This mustache was truly magnificent. Like a tentacle, each whisker leapt out at potential spectators, making easy prey of their gazes. And once they had captured, they were unwilling to let go.

Being the thick jungle of hair that it was, it was next to impossible to resist getting lost in said mustache. Merrily, one danced about its frizzly form, relishing its faint, vibrant motions. One was practically swept away by it. And from its staggering thickness, one would assume it would make an even better brush than the epaulettes its pony-attachment was wearing.

The rest of the mustache's pony-attachment was also something to look at: fierce coal-black eyes, carrying the memory of bravery and sacrifice, taut lips, or at least a lower lip not concealed by the mustache, never short of words of inspiration and honesty, and a graceful posture that couldn't be bent by the fires of Tartarus themselves.

He was most certainly a pony worth knowing. And the noose around his neck made for a great conversation starter.

Luna withdrew her eyes from the painting and turned to speak to her guards. “Excuse me, could you please tell me who this here stallion might be?”

Her words brought the two guardsponies right out of their trances, as they quickly abandoned their tasks of picking noses and counting cracks in the floor. Both were appropriately terrified and confused. “Excuse me, My Princess,” the one to her right said, “would you please repeat that?”

She looked at them sternly. “I asked of you who the pony depicted in this portrait is,” she repeated.

“Certainly!” the left guard said as he stepped up. “This is...” He squinted his eyes a little. “This is General Brickwall and he lived from 139–176 A.C. He was a renowned general. Very famous.”

Luna nodded in fascination before she returned her attention to the painting. As her gaze wandered south, she let out a snort. “You simply read the inscription beneath, didn't you?”

The guard backed off a single step. “No, Your Majesty. I simply know a lot about history. That's all.”

“Is that so.” She eyed him warily. “Then you can surely tell me where he was born.”

“Manehatten.”

“And where he died.”

“Baltimare.”

“And why he became famous.”

“Because he won many battles. He was a general after all.”

Silence followed suit. Wordlessly, Luna circled her prey, searching for the weak spot at which to throw her attack. The guard had not accepted his fate. He remained upright and confident, not breaking as much as a single sweat. Still, she knew she had him locked in a corner like a fish in a bowl and was only missing a single blow with which to catch him.

Luna attacked. “Why was he painted with a noose around his neck?”

“Because... he was hung,” the guard answered.

“In?”

“Baltimare.”

“For?”

“High treason.”

“Because?”

“He treasoned.”

She locked her eyes with his. Still no blinks, still no flinching. He had successfully evaded her blows and stood the test.

“Alright,” she said as she moved two steps to the right towards the next painting, making sure she'd block its inscription from view. “Then what can you tell me about the... pony depicted over here.” She pointed at what was unmistakably a stallion wearing a long blond wig, a glamorous, sparkling dress, and more makeup than was appropriate for any self-respecting mare.

“That's easy,” the guard replied. “He was a world-famous...” He stroked his chin with his hoof. “...cross-dresser?”

“Nonsense!” she exploded. “Insolent whelp! Through thy ignorance and hauteur, thou hast committed a most ferocious crime for which thou shalt be—”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. All these breathing exercises with Princess Cadence couldn't have been for naught. No, she would take a moment to calm herself and then address the problem in a more appropriate fashion.

“You lying scum! With your deception, you have made a fool of both of us, and I for my part won't stand for it! If you won't admit to your devious lies, so the heavens help me, you will eat—”

“My Princess, if I may speak freely,” the guard to her right interrupted.

The three of them waited a long time, until all rhetoric had certainly passed. “You may,” Luna finally allowed.

“It is not our fault. Princess Celestia has given us very specific instructions that we should never leave any question of yours unanswered, no matter the circumstance. So, I'm afraid the two of us were only following orders.”

She looked at him perplexed. “And you interpret her order as her desire to lie to me at all cost?”

The right guard rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, she didn't say that per se, but she strongly implied it. She wanted us to make sure Your Majesty never felt foolish or left out.”

“Then I must say you have done a remarkably bad job, for I am feeling plenty foolish right now.” She stepped forward, right into the right guards face. “So you are suggesting my sister should answer for your dishonesty in your place?”

He gulped. “Of course not, Your Majesty! I would never suggest such a thing.”

