The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

First published 17th of October, 2011

A lone pony of a Wasteland future Equestria finds a way to visit her dead friends in the past.

A horrible Cataclysm has turned all of Equestria into a Wasteland of barren ash and twilight desolation. The Sun and the Moon have been destroyed. Everypony has died--including Princesses Luna and Celestia. But one pony miraculously survives; she is a lone wanderer, the last of her kind, surrounded by menacing creatures that hate her. She navigates the Wastes in an airship and scavenges off the blighted landscape to keep herself alive.

Then one day she meets an old companion who grants her a gift, the chance to go back in time to the warm and sunny days of Ponyville, where her dead friends live in happiness. How far will the last pony venture into this joyous age of Equestria, even if she fully knows that there is no way to change the horrible fate of everypony she loves?

2013 Edition: Smaller Chapters, Better Grammar, and a Few New Scenes

(A shout-out to Vimbert, pre-reader and gentlecolt)

- ACT ONE: THE WASTELAND - Chapter One: From the Ashes

The first thing she remembered was how scared Rainbow Dash was. She could feel the pegasus' panting breath as the young filly clung—trembling—to her backside. Rainbow Dash flew them both over the panicked sprawl of Cloudsdale, darting around herds of frightened and hysterical ponies. There was a great shadow falling over the land of Equestria, as if some titanic curtain was being drawn over the noonday Sun, and the pegasi's home in the sky was the first to fall under the blight.

As the chaos reached a deafening cacophony, the tiny pony buried her snout into Rainbow's prismatic mane. “I don't get it!” she shouted. “Wh-what's going on? Why's everypony so freaked out?”

“I can't believe it. Harmony was right! She was right all along!” Rainbow Dash's voice sounded strangely cold, contemplative, distant—like she was flying a million kilometers away from where the two of them were presently soaring. “I wonder who else knew about this! Twilight?!”

“R-Rainbow, you're scaring me,” the filly murmured. Tears welled at the edges of her eyes as she clung all the tighter to her sky-barreling protector. “Who was right about what? Where are you taking us?”

As Rainbow Dash veered around a stampeding herd of rain factory workers, she ignored the little pony's first question and barely tackled the second, “I'm taking you somewhere safe!”

“M-me?” The filly blinked. “But what about you?—WHOAH!”

She shrieked as Rainbow ducked low beneath a falling column of skymarble. Gasping, the filly atop her looked back to see an entire cloudbed dissipating in a wisp of steam; every pegasus that was galloping across it flailed in the sudden plunge and all too tragically succumbed to the weight of several ivory structures overtaking them from above. Far below the clouds, where the hapless pegasi plummeted, the great green expanse of Equestria shuddered and bulged as if a serpent of epic proportions was shredding its way upwards through the surface.

There were even more screams. The young pony looked forward to witness a rainbow factory imploding as three whole levels of cloudbeds collapsed through it. Before her trembling eyes, half of Cloudsdale crumbled into a gigantic earthbound comet. Streams of shattered rainbow patterns and marble shrapnel flew towards them. Before she could scream, Rainbow Dash banked hard to the left, yelling at the youngling to hold on tight.

She obeyed, and clamped her hooves around Rainbow's spine with an iron grip as the pegasus spun them around surging chunks of debris, falling droves of screaming ponies, and white-hot spurts of Cloudsdalian steam. At the end of her acrobatic sky dance, Rainbow Dash heroically soared the two of them heavenward towards a patch of brown haze beyond the last wisps of evaporating clouds. As the clouds gave way, the brown haze turned out to be a caravan of abandoned hot air balloons conjoined about a metal framed gondola large enough to fit four dozen ponies.

Rainbow Dash threaded the two of them through an open porthole in the side of the abandoned royal cargo vessel. Touching down inside, Rainbow planted the young filly on her hooves. The pony stumbled numbly across the metal interior of the gondola, ushered forward by her older friend. After several dizzied blinks, she saw what she was being led to: a series of dark cubicles fashioned out of obsidian metal.

“Arcane vaults?” The filly glanced confusedly up at the pegasus. “Rainbow Dash—Ponies are dying! What are we doing here?”

“Kid, if I place my bets right—and I sure as Celestia wish I didn't have to—all of Equestria is dying. There's no place in the sky or on the ground that's safe—except for here.”

“Why here?”

“It's what Harmony told me. And so far, she's been right about a bunch of stuff,” Rainbow Dash's voice echoed once she had shoved them both into the hollow of one of the arcane vaults. The great dying world shrieked and howled outside the claustrophobic interior like a reverse seashell. “It all makes sense now. I can't take any chances; You're staying here, alright?”

“Staying here?” the filly squeaked in disbelief. She trotted shakily around the interior, eyeing the floor, the roof, the two tiny windows of sickly pale sunlight growing dimmer, dimmer, dimmer. “But Rainbow Dash! What about our friends? What about my—?” There was a large metallic clang, and the filly gasped to find herself shut inside the box-like vault. “Rainbow Dash!” She ran up and scratched her hooves in futility against the thick black door. “Let me out! Wh-why are you doing this?”

“Because I'll be darned if I let you die!” Rainbow Dash's bright face hovered outside a barred vent in the door frame. She reached a hoof down and playfully ruffled the filly's mane, all the while sporting a brave smirk. “Don't fret! I'll be back in—like—half an hour, tops! I just gotta find Harmony! She'll know how to fix all of this!” She managed a not-so-stealthy gulp of a lumped throat: “Sh-she has to ...”

“Rainbow Dash, don't leave me!” the filly sobbed, all her tiny weight pressed against the door. “Please—I don't want to be alone!”

“I'll be back! I promise! Now you promise me something! Promise me you'll not leave this airship until one of us girls comes to get you!”

“Rainbow—”

“Promise me! Pinkie Pie Swear!”

“I-I swear,” the filly hiccuped, fighting back her tears.

“Everything's gonna work out. You'll see!” Rainbow Dash's hoof let go of the filly's head as she trotted backwards towards the porthole in the side of the gondola. “Seriously, kid—Would I let the world be any less cool by disappearing?” A wink, a flick of the tail, and she was gone.

The little pony sat there—trembling—in the dark shadow of the arcane vault, with the penumbra of light from two opposite windows acting as her only view to an apocalyptic crescendo. For what seemed like an hour of creeping terror, she listened to the thunderous echoes of her own heartbeat. A sour tumor formed in the base of her throat. With a trembling tongue, she reared herself up and started calling—mewling—Rainbow Dash's name, then Fluttershy's, then even Applejack's. When nopony and nothing answered her foalish cries, she cleared her throat and—in a braver breath—tried a name that she had barely come to comprehend, much less believe in. “H-Harmony?”

It was around that very moment that a tremendous shockwave ricocheted across the roof of the world. The filly felt it, as the entire body of the gondola rattled like a ship dashed against a rocky seashore. The pale bands of light from the opposite windows swam across the vault's interior, and the young pony realized to her horror that one or more of the balloons had exploded. The entire body of the dirigible spiraled in a suicidal plunge earthward. She was only faintly aware of a horrified little voice calling out all the names she had ever grown attached to in her abbreviated life. Several more spins later, her young body flew violently towards the side of the vault. She looked out the barred window and saw the entirety of Cloudsdale falling like a bag of ivory bricks towards an Equestrian countryside drenched in endless flame. Droves of screaming pegasi fell towards the gaping maw of the burning abyss—until suddenly their airborne carcasses exploded in a hurdling wall of ash.

Breathless, the filly's eyes tilted upwards to see the source of the holocaustal blast wave. As a great shadow fell over the plunging vault, she saw the Sun being blotted out by a great circular phantom. It wasn't until the pull of gravity boiled her blood from the inside out that she realized this “phantom” was the Moon. The cold body completely eclipsed the burning one—creating a solid ring of fire for a few brief breaths—until the Moon itself exploded and covered everything everywhere in one thunderous scream, masking hers.

Her scarlet eyes opened wide, twitching.

Ash and snow danced across the endless field of cloudbeds, stretching dark and gray from horizon to horizon, as far as anypony could see, as far as only she could see...

She sighed, her eyes filling with perpetual grayness from the monochromatic world outside. A hint of moisture sprang from her quivering lashes, but they cleared instantly as the pony frowned, sat up straight in her cockpit's seat, and flung a pair of amber-brown goggles over her gaze. The adult mare reached both hooves forward and pulled at a series of levers flanking the left and right sides of her chair, which was positioned in the center of an airship's cramped cabin. Gazing forward across an instrument panel, she focused on the altimeter as it ticked down a spinning scale. The gears and servos within the dashboard hissed and puttered incessantly, speaking to the mare in a language of her own design.

The entire body of the cabin rocked and veered as she navigated her way through a pocket of windy turbulence. She tilted her gaze up towards the curved windows that stretched in front of the dashboard. Beyond the copper-framed, transparent sheets, the flurry of ashen snow kicked up. The air was anything but calm here—a rock face had to be nearby. It was time to stop relying on the instrument panel and trust in gut instinct.

Taking a deep breath, the pony reached a brown hoof up and pulled at a chain-linked handle. A great iron boiler positioned at the very rear of the cabin hissed and billowed hotly. Several brass pipes rattled against the curved walls of the gondola as steam throttled up through them and into a series of gears that controlled the exterior rudders and propellers of the airship. The pony's hoof pulled at another chain, and a shrill whistling sound lit the foggy air as the vessel's lateral vents briefly opened.

A ringing noise sounded across the cabin; the ship descended rapidly. The pony ignored the alarm and proceeded with her sharp plummet. Her brow creased above her amber goggles as she squinted hard through the mist-laden windshield, the fluttering ash outside parting every which way to make room for the ship's piercing path. The altimeter clicked madly; the metal framework of the dashboard rattled and buckled. Finally, as the vessel’s fall gave slack to the pony's seat harnesses, she spotted a break in the ashen blizzard. A great black mass surged through the gray mist ahead.

She immediately reached her muzzle up and yanked at a chain-linked handle with her teeth while simultaneously shoving two levers back with a pair of strong hooves. Every dangling supply net and rattling cage inside the gondola swayed forward as the zeppelin came to a hovering stop. The aircraft then fluttered gently down towards a granite cliff that jutted out from the mist like a great black knife. Slowly, the pony piloted the dirigible downward one meter at a time, then one half meter at a time, then she cut all power and simply let the thing naturally drift until there was an inevitable thump of iron against rock.

