidst the swirling of the inky aether, you glimpse a single point of warm light.

You try to see past the writhing figures as they advance, shaking free of the knife-like grasp of those who close upon you, their numbers seeming to build exponentially. You find new strength in what little you can see of the light, bucking and stomping at your assailants, but as the swarm closes over you all vision is lost in the seething mass of their frozen blades and the raging cacophony of their chittering voices. 

You cling, to what you can’t be sure, for at this point there is nothing left to perceive but them, and you. They slice and cut, and you fight to keep the very last of yourself from being exposed to the terrible chill of their attentions. Deeper and deeper inward you focus, trying to build solidarity within your spirit against that wrathful storm. Layer upon layer of yourself do you harden and sacrifice to their ferocity, and slowly the galeful winds fade from notice, the freezing chill departs, and the nightmarish din becomes an all encompassing silence.

Calm.

Quiet.

Dark....

Nothingness.

☽▐▓▒░☼░▒▓▌☾

Black.

That’s all there is.

Or is it? Is the black even there?

What is black, when there is nothing else?

Could it be white, or orange, or blue? What would those look like?

... No, nevermind. There is no color. There is nothing.

That feels wrong though... there is something... there’s you.

Yes, that’s true, you suppose, for what it’s worth... which seems to be nothing. With nothing but me, what’s the point?

Hah! Point.

Nothing but me... 

You may as well be a single, zero dimensional, point.

By my innate power over the land of me, I declare me the king.

King of Pointland!

Here be Pointland! Me be King of Pointland! My own infinite universe of zero dimensionality! Zero King! Me be King! Me me me, me-me me me! Me-me me me! Me-me me meeehhh.... bleeh.

Why bother...

I am me, and here I am.

Yeah... or... I think so, at least.

Well of course you think that, what else could you think? Thinking is all there is...

Not much to think about, aside from yourself that is.

Hard to be sure that you’re even here, when there’s nothing but you. Funny, that.

Well... I think, therefore I am. So there’s that.

Better. But why?

Well if I’m the one thinking this, then it should logically follow that I’m here to think it.

Good. I was hoping you still had that in you.

Wait. What?

You’re borrowing some of what you shed so we can talk to us more easily now, hope I don’t mind.

What. You can’t even.... Pronouns.

You feel a tug, a... direction. You have a direction! You direct your direct attention toward this new direction most directly! The nothingness there — eee! You have here and there now too: Location! — starts to coalesce in a hazy wash of color.

“We shed and collapsed smaller and smaller, until all of our remaining resonance was compacted to something so small, they didn’t see us. They were suppressing connections, and with no connections, they left us alone. Smart. We chose the perfect spot to hide too. Though credit goes to you for that.”

The wash was becoming more solid, taking on hues and the vague notion of shape. 

I don’t understand. We? Who are you? And where is this?

“We are you, and... not you. Cryptic and useless, we know. To stick with that theme: We’ll understand it all in time. As for where, we’re at the base of your horn. The area responsible for analyzing resonant responses and generating harmonic signatures, to be exact. They seem to be wary of venturing too near.”

The shape swirls in washes of orange and blue, and slowly takes on an equine form.

You’re feeling pretty wary too as you watch it take shape, your shape to be exact. Orange coat, blue mane and tail, even your double mountain cutie mark!

“Don’t worry, we told you we’re just borrowing it.” It- they- you, sit back on your haunches, now fully formed.

You try to shake the syntax of that notion out of your nonexistent head.

What were those things, and why don’t they want to bother us here?

“The details aren't important, besides, we know all this already, or, we did. We will. What’s important is that we get back out of here. And sorry about the pronoun confusion, lets see if we can do something about that. We’re the only one here there is right now,” you see yourself gesture outwards at the nothing, “so we’re all we can talk to, or about.”

And here I thought maybe you were just using the royal ‘we’. Besides, no way am I going back out there to those, those... beasties! 

... Hey, what are you doing?

You watch as well- you, lower your head and start to trace a large glowing rectangle with the tip of your horn.

“They were trying to make you sleep, to make you vulnerable to their master, I suspect. And unless you are a very energetic sleepwalker, I’m pretty sure it worked. This, hopefully, will help us get back out there and face them,” he says as you watch him complete the rectangle.

It’s about twice as wide as you, and a bit taller than that, with a surface that shimmers as if of water, refracting some unseen source of light.

“Well, it’ll either help you out, or them in.”

Wait, why? What is it?

“A Mirror, and unless we’re incorrect, this may draw their attention.”

What will? Don’t give us away!

“Remember ‘Too Many Pinkie Pies’?”

Yeah, but that was a pool, so if you’re going for techni- wha- whoa- whooaaa!

Your point of view is pulled and twisted as you see Zēnith step forward with a grin, pressing through the surface horn first.

You can suddenly feel your horn, your head, your face! The feeling sweeps down your body in a single graceful wave as you step forward. You find yourself so caught up in the rush of corporeality that by the time you take notice you’ve passed through the mirror, and are now standing on all four hooves in the darkened expanse.

You turn around and face your reflection, whose face is wearing your smuggest top-shelf grin, the kind that usually makes people look like they want to clock you one — a feeling you can suddenly identify with.

“All right, fine. That was good thinking, nicely done,” you say with mock reluctance. All told, you were glad to be back in your own skin, even if it seems to also be over there grinning at you. “But if those shadows show up here, it’s on your head!”

“We’ve only got the one between us, genius,” he points out, tapping a hoof to his head for emphasis. “But point taken. Better make sure you can defend yourself then, eh?”

You doppelganger suddenly snaps his head upwards and to the side, ears swiveling as if to catch sounds yours can’t.

“What? What is it?” You turn and survey the void around you, finding nothing. “And I assume you saw those things too, how -exactly- do you envision me fighting them?” 

“I don’t,” he replied quickly, swiveling his head to scan a new direction, eyes darting over the uniform blackness.

You look at him sharply, “Pardon?”

A coolness was slowly settling in around you, and although it was nice to feel temperature again, it did little to sooth your nerves.

“I don’t. I never said you’d fight them, I said defend yourself.”

“Well how do you envision me doing -that-?”

“There is an infinite number of ways to accomplish any given task. The trick is selection and realization.”

“Okay, fine,” you retort, exasperated, “want to help me -realize- a way out of here?”

“Don’t worry. That part will happen pretty definitely.” As he speaks a light wind grows in the chilled air about you, and on the very edge of your hearing a rumbling howl slowly gains intensity.

“How about a way out that doesn’t get us eaten by shadow beasts?”

“You don’t know they’ll do that. Maybe they’re friendly, and all you need to do is be more understanding.”

“Right, sure,  and maybe all you need to do is give useful advice!”

He just shakes his head slightly, smirking in the most maddeningly calm way imaginable and replies, “Sometimes the best way out, is through.” Suddenly his face lights up with an ear-to-ear grin as he spins about, bellowing "Soup’s On! Come and get it!”

You can almost swear you hear an old-timey dinner chime ringing as he rears his hind legs up and kicks right through the mirror, shattering it over you in a spray of light and a torrent of frozen claws.

If you ever get your hooves on you again you swear you’ll throttle you for that.

The way out seemed almost worse than the way in, but as you fight the twisting gale of stinging bites and nauseatingly unnatural ways your body seemed to be twisting and bending, you catch a mental lock on that elusive pinprick of light. Feeling like you’re hanging onto a rock in a storm for dear life you pull at it, pushing yourself forward past the rending talons, quelling the wrenching in your gut, and tear toward the comforting radiance. Closer and closer it draws, widening slowly until with a feeling like being drunk — as in through a straw — it over takes your vision, and plunges you stomach first into your corporeal shell, but what’s there to greet you is hardly any better. 

☽▐▓▒░☼░▒▓▌☾

You wake, head pounding and mind a jumble of shapes and notions. The cold, the howling wind and rain, the searing light, all of it fills your perception, though none as much as the crouched simian grasping you, the utter void of his steel-socketed hollow eye, and the pull of something wrapped around your neck.

You do the first thing you think of in such a vulnerable and frightening position: snap your head up, and your jaws together.

Though not a flesh-eater, the feeling of your teeth sinking into the ape’s cloth wrapped arm was somehow -very- comforting in this context.

The ape howls — in pain or surprise you care not — and drops you to the ground on your back.

You scramble backwards in adrenaline fueled panic, managing to turn and stand, with only a few more jabbing kicks then may have been strictly necessary. You sprint for the cover of the brush, crashing through it in a mad dash, then up the steam, ducking under what you can of the waterside plants’ flailing branches and charging through the rest. A long soul chilling laugh emanates from behind you, somehow overpowering the storm. Hooves do -not- fail me now!

Something bumps against your collarbones in time with your hurried hoof falls, a lightish sort of something that you can feel in a band all the way around your neck. The idea that you’re carrying something fitted to you by the cackling disfigured simian puts a pit in your stomach, but since it’s evidently too tight to be rid of with a toss of the head you know you’ll have to deal with it later.

As soon as you leave the light cast by the beast you realize just how dark it had become, and how treacherous running over the loose river rocks would be. Even a twisted fetlock and you would be easy pickings, but you daren’t slow down, or even attempt a light spell for risk of giving yourself away. You move as fast as you can without taking a dive, trying to put distance between you and your predator, which had started to flap its thunderous wings, but has yet to take to the air, if your ears can be trusted in this din.

You stumble up the stream, bruising your legs and chest with falls against the rocky ground. Rain pelts the brush as wind fills your ears and whips at your mane, soaking you to the bone. Only the body heat from your exertion keeps you warm, and you know that even if that thing doesn't get you, without shelter, the storm will. As you get further up the hill the plants around your stream start growing thin, and you can see several faint orangish lights up ahead, right beside the stream. Shelter? Could it be? You hazard a look back, and through the low clouds and rain you catch glimpses of the beast back in the air, circling up and away from you. Yes, it’s leaving!

You hurry on towards the lights with renewed zeal, breaking from the stream and sprinting towards salvation. Oh please oh please be help! As you approach you can make out the form of a cabin through the rain, it’s made with stacked stone walls and chimney with a wooden roof, a warm glow comes from within; somepony was home! A rock catches your front right hoof painfully, causing you to stumble, but you charge on, limping.

The ground between you and the cabin closes quickly, and you skid to a stop, sitting freezing, wet, and out of breath, on the small stone step in front of the wooden door. It was much larger than you expected, easily twice your height. Whatever, you could critique their home later. You forcefully bang on the door with your good front hoof, trying to catch your breath enough to speak. You hear a voice from within, but you can’t make it out over the wind tearing into you.

You knock again, wheezing out words between gasps,
“Please- *huff* Help! *huff* Monster— need shelter!”