She turned her back to them. “But she will do so anyway,” she decided as she started down the hall.

She was already a length away when the right guard stopped her. “My Princess,” he said, “Princess Celestia has also given us instructions not to leave your side.”

“Then don't,” she hissed as she led the way.

Moments later, she and company had reached the throne room and burst through the door with a loud: “Sister!”

Celestia looked at her curiously, but with unaltered composure. “Good day, dear sister,” she said. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

Luna opened her mouth to speak, but cut herself short. She looked to her right and spotted a couple of nobleponies. Apparently, she had barged in on some sort of forum, discussion, or negotiation, but it couldn't have been anything important, as otherwise she would have surely known about it. She chose to ignore it completely.

“Actually, there is,” she told her sister. “I would like to borrow a minute of your time.”

Celestia nodded friendlily in return and politely asked for the nobleponies to leave. After they did and only the Royal Guards remained, including Luna's private pair, she turned her full attention to her sister. “What is it, Luna?” she asked with a smile.

Luna looked back sternly and decided to cut right to the chase. “You deliberately ordered your guards to lie to me,” she accused.

It only fostered Celestia's smile. “I am fairly certain I did no such thing. I would presume there has been some kind of misunderstanding between the three of you?”

Luna didn't pick up on it. “So you claim you never commanded them to lie to me,” she pondered. “Nevertheless, the fact remains that they attempted to deceive their princess with their falsehood; one of the most heinous crimes imaginable.”

She looked back and forth between her guards and her sister. “So I would propose that their punishments consist of their immediate dismissal as my personal guards and their reassignment to their previous position, whichever those have been.” She had the tone of a defense attorney who had just brought about the decisive turnabout in a lost case through deductive reasoning. “As for me: I shall get back to my previous unguarded state and wander about the castle however I like, as has been the case for millennia past and will continue to be for ages to come.”

Celestia's response was immediate and absolute. “No!”

“Why not?” Luna asked, anger growing in her voice.

“Because we both agreed not to interfere with the responsibilities of the Royal Guards in matters of security anymore. Besides, I have never had the chance to hear their side of the story.” Celestia gestured for the two guards in question to step up and they did. “Please, speak up, my little ponies. Has my sister given you a chance to explain yourselves?”

The left guard remained as stiff as his own upper lip. He wasn't going to say anything soon, putting all the more pressure on the right one. The right's brow was visibly drenched in sweat as his eyes shifted back and forth between the two princesses. “Well, um... she definitely didn't not give us the chance to explain ourselves, but...”

He held his breath, desperately looking for a save. “But I think we'd like the chance to explain ourselves again.”

Celestia smiled down on him. Luna wasn't so kind. “Very well,” the former said. “You shall have your chance right now.”

The right guard swallowed hard. “It all happened like this: as per our duty, we were escorting Princess Luna along the castle grounds, when she happened to stumble upon a portrait that sparked her interest. In order not to upset her—”

“Lies!” Luna interrupted. “Nothing but lies! It was entirely to upset me!”

“Please, Luna,” Celestia chided, “let him speak.” She shot the distressed guard a smile. “Please, do continue.”

He did just that. “As I was saying, we didn't want to upset her, although we have been unsuccessful in doing so. When she asked us a question about the aforementioned portrait, we tried to provide her with the knowledge we had, but I'm afraid it was too little to prove a sufficient answer.”

“You mocked me!” Luna shouted. “You mocked me, and then you lied to me, and then you mocked me by lying to me some more!”

“Is that true?” Celestia asked calmly. “Did the two of you lie to my sister?”

“Technically I didn't...” The right guard looked over to his left counterpart. Even if his brother-in-arms didn't do anything to help their case, he wouldn't just throw him to the wolves. “I suppose we did, but we didn't mean any harm. We only abode to our orders of answering all her questions so she won't feel left out, which we understood as...” He took a small break. “...not letting her feel left out.”

Celsetia laid her hoof on his shoulder to stop his shaking. It calmed him down severely. “That was not what I intended when I gave you those instructions. I only meant for you to guide her to a place whence she could get the answer. I would never want you to lie to my sister, for as you can surely tell by now, it upsets her significantly.”

She eyed both of them. “So, are we clear? No more lying to Princess Luna?”