In one motion, she unclasped all of her safety harnesses and dashed towards the port side of the vessel. Clad in brown leather armor from snout to flank, the agile pony raised her head towards a valve and grasped its handle in her teeth. With a tightly held breath, she cranked and cranked and cranked the cylindrical device forward until—through the edge of her squinting vision—she saw a giant mechanical claw stretching outward from beyond the leftmost side of the great yawning windshield. Once the claw was within reach of the rocky cliff, she let go of the valve and in the next breath pulled at two hooks positioned right next to it. There was a hissing of steam and hydraulics, and she watched in deadpan satisfaction as the metal “fingers” of the claw clamped down tightly onto the edge of the cliff. Locking the fingers in place with a pulled lever, she then trotted to the starboard side of the ship and performed the same feat, so that an identical claw stretched outward from the right and similarly clasped onto the mountainous promontory—successfully anchoring the vessel in place.

The pony shuffled over towards a supply locker on the port side. Instead of a handle, there was a black stone within which a glowing rune was etched. Reaching towards a work bench, she grabbed a leather bracelet within which half-a-dozen severed horns were interwoven with fine stitches. After sliding the multi-colored band onto her right hoof, she cleared her throat and solidly uttered one word: “H'jem.”

One of the many horns on the bracelet shimmered in a brief purple haze. Immediately, the glowing rune on the supply locker faded to black, and the hulking metal cabinet opened with a resounding metallic ring. Reaching into the locker, the pony grabbed and shouldered another thick layer of armor. After donning the dull brown material, she then snatched two sets of saddle bags, followed by a pair of lanterns which she yoked over her neck. Once suited, she procured a long collapsible cylinder of brass fused to a wooden stock. She then made sure to grab two hollow metal magazines filled to the brim with faintly glowing runestones. Afterward, she slid the brass rifle into a sheath on the right flank of her armored shell and the magazines into the left side compartments. Finally, she grabbed a tiny glass jar fitted with a gray metal cap etched with an ancient rune. The container was custom made, as was everything else on her and around her. So adequately geared, the pony took a few backtrots from the closed supply locker and grunted a different word into the air: “W'nyhhm.”

The rune over the middle of the cabinet glowed once again, locking the doors with a magical seal. The pony made one final check of her instruments, lowered the temperature on the boiler in the back, extinguished the lanterns lining the interior of the cabin, and made her way down a winding brass staircase into a dark-lit storage chamber that encompassed the entire floor below.

Strolling past several tables of chemistry equipment and engineering tools, she nonchalantly approached a widely yawning aperture of copper plates positioned at the lower bow of her airship. “H'jem,” the mare uttered once more. The circular door in front of her opened from the inside out, its shiny metal hole pouring a gray spotlight of misty haze across her weathered features. She reached a hoof up to the side of her pilot's cap, dragging a cloth mask down so that it covered her mouth and snout.

She was immediately assaulted by a flurry of bone-chillingly cold wind dotted with snow and ash, a greeting from the dead world beyond. Trotting forward, she hopped down from the lower level of the gondola and onto the black rock of the cliff face—her brass horseshoes nearly slipping on the polished obsidian. She hissed a muffled curse under her breath, groaned inwardly, and marched on past the gently swaying hull of her anchored airship and the faded letters of its name that had been half-heartedly spray-painted thereupon: “HARMONY.”

Pausing briefly to measure the direction and intensity of the wind, the pony reached a hoof up and parted the mask from her lips just long enough to growl: “H'jnor.” The entrance to the Harmony's hangar closed shut like a cat’s eye. “W'nyhhm.” Six glowing runes positioned around the closed aperture suddenly lit up, encasing the body of the entrance in a thin haze of purple shielding.

The pony trotted forward, marching across the glassy black surface of the mountainside. Her clopping hooves were mere pin-drops in an endless howl of wind and snow. Above her thickly armored neck, a ceiling of dark gray clouds swam incessantly across the sky, and beyond that soulless mesh the pony knew to expect only the sputtering hint of starlight or something halfway like it. Soon, the shrieking wind drowned away as she grew more and more distant from the Harmony and closer towards her goal. It was a haunting silence, like suddenly being at the bottom of a deep well with no echoes. But this hardly surprised her—after all, she had been in that exact place before, long ago.

It took barely two hundred meters of trotting before she found the first sign of the ruins. The softly falling snow gave way to a great white mass: an overturned cylindrical tower that had fallen thunderously on its crumbling side countless years ago. Emblazoned across the shattered stalk of the lopsided spire was the faded image of a bronze sun splotched with ash and rusted streaks of long-lost life. This same image blotted the sides of several more buildings—some collapsed, others in a perpetual state of decay—as the grand skeleton of a deceased city exposed itself coldly before her. The pony had reached her destination: the elevated, unclimbable ruins of Canterlot. She pressed on, in search of her target.

The mountainous spires that shadowed Canterlot were natural weather breakers; they pierced the high clouds of ash like gigantic plows. In brief spurts, the endless twilight of the sky glanced down in its dull gray glare, but the remaining towers of the crumbled urbanscape blocked even those meager attempts at “light,” so that the streets were reduced to veritable black chasms. A dead-thick ink bled through the winding alleyways and sporadic courtyards and marble-stepped corridors of the maretropolis. What was once the capitol city of Equestria and home to the Royal Equine had become a grand mausoleum.

Through this, the pony marched slowly, eyeing every shape and shadow beyond lingering corners. Her snout twitched anxiously, ready to reach back towards the rifle on her right flank at any given blink. Her hooves made lonely scrapings sounds of crafted metal against decayed stone. Her breaths—muffled by her cloth mask—came out evenly and calmly, albeit balanced upon the precipice of caution: the sign of an expert explorer who had ventured through many an unwitting graveyard much like this one.

Her amber shaded goggles reflected abandoned storefronts, their dangling signs and painted windows preserved icily through the death-blink of time. She sauntered past lonely market vendors; the many fruits stacked inside had long-decayed into dry pits with hanging scraps of papery skin. Tattered and tossed flags bearing the Celestial crest rested on either side of her as she ascended winding streets of mildew-stained cobblestone, pointing her way towards the palatial center of the cold granite labyrinth.

There was a break in the spires, and a curtain of snow fell to greet her once more. Soft flecks of ash settled on her armored neck and flank; she made no attempt to shrug any of it off. The dead powdery substance had become like a second skin to her, a precipitation that never ceased to fall for any single moment of any single day ever—not that “days” could any longer be quantified in the gray miasma that everything had become.

After another row of steps, a gaping wide entrance yawned before her, announcing the front half of a large ten-story structure built upon the highest point in Canterlot. It was the Royal Quarters; she had made it there in record time. Pressing onward, she twisted her snout left and right, nudging switches built into her yoke that activated a pair of spring-loaded flints which scratched each other inside a pair of gas lanterns. After a few diligent tries, the two lanterns lit up, and they shone a swath of light directly ahead of the pony in a golden halo as she ventured into the darkest part of her sojourn. The last time she was here, she made the mistake of not crafting herself any form of light projection. A near-plummet into a gaping hole in the floor that led into the heart of the mountain taught her a thing or two about such carelessness.

With the lantern light as her guide, the pony made her way through the former living quarters of Equestria's two crowned princesses. She trotted over checkerboard tiles dotted with bits of gravel and debris, hopping over a collapsed coat of arms in order to make her way into the grand library. The shadows of hundreds upon hundreds of collapsed books moved before her like puppets as the shuffling pony shone her light left and right, finally finding the detour she needed through the dining hall. Tables and troughs were filled to the brim with clattered silverware, shattered plates, and bits and pieces of petrified fruits and vegetables.

And it was here—finally—that she saw them: bodies, the hollowed-out shells of ponies. Either in a clattered sea of bones or in the seared cornucopia of plastered leather, she always stumbled upon them this deep into a fortified structure. Any of the ponies that had been left out in the open air of Equestria had turned into ashes ages ago, to forever be lifted up by the cold winds of the plains and snowed back down onto the endless graveyard of Equestria. Here, in Canterlot, in the heart of the Princesses' Palace, many of the remains were hidden in smokey heaps under helmets and saddles of armor, like worthless lint collecting under rusted dustpans. The last time she was here, she confiscated a few of the brass horseshoes off of the guards' remains and smelted them to form new rivets for the Harmony's storage compartment. It was almost worth the near-plunge into the heart of the mountain, almost.

She had no need with horseshoes or armor this time. She was here for one thing and one thing alone. She pressed on, ascending several curved staircases lined with tapestries. The woven illustrations divulged to her lantern-lit waltz one historical lesson after another: of colorful ponies overcoming gray hardships before building a golden interwoven city under the watchful gaze of a silk-plastered Alicorn with a starlit mane.

The winding staircase was suddenly pelted with a flurry of cold ash and snow. The pony found herself trotting onto an open balcony overlooking a great westward blight: a land of dead gray fields and exposed black earth, sleeping forever under a swirling bed of cold drifting mist. She had seen it all before, from above and from below. Intriguingly enough—to her at least—she found that the Equestrian Wasteland looked the same on either side of the clouds.

Glancing right, she paused for the first time since she entered the ruins of Canterlot. A three-story tall stained glass window stretched above her. In its epicenter was the swirling infinitude of the Goddess of the Day and the Goddess of the Night in perpetual pursuit of one another. Below and above them were joyous green mosaics of jagged equine figures in hoof-rearing reverie. The tints in the segmented glass were amazingly well preserved. Not a single chip of paint had faded from the artistic craftponyship, a work of art that was two Ages' old at least. But the pony could hardly tell—or care. Color no longer shone in Equestria, not like it used to.

Lowering her snout, she gazed through amber goggles and was mutely pleased to see a loose panel of glass covering the flank of one of the prancing ponies beneath the twin Goddesses. Pushing her leather-armored mane against it, she was able with minimal effort to push the panel off its frame and crawl through the pony-shaped hole. Trotting softly through the stained glass window, she tilted her snout up and flashed her yoke-lanterns widely to reveal the cavernous hollow of Princess Celestia's Royal Throneroom. A curved series of steps led audaciously towards the holy seat in question, still draped with rich purple banners, all emblazoned with the solar crest. The gold plates below the throne had lost their shine, and the water fountains flanking the base of the seat had long dried up. Overall, the place was well preserved with what could only be described as appropriately bitter irony.