Maybe it was the wind, but your voice sounded off, even for being so raspy from running, and you are lightly drawn back to that mental mirror; that unfamiliar familiarity edging back into you.

The door is flung inwardly open to reveal a pleasant cabin interior; a warm fire, some comfy chairs, and the end of a hollow metal tube very close to your face. You flinch back, it’s aimed just over your head, but quickly drops to correct... then slowly lowers to the floor as the face behind it comes into focus. You sit there gasping for breath, hurt front hoof held off the ground, staring at each other.

She’s cute. Reddish brown hair, somewhat form fitting green pajama pant and shirt, mid-twenties or so you’d guess. Something seems off though... is it the freckles? No... not the shocked expression either... she just looks a little... gah! There’s that feeling again... like you should know something but can't quite place it... Your head feels tight as blackness closes in on your vision, and you waver woozily in your seat.

You’re staring at the mirror, drifting slowly towards it; your reflection eyeing you with mild shock, and not a little fear. You call out to it, feeling as if it could help you for some unknown reason, but it merely mimics your plea. In the reflection you can see shadowy beings creeping around, their chitter tickling your consciousness. Suddenly you don’t think you want to know what’s on the other side, but apparently you don’t get an option this time. A blurred and ghostly visage of a face like the girl’s floats over your own. It’s harder, more angular, not unlike... the same as... but not...

The figures are trying to hold your reflection back, but it fights them off, pulling you closer as it advances. As you get close enough you lock gazes with yourself, frozen in fear at your doppelgangers vehement expression, twisting as it was into something else... something altogether too apelike. You make contact with the icy surface, and for a split second time seems to halt.

The mirror shatters, and a torrential downpour of memories flood around you, the darklings screeching in outrage as you feel them rip at your limbs, twisting and pulling your legs outward, smashing your hooves, ripping them apart. You see flashes of everything: your parents, where you grew up, your childhood friends, your room, all distorted and torn by the shadows and their hatred to the point of ruin. Names, faces, colors, smells, all were muddied and broken, like some cruel Kafkan joke.

As if a siphon had taken hold of you, you’re pulled back down into your cold wet shell, battered and bruised more than just physically, but intact, if as much could be said.

Something had been done to you, something you were never supposed to realize had taken place, but now the damage was done, and the retribution was humbling.

“Human...” you manage to the girl in front of you, slowly pointing a hoof, eyes as wide as saucers, jaw slack.

“Unicorn...” she replies, extending a finger, a similar expression across her face.

You fall to the floor, a soaking crumpled mess of twigs, mud, leaves, and exhausted pony. Your last waking thought was to the only thing you could remember with any clarity.

Your name.

Zēnith.
> Part 3.5: Then Clap Your Hands
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An absolutely filthy, blue haired, orange coated, and if she wasn’t mistaken, -talking- unicorn was quite possibly the last thing Astrid would have expected when she opened the door to that storming night, yet here it was, lying in a dripping heap across her door frame.

She hadn’t really expected something that would actually warrant the use of the hunting rifle, now hanging limply from her hand, but one too many spooky stories of psycho murderers in the mountains had made her a bit paranoid. I mean, honestly, a young woman, alone in a mountain cabin, on a dark and stormy night, she hears a knock on her door, and what? Thinks it’s the pizza delivery guy?

It may not have been a murderer, but now she had to wonder if she was the one going psycho. It’s still lying there face down, wet hair dripping on the wooden floor, just as orange, and blue, and unicorn...y as ever. 

*nudge*

*nudge* *nudge*

A couple prods from the boot confirm that it is indeed solid, and quite unconscious. It’s poor head rolls pathetically to the side, revealing a collar secured around its neck. Not yet far enough inside to completely escape the rain, rivulets of water run from it’s coat, and the harsh wind alone makes Astrid shiver.

“Okay, seriously, what the hell?”

Astrid’s head pokes out of the door, looking left, then right. Seeing nothing besides thick storm clouds rolling low over the high mountain pass she looks down at the pitifully dripping form at her feet once again. This has to be the weirdest animal rescue she’d ever heard of, but (possibly imaginary) mythological creature or not, she couldn’t just leave it there. It didn’t look dangerous, and if it was then, well... she just hoped it wasn’t dangerous, hefting the weight of the rifle back onto its wall rack near the door.

“Can’t even take a vacation without an animal needing rescuing. Though admittedly this is much more ‘hands-on’ than most... Omph, you’re heavy!”

Scooping the sopping wet creature up into her arms was tricky; it was heavier than it looked, and as anyone who handles sleeping children can attest, about as unwieldy as a misshapen back of rocks, if presumably more delicate. It seems about the size of a big dog, like a great dane or irish wolfhound, but built a bit more softly.

The presence of the blue collar was also puzzling, as in Astrid’s experience collars had always implied human interaction of some sort, a color-matched one doubly so.

She wound up half-carrying half-dragging it across the floor to the thick rug in front of the wood-burning stove, its limp posture and wet fur making her grip difficult. The collar proved useful in this regard, though she had to take care not to add asphyxiation to the creatures assumably lengthy list of woes for today.

Its coat feels smooth where it isn’t splattered with mud, and the muscles beneath certainly aren’t chiseled, but they are firm; built for using. Hopefully the warm fire would help dry the poor thing off, because even with the fur, it is -freezing-! She sure hoped it doesn’t have hypothermia after being out in a storm like that. Putting a hand to the long neck she felt for a pulse, hoping its biology was similar enough. After some prodding she got one, a bit faint, but not too bad, considering.

With the door finally able to be shut some amount warmth starts to return to the small room, and she fetches a few towels from a closet, both to dry off her guest, the muddy water all over the floor, and herself. A few pieces of cloth tossed over the puddles later and Astrid is crouching back over the — and she still couldn’t quite believe it to be real — unicorn. She takes a dry towel and sets about rubbing down it’s back and sides.

What are these odd marks under all this mud on its flanks? Mountains? Is it a stencil, or tattoo, or... what? Nevermind; worry about the weirdness of the tiny colorful unicorn later, like when it doesn’t need medical care. It isn’t even shivering, and that’s a bad sign when you’re this cold. Assuming it’s warm blooded. And has a shiver response to cold. And any number of other things that she could name. Assumptions for the moment, however, would have to do.

Getting the core warm was the most important, she remembered (glad all those -advanced- university classes were coming in handy), so onto the chest. Oh, um, well, guess that makes ‘it’ a ‘he’ then, doesn’t it? She respected his privacy as much as she could while she continued drying his legs, tail, and mane, the latter two proving difficult thanks to the myriad of plant debris tangled into them. Not that she was particularly squeamish with the idea of treating animals in their... ‘entirety’, but his whole existence was uncertain territory for sure, and since it- er, he, had seemed sentient she figured it was best to play it safe. What if he woke up to her drying him, he might think she was... Nope, nope, not gonna think about it! Blushing slightly, she worked her way up his neck, stopping to inspect the collar in greater detail for a moment.

It was strong looking, a rich cobalt blue, and the only thing on him that didn’t need drying. A hydrophobic coating perhaps? The flexible material had a steely sheen to it that gave it a pretty shimmering appearance at the slight angles where it hugged the sides of his neck — not entirely unlike a fish’s scales or an insect's carapace, she noted. It hung fairly snugly, and looked loose enough to be comfortable, but not much more. As she turned it over in her hands she noticed two rather unusual aspects to add to the bundle of mysteries currently passed out on her rug.

First was a silvered pattern in the tight filament weave — most visible head-on — a narrow stripe ran along the top and bottom edges, and between them letters almost as tall as room would allow.

“Z-ē-n-i-t-h... ‘Zēnith’? That’ll be your name then, I assume.” She turned it all the way round, and that’s all there was, but in doing so she discovered the second oddity: that’s -all- there was.

“There’s no clasp... Who makes a collar with no clasp? How’d you even get this thing on?”

A low moan from her patient reminded Astrid of her task at hand, and she about drying the rest of him with one hand while she continued to inspect the collar with the other.

It was a uniform band of the oddly slick metallic weave about 5mm thick. No tags, no markings aside from the silvery pattern, and she could feel no disruptions along on the inside surface. Trying to stretch it wider proved fruitless as it had no give whatsoever — though it did flex easily enough — and with a huff she gave up, relinquishing the mystery to be worked on later.

Her attention fell to the next tantalizing item on the list: his horn. So weird...

It was about sixteen cm long, the same orange as his coat, with a gentle corkscrewing groove running up its length. Odd, weren’t unicorns supposed to have white horns? Well, they were also supposed to have white coats... and for that matter, they were -also- supposed to be mythological!

She slowly reached out towards the horn and lightly ran her fingers along it, allowing curiosity to overcome respect for personal space in regards to -this- feature of his anatomy. It was an odd texture; extremely smooth, almost silky, but felt very tough and solid. She tapped it experimentally with a fingertip, which to her surprise drew another low moan from its owner.

“Hey, are you okay? I’m really sorry about the gun thing, the storm just had me spooked and- Well, how are you feeling, you want some hot water, or...?”
Her jumble of words faded off as she saw he still wasn’t conscious. Well alright: Horn is sensitive. Got it.

Well, he may not be clean, but he was dry, and mud caked fur wouldn’t kill him. She went and got some thicker woolen blankets and made a large makeshift bed lying before the fire, wrapping him in its folds, belly towards the radiating flames.

Still feels like he’s freezing though... some hot packs would do him good, hmm... Ah! She put a pot of water on the stove and went and got some water bottles. When the water was just hotter than she was comfortable putting her hand in she took the pot off and filled the bottles, capping them tightly. She nestled the toasty bottles against his torso, trying to get them to heat his core as best she could.

Shifting his limbs to position the bottles roused another groan from him, his eyes still shut, but a slight frown across his features. Uncanny how human he was... like the Cheshire cat smiling. Apparently his hypothalamus had also just checked in, only to find that housekeeping had turned the AC on full blast, and that icicles were rapidly forming on the ceiling fan. 

The shivering that started as little more than small muscle twitches worked its way up his flanks, and ended in what could almost be mistaken for a mild seizure in its ferocity.

Oh, come on... She bundled him back up, and added a few more logs to the fire. He still shivered away, teeth chattering audibly. *Sigh*, alright, fine. Astrid extinguished the lamps, leaving the fire the only remaining light source, and got the comforter and pillows from her bed. She curled up behind the pint sized unicorn on the pad of blankets, wrapping them together under the comforter and pulling him close so her body heat would transfer.