“Absolutely!” To everypony's surprise, it was the left guard shouting as loudly as he could. “No lies! Got it!”

“And I think for what you did, you owe her an apology.”

“Yes, Your Majesty! We are sorry, Princess! Please forgive us!” both answered promptly.

Celestia turned towards her sister. “As you can see, sister, these two ponies here had no malicious intent when doing what they did. So there is no need to dismiss them as your guards, wouldn't you agree?”

The two guards held their breaths as they expectantly looked at Luna. They might have dodged the wrath of one infallible god-princess, but that didn't mean they would dodge another.

“Fair enough,” Luna said after a moment, with a grudge still audible. “Just make sure that it never happens again.”

She heard her guards release their breaths and turned to leave. To her, this was now over and done with. She'd simply write it off as a defeat and never speak of it again.

“What was the question?” Celestia asked the backside of her sister.

Luna turned around on the spot. “What?”

“The question your guards couldn't answer. What was it?”

Luna waved it away. “Like they said, it was merely something about a painting I had found in a castle hallway.”

“Show me.”

“What?”

“Show me. I'm fairly certain I can answer whatever questions you may have if you show me the painting.”

Luna looked at her sister speechlessly. Celestia still had that dumb smirk on her face, that calm, superior smile that almost forced her to say no. But that, Luna knew, was exactly what she'd expect her to do. “Alright, I will show you,” she finally decided as they disappeared in a bright flash.

And reappeared not a second later in the hallway. “This is the painting I was talking about,” Luna pointed out.

“Ah, I see,” Celestia said gleefully. “This is a painting of General Brickwall.”

“That much I was already able to inquire.”

“Then what is your question?”

“My question is this.” Luna took a moment to admire the painting before she continued: “Who was he? What did his fierce eyes of steel see in his lifetime. Whereto did his battle cry lead his dauntless soldiers. What did he achieve to be painted in such a grand and imposing way?” She restrained herself from dropping the word mustache along the way.

Celestia cleared her throat and began: “Brickwall was a general fighting many battles in the wars of the Great Southern Plains. He was tremendously successful, not only in that he won all his battles, but also doing so overwhelmingly, sometimes with not even a single documented casualty on his side. In fact, at some point he started to call himself 'Brickwall the Undefeated'.”

“A nickname tempting the fates, no doubt,” Luna pointed out. “I suppose at some point something was bound to break his lucky streak.”

“You are correct. It isn't for his seeming invincibility that he is known to this day. Most ponies remember him for a different reason. As he continued to become more and more successful, his arrogance got the better of him and he lead a campaign that ended in perhaps the most crushing defeat in Equestrian history, and his capture. It was then that he coined the famous phrase: 'I'd rather die than surrender, Tim!' ”

“Who was Tim?”

“Apparently one of the ponies captured along with him, to whom he talked right before he surrendered. And died.”

“He... But he...”

This was quite something to take in. Celestia once more proved her talent in leaving her sister flabbergasted. Luna quickly moved on to the other painting she had found. “What about this one? Who was... he.”

“That is a painting of Masked Mullet,” Celestia replied, “a famous actor of his time, who truly had the blood of a thespian.”

Luna scanned the effeminate stallion once more. “I see. That would explain the dress and the rest of his peculiar get up.”

Celestia chuckled to herself. “I guess it would seem this way, although I assume the artist depicted him this way for his political commitment and his struggle for the rights of cross-dressing ponies all over Equestria.”

“Cross-dresser...” Luna's mouth wouldn't form any more words. It just babbled on and on incoherently.

Celestia lovingly placed a hoof on Luna's shoulder. “You know, sister, I do not mind sharing my knowledge with you, but if you want to learn more about all the Equestrian history you have missed in your absence, you should spend a visit to the Canterlot Archives,” she advised. “I am certain I can't tell you anything you wouldn't find in a library.”

“Library...” Luna still didn't have much more mental capability than a talking potato.

“Now if that is all you wanted to know, I would like to return to the throne room. There is still some business I have to attend to.” When she didn't hear any objections, Celestia added: “Be seeing you, sister!”

“...seeing you...”

And with another flash she was gone, leaving behind Luna in her aphasic shock. Only when her guards turned the corner and sprinted towards her did she snap out of it.

“Princess!” the right guard shouted. “Please...”