She gazed around, reaching a hoof up to adjust the apertures of her goggles. The shadows of the room cleared before her engineered vision. As she flashed her lantern light around, she finally saw what she was looking for. Trotting over for a closer inspection, the pony lowered her snout to study a series of blood-red feathers littered along the far side of the throne room. Her goggled eyes wandered a little further. She spotted a large “nest” of golden thatched threads, huddled just beneath a grand tapestry woven in the image of Princess Celestia herself.

This was it. This was its hiding place. If the pony had any chance of catching it, she had to act soon. She had to bait it here before it was too late. The window of opportunity had been closing even before she lowered the Harmony into its anchorage. If she had any hope of getting paid—much less out of Canterlot alive—she had to act swiftly or lose ...

What was there left to lose?

She knelt down and reached a snout back past her yoke, yanking a string that loosened a pouch on the right side of her forward saddle bag. Shaking it to the side, she dropped loose a paper cylinder crafted onto a wooden block. Tightening the pouch shut, she then propped the fireworks cannon up at the entranceway beyond the throneroom. Stepping back, she kneaded her hooves in counterclockwise twists. With a metallic sound, cleated spikes shot out from the base of her front horseshoes. Next, she scraped her cleats until sparks flew—which she then used to light the tiny cannon's fuse. Swiftly retracting the cleats, she galloped back to the far side of the room and hid beside the throne, out of sight from the entranceway to the grand corridor. Kneeling low, she squinted her eyes and reached a hoof up to a series of dials atop her goggles, dimming the amber lenses just in time for what was about to happen.

With a bright flash of light, the fuse burned into the cannon and the pyrotechnics fired a flare ceilingward. Here in the granite heart of the Royal Castle, the burning plume of golden light shone like a beacon. Its frothing core let loose an unearthly howl, a banshee scream that filled every abandoned corner of the Palace and its surrounding alleyways. There was no way that a living soul in the catacombs of Canterlot could not hear this flashy desecration of silence, and the pony knew that there were only two souls to be had in the entire city: herself, and her target.

The first minute of howling zoomed by like a skittering rat. The second swum by with the delicateness of swarming moths. By the third minute—a limping, shuffling, decaying minute—the pyrotechnics had begun to dwindle into a low groan, like a sea of dying cats. The pony felt her heartbeat once again, and she grew increasingly anxious as the shadows of the throneroom recollected in the absence of her flickering distraction. Taking a few deep breaths, she glanced right for any sign of her prey: none. She glanced left—and her head did a double-take. The dangling haze from her yoked lanterns had caught sight of an unmistakable outline forever etched into the inner surface of her starved eyelids. It was the shape of a record player, and where there were record players...

She trotted over swiftly, keeping one eye on her dwindling flare, all the while feeling the weight of the rifle on her armored flank. Once she had reached the left side of the throne room, she exhaled at the sight of a series of supply crates, atop which was indeed a record player, its needle and crank having fallen off and dwindled into splinters long ago. Energized with a seemingly alien euphoria, the leather-clad mare hoofed through the ashen mound of debris besides the crate—kicking up a few red feathers in the maddening search. Finally, she found what she was looking for, hoping for: a black disc encased in white shreds of tattered vinyl. Hungrily, she rotated the record to its side and was astonished to see one particular name on the water-stained label. For the first time in immeasurable “weeks,” a smile graced the last pony's masked lips—or at least something that resembled one. Her hairless tail briefly flicked.

A thunderous roar filled the chamber; the floor and granite foundations of the throne room shook. Pebbles and precipitous bits of dust fluttered downward from the painted ceiling. She gasped and immediately tossed her snout left and right, shoving tiny knobs in her lanterns and killing their golden glow. With a single leap, she slid back into place besides the throne with the labeled record in her gentle jaws. Reaching back, she tossed the black disc into a safe pocket of her left rear saddle bag. After tightening it, she flung her right shoulder forward and bucked her legs.

Her rifle launched forward in midair like a spring. She raised her muzzle, grabbed the weapon’s wooden stock in gnashing teeth, and gave it a shake. With a series of clack-a-clacking noises, the brass cylinder extended and exposed its chamber. Reaching back in a single breath, the pony unsheathed a magazine full of runestones and chanted breathily into them. The armband of horns on her right leg flickered, and the stones glowed a bit brighter as she slapped them into place, cocked the rifle, and slid two hooves into a pair of levers welded into the weapon at ninety degree angles with one another. Sliding into the dark shadows of the throneroom, she squatted besides the golden seat and waited, her goggled gaze locked down the sight of the rifle barrel aimed towards the entranceway beyond the smoldering fireworks.

The strange roar cascaded through the stone hallways of the palace once again, rattling the royal seat besides her crouched body. More dust and paint chips fell from the ceiling as the heat of the room increased by several degrees per minute. Sweat formed in bulbs between the pony's brown coat and her thick leather armor as she waited on her prey. She shook the fear off like she had trained herself to do long before, and her goggled eyes roamed the lengths and breadths of the hollow throneroom in mute anticipation of the inferno that was heading her way. The temperature reached a fever pitch and a bright copper glow washed over the place. However, as the sizzling seconds piled up on one another, she could not tell from where the brightness was coming.

The truth made itself evident to her very quickly as the pony spotted the circular image of the swirling Horse Goddesses swimming over the stone floor and towards the seat. Blinking under her goggles, she craned her neck and turned around. A brilliant cross of gold and scarlet light billowed from just outside the stained glass window, illuminating the entire mosaic of Equestria in ghostly bright colors. A pair of shimmering eyes flickered to life and glared straight through the etched surfaces—and found her. With a grand shriek—filling the Palace once more with a blood-curdling roar—the great burning thing plowed straight through the window. The creature shattered through a sea of stained glass shards as it swooped down towards the pony hidden behind the seat.

The mare held her breath and dove forward into a full-bodied roll. Princess Celestia's age-old throne caught aflame as a pair of golden talons ripped through it with trails of seeping plasma. The air of the room positively boiled, the distant ashes of dead guard horses evaporating instantly. Sliding to a stop against a far wall, the pony hissed as her leather armor steamed from the sheer heat. She propped her brass rifle up over a supply crate and took aim. From her vantage point, a giant flaming bird stared down her sight and shrieked its golden beak wide, a burning tongue lashing at the equine intruder.

“H'rhnum!” the mare shouted into her mask. Her bracelet of horns flickered; the first runestone inside the rifle's magazine burst in a puff of smoke. A shot rang out as a manabullet throttled down the brass barrel of the rifle and soared across the room, finding its way into the avian inferno's chest. Chunks of plasma and plumes of scarlet feathers littered the floor as the thing shrieked and flailed its billowing wings up high, melting and curling the paint on the ceiling. Without a second's hesitation, the pony yanked at both levers of the rifle with alternating hooves, cocking the weapon. It spat the smoking dead runestone out of its magazine and loaded the next one. “H'rhnum!” Another bang. This time the manabullet screamed its way towards the nape of the flaming fowl's neck. The creature intelligently dodged at the last second, and with a bubbling howl the phoenix dove its way at the rifler.

The pony scampered and dodged to the side just as the burning creature slammed into the wall behind her. The supply crates burst into flames, spilling sparks and embers all over the mare's rolling body. It wasn't until the pony stumbled back onto four hooves that she realized her mask was on fire. Cursing, she tossed her snout madly left and right until the fabric was successfully flung from her sooted face. With gnashing teeth, she cocked the gun and spun about, only to meet a flaming talon to her chest.

Under the dull thunder that followed, she thanked her lucky stars that she had packed extra armor. Though her brown coat was slightly singed, the smoldering husk of her chestplate remained intact. She realized this—of course—after only the third or fourth bounce off the palace walls. Groaning, she got up and could tell from her dancing shadows that the phoenix was clawing towards her for another strike. With a sharp breath, she flung her rifle once more over her shoulder—sheathing it—and broke into a full gallop in time to narrowly escape a snarling strike from the flaming creature, now hot on her hairless tail.

The pony ran, dashed, and scampered down a series of meandering hallways at full speed. She had no need of the lanterns anymore, as the bright flare of her pursuing target lit everything hellishly for her. She flung the heavy yoke off and leaped in time to avoid a plume of fire bursting at the top of some winding stairs. The pony then rapidly descended, sliding icily down the laminated banister. Reaching the bottom, she dove with a forward flip, slid comically sideways on a loose rug, and regained her hooves in time to avoid the impaling beak of the dive-bombing phoenix.

Now on even ground, the lone pony made for a gray light at the end of a long passageway leading into the open courtyard of the palace's center. The tapestries and portraits flanking her caught flame as she galloped past them. Up ahead, the passageway yawned open to reveal a marble balcony, at the edge of which hung a brilliant purple banner. Taking a wild chance, the pony jumped and grabbed the edge of the royal fabric in her teeth. Using her momentum, she swung violently forward and leaped at the end of her self-imposed body toss. It was just in time; the phoenix had burst out of the palace behind her, shrieking and snapping at her flailing hooves with a bright beak. The pony out-“flew” the flaming bird, landed her hooves in a dried up aqueduct, and slid down the mud-laden bridge until she cleared the palace gates and pounced full force into the snow-kissed blackness of the Canterlot streets below.

Landing on a second-story awning, she fell through tattered fabric and awkwardly ragdolled onto a wooden market stand below, smashing it to splintery bits. After scampering up to her hooves, she prepared to gain some bonus distance, only to gasp at the realization that her left rear saddlebag had flung open in the haphazard landing. Glancing every which way, she froze jubilantly upon the sight of the black record disc she had swiped earlier; it was still intact. She ran back, slid on four hooves, and snatched it off the street in her teeth. There was a a shrill shriek. The pony glanced up, and her goggles reflected twin golden comets burning down towards her. She barely dashed away from the phoenix's talons scraping the cobblestone street.

The pony tossed the record back into her bag and galloped down the careening, snow-laden avenues of Canterlot. The pursuing phoenix lit the stone-dead blackness of the ruined City like a torch at the bottom of a deep grave. As the seconds wore into minutes—the phoenix gave up running on its talons and took to the air. It hovered a violent halo over the distant image of the scampering pony, all the while screeching angrily like the shimmering ghost that it was. The mare looked up to witness a veritable forest of scarlet feathers falling loosely from the lurching fowl's wings. That was just the inspiration she needed to take a sharp left towards a lower district, leap over a rooftop, slide down its crumbling shingles, leap again, fall two stories, and cannonball weightedly through the balcony window of an abandoned hotel room across the street.