“Better not regret saving you...” She grumbled as she lay there. Small and fuzzy you may be, but even kittens can scratch pretty good. She reached out and felt one of his hooves. Although you’d probably deal more bludgeoning damage than slashing damage huh? Chuckling slightly at herself, she relaxed somewhat. It felt like his shivers were subsiding a bit, and she was tired; sleep was a welcome prospect.

The two of them slept soundly for the time being, dreams in their heads while the storm blew itself out trying to get the mountain to bow, the night relinquished its rule of the sky to the morning sun, and the great cogs of the cosmos turned just as they had for aeons past.
> Part 4: Humane Treatment
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part 4: Nocturnal Emotions

The gentle summer breeze blows through your hair as it glides calmly over the endless green meadow. Warmth rains down from above, though from no single direction in particular. The grass hugs against your curled form as you lay basking in unmitigated peace, the long chirping songs of insects all around you.

“Hey, let’s play!” An orange pony calls to you from a small swell of a hill nearby.

You run and laugh with him over the mild rise and fall of the elysium fields as you play chase. His stripe-faded cobalt mane and tail whip behind him, and you feel their sturdy silkiness as they run through your grasp just before he leaps away once again, cheering.

You tire, and take rest under a grand oak tree, it’s shifting leaves casting a kaleidoscope of sunbeams. Leaves trail away in the wind, dancing with each other in spins and pirouettes as they slowly fade into the infinity of grass and sky. The unicorn sifts through a low branch with his magic, clusters of leaves swaying in the roaming light blue field. Two apples are the fruits of his labor, and he floats one over to you. It crunches juicily, it’s sweetness balanced with a fresh tangy zing.

“Thanks,” you manage between bites. “These are really good.”

“Oh, don’t thank me.”

You munch on the fruit, watching the leaves in wind together. You rub the top of his head and behind his ears absently, him enjoying the ministrations, and you enjoying the softness of his plush coat.

“What’s your name, by the way?”

He looks up at the question, half eaten apple hovering within easy reach of his mouth.

“When making introductions isn’t it polite to offer your own name first?”

“Of course,” you chuckle, “how rude of me. My name is...” You pause, momentarily unsure for some reason. You close your eyes and shake your head. “Zēnith! I’m Zēnith.”

And so you are.

You open your eyes to see an apple suspended in mid air, half eaten and glowing blue. Beyond it another apple floats of its own accord, rotating slowly against a backdrop of kaleidoscopic sunbeams, whole and uneaten.

“Hello?” You get to your hooves and circle the wide tree trunk, but find no one. Guess they left. Never even introduced himself. Rude indeed.

You flop down in the shade to finish your apple, watching with idle interest as the other one tumbles in slow motion through a lazy orbit around the tree. Wait a moment. You sit up, attention fixed.

“Gravity.” You say to the aeronautic fruit.

No sooner has the notion formed in your mind than it succumbs to its effect. You track its slight bounce upon the healthy grass, it rolls to a stop against your forehoof.

A moment passes as you monitor it for further signs of mischief.

It regards you with disdain, in so far as a fruit is able, anyway, being such happy things by nature.

“Hmph.” You give it a nudge, and it rolls just far enough that the slope of the hill catches it, carrying it away into the sunny fields. It seems much more content with this.

You call out after it, waving, “Fare well! I hope you grow into a big, strong, tree someday!” but it’s out of earshot.

“Did something about all this strike you as odd?” says a light, woody voice with a friendly tone.

You scuffle away from the tree in surprise, looking it up and down warily.

“I mean, I’m an -oak- tree, not an -apple- tree. Where’d you even get those things?” It then proceeds to turn out all the pockets in its entire canopy, showering the grass at its roots with a light sprinkling of marbles, paper clips, old flash drives, rubber bands, and lint that turns into doves halfway to the ground and fly away.

You balk at it, looking around to see if there was anyone else who could help you make some sense of this.

“Hahahhaa, oh wow! You should see your face! The giant eyes make it even better!” The tree uses a few of its branches to point your way, shaking in laughter.

You fake a laugh nervously, not knowing what else to do.

“Heh, heh heh.. heheheh heh.”

It laughs uproariously, ripping up a thick rootstock so it can slap its knee with a lower branch. Given confidence you start to feel at ease, joining it in earnest.

“Hehehe, hah, hahahhhaa! Hahahahahhhaah!” You’re nearly in tears now, rolling around on your back, so when your partner suddenly stops... “Haahaahahahahhaaaa.... hah... ha?” It takes you a moment to notice.

“Dude. Not that funny.”

A look of wounded disbelief is all you can muster at his suddenly serious tone.

“Whatever man, I’m out.”

The ground shakes as the massive deciduous uproots itself entirely, causing you to run for cover from the flying clods of hard packed earth and grass. From a safe distance you watch it trundle off towards the horizon, snakelike roots swaying beneath it in a writhing mass.

“By the way,” it seems to call over it’s shoulder, “your face still looks ridiculous. You might wanna get it looked at, so I left you a looking glass.”

Looking back to where it had been planted quite firmly not a minute ago you see a full length mirror in an ornate frame sitting immaculately at the center of the crater of torn dirt and vegetation.

In its silvered surface you see... yourself! Surprise! The tangerine unicorn with the aqua mane known as Zēnith stares back out at you, as if he didn’t really know what to expect.

“I don’t get it.” You blink at your counterpart. A moment later he blinks back. You sit up straighter, leaning back slightly. He rolls his eyes, smiling.

“Really? You don’t get it? He left you a ‘looking-glass’, because you needed something looked at.” He smiles encouragingly, nodding you on. You blink in silence, and he sighs, face falling in exasperation.

“The pun is I’m a piece of glass that looks -at you-.”

In soviet russia...

“.... Isn’t that more of a play on words?”

He looks momentarily taken aback. “No.”

“You sure? Why not? I thought–”

“Because I said so. That’s not the point though. The point is: We’re ponies, ya dummy!”

You look down at your own fuzzy forelegs and hooves, “Oh yeah, huh? That is kind of unusual, now that you mention it. How did I not notice that?”

You do a few turns in front of the mirror to inspect yourself, reflection-Zēnith doing the same as he continues to speak.

“Well it would probably have been more apparent minus the dream world,” he says, motioning to the dirt crater and infinite grass.

“Yeahhh... that would explain a few things too.”

You twist and bend your neck, getting a feel for it’s length and flexibility while you simultaneously make use of it to look yourself over more closely. Sitting on your haunches is the most comfortable way to see most of yourself without laying down, and you use the freedom the position gives your forelegs to experiment with their joints before standing on all fours and doing the same with a hind leg.

“Hey,” you say to your reflective associate, “open wide, I wanna see how our teeth look.”

He gives you half a smirk and half a raised eyebrow, but does as requested.

“Thanks...”

His front row seems pretty standard; a set of wide and flat cutting instruments that appear perfect for slicing off bites of food. Incisors, if you recall correctly. His molars are no more unusual, except for there seem to be a few more of them to fill out his longer muzzle. Between the front and back sets, however, is a gap, right where a carnivore would have a pair of those pointy canines. You sit back and use your tongue to confirm what you’re seeing.

“Plus...” he says leadingly, using a hoof to part his mane around the orange spiral of his horn.

“Hey, yeah! Can we do magic?” 

“I don’t know, -can- we?”

“...’May’ we do magic?” you ask, unsure.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Giving up on this line of inquiry you pick a dirt clod at random and focus on it, envisioning lifting it into the air. A tingle starts at the front of your head, and travels up the length of your horn as it glows with magic. The piece of earth is enveloped in a matching pale blue aura, and slowly rises from the ground.

“Yeah, awesome!”

“True, but not to dampen your mood or anything: this is a dream, so technically you could have done that without being a unicorn. You enforced gravity on that apple with a whim, if you recall.”

“Oh...” The clod drops back to earth. “Well then...” You give the mirror a judging look. “How about this?” You engulf the large rectangle of metal and glass in your aura and lift it from the ground, enjoying the look on your reflections face as you swing it about, tilting him this way and that as he tries to keep his balance.

“Whoa.. whoaa! Aahhh-” He finally tumbles over with a light thud, so you relent and lower it gently to the grass, snickering as he climbs back to his hooves, earning you a dirty look.

“Hehehe... sorry. This is pretty cool though!” You prance back and forth, making good use of your quadrupedal form.

“Yes, but-” he is cut off as a slight wash of static passes over the mirror’s image. “That’s odd...” he says to himself, looking off towards something outside the mirror’s frame of view.

“What is?” you reply with idle curiosity, more enthralled with checking out the actual structure of the legs you’ve been trotting around on so obliviously.

“It’s probably nothing, but just in case... I’ll be right back.” He walks to the side, disappearing out of view.

“Mkay, you do that,” you reply absently. Whatever it is, this is probably more interesting.

From how they looked in the show a pony's hind legs always seemed to be bending backwards at the knee, and that never gave you much pause, but now that you’ve actually got a real pair of them under you (even if it was a dream) you realise that isn’t the case. By the feel of the joints what you had once considered to be your entire leg — that is: your thigh and calf — were shrunk up into that wide haunch completely above that cute backward hook you had always called a knee. That hook was actually where your shin — which was tilted nearly to the horizontal, plus or minus depending on your stance — met the bones that would normally belong in your foot, which would make it an heel of sorts you suppose. The same goes for your forward pair of legs; the mid-limb joint is no longer your elbow, but your wrist, as the former is located nearly up chest level.

Movement in the mirror catches your attention, but when you look it’s still just as vacant as when you last checked. Where did mirror-Zēnith say he was going again? You move towards it, peering through it at angles in an effort to ascertain if there was anything else to be seen aside from the endless reflected landscape. The notion of looking at a mirror and seeing everything but yourself strikes you as humorous, if a bit odd, and you muse that not being able to use mirrors must take vampires some time to get accustomed to. 

You pull yourself from your reverie call out a questioning “Hello?”

There’s no response, but the image does go fuzzy for a moment, as if in a mix of going out of focus and poor reception. Weird, but okay. For now you decide to accept that he’ll be back when he’s back, and not a moment sooner.

You step away from the mirror into a nice open patch of grass and close your eyes, letting the light wind calm you as you focused on the feeling of your body. The positions of your joints, the way your limbs moved to keep you balanced, you try to feel though it all without forcing your attention on any one thing in particular. 

One of the first things to come to mind is the effect this body shape has on your standing posture. A good way to describe would be to imagine you’re balancing on the very tips of your fingers and toes — all four of them in the form of your hooves. The digits are angled just forward of vertical from the lower end of each of the sets of bones that would -normally- run the length of your hands and feet, and now make up the majority of the lower half of each of their respective limbs. The hooves themselves feel very sturdy, entirely fitting for use as a foot, but it’s hard to shake the almost tippity feeling of standing on nothing more than the overgrown nails on your thumb and hallux. For a moment it manages to make you feel simultaneously too high up on your limbs — as standing on the tips of your toes would have done normally — and too close to the ground, given how much shorter you now are. You open your eyes to balance yourself against the horizon, fighting the dreamy way it too seems to be swimming with vertigo. After a moment you manage to force it flat again, and the feeling passes.