He, like his partner, needed a few seconds to catch his breath. “Please don't run off like that. If you teleport, we have next to no chance of catching up to you.”

Luna looked at him and wordlessly led them to the library.

* * *

Celestia had been right: the Archives were a great place for research with an illimitable amount of knowledge on display. So much, in fact, that it was hard to find a first vantage point from which to start. Luna went with History Of Equestria – Ponies And Others, a simple reference book for ponies and members of other races of historical significance. Presumably, it would be perfect to get an overview. Once she'd find some ponies to pique her interest, she would further her studies on them with some more detailed books.

The only problem was there were simply too many ponies to choose from. There was Empty Barrel, a philosopher who decided to question the standards of society and endorse the true values of life by abandoning all luxury, except for a giant ceramic jar into which he moved. There was Soaring Spear, a warrior renowned for ridding the distant villages of the savannah of the dreaded pony-eating lion wizard of Tsavo. There was Impending Doom, a royal counselor who was an adviser to many kings, queens, princes, princesses, dukes, and duchesses, all of which were overthrown within a week of their meeting. All of them, she deemed, deserved to be looked into some more.

The entries were only one or two paragraphs long, three tops, but despite their brevity, they managed to whet Luna's appetite every time. Every deed was heroic, every action was courageous, and every character was admirable. And with recounts as vivid and ostentatious as these, it left her wondering what it would be like to have...

She looked up and scoured the room for possible sudden intruders. The only other ponies present were her guards, and they kept their distance, still waiting at the door. She was free to indulge in any nefarious activities she desired.

She knew it was vain. She knew it was petty. She knew it was downright narcissistic. But there was no way she could stop herself. She had another quick glance for any prying eyes before she turned the page to the letter 'L'.

Luminous Incandescence
Lupercalia
Lurking Shadow

No, there was apparently no entry for any Luna whatsoever. Although, maybe that wasn't the only way to go about this. Maybe she had to approach this from a different angle. She flipped the pages towards 'N'.

There was no entry there either. Something to be grateful for, she felt, but it still left her wondering. Had her rule in history really been so miniscule that she was undeserving of an entry of her own? Had she really never done anything as noteworthy as all these ponies she had read about? No, there had to be a place where she left her hoofprint in history. And then it came to her. She turned to chapter 'D'.

Discord:
A mischievous draconequus, who managed to conquer the entire world by chaotic magic unparalleled in the history of Equestria. His control stretched beyond the material world into the realms of the celestial bodies, the flow of time, and the rules of logic themselves.
His reign was marked by absolute capriciousness. Contrary to other absolute rulers of his time, he never demanded anything from his subjects, who he viewed as his personal playthings.
His rule came to a short end when he was turned into stone by the Elements of Harmony, wielded by Princess Celestia and...

“Accomplice!?” The book trembled in Luna's hooves. “This is how history remembers me!? As a nameless appendage to my sister!?”

The book went sailing through the air and was replaced with a new one. Clearly whatever publisher had dared to let this hackwork pass was a lone, incapable lunatic, who'd by now had led his company into inevitable ruin. Another, a real reference book was bound to have some account on her.

She had no entry in A History Of Equestrians. Nothing in Ponysonas In The Equestrian Timeline either. Even the obscurely named You're An Idiot, And You Should Have Learned About These Ponies A Long Time Ago had no mention of her whatsoever. She browsed all the shelves labeled 'L' and 'P', but none of the spines made any indication the books could be about her. There was something fishy going on and she would definitely get herself some answers.

“Sister!” she yelled for the second time today as she burst into the thrown room once more.

“Hello, sister!” Celestia answered with the same unbroken serenity from before. “What can I do for you.”

Luna got straight to the point. “Where am I?” she asked angrily.

“In the Canterlot throne room,” came Celestia's smiling response. “Although, I can't imagine that is what you meant.”

“I meant in the history books! Where is my place in the history of Equestria?”

Celestia gave the question a seconds worth of thought. “Have you checked under 'L'? Probably somewhere close to Lurking Shado—”

“I am serious!”

“And so am I. Any decent book on history should have your name in it at least a few times.”

“But it doesn't!” Luna insisted, stomping violently. “I checked multiple books. There isn't the slightest mention of me in any of them. Not a single word. In all of them, I am reduced to a mere nameless assistant.” She spat the last word with pure venom.