Glass, wood, and bed stuffing flew through the air as the pony barreled over a mattress, tumbled across the floor, and somehow landed on her back with her shoulders pressed up against a wall. There was a clack-a-clacking sound. The leather-armored equine had her rifle aimed out towards the hole she had just made in the windows—peering through the softly-raining ash beyond for any sign of her glowing target.

She gulped, sweated, and hooked her hooves tighter in the levers attached to the rifle. The foremost runestone in the magazine was rattling noisily. Glancing briefly at her limbs, she realized that she was shaking. She winced at her brief loss of nerves and steeled herself with an angry frown. As the agonizing seconds limped on, there was no sign of her flaming pursuer through the shattered balcony window. As the upholstery beside her started to sizzle and smoke, she realized why.

She barely had time to flip up onto her hooves and gallop away when the closet doors behind her smashed inward with smoldering splinters. The phoenix's burning beak ate through the cramped hotel room like a hot knife through butter. Snarling, the last pony spun, propped herself against another wall and took aim. “H'rhnum—!” The shrieking fowl rammed straight into her just before she could get a shot off. The bullet flew pathetically into the floor as the two went smashing through the wall and plunged several meters into the corpse-strewn hotel lobby below.

The pony collapsed under a rain of horse bones and petrified skin flakes. The phoenix floundered and thrashed, raining fire and dead feathers all across the cold tile floor. Bounding back up to her hooves, the mare limped over a chair and sofa, reaching back and grabbing at the other magazine of runestones. These glowed with a purple aura as she shoved them into her rifle and galloped out into an open garden full of leafless, gnarled trees. The hotel lobby imploded right behind her from the phoenix's violent thrashings, forcing the pony to collapse from the sheer heat of the shockwave.

Crawling over the gray sand and dead grass of the garden, the last pony rolled to her side and finished clapping the magazine full of runestones into her weapon. Pivoting so that she was lying on her chest, she aimed her barrel at a pair of marble columns still standing in front of the smoldering heap that remained of the hotel lobby. “H'rhnum! H'rhnum!” Despite the sheen of sweat and soot covering her goggles, her aim was true, and both manabullets embedded a runed dart into each marble column. The darts continued to glow a deep purple, even as the pony watched the heap of hotel ruins bulge up from deep within and explode.

The phoenix emerged—wailing—for it had lost a great deal of its plumage. As a heap of its scarlet feathers had fallen loose, so had its flaming brilliance. The fowl now stood—or more appropriately stumbled—as a three-meter tall creature with wrinkled skin and crackling flesh. Its flickering eyes dimmed for a brief moment until it shook its snout and roared with a renewed burst of flames kindling across its body from wing to tail. It scampered like a drooling, flightless reptile the pony's way, threading between the two columns...

The pony took a deep breath and shouted high into the broiling garden air, “Y'hnyrr!” Her bracelet flickered. In response, the purple glow over the twin darts faded as their runes died. The enchanted shields on them dissipated, and volatile chemicals stored inside each dart—otherwise magically separated—were instantaneously fused. Dual explosions rocked the heart of Canterlot, utterly engulfing the phoenix in shrapnel and plasma. By then, the pony had flung herself behind a thick bramble of thorns, using it as a shield. As soon as the thunder from the twin blasts faded, she peered up to see that the briars had burst into flames, as did all the dead trees lining the garden.

Sprawled out in the center of the courtyard of burning trees was the phoenix, trying breathlessly to hold its naked weight up on two quivering talons and a pair of withered wings, its feathers now black smoldering husks. The flickering glow had faded from its eyes, revealing two jaded, red orbs of pale invalidity. The creature hacked and wheezed, crying forth a warbling voice that barely mimicked its years of pride and royal ferocity. It limped and lurched on the four shuddering limbs suddenly given to it, plowing its beak through the dead garden as the pony cautiously paced around the creature, her rifle propped on her flank. As the trees' flaming “leaves” died with several plumes of smoke, the phoenix's breaths grew further and further apart.

The last pony eyed it knowingly. The bird’s helpless gaze danced like dying twins in her amber goggles. The mare had studied hard on the physiology of phoenixes. In a dead world starved of magic, the creature's life cycle was far shorter than normal. The pony had arrived at the precise time she needed to get the job done. It wouldn't be long now.

Staring at her, the phoenix managed one last snarl. Its gnarled flesh glowed from underneath and produced a few scant feathers of hot burning plasma. The pony stopped pacing and immediately propped herself back against a dead tree, cocking her rifle towards the thing's snout until the avian metabeast simply gave up. In a sickly slump, the great bird's eyes closed with finality as the creature exhaled one lasting breath. Just as it did so, its body dissipated into a brittle pile of black ash in the center of the garden. Deafening silence returned ever so softly to the snow-kissed grave of Canterlot.

The pony wasted no time. Leaning her rifle against a dried fountain, she slid down on two knees and reached back to her saddlebag, taking out the glass jar that she had procured from the locker on board the Harmony. Carefully, she unscrewed the runed cap and lowered the jar down—scooping up every single speck of black ash from the garden floor. This was it; everything counted on this moment and no other. She sweated with the effort, but was swiftly done with the task. She slapped the cap back onto the jar, lowered her lips to within a millimeter of the thing, and softly-but-succinctly murmured: “W'nyhhm.”

The rune lit up, and a purplish haze bathed over the jar, sealing the cap magically onto the container. Not a second too soon: for within a blink, the ashes inside the glass jar sparked, sparked again, and lit aflame with such ferocity that the container nearly leaped out of the pony's hooves. With a deep exhale, she gazed as the black ash inside disappeared, and in place of it there billowed a plasmatic core of crimson and gold energy. The flames splashed and kicked inside the glass sarcophagus for a few moments, until the deep glow fell still—and constant. The phoenix was imprisoned, contained.

“Welcome to my life.”

Sighing, the last pony stood on three limbs, juggling the glowing jar briefly before saddlebagging it and marching limply with rifle in tow through the dead streets of Canterlot.

Alone.

Chapter Two: The Last Pony

Several dozens of hours later, somewhere above the mountainous spires of the Northern Reaches, the Harmony came to a puttering hover in the midst of a great gray cloudbed, just one gray body in an endless sea of thousands more like it. The vessel's spinning rear propellers came to a stand-still, and the copper rudders flanking the bulbous rust-red body of the miniature zeppelin pivoted back, slowing the airship's velocity to nil.

Inside the cockpit of the floating vessel's suspended gondola, the goggled pony finished locking her levers into place. She raised a hoof and hung it loosely from a chain-linked handle. Taking a deep breath, she gazed through the wide windshields of her vessel. Once again, there was nothing to behold but endless gray mist and ash. The mare raised an unamused eyebrow. This was the agreed-upon coordinates for their rendezvous; she expected at least a mere hint of her client's presence by this point.

She sighed. The mare unharnessed herself from the cockpit seat and trotted across the gently swaying, lantern-lit cabin until she came upon a long wooden spout welded to an elaborate speaker system along the port side of the gondola. With one hoof, she grasped a handle and vigorously cranked it. The spout glowed deeply from within as two teslacoils on either side of the device sparked to life. With a deep breath, and the pony spoke into the spout, listening passively as her own voice was broadcasted in loud, crackling intensity beyond the hull of her hovering craft.

“I know that you are out there somewhere, Gilliam! I went through the gauntlet to get what you ordered. Now show your smelly faces before I go and sell this to that baboon at the M.O.D.D.!”

She prepared to wait an hour for a response. She only needed a few seconds. Out from the thick soup of mist there boomed a voice on immense speakers that severely dwarfed those of the Harmony.

“No need to get testy, pony girrrrl. We have been expectingggg you.” This, of course, was followed by a tumultuous rumbling sound as the clouds parted ways to reveal the thick black bow of a gargantuan airship lurching forward and above the Harmony. The arrogant proximity of the giant black craft forced the pony's vessel to rock back and forth like a foal's tiny balloon in the breeze.

The pony hissed and muttered foul things under her breath as she leaped back into her cockpit and grasped both hooves to a lever, glaring up through the dashboard windows as the massive cloud-ship elevated high above the local mountaintops. Groaning inwardly, she pulled a chain-linked handle, adding more fuel to the boiler at the rear of the cabin, so that the steam vents pumped heated gas into the zeppelin's balloon and raised the craft's altitude to match that of the battle-cruiser.

Both aircraft pulled above the highest cloudbeds, so that the ceiling of overcast transformed into a milky sea. Above, the dull gray sky twinkled with distant, dying stars. There was no Moon in sight. In the dim everlasting twilight, the pony pilot could see Gilliam's sky vessel in all its glory. It was a long, narrow, iron-clad thing with six horizontal propellers continuously spinning and giving it lift. The stern of the ship was slightly thicker than the rest, built to house innumerable bits of cargo, both nefarious and really nefarious. The bow of the ship was a narrow stalk of a thing that flattened towards the front and acted as a runway, atop which several bipedal creatures were busily moving crates and equipment to make room for the Harmony's mooring.Several intimidating cannons lined the hull of the heavily riveted cloud-ship, and across its port side a series of sprayed letters glinted in the twilight, shamelessly boasting the vessel's name: “The Dog's Bollocks.”

The mare lowered her tiny airship towards the bow with residual hesitance. The huge looming vessel resembled more an upside down legless crocodile than it did a cloudship, and yet this was the only place where she wanted—or needed—to be. Without the payment for this latest job, she wouldn't get the strips she needed to buy a flamestone. Without a flamestone, she'd have to go for yet another consecutive stormfront without being able to fire up the signal.

And without the signal...

“Park her in the same 'ol place, pony girrrrrrl. Make yourself at home.” The booming voice was punctuated by what sounded ever so briefly like a chuckling voice before it was cut short by the transmission's end. If the pony was amused, she made no attempt to show it. Touching down to the runway of the airship, she locked her vessel's claws in place, cooled the boiler, stocked up on a few necessities, and—last but not least—saddlebagged the glowing little jar that this entire exchange centered upon. With a strong breath, she made her armored way down the spiral staircase and stepped through the lower compartment's aperture.

“Izzat—?”

“Shhh! The girrrrrl might hearrrr you!”

“But izzat—?”

“Shhh! Of course she isss!”