Bleh. Being able to affect the environment with thought alone is a double edged sword.

You tense and relax your ‘fingers’ and ‘toes’ in unison, testing their strength, and bouncing you up and down in a way you imagine is rather evocative of Pinkie’s hoppity walking style. Giggling to yourself you get your knees — or, wrists and ankles, really — into it as well, and before you know it you’re bouncing around to the tune of that little rubber band sound effect that seems to just have invited itself along.

You *poink* back to the mirror, wanting to show off, but find it's still empty.

“Hey, hello? Mirror-me, you in there?” With no response forthcoming you tap the glass gently, disturbing the image again, and eliciting a windy echoing that sounded as if it came from a space far too big and full of hard surfaces for what stood before you. Calling out you again knock harder — still with some modicum of care, but insistent nonetheless. The image repairs itself rapidly, but loses more coherence with each knock, until it finally — with a whoosh of static — it cracks apart in a spider web of right angles and straight lines. Eeewhoops.

You inhale sharply, afraid you’d broken it completely, but as you lean in to inspect the damage you see the glass is fine, and the cracks are just razor thin lines in the image itself, dividing and rearranging the picture into a seemingly random jumble of boxes, each now featuring a tiny portion of yourself staring back out at you They shimmer darkly as you shift your view back and forth, catching the light almost but not quite entirely unlike spider silk on a sunny afternoon. Looking at the whole of it you can almost swear that there’s a pattern to the inky glistening, and you find yourself drawn towards it, slowly reaching out a single hoof — an action also so taken by the many diminutive images of yourself — until its edge makes almost imperceptible contact with the veined surface.

Shards of jagged light rupture outward from the mirror's frame, accompanied by a thread of lightning shooting into your outstretched hoof and carving its way through you to burn -nearly- painlessly along the core of your horn. Time seems to lose its flow as the world around you flexes, and you’re caught in a barrage of words and meanings as the luminous fragments pass right through you. There’s too much to comprehend most of it, but the tone is urgent, the notion cautioning, and the voice familiar... friendly.

As soon you are once again able to perceive the passage of time as a linear series of events you throw yourself backwards in shock, but quickly notice that the cacophony is silenced, the world is stable, and the mirror is free of visual imperfections. Well, unless you count that the Zēnith it now shows is regarding you quizzically, as opposed to being strewn out on his back on the grass, as you currently are.

“What in the hay was that?!”

“My apologies. I had to excuse myself for a moment, but it was in error.”

“What? No. The– the explodey shockey thing with all the– the talking, and the sky got all bendy and– and...” You trail off as his expression gets more and more confused.

“Many strange things can occur within dreams,” he offers finally. “But more to the point, do you not enjoy this form? I see that you’re already proficient in its use.”

“Y–yeah,” you manage, still not completely over the shock, nor convinced that it was just some passing phantasm.

“Still not at ease? May I recommend more of that entertainingly inefficient style of locomotion?”

“Wha– Pinkie’s hop thing she does? Um, no, I think I’ll take it easy for a bit...” your stomach — or whatever equivalent you were working with — wasn’t sitting too good after that scare. It may simply be nerves, but either way your heart just wouldn’t be in it.

“I understand. Then perhaps you should just lay down for a while? The weather is ideal.”

You lower your hindquarters to the ground, resting on your old ankles and letting your tail naturally wrap forward around your legs. You get some amusement out of how silly it would be to try to walk with those joints on the ground now.

"When it's so nice out, it seems almost a shame to not take the time to enjoy it, don't you think?"

"Mmmh..." You nod slowly, realizing as you looked around that it -was- nice to just take some time to relax. You close your eyes to take a deep breath in through your nose, and slowly let it out again. "Yeah... This -is- nice." You open your eyes to see him kicked back on a small cloud which was floating around at head level. 

“As I said.” He kicks his hind legs idly, propelling him backwards at a lazy pace and breaking off bits of cloud that evaporate into nothingness as they slowly drift away. “Say, want to try something?” He looks at you with a glint of excitement in his eyes.

“Sure? What kind of something?”

“I want to help you practice using your magic, so if you — oh, but...” He pauses hesitantly. “Well, it won’t really mean much, things being as they are.”

“What do you mean?”

“As you saw earlier, you can control the environment here at will, which would make any magic more for show than anything else.” He shrugs apologetically, then lounges back into the cloud once again.

“Okay, hey, hold on a second,” you say, standing, “I -want- to practice, so isn’t there some spell or something that could only be cast the hard way?”

“No, no... you can do absolutely everything,” he says without bothering to open his eyes. “This space is limited only by your -imagination-.” He gives a vague wave of his hoof to stress the last word, spinning him and his cloud away from you ever so slowly. “What would be a good way to pose it to you...? It would be like beating a game with godmode active. Sure you can do it, but so what?”

You ponder that for a moment. “Well it’s not much fun having console access if it keeps me from doing what I really want. You’d think that given more or less ultimate power I could — I don’t know — imagine myself up a place where I -can’t- just make things happen. Would that be possible? Disable the godmode?” 

“Yes, interesting... Can you imagine it?” He rearranges himself on his still-spinning cloud to better face you, curiosity apparently piqued. “Can you picture a world where you are no longer tied as intrinsically to the fabric of reality as you are right now?” His tone is becoming increasingly excited as he continues. “A plane with laws which govern the behavior of its constituent substance in steady immutability,” he rolls off the cloud, landing nimbly and advancing in measured paces, “one in which you are no -all-powerful- master of time and space, no godlike proprietor of all that you survey!?”

The sky was beginning to darken, the wind slowly rising in force. You take a wary step back from the mirror, keeping your eyes on your advancing reflection and his increasingly manic expression.

“A realm that restricts you, gives you boundaries, defines you as a being of oh so very -finite- powers and prowess?!” he practically spits out this last utterance, wild face nearly pressed against the glass.

“What’s your game?” you ask accusatorily. “Who are you, exactly?” You are no longer sure you can trust this self-same stallion who stands before you, mane wild in the rough wind, and eyes like jagged steel.

“Why, I am you. Can’t you tell just by looking?” He taunts you with his cock-sure grin as he begins to pace with leisure across the mirror’s face.

“You may look like me, but -I’m- the only me there is, you’re just– just—”

“Just what?” he almost sneers. “Speak your mind. Name Me!” The tempestuous sky darkens with his voice, gusting and rumbling across the hills.

“A dream! A figment of my imagination! Nothing more!” you manage to blurt out. Saying it out loud helps you to believe it, but in truth the thing before you certainly feels very real, and very very frightening.

His face contorts into an unnervingly satisfied smile, “Yes... exactly. And tell me, where do you think we are at this very moment?” He stops his pacing to fix you with a sidelong stare, head held high.

You look around, seeing the murky green hills rolling away beneath a foul grey sky swirled with streaks of storm, but not yet showing any sign of rain. The air that was once light and fresh now tugs thickly along the ground, wisps of fog swirling up from the unknown spaces hidden from view between the buckled landscape, lending them a shroud of dire intents.

“Nowhere, just the middle of some giant field.” you answer hurriedly, unsure where he was going with this, and not wanting to see him angry again.

“No, no, no. Not what it looks like, what it -is-.” he explains as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Where can trees walk, and talk? Where can unicorns run free over endless sun kissed hills? Where can you affect the world around you with mere intention?”

“A dream?” you venture, keeping the meekness out of your voice as much as you can.

“Yess... yes indeed... Your dream, to be exact. All of this; all you see, is simply a figment of your imagination, but it is -your- imagination. I am as much you as -you- are, as is the grass beneath our hooves and the sky above.” He paws the ground then gazes upwards. Perhaps he got lost in the swirls of the clouds, but whatever the reason he gives you a moment to let this ascertation sink in. His demeanor has calmed to a philosophical serenity, and the weather has done likewise.

“I get what you’re saying, but I’d like to point out that ‘Equestria’ would have also fit those criteria you gave.” You say it matter of factly, but a smile slowly creeps into the corners of your mouth as he drops his head to give you a confused look.

“You know? Enchanted trees with improbable fruit, unicorns playing in the sun, picking stuff up with magic? Totally could be Equestria you were talking about there.”

He facehoofs. “Okay, but you were right the first time. This couldn’t -actually- be Equestria.”

“Why not? Assume you’re right. Assume this is a dream, and we’re all products of my own mind. That means you don’t know anything I don’t, and since I’ve never been to Equestria neither of us could actually say for certain that this isn’t it, at least some remote part of it. So if it isn’t: it could be, and if it is: then we’re in Equestria, so there’s no way this couldn’t be Equestria. Either it is, or  for all we know it could be. QED, my doubtful doppelganger, Q.E.D.” You take a well deserved seat and watch him try to follow your logic.

He stares at you with a mild case of slackjaw for a few moments while his eyes move back and forth through whatever mental hurdles he was giving your proof. His chin snaps up and he meets your gaze with a nod and a sincere “Well done. That’s solid reasoning. But, do you -really- think we’re in Equestria?”

“Pffffft– no! You gumdrops loco? This is a dream for sure. I’d bet warm pastries on that.”

His slackjaw appears to have flared up acutely.

“I just wanted to see if I could mess with you, sorry. Got you back for getting all crazy eyes with the sky. Consider us even.” You give him a friendly smile, which he returns after a small delay, if somewhat hesitantly.

You feel an odd sort of motion in the air, and looking up in synchronous you both see the darker swirls of clouds have arranged themselves into a set of concentric rings directly above you. They slowly spread outwards like ripples in a puddle, leaving only a light overcast fog. You both watch them peacefully.

*Ahem!* “Right, where were we?” he asks, a bit flustered. Embarrassed, maybe?

“You were getting very zen. Spouting ‘we are one with the earth and sky’ kinda stuff. Speaking of which, is that how you did that with the storm?”

“Erh, yes. More or less. Each of us plays a part in the story of the dream. The world around us exists to give our actions context, meaning, purpose. Each of the beings within is a facet of yourself, acting out some emotion, idea, experience, or other mental process, usually with random influences from the spontaneous firing of neurons in the brain. My ‘game’, as you put it, is you. Me. Us. My temperament may differ from yours just as the dirt differs from the wind, but we are both cut from the same cloth. Ask of me why I am driven to guide you as I do? You may as well ask of the raven why he caws — but first I say ask of yourself why you seek to relinquish this control. It’s not often one of... -us- becomes lucid: aware of the nature of the dream. In doing so you took on the conscious mind, and with it conscious control. ‘Console access’ I believe you said. You will give up this power, and what will you gain from it?”