It left Celestia completely untouched. “I can't believe that. From the very first day we were appointed rulers of Equestria, we have always acted as a team. We even wielded the Elements of Harmony together. Everything we did bore both our names. Why, I have read at least a dozen accounts of our joint victory over King Sombra, just last...” In a brief moment of epiphany, it dawned on Celestia exactly how long she hadn't been in the history section of her own library. “...just last millennium. Maybe they're a little hidden, but they should still all be there.”

“Well, it seems my part in it all has been degraded ever since,” Luna snarled. “Whoever has been in charge of the history section of the Canterlot Archives in the last couple of centuries hasn't been much of an advocate of truth.”

“That is not true!” Celestia's usually calm demeanor was broken by the slightest hint of anger. “I have never appointed a curator carelessly. All of them have been renowned professors at my School for Gifted Unicorns before I even considered putting them in charge of our nation's most important archive.”

Celestia let the graveness of this statement sink in before she hastily added: “With one obvious exception, of course.”

Luna's ears perked up at the sound of this. “Then we have a culprit!” she announced. “I am sure this 'exception' of yours was severely unqualified and thought nothing of my place alongside yours in history.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

“And why would that be?”

Celestia gave her sister a slightly pained expression. “Because that exception was your former personal assistant, Curtsey.”

“My... assistant?”

A ray of enlightenment pierced the clouds of obliviousness that had fogged her memory. That's right, she remembered: a thousand years ago, she had had an assistant.

Of course, back then she had had quite the array of assistants and private servants. One of these had been Curtsey, her go-to maid, personal day planner, and handymare for all odd jobs coming up. In her memories, Luna was quite fond of her. She had always been friendly, efficient, reliable, a bit possessive at times, but most importantly, discrete enough to be easily completely forgotten about. In short, she had been the picture book definition of a fine assistant, which elicited a simple question from Luna: “How? How did she get to be a curator?”

Celestia was shifting back and forth uncomfortably, like a schoolfilly ill-prepared for her presentation – something Luna had never seen from her sister before. “It was simply that, shortly after the time of your... departure, the previous curator retired from business. There were a few viable candidates at the time, but none of them were truly outstanding. When Curtsey then applied for the position, I felt somewhat obliged to give it to her, since I had been directly responsible for... the vacancy of her previous position.

“So you see why I can not believe that it was a curator's doing,” Celestia quickly continued. “I'm sure it was simple happenstance. If you search a little more thoroughly, I am sure you will come upon many books that honor your memory a little more explicitly.”

“Perhaps your right. Perhaps a more extensive search will bring forth something proper. If you need me, I'll be in the library for the rest of the day.”

Luna's affirmation seemed to put Celestia right back at ease and they bid each other farewell. She picked up her guards at the door and quickly returned to the library.

Before she entered through the door, however, she turned to the guards on her left and right and pierced them with a stare. “May I ask something of you,” she demanded.

“Of course you may, Princess,” they replied.

She pointed back to the hallway. “I will need you to go to the kitchen and fetch me a few things. Some coffee and fruit snacks will do for the moment, but I might require some more after that. I'm afraid this is going to be a long study session ahead of me.”

Luna downed cup number eight. Or was it number nine? She had lost count of about everything at seventy books and four cups of coffee.

One thing she was sure of though: this amount had at least doubled by now. She had endured no less than one hundred and forty failures in locating her name. Things grew more and more unaccountable, and simultaneously, so did she.

She hated them. She hated them all for being so hateworthy. But most off all, she hated the dozens of biographies on her sister. All of them were accurate to ten decimal places. All of them knew the date, place, and even time of her birth. They recounted all the steps, essential and unessential, in her campaigns to defeat Discord. One of them even put down her date of death, as predicted by the prophecies of one Nagstradamus. They only omitted one very small detail: the fact that she had been born with a little sister.

Time and time again had she extended her search radius. Time and time again had she included ponies, events, and locations she had only brushed in her lifetime, on the off-chance that it might be the one thing her connection to which had not been eradicated from history.

Book number one-hundred forty-one and then some fell to the floor next to its predecessors. She had refused to put any of them back into place before she found at least a single mention of her name. Before she did, she figured, the chore would be simply too depressing.