Two smelly, hunched-over shadows squatted behind a series of crates and watched with glued anticipation as the four-legged mare trotted out of the gaping exit of the Harmony's gondola.

Three canine creatures greeted her with untraditional salutes and pointed towards the entranceway positioned halfway down the airship's bow. She proudly lifted her snout and marched slowly towards her destination. When her back was turned, one of the canines greedily rubbed his paws and made to peek inside the Harmony's storage compartment. Without looking, the pony voiced two blunt words. The aperture shut loudly, shielded with glowing runes. The sneaky dog fell flat on his stubby tail and shook an angry fist at the pony while his two companions snickered at him.

The two hunched shadows shuffled to the other side of the crates and watched with panting breaths and wagging tails. “Look how she walksssss! So bizarrrrre!”

“You dunce! That's how all ponies walk! Or at least how they usedddd to.”

“Poniesss? What are 'poniesssss?'”

“Grrrrrrghhh—Silly, ugly, selfissssssh creatures who hogged the Sun and the Moon when Equestria had color!”

“Hah! Hahah! Silly mutt! The Moon is a myth! It neverrrrr existed!”

“Baaah! Shows how much you know! The night usedddd to have a Moon! And there were living thingsssss in the sky as WELL as on the ground!”

“On the ground? You lie! What happened to them all?”

“They left when the poniesssss left Equestria.”

“They all left?”

“Mmmmm-Yes. All died. All exceptttt herrrrr.”

“So izzat—?”

“Yessss! Don't you see? She is the lastttt one. The last ponyyyyy.”

“Ohhhhh.... Mmmmm—I bet her flankssss are scrumptious.”

“Heheheh—I know, right? What I wouldn't give to have one bite—”

“BAH! You two! Back to workkkkk or Gilliam give no bone!”

“Yes, boss.”

“Y-yes, bosssss.”

The metal doors to the runway closed with rusted thunder behind the pony. The mist and ash of the Equestrian sky dissipated, giving way to an odorous brown haze that permeated the stuffy air of the battleship's interior. Her goggles practically fogged from the stench as she gazed left and right. Corridors bled rustily into haphazardly-riveted hallways full of bickering and brawling canines. A few metal-helmeted guards leered and drooled at her. Others poked sticks at rabid brothers rattling inside iron cages. In mess halls, dozens of mangy bodies dug their maws into basins full of rum and laughed over crucibles of brimming incense.

The pony's brow furrowed. Clumps of panting creatures gathered behind her, watching with mixed curiosity and stupidity as she trudged her armored self up a final flight of stairs and entered the command center, the ship's bridge, and the waiting presence of her client therein. A pair of guards parted ways to grant her access, but growled sideways at her passing form nonetheless.

Once on the bridge, a wide panorama of glass windows and portholes bathed the black metal surfaces and instrument panels with an endless gray gleam. At four windows towards the front of the bridge there were swivel chairs fixed to giant harpoon guns that aimed straight out into the clouds. Standing around a broad table in the center of the bridge were several tall dogs, far bulkier and more intimidating than the grand pack of lackeys whom the pony had marched past on the lower decks. They all muttered and clamored over an ugly-but-practical map of the Equestrian Wasteland. Upon first sight of the pony's arrival, they parted ways to reveal one husky canine seated with his back to the mare-for-hire.

“Hrmmm—Your swiftness is either a gift or a jokkkke. I do hope you have brought evidence to disprove the latterrrrrr, Harmony.”

The pony rolled her eyes. “For the last time, Gilliam,” she muttered, “'Harmony' is the name of my ship. Not me.”

“Then what does that make you—I wonderrrrr?” The figure swiveled around in his chair. He was a stubby, stout excuse for a canine. The upper right portion of his skull was substituted with a metal-riveted iron plate. His left eye housed a whirring aperture lens that pistoned slowly in and out, focusing on her lonesome figure. “A mercenary with no name? Perhaps you should just settle for 'pony.' That's easy for all of us to rememberrrrr, yes? Even you? Heheheh.” Gilliam's fellow cabinet of airdogs chuckled in cadence with him, at least until he silenced them with a vicious pounding of his paw against an armrest.

The pony took a deep breath, her goggled gaze fixated on the captain of the canine airship. “Have you had your fill?”

“Mmm... Of laughterrrr?” He raised a clawed finger. “Yes. But—er—Of magic red flame? No. That is why I am—eheheh—droolingggg in anticipation of what you have brought us, lone pilot of the Harmony, infamous rogue of the sky. Eheheheh.” He leaned forward, grinning ear to metal plate with ruby-studded teeth. “Did you gettttttt it? Did you get the phoenixxxxxx flame? Yes? Y-yes??”

The pony stared apathetically at him. She reached a hoof back towards her saddlebag. There was a metallic ringing noise as every guard in the room took the sudden movement as an excuse to show off the lengths of their razor-sharp polearms in her general direction. She glanced at them with no less boredom, then produced a glowing glass jar from the depths of her leather pouch. A gold-and-crimson glow lit the room as the impossibly shrunk bird shimmered from deep within the tiny, rune-capped prison.

A deep, howling chant filled the bridge from every canine's slobbering lips, most of all Gilliam's. “Oooooooh—So beautifulllll! And trust me, childdddd. That's a compliment coming from someone who—like you—knows that there are very few beautiful thingssssssss left in this world.” He scratched his scraggly chin as his one ear flickered curiously. “Funny. The burning bird is a lot smallerrrrrr than I had imagined.”

“I have a Second Age Lunar Seal enchanting the container,” she explained matter-of-factly while gesturing towards the jar with professional nonchalance. “Laws of mass and energy can be bent when magic is at play.”

“Something you poniessssss were all good at, once upon a time, no doubtttttt.” Gilliam hobbled up with the assistance of a diamond-studded cane, greedily eyeing the glowing item in the mare's grasp. “You really should be proud of yourself, girrrrrl,” he slurred as his eyepiece pistoned her reflection in and out. “In spite of everything that has happened, you are a shining—no—a radiantttttt example of true Equestrian grit. Only someone of your—eheheheh—calibre could be so capable of ensnaringgggg such a creature, and in the dead heart of your much beloved capital, no lessssss.”

“I didn't come all this way to be paid in compliments, Gilliam!” she snapped, her brow creasing over an angry amber glint. “I expect strips. Lots and lots of silver strips.”

“Please, little girrrrrrl,” he smiled, his ruby-studded teeth glistening. “Humor an old pooch—Yes? After all, you are a very precioussssss specimen. Why, it isn't just everyday that my fellow cohortsssss and I get to have dialogue with the only known pony in existence.”

“The day I sit and have tea with Diamond Dogs is the day I know I've really sold my soul.” She casually juggled the glowing jar of Canterlotlian essence to emphasize her statement.

Gilliam jolted noticeably, pointing with his cane. “Easy—Easy girrrrl!” He gave a brief frown. “And don't call us 'Diamond Dogs'! We are the 'Dirigible Dogs' now! We have been called that for longer than you care to rememberrrr, I will bet!”

“But you've got friggin' diamonds in your teeth, for crying out loud.”

“Well, er, yes, but—”

“And seriously...'Dirigible?' You live in a giant metal suppository held in the air by propellers! That hardly qualifies as—”

“E-NOUGH!” Gilliam whined, his one ear sagging as he waved his diamond cane overhead. “Yeesh—What would it take to gettttt you to show some respectttt?”

“Strips.” The pony frowned. “Lots of them, given to me, as agreed to.”

Gilliam exhaled through two snorting nostrils. He glanced at one of his closest advisers, and then nodded. After a return nod, the taller canine produced a leather sack from a belt satchel and tossed it the pony's way. She caught it, and with even less effort tossed her glowing jar straight at Gilliam. He gasped and dropped his cane in order to catch the imprisoned phoenix in two floundering paws. Panting slightly, he shook the slobber off his double chin and frowned the pony's way.

“Always keeping things a centimeterrrr above unbearable, girrrrrl?”

“You wouldn't keep hiring me if I didn't,” she retorted, counting the many silver bars inside the pouch.

“Hmmmm—Or perhaps I just won't hire you from now on at all,” he said, picking his cane back up in one paw.

“Keep trying to make me laugh, Gilliam,” she droned back. “I need more things to keep my journal entries interesting.” There was no response this time—only dead silence. She was so engrossed in counting the strips in her pouch, that she didn't notice until the last second that several sharp, glistening polearms were being raised towards the nape of her neck. She squinted through her goggles at them, then glared cooly Gilliam's way. “A double-cross, Gilliam? After all we've been through?”

Flanked by his smirking peers, Gilliam grinned within the purple haze of the jar's runed cap. “Oh, no double-cross, pony girrrrrrrl. We agreed that I would hand you the money for your job—And I didddd!” He gestured with a slight chuckle. “I did not, howeverrrr, guarantee that you would leave with the money.”

The guard dogs surrounded the pony on all sides now, ensnaring the mare in a forest of sharp blades. She gazed over them at her sudden ex-client. “Who was it? Harpy pirates?One of the ogre factions from the Valley of Jewels? The Golden Gang? It wasn't Gilda, was it?”

“Mmm—Like you, I am also a dedicatedddd worker—and never give out the name of the wealthy mutt who paysssss me.” He inspected the glowing jar up close and shook the frothing red thing besides his one good ear, chuckling. “But, suffice to say—When I show up at their mountainside bunker with both the red flame and the last tender side of horsemeat on Earth—well—maybe I'll have twice the richesssss to make us worthy of being called 'Dirigible Dogs' after all.” He nodded his head towards the distant image of the Harmony hovering over the runway of the bow. “Along with other fringe benefitsssss. Eheheheh.”

The pony glanced over her shoulder, then back towards the group of leering canines. “Of course, I only have one word to say to all this.”

“And what would that be—?”

Hooves taut against the metal bulkheads, the pony bent her legs and grunted forth: “W'lynmh!”

“What in the heck is that supposed to—Wait.” Gilliam's eyes narrowed as he pointed with his cane. “Did you just spout out one of your—?”

The bracelet of horns on the pony's right foreleg glittered, and a rune flickered responsively on the side of her armored leather. In a sudden hiss, four metal studs popped loose from her saddle and a thick green gas filled the room from the uncorked vents in her armor. As the surrounding guard dogs gasped and stumbled breathlessly away from her, she flicked her neck to the side—activating a trigger in her neckpiece. In a series of metal clanking noises, a mouthguard extended downward from her pilot's cap and covered her lips—filtering oxygen through a series of tubes attached to a bottle at the top of her leathered neck. With a blurring of hooves, she disappeared effortlessly into the rapidly expanding smoke.