“I want to cast magic as I should, without just cheating the effects into place.’

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“It’s like you said, beating the game with godmode on is no fun. I mean, I usually play on normal difficulty,” you continue, mumbling.” For my first run through, anyway. No cheats either. Well, except for maybe abusing the quick save key...” you trail off before snapping back out of it. “I just want it to -mean- something — you know? — to be challenging!”

“If that’s the case, then I can help. However -you- must be the one to do it. Are you ready?”

Hooves spread, and center of balance lowered, you reply “Yes.”

“Excellent.” He adopts a pose mirroring yours. “All you need to do is look to your reflection, picture yourself, just how I want to be. See your form. -Know- that that is who I am.” Your voice still echoes through his head, despite the fact that your mouth is no longer moving. “I -am- who I see in my mind. When you do this I am thinking about myself as you currently am, because these thoughts are now me.” You and your reflection are perfectly symmetrical, as any well behaved reflection should be. The barrier of your ego — the essence of your self — dissolving away. 

Trying to focus you close your eyes and furrow your brow in concentration. Still you can see, in your mind's eye, both your bodies. You see the wind drawing the tips of your mane across your forehead, feel your forelock gently swaying around your horn, but whether you are feeling what you see, or seeing what you feel is becoming more and more unclear. You see Zēnith’s ear flick in the wind, and feel the mirror motions twitch.

“Yes, good. This is our body, our vessel. We must — hey, relax; don’t try so hard — we must oversee it in it’s totality, for it contains -who- we are, and constrains -what- we are.” His words– your words seepingly fade from being sensory input; becoming something deeper. “Notice its pulse, fill its lungs, and let the tempo of its mechanics soothe our mind...”

“-Who are you?-” The words echo softly across your consciousness in a voice not quite familiar.

Your physical form slowly occupies more and more of your thoughts, becoming your entire world as you sink into yourself — both yourselves, as they are now the same object simply occupying two halves in your mind at once — truly filling the body as if for the first time. The words in your ear fade in and out rhythmically, growing softer and more entwined with your own thoughts and sensations until all you know is your own inner universe.

There’s a static tingle that starts to build in your hooves, suffusing them, creeping up your legs as it simultaneously alights upon the fur of your coat, mane, and tail. The dusting sends a shiver from the very tip of your tail — suddenly almost inexplicably sensuous, and responsive — dripping, crawling, up your spine. The nibbling shocks continue to wrap their way up the bones of your legs as your fizzing dusty coat permeates your skin, soaking from all angles in towards your core. Behind them both is left a feeling of electric numbness, yet one that leaves you acutely aware of every aspect of your anatomy. The feeling covers your belly, caressing your lungs and heart, pouring its way up your neck — and it’s nearly all you can do to keep from collapsing under the wash of sensation. You know to stay standing. You know you will breath, and relax, and listen — listen to the music of your own biology.

The skin around your skull dances with sensation, squeezing into the bone beneath and starting to hug hotly around the base of your horn. Your spine clenches straight, your head thrown back, as the flood collides with your foramen magnum, surging through it to fill your skull with a deluge of seething impulses. They wash and scatter, swirling in bounding tidal symphony, crashing across the folds of your cortex as if they were a rocky shore subject to the ire of a howling squall. Its power grows, the frequency slides: countless disparate waves shifting through octaves until they begin to hum together in a growing din of harmonizing oscillations and overtones.

All feelings of self are oddly mute; you know you are present, but at the same time you feel completely changed: given over to the machinations of this experience. Your entire existence has been swept up in this work, leaving no room for other thoughts or actions. You are committed as a whole to something wondrous, and can feel nothing but focused exuberance towards seeing it through to completion. Whatever it takes, whatever it brings.

The cadence starts at the top of your spine, being fed by pulses drawn from all along your body, orchestrated into meaningful form by smaller rhythmic motions in your hooves, along your hair, and over your fur. Like a wave generator they feed the beat which builds inside you. From the base of your skull to the root of your horn and back again it thrums. The ring where your horn meets your skull has grown hotter and hotter, burning inward, and somehow outward as well, though you feel no discomfort. The feeling distorts, severing into a halo of force that spins and climbs, spiraling up your horn to its tip, expanding as it matches resonance with whatever madness has overtaken your mind. The other half of the ring constricts around your horns root, throbbing hotly in time to the beat which it draws ever closer to intersecting.

A tugging thread starts to stretch down from your horn, passing through the scorching lower ring, rooting deeper and deeper into you. It branches to engulf and permeate the now almost musical turmoil within you skull, questing down your spine, your legs, anchoring you through your hooves and feeding off the breezy waves that roll over your coat and along your tail. It unites your form on a level you didn’t know possible, the rhythmically melodious pull making your consciousness flutter as you are rocked forward and backward within yourself. Everything is shifting more rapidly, the harmonies matching together, and that tightening knot of red hot intensity sears together as it pinches down on your world. The pressure bears down all around you, only just out of sync and nearly suffocating in its fervor, the music of your being straining against it in a battle of will.

At this point you can do nothing but give way to the power within you, any presence you once had now conscripted into the act as time loses it pace, replaced by this glorious symphony in which every atom of your being plays a part.

The igneous mass at the root of your horn takes on the notes of your symphonic composition one at a time at first, but with a tempo building to match your own. As it phases in to join your harmonious existence you are swept back from it, as water recedes before a wave so you too withdraw, bunching, and coiling. It seems to last an eternity, but as soon as it is done it feels like it was too quick to even notice. Loosed upon your target you careen forward, forking through the maze of neurons like lightning, with an unwavering certainty of which paths are proper, guided as you are by the coursing crescendo in your veins.

The bolt connects, lighting up your horn like the surface of the sun, filling your senses with pure energy. The music bores down the smooth carven spirals of your horn, exploding in swirling magical perfection from the tip, arcing towards the spinning halo of energy which orbits it. The halo bends it, drawing it into its dance, making it flow faster and slicing off shells from its surface: sheets of magic which tighten, expand, play off of one another as they weave together in a complex and expanding waltz. More rings form: eddies in the current around which planes of force tighten before being accelerated off in other directions to continue the tapestry, shifting and altering its shape. They leap back and across, sliding over one another, and with intention a set of six twisting sheets arcs forward, feeding into the heart of the foremost loop, being spun and thrown by the built up power stored there. The complexity is astonishing, yet somehow you are able to hold it all within your mind. 

These six jolt forward, upward, streaking away from you in a co-orbital flight, matched in speed only by an arcing conic shell that surrounds them all. They weave back and forth across their barycenter as they spin together symmetrically, their internal energy pulling and distorting their brethren into a self-perpetuating pirouette. Far outside of where you would normally be able to see detail they fly, yet you can continue to make out the tiniest interactions with ease. Their substance is being thinned, used up in their entwining journey. The shell which they skim against with every outward stroke balances their dwindling power, and contracts to match their less enthusiastic waves, falling inward parabolically. The waveform bounds in and out, losing momentum with each cycle, the outer guiding shell moving ahead. The attraction to the sheets pulls it in tighter and tighter as it gains distance, until it dives in sharply, collapsing in upon itself and sealing shut. The waves swirl outward one last time, and in tangent arcs join the shell, becoming rivers of magic along its surface, screaming towards each other before meeting with a stupendous burst light, color, music, and power. The sum total energy contained along the entire chain, from the reservoir that was siphoned up through your horn, to the distant focal point, took this as its cue and surged forward. The spell structure emanating from your horn drew it all in, and spooled it out, unraveling nearly instantaneously as it was pulled through -all- the intricate weavings and forced down the long, spiraling bridge. 

As soon as the bloated halo around your horn expels the last of its magic your connection to all that beautiful wonder is severed, and you lose your mystically detailed vision of its inner workings. The effects of it, however your horn can still feel quite well! Directly above you, at the top of the sky, it’s as if a magical star had gone supernova. A prismatic point of swirling power blazes like a beacon in the night, bathing your surroundings in ethereal waves and filling the air with a softly drifting snow of sparkling motes which alight weightlessly around you, frosting the world in luminous splendor.

The World! After being so internally enthralled the presence of all this which surrounds you in such a spectacular manner stuns you to your core! The currents in the air, the waving of the grass, the movement of your body as it finally starts to relax. You see it all in such splendor and detail that you barely notice your eyes no longer being bolted open, no longer locked skyward. You can hardly tell whether you are looking through them, or simply feeling the soft and sturdy ground as your legs gently buckle onto it. Just as you were earlier riveted at the level of connectedness you had with your unicorn body, you now marvel how natural it feels to lay it upon the earth, how the entire universe seems so at ease and harmonious, and how much you could really go for a nap right about now.

☽▐▓▒░☼░▒▓▌☾

“Waaah!” Astrid wakes with a start to the crash of thunder and metal. A wide mixing bowl had just collided with the carved wooden duck that normally sits upon one of the windowsills, and the flash of the lightning made their facades dance in her vision. It must have been just outside to be so bright and loud. This gave her pause before she realized the metallic echo to her cacophonous  awakening came from a pair of objects that normally rested in quite disparate areas of the room both from each other, and her sleeping location. They therefore had no place being in the air right in front of her face when she’d bolted upright. As her eyes adjusted she saw that not only were they not alone, but neither showed any sign of being ready to surrender to gravity just yet. They swung slowly as they accelerated away from each other and continued their tumbling acrobatic journey, narrowly avoiding several other household items in the process.

The room was bathed in soft blue illumination, and to Astrid it appeared that all around her the air itself had come aglow; the aerial objects casting swooping and dancing shadows along the outer edges of the cabin’s front room, shadows quite like the ones she almost absently noted were missing from her own body as she hurriedly tossed aside her bedding. Spinning into a crouch she comes face to face with the continued host of tonight's strangeness, causing her to yelp in surprise as she jumps back and clamber slackjawed to her feet as she continues backing away.

Sitting upright on his haunches, horn aligned vertically from his skull, is the creature she pulled in off her doorstep earlier that night. His twig-tangled mane sways around as if it was underwater, and his wide eyes are lit from within by an unearthly power. The collar around his neck gleams; its unusually clean metallic weave strangely iridescent in the pale light.

Although they are clearly lit, it appears his eyes are still closed, the light shining from the center of each eye becoming colored a shade of violet as it penetrates his lids, lending an eerie relief to the few thicker blood vessels that twist through the large fleshy membrane. His head — or perhaps it’s his horn, judging from the way his hair is twirling around it — appears to be the epicenter of the sphere of soft blue light that seems to come from everywhere within it at once. Looking directly into the middle of it makes her vision haze over a milky blue, and causes a strange twinge of sensation all across her scalp, so she quickly looks away, and does so just in time to duck under a low flying foot stool.