She turned to the next book on the table. The Mare In The Moon And Other Old Mare's Tales. She reconsidered. She had originally grabbed it because Mare in the Moon somewhat sounded like it would relate to the situation of her thousand-year indisposition, but right now, it sounded simply too far-fetched. But she wasn't going to put it back anyway, so she decided to give it a shot nonetheless.

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together, and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn; the younger brought out the moon to begin the night. Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all the different types of ponies.
But as time went on, the younger sister became resentful. The ponies relished and played in the day her elder sister brought forth, but shunned and slept through her beautiful night. One fateful day, the younger unicorn refused to lower the moon to make way for the dawn. The elder sister tried to reason with her, but the bitterness in the young one's heart had transformed her into a wicked mare of darkness: Nightmare Moon.
She vowed that she would shroud the land in eternal night. Reluctantly, the elder sister harnessed the most powerful magic known to ponydom: the Elements of Harmony. Using the magic of the Elements of Harmony, she defeated her younger sister, and banished her permanently in the moon.
The elder sister took on responsibility for both sun and moon and harmony has been maintained in Equestria for generations since.

She was unable to tear herself away from it. She reread it, then re-reread it, and re-reread it once more. There was no doubt about it. This was her. This was her mark in history. This was what Luna, aka Nightmare Moon, was remembered by by the ponies of this day and age.

“The villainess in a lousy, crummy, two-bit fillies' bedtime story!?”

It was exasperating to a point of uncontrol.

The infuriating storybook was the first to be swept up by her magic, but it sure wasn't the last. In a long chain, they spiraled upwards to the roof, where they were caught in a giant hard cover swirl that was running faster and faster as it grew larger and larger.

The rustling of hundreds of loose pages filled the room, their crackling the overture to the upcoming thunderstorm. All these books had committed atrocities and for that they would receive the cruelest of penalties. Her righteous fury would rain swift vengeance down upon them. Or was it her swift fury raining down righteous vengeance? It didn't matter. It was going to be something swift, something righteous, and above all, something very, very painful.

What their punishment would be, Luna didn't know yet. So far, no book had ever dared to defy her. But whatever it was, she would make sure it would be crushing, and a definite warning to all future books which would consider doing the same.

And for that, one collective punishment wouldn't be enough. No, for this they all deserved an individual sentence, specifically designed to give Tartarus to each and every last one of them. And she would start with the tome right above her head, the one with the title Coffee Recipes Of Centuries Past. It would be the first to suffer the full extent of her wrath. It would be the first to...

At once, Luna let go off all the other books. What was this one doing along all the others? Had she selected it? Why would she do such a thing? She racked her brain for an answer.

There was a story concerning coffee in her past. Once, there was a band of rapscallions that figured if they only drank enough coffee, they would stay up long enough for an exhausted, dreamless sleep, in which they wouldn't have to face the nightmares Luna had prepared for them, which would help them grow into better ponies.

The problem eventually became big enough to warrant her intervention. She challenged the greatest chefs of Equestria to come up with a new coffee recipe, one that would use a trick to force ponies into a belated, but deeper-than-regular slumber, thereby giving her ample time to deal with these misdemeanants once and for all.

One chef was able to succeed eventually, and once she had taken care of the problem, he was highly rewarded for it. She thought the book might have an honorary mention of her for the contest she initiated.

But she couldn't, for the life of herself, figure out what its name used to be. She though it had been a terrible pun, along the lines of “A Heavy Doze Off Caffeine”, but only ten times worse. It was no use; she would have to go through all of them, one by one, starting immediately.

Arabica Assault.

A fabled type of coffee originating from Saddle Arabia.
For centuries, the brewing process has been transferred orally from generation to generation and kept well hidden from foreign influences, until in 806 A.C., when famous entrepreneur Doubles Pennyworth bought the recipe off one of the native families and introduced it to Equestria.
Aficionados value the coffee for its enticing flavor, its excruciating bitterness, and its enormous caffeine content. Allegedly, it is so strong, it is literally able to wake the dead.

Luna closed the book. This coffee seemed to be exactly what she needed. It might be the one thing that could give her the kick necessary to continue working on deconstructing her ominous vanishing. And if that last sentence was true, she had just gotten a new angle on the problem.