Hobbling back into his seat under a storm of hacking breaths, Gilliam shook his cane in one paw and the glowing bottle in the other. “St-Stop herrrr! Kill herrrrr! Skin herrrr! But most importantly—Get me my silver backkkk!”

Several guard dogs and military advisers held their breaths and stormed bravely into the thick of the haze. Gilliam watched dizzily from his swiveling seat as a cacophony of metallic clanging sounds emanated from the chaotic emerald cloud bubbling before him. A few shrill cries of pain later, and three guard dogs fell before his pawed feet in a groaning heap. Another pair of snarling canines tackled themselves stupidly to the floor, mistaking each other for the rogue equine.

“Curse you stupid mutts! She's the only one of us with hooves! Attackkkkk the one with hoovesssss!” Gilliam hyperventilated.

“I see herrrrrr!” A guard dog charged up from the side and aimed his spear at a shimmering glint of light from deep within the cloud. A pair of goggles and a mouthguard hovered a few meters ahead of the nearest pack of clamoring dogs. “Have at you, rockinghorse!”

Gilliam's eyes twitched. He realized what was happening and leaned forward on his cane. “No! Wait—!”

The guard dog went charging in and slammed blindly at the goggles-and-mask with the full length of his polearm. A few resounding thuds ricocheted off a helpless skull, followed by a groan. Still hacking and wheezing from the smoke, a frustrated and perplexed Gilliam finally resorted to swiveling towards his “war table” and slamming his paw over a yellow switch. The many windows flanking the bridge pivoted open on command. Simultaneously, a series of metal fans descended from the ceiling and blew the excess smoke out, returning the room to its usual gray gleam. As the fumes dissipated, the victorious guard dog stood with his battered polearm waving over the thoroughly bruised figure of one of Gilliam's most trusted advisers. The pony's goggles and mouthpiece had been slapped over the misfortunate canine's head amidst the blinding confusion.

“What in the—?”

“If that's nottttt the pony, then where did she go?”

“Lookkkk!”

“Over there!”

“Woof!”

Gilliam spun and looked. At the far end of the bridge, towards the bow, the mare in question was in full gallop, abandoning a pile of freshly throttled and dizzy-eyed canines. Sneering, the metal-plated ship's captain grinded his studded teeth until a diamond popped loose. “NO.”

The pony dove clear through the window, sending glass shards flying in cadence with the fluttering ash and snow of the great gray sky surrounding the Dirigible Dogs' cloud-ship. Skidding down a few lengthy bulkheads, she kicked to the side, performed a half-flip, and landed squarely on the flat runway of the ship's bow.

In full gallop, she burned a straight path towards the spot where the Harmony was last moored. Her scarlet eyes were exposed, along with a slender neck with a completely shaved mane, all the way down to its stubble. Gripping the leather pouch of silver in her teeth, she glanced breathlessly from side to side as several metal hatches and trap doors lining the Dogs Bollocks' hull opened. Angry, frothing guard dogs poured out with spears raised overhead.

“Stop her! Stab her! Guttttt herrrrrr!” Gilliam's voice crackled horrendously over the battle-cruiser's blasting speakers. “Do not let the pony gettttt away!”

Barks lit the air. Foaming snouts howled against the wind. Spears flew. The brave mare dodged and skirted past them all. Two bladed weapons barely missed her, shredding at her brown coat. She galloped faster, eyes tearing into the cold winds of the high altitude as she spotted several mutts leaping out from behind piles of supply crates lining the flat runway. She ducked two diving bodies, leaped over another, kicked two more charging from the side, and jumped high to dodge yet another cluster of spears. Still airborne, she found herself sailing towards a ridiculously muscular guard who was dual-wielding a pair of axes.

“I have you now, horse-meatttttt!” He grinned and raised both weapons.

While plummeting, the frowning pony clapped her hooves together. With a metallic ring, all four of her horseshoes extended razor sharp cleats.

The guard gasped and dropped his axes, flailing. “No-no-no-no-I didn't mean itttt—AAH!” He let loose a blood-curdling, yipping noise as she landed square on his chest with the full force of her agile body. Retracting the pointed cleats, she kicked off him and barreled down the last half of the runway.

“Cast it off! Cast it off! Don't let herrrrrr get back to her shipppp!”

Glancing up in mid-gallop, the pony's scarlet eyes twitched. She couldn't afford to gasp or else she'd drop the precious silver dangling from her mouth. Several meters ahead at the end of the runway, half a dozen work dogs had pried loose the mooring clamps of the Harmony. Now her zeppelin-and-home was drifting off into the great gray expanse ... without her.

“Yes! Yessss—Hahahaha! Stupid girrrrrl! You are stuck with us now! Hahahah!”

Spurred on, she galloped even faster. She skirted past three guard dogs, shoved another off his feet with a swinging snout, and side-bucked two more before zooming towards the very edge of the runway. Squinting, she shuddered to see the aimless body of the Harmony floating further and further away. Three meters' distance... four... seven... nine...

Before her scarlet eyes could blink, her body jolted hard from a thrown spear grazing her closely—slicing at one of the straps that held her leather-armored saddle in place. Briefly stumbling, she bolted back into full gallop, chased by the roaring echo of over a hundred angry, blade-wielding canines hot on her hooves.

“Nnnnngh—Confounddddd it! Stick her already! Gut her ---Wait, where in the heck does she think she's—?”

The Harmony was at an impossible leaping distance, but the pony still rocketed towards it. The saddle sagged loosely from her flank, and with a few well-timed jumps she effortlessly flung it off her. Then, in an explosion of mighty brown feathers, she spread two wings majestically to her sides and caught a gust of wind. Kicking off the last sloping length of the bow, she leaped gracefully into the air and coasted like a shimmering kite through the naked gray sky and towards the entrance of the Harmony. With two words shouted, she opened the aperture as it swallowed her hurdling body safely inside.

“She's a pegasus...”

Inside the Dog's Bollocks' bridge, Gilliam's voice sneered. His snarl turned into a growl and he slammed his fist into the nearest metal bulkhead he could find.

“The lasttttttt pony on the face of the earth and it's a god-forsaken Pegasusssss! Rrrrrrrrgh! Somedog! Anydog—Arm the harpoons! Shoot that miserable, silver-swipinggggg piece of filth out of my skies!”

A guard dog coughed and wheezed as the last of the green smog dissipated from the lengths of the bridge. “Y-yes, sir! Rightttt away, sir!” He hobbled up to a harpoon gun and pivoted until he had the distant copper-red image of the Harmony in his sights. “A bit hard to see through all this—KAFF! KAFF!—smoke though—”

“I don't want excuses! Now skewer her with a harpoon or I will make a collar out of your tail!”

“Aye sir! Consider her glue!” The harpoon's barbed tip glistened in the twilight while every other dog ran to his post under the warbling chaos of battle-station alarms.

Scrambling up to her cockpit seat, the pony yanked at several levers at once. Not even bothering with the seat harness, she raised her muzzle and pulled two chain-linked handles, one after another. The boiler towards the rear of the cabin surged hotly as a rush of gas filtered through the pipes and into the zeppelin balloon over her shaved mane.

The entire gondola shook. Even through the metal bulkheads and reinforced hull of the tiny Harmony, she could hear the alarms from the nearby airship. Glancing out the cockpit windshields, she spotted the huge, hulking bow of the Dog's Bollocks pivoting to face her, its six looming propellers kicking the air into a heated frenzy.

It was only a matter of seconds before any one of the ship's innumerable guns fired a single zeppelin-dooming projectile straight at her vessel. She could very easily outrun the mutts' battleship, but not any of their merciless harpoons.

So it was with a breath of finality that the glaring pony lowered her brown face towards the bracelet of horns on her right limb and muttered into their mystical haze:

“Y'hnyrr.”

Back on the dogs' bridge...

“Have you got a fix on her yet?” Gilliam growled.

“Aye sir! I justttttt need to measure for wind resistance—”

“Less mumbo jumbo and morrrrrre blood!” the diamond-studded leader snarled, waving the glowing red jar in his paw. “Bounty be cursedddd! I want to smear the skiesssss with the the last pony's unholy juicessss—” No sooner was this uttered, but the flickering rune on the cap of the bottle suddenly died, its glow fading in a blink.

The tall cabinet of military advisers glanced at their leader. The guard dogs shifted nervously, whining. Suddenly, the jar vibrated as the red flame inside—no longer magically contained—began to buckle and expand.

“Hmmmm.” Gilliam blinked closely at it. He exhaled. “Oh. Well ain't thattttt cute—?”

His voice was cut short by a huge flaming explosion erupting point blank in his studded face. Several howling voices barked but were just as quickly snuffed out as giant wings of lava-hot plasma expanded throughout the entire space of the bridge and melted the rivets off the black bulkheads and everything else in between.

From her cockpit seat in the Harmony, the mare watched as a great, winged beast of insufferable flame burst outward from the top half of the cloud-ship. The Dogs Bollocks lurched severely, then veered hard to its starboard side as three of its six propellers failed. A series of heavy explosions ripped through the belly of the great black vessel in muffled chain reactions. The hulking thing slanted northward towards an inevitable wall of granite mountains beyond the blinding mist that enveloped the plummeting carnage and all of its howling occupants within.

Soon, she was once more awash in the gentle, puttering rhythm of her steam-powered cabin interior. Weathering a deep breath, the brown mare juggled the pouch of silver in her hoof. She gazed at it closely for a few emotionless seconds before tossing it expertly into a dangling hammock two meters behind her.

“Hmmph... Should have just named yourselves 'Dead Dogs.'”

That muttered, she pulled a handle down and shoved two levers forward, kicking the zeppelin into an accelerated gear, coasting her gently southward into the yawning void of the gray Equestrian Wastes.

Chapter Three: Of Hope and Harmony

A brown hoof dusted off the glossy surface of the record picked up from the Royal Throneroom at Canterlot. As the disc flipped over in the Harmony's cabin lantern-light, the white round label came into focus, and the name that was on it read: “Octavia – Suites for a Princess – Sessions I thru IV.” Gently, the fragile object was hoisted over the center spindle of a record player. With a cranking sound, the glossy thing spun liquidly as a needle was lowered into place. A pair of rusted speakers crackled and hissed for a brief moment, then a sweet melody of low bass cello strings bled through, dancing in the musty air of the swaying gondola.