The cloud of objects which seem to have forsaken the grip of gravity — indeed proving it -is- just a theory after all — form a vague ring, floating with mild determination in clockwise and counterclockwise orbits, perturbed but not deterred from their path when a pair of them happen to collide and are sent spinning off in their own way to slowly rejoin the group. It appears that most of the smaller objects from around the room have taken flight already, a couple of small paintings of landscapes which were hanging nearly sideways on the far wall just then slipping loose of their nails to join in.

The scene is full of a quiet power, broken only momentarily by the occasional mid air collision, and underscored by the sounds of the storm outside. The deep throaty howl of the wind as it plows over the mountain pass, tearing at the thick timbers of the cabin, and the wavering staccato of rain as it pelts its roof and windward walls. A instant of light seeps in around the storm shutters over the windows, followed after a few seconds by the distant roll of thunder.

Astrid takes one last look at the scene and with a definitive “Nope.” turns and makes for the door. With one hand she takes her scarf from the hook and starts to wrap it about neck while with the other she unlatches the door with a shove and — 

“Aaah!!”

The wind howls through the gap, instantly ripping her scarf from her gasp. It’s sucked it out into the tumultuous night as the wind slams into the door itself, making it impossible to open fully. She stares for a long few moments into the wailing dark abyss after her errant scarf as the heat is rapidly being sucked out of the room and the wet spray curls inward around the doors edge. At least now her brain was fully awake. As they say: experience is something you gain just -after- you needed it.

With a curt sigh she lets the door drop shut. In a storm this fierce she knows she’d have little chance of standing, let alone making headway — especially considering her lack of equipment, and current state of dress: light fleece pajama pants and shirt, and now sans scarf. No, running was not an option. She’d just have to keep her wits about her and figure this one out. Taking a deep breath she turn back to survey the room.

The room, as a sum of its parts, was slowly becoming consumed. Almost all the little forest themed trinkets and decorations had been swept up by the mysterious force, and several larger objects too had now joined the mix. As she watches the footstool knocks into the back of a dining chair that was slowly skidding across the floor, sending it tumbling over... and up into the air. Shaking her head she begins to skirt the room, keeping clear of the swirling mess centered within. Bowls and baskets, papers and pinecones, and even the toaster from the nearby kitchenette spin as they weave past one another in an aerial ballet.

Passing the kitchen counters Astrid spies the block of knives inching away from the wall, and quickly secures it in one of the latched cupboards, letting loose a spray of paper plates from the upper shelves in the process. Beyond worth it to keep -those- from getting mixed up in all this!

Whatever -this- was...

She rounds the room, coming to the hallway opposite the front door, which leads to the bedrooms and washroom. The soft sphere of blue light had expanded a little farther, reaching to the beams which support the vaulted ceiling above and engulfing the small sofa and overstuffed armchair which were now sliding around the dirt smeared unicorn in lazy arcs. Stalking shadows in variable shades of blue covered the walls, and even Astrid’s own clothes and hair were being tugged at by the force which animated them. In the eye of the storm sat her guest, though looking his direction again hazed her vision with blue, thicker now than it was before, and a tingling crawled across her head like a nest of ants made of static.

His forelegs were hanging slack above the floor, his posture straighter, seated only on the lower half of his hind legs he looked as if he was being drawn upwards through the horn rooted to the crown of his skull. His mane and tail were both being drawn around both it and himself; curling as fluidly as their tangles would allow in opposing directions, as if caught in their own unseen vortices.

The tingling itch of electric pinpricks had started to spread down the back of her neck and behind her ears, and the azure fog over her vision was thickening in lateral bands. Blinking and rubbing her eyes Astrid turned away and groped her way along the wall down the hallway while her vision returned and the sensation quickly faded, wondering what in the name of all things documentable was going on, and feeling not just a little bit frightened. 

“Fear of the unknown is a perfectly normal human response,” she reasoned to herself. “I just have to recognise that, and not let it sway my actions towards the illogical... yeah.” She didn’t think she sounded particularly convinced.

Vision clear she throws open the door to her bedroom and in a stern and well enunciated voice she addresses the darkness: “Rook. Locate. Sit-Code: X-1.”

No sooner had the second word left her lips than three pencil thin beams of white light appeared, intersecting at right angles to one another on a black multi-pocketed duffle near the foot of her bed, and no sooner had they appeared than she was moving towards them, still speaking. “Recognise: Astrid Aetherson. Begin full sensor data logging and archival, encrypted with my biometrics and private key: ...” 

She hesitates before giving the key while she unearths from the bag a small metal cube about 2 cm on each side; the source of the beams of light, which switch off the instant it is handled.

“... ‘Midnight Revelations: Unicorns -do- exist.’ Priority Two.” She shakes her head, a flash of clarity about the whole situation bubbling to the surface of her thoughts. “Priority one: assist with analysis of situation and keep me apprised of threats.” 

“Affirmative.” was the cube’s simple reply, it was given in a level tone in what was probably a male's voice. “Capturing biometric signature for encryption.”

A large grid of light springs to life, blanketing Astrid’s front as a horizontal beam moves up and down her body. A chirp and the dissolution of the grid signaled a successful capture. The entire thing was purely aesthetic, as she knew full well the scan need not be even slightly noticeable, but apparently people held still for the process more when given a lightshow.

“Data stream now encrypted.”

“Thank you Rook,” then mostly to herself, “This is no time for sass.” She stands and moves to leave the room, cube in hand, but doesn’t even make it to the hallway before it vibrates and chirps an alarm.

“Mistress, low intensity broad spectrum radiation detected. Hazardous exposure after 2.3 hours at current levels.”

Astrid grimaces. “Display. Track exposure and alert as appropriate.”

A rainbow band of bars appears midair above the cube as she holds it in her open palm. They dance wildly all across the range of colors, and as she takes a few steps forward into the hallway they climb waveringly. “What the heck kind of reading is that?” she wonders aloud.

“Emission spectra match no known source, fluctuations match no known pattern thus far. Analysis requires more data... Hazardous exposure in 2 hours.”

She grimaces again. Who knows how much exposure she’d already gotten before she woke up, but no vomiting so far was a film of a silver lining on this thundercloud. ‘More data’ may very well wind up lethal. Nevertheless she steps forward down the hallway. Circumstances like this– actually, there are no circumstances like this! Unicorns do not just show up on ones doorstep in the middle of the night and start bathing the room in radiation, it just doesn’t happen! The fact that it -is- happening however makes following proper record keeping and investigative scientific protocols all the more important.

A few more steps down the hall. “Rook, did I ever tell you about my Uncle Dimitri?” He would have been proud of her professionalism in this scenario.

“No, Mistress, you have not. Though I do have a limited personnel record of him.”

“Well feel free to update it: When I was little, during a key experiment with spacetime distortion at the lab where he worked, a power fluctuation caused a runaway anomaly. It was threatening to rip the entire installation apart from the inside.”

She approaches the doorway leading into the front room and presses herself against the wall for the last meter or so, her soft green flannel sleepwear brushing the wooden paneling as she moves. Holding Rook out around the door and into the room with the very tips of her fingers, his sensor display jumps and sweeps, registering the increase in ambient energy. The wood in this cabin provided much more shielding than she would have expected. The thump of a large something moving in ways it most probably shouldn’t in the other room reminded her that sometimes just taking good luck at face value was perfectly acceptable.

“Uncle Dimitri was always a bit of a visionary, and a risk taker. Against safety regulations he entered the containment chamber to reboot the field sensor equipment which was damaged by the flux. It allowed the disturbance to be neutralized, and he saved every life in the facility. Well, every -other- life, technically.” She paused, remembering how she would try to climb up the many tool loops of his jumpsuit, and how he would ruffle her hair with a smile and a kind “Nyet solnyshko, if you want to climb, find a tree.”

“I have a list of possible known radiation sources, Mistress. Best match at 31.7% probability is the T-10 Soviet Tokamak running test pattern Sigma.” Snapped back to reality she withdrew Rook into the shelter of the doorframe, and with a finger scrolled down the holographic data displayed above the sensor readout, reading them aloud.

“Coronal mass ejection of Sirius, 25%... MOX nuclear fuel when exposed to gamma ray burst, 18%... Enriched mantle sample #497, 6%?!” Astrid takes a peek into the room and sees the unicorn very nearly standing bipedally; his two hind hoofs still on the floor, but otherwise suspended midair in the midst of an orbital entourage. Even the momentary focus was enough to send a splash of blue across her vision, and a wave of tingles down her scalp. Retreating and rubbing her eyes she says quite pointedly to Rook “-That- is not a tokamak! Ahh...” She blinks as her vision clears.

“I only gave it a 31.7% chance based on a spectral analysis of its output. Are your eyes irritated?”

“I’m fine now. Looking directly at him gives my vision this blueish haze.”

“Flashes of light could be caused by charged particles moving at relativistic speeds through the liquid medium of your eye. I estimate hazardous exposure here to be within 57 minutes, assuming no increase in intensity.”

“It’s not flashes, it’s like this fog that builds up, then fades when I look away.” She peeks out the door towards the other side of the room. “I think I could take shelter behind the kitchen island. It’s -literally- nailed down, so I doubt it’s going anywhere.”

“Unshielded at this distance hazardous exposure occurs in 26 minutes, and I remind you that dosage increases exponentially with proximity. I recommend seeking the farthest possible point from the source.’

“Can you shorten that to ‘Haz-Ex’? It’s too long otherwise. I think I can take this door off and use it as a shield...” she starts to fiddle with the ornate hinge pins, working the top one loose.

“Mistress, you asked me to monitor threats and provide awareness of them, and to that end I’d like you to clarify the end of your anecdote about Professor Dimitri.”

“Hmm? Ah, got it!” the pin pops loose and thuds to the floor as she begins on the other. “Oh, yeah, Uncle Dimi got in there and rebooted the sensors, but when the dampening field came back online it caused some sort of boundary collapse in the anomaly, which turned space back in on itself. Sliced a 57 meter sphere right out of the universe. Took out most of the containment chamber, but the pressure vessel held, so with a snap the anomaly and uncle Dimitri vanished, but over two thousand people were saved... I have to think he knew the risks, smart as he was.”

In the silence that followed the other pin dropped.

“Mistress I must tell you I am concerned you may be putting yourself in danger. No one’s life is at risk here but your own.”