Under the softly lulling rhythms that kissed the bulkheads, the last pony hopped up to a hammock and laid herself down, rocking gently along the starboard side of the lonesome cabin. She tilted one ear towards the music while another kept a diligent check on the hissing sounds coming from the boiler located towards the rear of the craft. Giving a prolonged exhale, the mare poured her scarlet eyes over the curved ceiling of her floating home. She let her gaze dance around metal beams and iron rivets in a synchronized waltz with the rise and fall of the age-old cello recording. Finally, as the melancholic air around her succumbed to the peaceful melody, she permitted her eyes to shut and her body to drift with the sway of her own tiny world. Her hooves rested behind her back and her hairless tail drooped over the side of the hammock as time blurred into a tranquil hum.

Outside, the great gray wasteland howled and spun its endless cyclone of mist and ash. The Harmony hovered bravely in place, a lone copper ballast in a sea of oblivion and snow. The stars above lingered on the edge of perpetual dying, and the black empty Earth below yawned for hundreds upon thousands of worthless kilometers.

The world of nothing: Equestria, population one.

Journal Entry # 2,345

I love music. I don't care how many times I've written it down. I don't care that I will be the only one to read it. I love music. I love its sound. I love its tempo. I love its movements. I love it when it begins; I love it when it ends. I love knowing that there were ponies behind the strings who made this music. I love knowing that they recorded it solely for the sake of sharing their souls, their hopes and their dreams, their fears and their sorrows. I love knowing that—in some way or another—these gifted and masterful ponies are sharing all that they know and love with me, even if it means that I am only having conversations with the dead.

Conversations with the dead are better than no conversations at all. And the reason I think I love it the most is because—in a world where there's nothing left to lose—I can remember once more what it means to feel... sad.

One night, the last pony marched up a snowy hilltop. Behind her—through a sea of flurrying ash—the Harmony could be seen, moored to a trio of burnt-out oak trees. Ahead of her, a mound of crumpled earth buckled under her hooves as she ascended the rise. Panting, her breath fogging through the misty air, the leather-clad mare came to the top of the crest and gazed down.

Her amber goggles reflected a wide graveyard of collapsed buildings and hollowed-out hovels of earth pony architecture. In the center of the landscape was a clock tower, its circular face spilling rustedly out of the tallest point. The minute and hour hands had fallen to the doughy gray earth countless years ago, forming two stabbing obelisks into the flesh of the dead world. Taking little time to sight-see, the pegasus pony gently hovered down the slope on cold brown feathers. Landing, she trotted her lonesome way through the ruins of yet another ram-shackled village.

Her name was Octavia. She was the most gifted cello player in all of Equestria. She performed her masterpieces live, before dukes and duchesses, queens and kings, even Princess Celestia herself in the Canterlot Concert Hall. Her symphonies were recorded in mass—and to my delight, I have found discs of her exceptional talent almost everywhere: from the ruins of Cloudsdale to the sunken depths of Manehattan.

I have hoarded all of her stuff that I can find. And when I listen to them, pricking my ear to hear beyond even the heavenly layers of her masterful strings, I think I can detect the breaths of the audience in attendance. And when they applaud, when they cheer—I am there. I am with them. I am in a concert hall surrounded by thousands of living, breathing,

And then the record player stops.

Inside a collapsed building, she poked through a pile of debris, overturning kitchen utensils, saucers, plates and other assorted dishes. She briefly plowed a shovel through a pile of papery scraps and unearthed a soup can featuring the image of two smiling, illustrated foals. Several cockroaches scurried out of the hollow container and fled towards the ash-splotched walls that were still standing. Ignoring them, she knocked the can upside down with the shovel until three lone beans spilled out. Her nostrils flared while she retracted the shovel back to her cylindrical hoof piece and extended a pair of metal claws in its place. Grasping gently onto the beans, she lifted and deposited each of them into a leather satchel on her saddlebag.

Tying it shut, she paced around and marched out of the dilapidated house, trotting slowly down the snow-laden stretch of the small city's main street. The last pony's horseshoes made lonesome omega symbols in the snow as she padded her way towards a half-crumbled library.

When I go hunting, I hear Octavia's strings. Her music accompanies me on every trip that I make, on every scavenge that I do, on every deep dive into the darkest catacombs of Equestria. Her majestic cello cries and sighs against the pale stone walls of my regular sojourn. And sometimes, in my head at least, I do not feel like I am simply a ghost—the last haunting spectre of Equestria that this holy land has somehow forgotten to exorcise. The world has forsaken me, and so I forsake it—with music.

This, of course, is extremely helpful ... until I remember that the world doesn't care. The only one who cares—or at least pretends to care—is me. And that doesn't count for much.

It doesn't at all.

Another night, the pegasus pony sat on the port side of the Harmony's cabin, her hoof bearing a cylindrical copper brace on the end of which rested a freshly inked pen. Bending over her workbench, she proceeded to write her journal entry on the blank page of a dusty, canvas-bound book that she had scavenged long ago from the ruins of a Cloudsdalian library.

Halfway through her writing, she stretched her shaved neck and forelegs. Bearing a long sigh, she gazed with bored scarlet eyes out the front windshields of the gondola. The world lingered in gray eternity, staring emotionlessly back at her. After another breath, she returned lethargically to her entry.

I know that I have written enough about Octavia—about music, about the only thing that actually has any significance to me. But today, nothing happened. And when I write on the topic of “nothing,” I inevitably comment on yesterday while simultaneously predicting tomorrow.

And yet I still write. I'm sure there was a noble reason for why I began making journal entries in the first place. Quite possibly, when I was still rather new to this whole routine—I had the naive hope that everything I put to pen would someday be read by other ponies. But I know that's utter bullcrap; because I'm a pony and I can't bring myself to read the older entries I have made.

Still, I am what I am, and that necessitates that I produce something ... anything ... to prove that I exist. It's the least and yet the most I can do with my presence here on this world, or so I try to tell myself.

Thus, as always, here goes:

She trotted swiftly down a field of petrified trees, all bent backwards in the fossilized signature of a blast wave having seared them to ash long ago. A fine, blue mist lingered coldly a few centimeters off the once-forested floor as the goggled mare shone a pair of glowing lanterns ahead of her. She focused the hazy beams of gold past the gray husks of wood until she narrowed the light onto a pale chunk of stone embedded deep in the sandy black earth. All of the trees leaned away from the alien rock as if it was something venomous. Without a moment's hesitation, the pony galloped up to the thing, knelt down, and produced a pick-axe from her saddlebag. She began chipping away until the cold white stone bled forth random nodes of muddied colors.

I found several moonrocks this week. Seven, to be exact. From them, I was able to mine three more emeralds, two more sapphires, one topaz, and a ruby. This fills my spectral stone quota for the signal over the next several stormfronts—with the exception of a flamestone. The one I've got right now is almost out of mana, and I though I'm sure I've got plenty of reliable suppliers, payment is going to be something of an issue—considering that I've just recently lost one of my biggest clients, Gilliam. Though, it is probably more accurate to say that he lost me... and most likely his life in the ensuing altercation.

A tattered tent flap billowed in the blistering winds.From the miserably gray world outside, the last pony poked her head in through the shredded fabric.She raised a hoof to her goggles and adjusted her lenses to take in the dim interior of the partially collapsed shelter.

Bodies were lying in a tight circle, all huddled around a lone lantern in the corner of the tent that had long dimmed.The claustrophobic air was ripe with stale musk and decay.Scraps of flesh and hair hung off the canine, mammalian, and reptilian figures, all frozen in unsung death throes.Whatever doom had befallen these souls, it happened not too long ago.

On the far side of the tent, several discarded and rusted tools conveyed the intelligence these starved wretches possessed until the very moment of their death.With nostrils flaring, the pony shuffled into the tent, strode apathetically over the corpses, and began rummaging through the dead's unclaimed loot.

Finding creatures willing to pay me in silver strips for random tasks is going to be a bit difficult if I can no longer trust in Diamond Dogs to hire me. I can only hope that many of the canines unaffiliated with Gilliam's “Dirigible” crew are still willing to do business. But I fear that the damage is done. Tick off one dog, and you've likely petted the entire pack the wrong way. That's what I get for trying to survive at Gilliam's behest. They say that history is made by the victors. But, triumphant as I may have been as of late, I am still only one pony. History only pays attention to those who survive by their seed, and on that front I am doubly screwed.

With a loud clatter, the last pony dumped the spoils of her latest scavenging trip all across her workbench.She stood back in the port side of the Harmony and sealed her saddlebag, gazing at the many random tools and nick-nacks, most of them likely to be nothing more than junk.Pausing, she raised her goggles and squinted with naked scarlet eyes.

Reaching a hoof forward, she fumbled through the pile of ash-stained tools and pulled out a leather scroll.She held it curiously, as if not remembering that particular scrap of parchment when she had first pilfered it from the creatures' tent.After a few seconds, she yanked the thread loose that was tying the scroll shut and unrolled it.Her eyes took in a rough map of sorts, drawn haphazardly by a hand possessed more of claws than cartography skills.

She rubbed her chin in thought.After a brief bout of contemplation, she marched across the gondola and opened a chest beneath the record player on the starboard side.She pulled out a series of leather scrolls, all in far better condition than the scrap she had just recently salvaged.

Then, in swift order, she marched to her workbench, swept the rattling tools off it, and sat down to add the details from the creatures' map to those already in her possession.

Gradually, the illustrated landscape beneath her sketching pen took shape.Several years of attentiveness and recording had dutifully created a continental shape across the brown surfaces of her maps.A grand body of water loomed to the east, joining a thick sea that ran east to west across the southern banks.The continent brimmed with mountains: sharp and jagged in the east, heavily snow-capped in the north, and intimidatingly tall along the west.

An enormously wide plain inhabited the Wasteland in between the mountainous barriers and the sea to the south.A dense forest of insane proportions hugged the western mountain range, and in the center of the valley, a little towards the north, an immense pit loomed next to what resembled an emormous gold tower.To the east, along the western edges of some of the highest mountains, a series of steep canyons and sharp plateaus lingered, their detailed descriptions obscured by the haphazard illustration of an equine skull.