“It wasn’t just about saving -people-, Rook. He made a series of video wills, several for all the ways in which he thought he might die. He said that if he ‘met his end pushing ze boundaries ov human understanding’,” she said in a mediocre russian accent, “then he would want his work continued, not for it to stop out of some misguided respect for the dead. He knew that if that lab was destroyed it wouldn’t just mean the death of all those people, it’d mean their dreams would die with them. No one would have even touched that field of research again for generations.”

“...I believe I understand his drive to protect his life’s work, and that of his colleagues, but that does not change the fact that in this instance no lives need be risked. Your safety is my utmost concern, Mistress, and I–“

“Hush.”

“Mistress it is imperative that–”

“No Rook, Shhh! Listen.”

Quiet. Outside the storm was still battering the cabin, but from the other room all sounds of clanging and banging had subsided. All that remained was a silent thrum of power, something was was not heard so much as felt.

“Low acoustical levels.” Rook noted at a reduced volume. A secondary display temporarily wrapped itself around that of the ambient radiation, showing the volume of sound over a much wider range of frequencies than Astrid was capable of hearing. She noted an odd shifting series of waves at the lower end of the spectrum, and was glad Rook was recording all this. There was so much she didn’t know about what was going on here, and so much more about it that he could capture than she could ever hope to.

“Yeah.” She whispered back. “And remember: Sit-Code X-1. Let me work.”

“Affirmative.” He almost sounded put out, but given that he shouldn’t be able to emulate that emotion it was hard to be sure.

Astrid stuck him to the face of her watch, where he automatically magnetized himself, and tilted the newly freed door downward so that it lay sideways and that she could crawl behind it as she slid it into the room. She was careful to stay behind it as she started making her way towards the rear of the kitchen island, where she felt she could prop it up and make a more steady observation point. She may be hard on him, but Rook had a point, and she felt no overwhelming need to get any more exposure than absolutely necessary.

“Haz-Ex in 68 minutes. Levels appear to be in slow decline,” Rook said, utilizing the acoustical bone implant in her jaw to speak with her silently.

“What? And we’ve only gotten closer...” Astrid ponders this as she grasps the doors handle and gives it another shove forward. She had to let it rest against her side as she moved, angled so it wouldn’t be pulled over. The force was making it lighter though, so at least that made moving it easier.

Her whispers stuck out enough in the relative calm, but the scrapping of wood on wood was almost painfully loud against the silence of the room. The fact that there was another person– or animal– or whatever he was in the room too, and he wasn’t making a peep, just made it worse. It was like he was just sitting there listening... watching... a shiver ran up her spine, and she felt as if the weight of the door was sagging into her.

She finally reaches the island and hauls the door upright, planting her back to it and taking a few deep breaths. The shadow of the door looms large and dark on the wall before her, as if she was sheltering in a deep rectangular hole. With a start she realizes the dancing shadows of all the airborne objects which previously painted the walls are gone... or nearly so. Looking more closely she sees there are yet some faint outlines still visible, but they glide in much more regular paths, the passing of a huge, yet barely distinct, boxy shadow — which she can only assume to be the sofa — aids in this observation.

Unable to resist the temptation, and finally abreast of her vantage point, she wraps her fingers around the very edge of the door as she leans one eye past its corner. The reason for the shadows’ lack of definition is immediately apparent

The growing swell of light surrounding her guest has engulfed even the farthest piece of orbital furnishing, wrapping them in its luminous embrace. The remaining shadows resulted from the fact that more light was coming from within than without, so the slight imbalance cast a ghostly silhouette onto the outer walls.

All this was taken in passively, however, as all her focus was on center stage. She remembered not to look right at him; instead looking at the floor under him and trying to use her peripherals. The unicorn had lifted himself completely off the rug; his legs hanging freely. The rear pair were in line with his body, no more than half a meter from the floor below. His tail was much smoother than she remembered, and as she watches a few sticks and leaves are brushed out by the swirling forces, joining in the floating fun. His forelegs were folded loosely against his mud and grass stained chest, and she watched as his lungs filled it and allowed it to empty incredibly slowly. He couldn’t be drawing a breath more than once every 45 seconds, maybe slower! She knew she should make a note of this, but in spite of herself remained still and silent. At his neck the collar — which before appeared to merely reflect the ambient light — now glows with its own inner illumination. The lettering around its exterior stands out, casting phantom shapes out into the air like a movie projector in a dusty theater. His mane, like his tail, is also nearly free of tangles and hitchhikers thanks to the mysterious ministrations. The bits of plant matter so freed float in tight loops over his dirtied coat. All this combined worked to lend him a sense of primal power, but what truly pushed it over the edge was his eyes.

If before they had simply been glowing from within, as if it was a party trick, then now they shone like beacons over darkened seas. The light is enough to fill both eyes fully across their widths, and so intense as to render his lids seemingly translucent. It shone right at her, into her, through her, as Astrid feels her body overran by tingling pinpricks.

She’d been so caught up that she just now noticed with a surge of panic that she’d been looking directly at him! Her hand had slipped from the side of the door and was resting on the countertop, just as fully exposed as most of her upper body. Rook was chirping loudly, the radiation meter surging far above several red lines, yet it all seemed muffled, like she was experiencing it from a great distance, underwater. The panic was there, but it seemed like it didn’t know exactly what it was supposed to be doing. She decides she doesn’t like the annoyance of this thing on her wrist, so with a twist of the clasp her watch falls away, clattering to rest on it’s side on the counter. The display shifts to stay in view; switching to a large red warning symbol which flashes alternatively with a skull and crossbones, but Astrid steps around the counter, leaving it behind.

Her gaze never leaves the unicorn suspended before her, and by now her skin is alive with a crawling tingle like the loving caress of lightning. Her vision has washed out into a milky blue haze, but is presently sharpening and condensing into lines that weave and twirl majestically. They shift with each step she takes, as if despite filling the room she can only see a slice of them at once, and as she moves a whole new set of mathematical beauties swim into view in place of the old. Her hair and clothes tug at her form; drawing her inward, but once she reaches the edge of the spinning objects that form a barrier around him she is forced to halt.

For the first time since leaving her cover she breaks eye contact, looking around the area slowly, taking in the way in which each piece of floating furniture or decor is being swept along by the lines of light; spun and carried along with them in their ballet. The vision starts to fade, the caress across her skin begins to itch as it sputters, and she looks back to the unicorn, pleading. There is a beauty overtly apparent in those lines to which he seems to be the key, but something deeper too; something she can almost taste. It resonates with her, familiar like a childhood lullaby, something that’s been with her her whole life, but always out of sight. It was in the wind when she learned to ride a bike, in the hum of the motor when her dad drove her to the beach, in the cheers of her friends and family when she graduated.

“What is it? What is all this!?” She cries, tears forming at the corners of her eyes as she locks them onto this thing that had stormed into her life. She sniffed, taking another glance around the room now that her view of the wondrous arcs of light had been renewed.

“-Who are you?-”

The unicorn draws in a breath. Not another of his long barely noticeable ones, but full and deep, through the mouth, as if he was just waking — yet his glowing eyes remain closed. As he inhales the room around him seems to compress slightly, imperceptibly flexing inward, and threatening to pull Astrid off her feet. His exhalation seems to draw on forever, and with it space relaxes, but the forces around him grow even stronger.

The objects twirl faster, another painting is pulled from a farther corner of the room, and the twigs and leaves closest to him start to grow! Little green stalks and buds wiggling free in a minute fit of life. Astrid feels the pull on her tighten, and suddenly her feet are lifting free of the floor, her clothes and hair almost whipping in the non-existent wind.

“Ah– Ahhh! No–no–no–no!”

Fear grips her as she loses her footing, her arms wheeling to keep her steady despite the fact that she’s not tipping whatsoever. She looks dead ahead and with a gasp see’s two orbs of white-blue light, no longer closed over, but staring right at her. She freezes. The tingle over her skin starts to bite, her vision is clouding into a smoky hue, and her limbs tremble as the eyes bore into her own. She knows nothing about this creature, nothing about what it can do, nothing about what it wants, nothing about where it came from, just that at this moment it has her suspended in midair, and that she is more afraid of it right now than anything else she can ever remember.

Cold sweat bathes her flesh, tremors wrack her limbs, and the world closes in around her; suffocatingly close. A touch at her feet snags her focus. The Floor! Almost no sooner does she register it than her weight overcomes her. She crumples, barely managing to break her fall as she collapses backwards, eyes screwed shut and curled up as tight as she can.

The rug is soft. Her eyes register only darkness. Nothing tingles or crawls over her. Her trembling slowly yields.

She peeks her eyes open, keeping them glued to a point on the floor. Still shaking just a little she lifts herself into a seated position, then a crouch, never lifting her eyes. She tries to calm her breath and get a hold of her limbs, swallowing. Rook’s alarm suddenly registers, a drone that once noticed stabs into her awareness.

“Rook, Mute!” He’d been transmitting both over his speaker and into her jaw implant.

“But Mistr–”

“Mute!”

The wailing halts. She rubs her temple.

It had let her go. She couldn’t even feel a whisper of a tug against her clothes. A long quiet moment passes before she can even muster herself enough to glance sideways at the room. No mystical lines dance along with the still airborne objects. No beautiful harmony delves into her memories. Just a slight chill and the sound of thunder against the howling sky.

It feels... lonely.

“Rook. What’s my exposure dosage?”

“...”

“You can unmute to tell me.” Her eyes are still downward.

“I know.” He replies somberly, pausing. “Mistress, your estimated whole-body absorbed dose is approximately 92 Gray. Plus or minus 28. It is a lethal dose. I am sorry.”

She swallowed.

“By how much?” It had been a long time since she’d needed to know human radiation exposure limits.

“Anything over approximately 7 gray is 100% lethal within a matter of days or weeks without treatment. The record survived dose was by an H.I. reactor worker at 23 Gray.”

Her body went numb, and she fell back out of her crouch, wrapping her arms around her knees. If that monster Horizon Innovations couldn’t fix her, no one could. She looked up at the floating being who had just killed her.

His eyes were completely white, so it was impossible to tell where they were pointed — if he could see out of them at all — it could be her imagination or wishful thinking, but he seemed to be regarding her with a look of at least mild concern. Nothing came over her vision. Nothing itched at her scalp or down her back. They just shared a long look in silence as the storm howled on, uncaring.

“Shouldn’t I be dead already?” Her tone was flat, but it cracked at the end.

“Symptoms should be extremely severe. Full systems failure is estimated to occur within no more than an hour at this dosage.” His tone was even. Something like sad, but too clinical. You knew it wasn’t his fault for not being able to sound comforting, so you hated his programmer for it instead, just a little.

“Well for being about to die, tell you the truth I feel fine.”

“Very little about this situation matches anything in my databank. There are many variables left unaccounted for.”

With a sigh Astrid stands and breaks eye contact with the floating equinoid to set rook evenly on the counter, and re-affix her watch around her wrist. She checked the time.

“Well. I didn’t think I would have to come up with what might be my last words so soon... Rook, you still recording?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Good. Add Dr. Aether– Add my dad’s authorization to the encryption key, and remove my biometrics. Won’t be much good if I’m–” she chokes, then swallows hard, “anyway, um... Hey Dad. Sorry I didn’t listen to Rook here, he really did his best.”

She pauses, blinking back the unbidden moisture at the corner of her eye.

“So there’s this unicorn, I think.” She steps aside and motions to the scene behind her — which she realizes must look impossible.“ Just showed up outta the storm and knocked on the door. I swear it said ‘Human’ when it looked at me, then it just collapsed. I was trying to help it, trying to do good. ‘Every life’, eh?” She sniffs and wipes her eye. “There’s something fantastic about what he can do. It’s not quantifiable by any words I know, it’s just... magic. I guess we’re just not built to take it though. If Rook’s sensors are right — and that no small if, I’m happy to say — then there’s not a thing on the planet that can help me, so, uh... I just want to say: I love you Dad. I love you.” She pauses, watery eyes drifting to the side as she ponders her parting missive before adding one last line. “I’ll see you at the beach.” Her half cocked smile does its best to appear reassuring, at least long enough to turn back to the unicorn, wiping her face and setting her jaw in determination.

“Okay Mister, let’s at least finish what you started!”

He stares ahead as if she hadn’t even spoken.

“Oh no, nuh-uh! You don’t flood my cabin, my -body- with radiation and then just sit there! What happened to the– those lines, the tingles?!” She shouts uselessly, trying to approach. The objects around him were still moving too quickly, however, and whenever she tried to duck through a hole it seemed one appeared to fill it, threatening to smack her sideways.

With a frustrated growl she rounds the kitchen island and hefts the sturdy wooden door clear overhead, arms running on a high octane adrenaline mix.

“Don’t you ignore -me!-”

Taking a step back she charges him, leaping and dropping the door to her side just as she reaches the wall of objects. Crashes and clatters buffet the door, but she is ultimately shielded as she flies forward, right towards that smugly passive glowing face. She wasn’t really sure what she intended to do after this part. Did she want to punch him? Tackle him? Try to throw him out of the air? Whatever she might have planned it never came to fruition, because both her and the door were swept up, caught and carried around in circles until they had found their own places in his orbits.

At first for some reason she was surprised, or at least taken off guard, because she flailed her arms and tried to balance as she was pitched sideways, her rage forgotten nearly as quickly as gravity had been made for forget about her. The momentum she had carries her around the room several times, the door drifting away from her towards the outer ring of furniture.

“No, door, come back– here!”

She tries to grab at it, but only gets a tentative hold on one edge. A slight tug succeeds only in spinning the both of them around a few times, and sending the door to slide gracefully through the denser and slightly more proximate ring of smaller objects without incident.

“Whoa– wh– whuuu~... this was a lot more pleasant when I wasn’t tipping over.” For a moment she remembers the gut wrenching pain and nausea she was supposed to be suffering as she died, and felt the bile rise to her throat. No! No, she decided. Can’t lose it now. This could literally be her final hour, so she better not waste it languishing over how she might not get another.

She takes a few breaths to calm herself and wait for her spinning to stop, and as she reopens her eyes she finds she’s also not rotating around to room quite so quickly. A bit more calm, she manages to get her nerves under control by the time she’s settled into a tranquil orbit. During this time she’s also began to feel pulses across her skin, not entirely unlike the crawling tingle of before, but far more... elegant. Her sight has likewise regained some of its earlier attributes. Highways of power twist in and out of the azure fog which has again started to flood the room.

Astrid finds it hard to not get lost in the intricate and shifting patterns almost immediately, but each time she comes face to face with Zēnith — as his glowing collar so pointedly proclaims — his eyes burrow into hers; cutting through the fog like a brilliant binocular lighthouse.

A feeling of welcoming warmth hums to life within her. Pathways of light surround her; condensing out of the mist, and she can feel them saturate her being. They feel like an old friend, long gone, but always near at heart. They ripple gently, like the surface of a pool that had been folded up and woven into a three dimensional work of sublime beauty and tranquility.

Again the memories started to flow through her mind, drifting lazily from scene to scene with no regard for her desire to dwell on each and every one. Laughter and smiles, words of truth spoken from the heart, faces she could always depend on, selfless acts and moments of tender kindness; a veritable deluge of happy moments scattered throughout her life.

Except... here and there were moments that at first seemed just as happy and comforting as the rest, but once they were gone she realized she didn’t know the faces of the people in those scenes. The people, the places, the feelings were all familiar, yet she could remember none of them. Could they be future events? She pondered this, yet found time a meaningless construct in the face of her sensations. This seemed beyond strange but the more she saw the more it all seemed to fit together. Like a quilt made from a thousand little scraps of cloth the lives she saw were being sewn into a single whole. But it wasn’t creation she was experiencing... it was as though it had always been, but had never existed until now. She tried to wrap her mind around how that made sense, but found it too hard to focus on such trivialities. There was a pattern to the flashes of lifes she had lived, and those she had not. They sung together in a harmony that moved her beyond her ability to currently comprehend. Her mind raced as she drew connection after connection, linking meaning and giving form within herself to that which she was experiencing.

The flood of understanding swelled up around her, expanding exponentially faster the more she assembled the world upon which she had been thrust into a coherent construct. The more it grew the more she saw, felt... -lived-. Forests exploded with foliage and shriveled beneath a blanket of snow in the time it took a flower to bloom. Lifetimes spun by in the time it took her to watch a smile spread across a child's face. It was staggering, astonishing, numbing.

All that she was ‘seeing’ she knew, she ‘saw’, to belong to but two threads, pinched and twisted together at a single point in an infinite tapestry of unquantifiable complexity, yet within that point there was more potential than she thought possible within all of what she had previously known as “the universe”. She somehow felt the paradoxical limits of an infinite substance compressed into an infinitesimally miniscule volume — and the horrific splendor of an endless construction of such volumes, innumerably interconnected to each and every other single one, and in a realm which rendered any distance between them meaningless. They existed at all locations together, occupying no space, and all of it, simultaneously.

Astrid's mind was a powerful tool. It could estimate the outcomes of highly complex relations within diminutive margins of error instantly, and calculate the theoretically exact outcome to most of them nearly as fast. It wasn’t that she was born a genius, though many would say she was. Her prowess was owed to an unquenchable thirst for challenge, and an upbringing which supplied her with no shortage of hurdles. She was almost constantly running mental exercises, some of which let her appear almost presentient at times — as she tried to race the quantum computations of the universe in real time — many of which had nothing to do with anything that anyone within a 1km radius had any notion of, and so caused her to appear very strange for bringing them up.

All the years of her life spent inspecting incongruities and seeking solutions had left her extremely well adapted to computation and analytical resolution, so when faced with a problem such as she currently was, she felt more alive and well equipped than she ever had before. It was for this reason that when she was attempting to internalize a first person perspective and understanding of even this relatively finite (and yet still quite infinite) slice of infinity — and was instead subsumed by its boundless depth and endless complexity— she was quite surprised about the whole business, and promptly died by aneurysm.

Being several quasi-cosmic layers outside your home dimensional envelope and still trying to act like the big kid on the block, as it turns out, it bad for your health.

Fortunately, by the action of any number of the infinite possible super-material wills, and/or sheer coincidence, all the other versions of Astrid's mind — those being the ones along all the branches of her probability matrix in which she -hadn’t- just kicked the bucket — were suddenly aware of her demise, and now realizing the danger, decided by unanimous decision that the best plan of action right then was to all back away from the problem slowly. One ever so slight time migration in the opposite direction, and all the Astrids were back in sync, and notably un-perished.

The next order of business was to take the problem, and tell it to piss right off. For a brain this meant simply going to sleep.

Back at the cabin a brilliant flash of blue light explodes from all the windows, illuminating huge swaths of rain-filled air and wind-swept grass. Swirly spiraling sparks of it accumulate all over the exterior walls and roof, gaining momentum before leaping off into the air with a zing and a fizzle, discharging the residual power in arcing trails of light that wavered and evaporated into the night.

Astrid’s body slumps over, and is slowly lowered to the floor, soon followed by that of the pastel pony beside hers, both quite unconscious. The various objects which had been strewn around the room reorganized themselves into their proper places. The door refit itself to its hinges, the bolts dropping into place nice and cleanly. 

Rook, for his part, watched all this from his perch on the counter, recording video in raw 3D from all optics, and logging every sensor. Astrid’s internal biomonitor was logging mostly nominal readings, though there had been an anomalous fault where every meter had jumped simultaneously, yet it had shown no error. It would need a diagnostics run, and possible replacement, he concluded as an addition to his own logs. For whatever reason her body was not failing her as he had expected it to, and he had never once found a situation with a higher joy-simulation index than that incorrect prognosis.

He continued to record as he was suddenly lifted into the air, and forcibly separated from the face of Astrid’s watch, which drifted down to clasp around her wrist. With alarm he noted the force exerted to overcome his magnetic coupling was not nearly what should have been required. He also noted the corresponding spike in ambient radiation as he practically fell from the timepiece, and its higher running average as he was subsequently caught, then floated off down the hallway to be tucked back into the duffel along with all the other clothes and equipment which had been tossed around the room. The ambient radiation dropped to very nearly normal levels as soon as he stopped moving. A few minutes went buy in which nothing of interest happened whatsoever.

“Time: 03:57:12 Optical feed static. Suspending.”

There was no need to record the inside of a bag. Announcing it out loud was just something his Mistress had directed him to do when they first started doing fieldwork. 

“Time: 04:02:12 Auditory feed static. Suspending.”

The cabin had gone quiet. Even his micro accelerometers were registering nothing but the impact of the wind and rain outside.

Plus now he wouldn’t have to announce anything else out loud.

He did the same for all his other sensors, following protocol and logging the action each time. Eventually none were left, and he could shut down his encryption algorithm. He would continue to monitor his surroundings, and could resume any logging he thought necessary, but vast as his storage capacity was, encrypted data  necessitated a drop in compression.

Stream index:zero Closed.
No Input Streams Active.
Encrypted Data Stream Finalizing... Done.
Redundantly Isolating Encrypted Sectors... Done.
Encrypted Data Secure: Ending Service... Done.
Situational Operations Code X-1: All Directives Complete.
Normal Operations Resumed.

End of Line.