In seemingly random places all across the map, from the eastern shore to the northern mountain snowpeaks to the western promontories, several black circles were labeled with somber words, bearing names that were once full of life:“Manehattan” in the southwest, “Stalliongrad” in the far north, “Whinniepeg” in the northeast, “Torontrot” and “Dream Valley” along the eastern shore, and “Baltimare” along the southern sea's coastline.The eastern mountains bore the name “Canterlot” not all too far from where the equine skull was drawn, and a few spaces to the left of the once-royal city, a large portion of the map was noticeably grayed out.

The last pony's pen made a great effort to avoid this spot.Instead, her hoof wandered northwest, east of a spot marked “Griffon Mount.”After carefully studying the parchment salvaged from the dead creatures' tent, she added a new black circle and wrote down the name “Fillydelpia.”

What were once cities are now sepulchers.What were once maretropolises are now mausoleums.In a dead world, everything is a tomb, and there is no use in paying respects, not when one wants to live.

I learned long ago that hesitating to grab what I needed from the graves around me only meant risking starvation or worse.There are creatures in this world who were born in misery and made to sow misery.I am not one of them; I can't let myself become such.And yet, as ugly and as decrepit as everything is, this is still my world.Something in my blood has earned it long ago.I know this; I feel it everytime I wake up to the desolation that masks my dreams.

If any soul deserves to rob from these graves, it's me.It is my duty to commit the sin first, to beat the surviving monstrosities to it, because allowing other creatures to enjoy the spoils means allowing true desecration.

Minding the cockpit of the Harmony, the pony squinted hard at a leather pull-down map of Equestria, scribbled and painted over in several dozen places with apocalyptic alterations. After gazing at the newly sketched circle to the west of the large plain, she snapped the map back up into its holster and lowered her amber goggles. Shoving a pair of levers forward, she accelerated the zeppelin and watched as the mist beyond the windshields parted, timely revealing a horizon of shattered skyscrapers looming before her.

Carefully, the pilot navigated the ghostly spires of Fillydelphia. The copper-colored airship dipped low, passing between enormous building after building of the abandoned maretropolis, swooping briefly under a pair of crumbling towers that had collapsed into each other to form a quivering arch of steel and concrete. Landing in a cobblestone intersection filled with randomly overturned stagecoaches, the pony moored the Harmony and stepped out on hoof, holstering a rifle before exploring the ruins to her immediate north.

I am always hunting, always scavenging, always clawing at the bowels of Equestria for things that I need. I can't remember a time when I was not searching, fishing, or scrounging. In this Wasteland, being still means being useless, and if there's anything I hate more than being alone, it's being useless. I've broken into homes, kicked in the doors to shrines, broken into banks, smashed urns apart, and even pilfered the storage lockers of hospitals. Nothing can be overlooked. Nothing must be wasted.

I have to remember that there is one important thing, something that is more important than one's pride, something that is more important than one's ethics, something that is more important than learning to love or hate oneself when trying in vain to fall into the bitter limbs of sleep. And that something is my life. Be it long or be it short, it is the only life that will ever mean anything to me. It is the only life that matters in Equestria, period.

A pair of lantern-lights shimmered over a brass pony statue, its metal face blindfolded, its hooves dangling a rusted set of iron scales. The leather-armored mare trotted slowly down an abandoned courtroom. Her goggled eyes glanced back and forth. She spotted a door behind the judge's seat. The shadows of the courtroom seats bobbed and weaved as she strolled towards the far end of the room, nudged her way through the collapsed doorframe, and stumbled upon a musty office full of dust and sediment.

A gentle flurry of snow greeted her. The pony spotted a stretch of shattered windows that overlooked the dead lengths of Fillydelphian skyscrapers looming several stories below. But that wasn't what caught her attention; the pony made a straight line for a pile of collapsed books lying beneath an overturned set of wooden shelves. Flipping through the pages with a metal-laced hoof, she raised her goggles, squinted at the words, and proceeded to store a good chunk of the literature into her saddlebag.

Books. Books are the hardest thing to salvage. A part of me knows that I must do something—anything—to preserve as many written words as I can. I'm not the only scavenging creature in the Wastes of Equestria, and I know that any literature of ponydom will be utter garbage to dog, goblin, or monkey-kind. But I only have so much room in my saddlebags, and even less weight for the Harmony to handle. On top of that, there is something that I know I need more than words, and that's warmth. Tragically, many pages serve better use in the boiler.

But the ones that are special—or at least the ones that I feel are most important to the history of the Equestrian Spirit—I keep. That's a tough thing to think about. All of our history, all of our lives, all that we've ever done or accomplished shall have its merit determined through the filter of my lonesome approval. That's one thing that I never expected to have on my shoulders. Then again, I never expected to have any of this on my shoulders.

The last pony sat on the edge of a tall skyscraper, her brown feathers fluttering in the cold winds funneling down the death-striken sprawl Fillydelphia.The gray air around her echoed from the groans of many tenuous, rusty steel girders of the thirty-story building as it settled beneath her from time and neglect.Two piles of books sat on either side of the mare.

With her goggles slid up to her shaved brow, she picked one of several books up and squinted at the cover.She opened the thing and flipped through page after page about desserts, baking, and kitchen etiquette.With a loathsome sigh, she flung her hoof forward and tossed the tome—pages fluttering—over the building's edge and into the rubble-strewn streets below.

Tiredly, she picked up another tome, skimmed through, tossed it, and did the same with the next two books.Finally, she paused upon picking up a written almanac of old Fillydelphian farming techniques.She perused a section on irrigation, her brow furrowed with thought.After several minutes, she clapped the book shut and placed it down upon the short pile to her right for preservation.

Without a second breath, she picked up the next book and resumed the process of emotionless elimination.

What I haven't gotten from experience, I have gotten from books. How to keep a fire going, how to keep a healthy diet, how to maintain the structural integrity of a zeppelin, how to filter steam through a steady pipeline, how to do anything to keep oneself alive without anyone to tell me by ear—I have learned to teach myself by eye.

Books have been my greatest teachers in a world without mentors. The writings of Aristrotle, Camule, Neightszche, Descanter—I have devoured all of their words, made many of them my own, developed a writing style so as to have dissertations with long dead phantoms.

It's funny, because I was never too keen on reading or learning when I was a little filly—and then when I was thrown into the world beyond the Cataclysm, it was a titanic struggle to teach myself the vocabulary that I did not yet understand. I accomplished most of this by reading simple books and jumping immediately to the more complicated ones, so that the meanings of things bled their way to my mind between the cracks of definition.

Many things in my life like this I had to overcome by learning them on my lonesome. In so many ways, it has always been like this, even before the Cataclysm. Perhaps I was the most fortunate pony in all of Equestria to end up being so unfortunate.

“H'jem,” she uttered. A runestone dimmed, unlocking a sealed bookshelf lying against the Harmony's starboard side. The compartment opened, revealing half a dozen rows of thick, canvas-bound books.

Still shaking the fresh ash and snow off her armored flanks, she reached into her saddlebag, grabbed a few new volumes in her snout, and shelved them with the rest. Taking a breath, she stepped back and gazed forlornly at the quiet rows of tomes until her goggled eyes rested on two large books—the largest of the library by far—resting at the toprightmost shelf. Two crests were emblazoned across their spines, plastered in gold and silver respectively: the Sun and the Moon.

Two books in particular, I know I will preserve with every fiber of my existence. They are the sacred words of the Equestrian Princesses, journals kept by Celestia herself and a much similar diary maintained by Luna. I found the two of them on my second trip to Canterlot. Enough time had passed for me to embrace the present darkness, and I took it upon myself to commit the unthinkable. I looted the Royal Palace.

What I once thought was a crime turned out to be the most noble thing I could have ever done, because where is there a better place for the Exalted Family's Legacy to reside ... but in the safely flying hovel of their last royal subject ever?

Luna's book is barely filled—mostly blank pages, on account that she was bequeathed the journal shortly after returning from her imprisonment as the Mare in the Moon, which was ironically just before the Cataclysm. But Princess Celestia's book—it is an indescribable masterpiece of poetry.

As another record of Octavia's strings sang to the lantern-lit air, the pony squatted in her swaying hammock upon folded legs. Celestia's golden book was carefully laid out before her. With her goggles pulled up, the last pony's scarlet eyes liquidly melted over the finely woven starlit calligraphy. A lump formed in her throat as she inhaled sharply and turned a page, a thick and focused pulse stretching visibly beneath her brown coat.

She writes of joy. She writes of hope. She writes of royal subjects and their daily lives, of magical apprentices and their friendships. Most of all, she writes of her sister, of the hole left in her life during Luna's thousand-year absence, and subsequently the immeasurable rapture of embracing her beloved sister's return. In almost every entry that Princess Celestia had ever made, she was full of optimism, of anticipating the joy and prosperity that the next Sun-Raising would bring. When I first read her works, I was hoping to find a sign—any sign—that would suggest that Celestia at least expected the coming Cataclysm that would end all of ponydom in Equestria—including the lives of her and her sister.

What I found instead were a few entries of the deepest, most overwhelming sorrow I could come to expect from anypony, much less the Goddess of the Sun. I had always known that Princess Celestia was immortal, but what I didn't know was the repercussions that came with her long life, of loved ones beneath her protective wings who would die in waves over the passing centuries, of friendships and alliances that started, blossomed, and withered away in as little a time as it took the Royal Princess to blink.

I've read those entries of hers—the sad ones—thousands of times more than her happy ones, because I soon came to realize that I was the only pony in the history of existence who could, in some fashion or another, relate to her. The only difference is, of course, nopony is going to read about my losses, like I have faithfully read all about hers.

Transcending the cloudy overcast of the world, above the ashen snowfall, the last pony clung to the outside of the Harmony. Angling her wings back to steady herself in the high winds, she hissed through clenched teeth that tightly gripped a welding tool. She expertly climbed the outer rungs encasing the copper leather body of the zeppelin's starboard side. Finally, the pegasus zeroed in on the source of a loud rattling noise that had been bothering her for several days. Raising a hoof to her goggles and adjusting a pair of nozzles, she tinted the lenses before aiming the welding torch at the bulkhead and fusing a new cluster of rivets into place. Sparks fell through the bone cold grayness and fluttered past the swaying gondola of the Harmony below. After the welding task was done, she re-gripped the welding tool and waved her wings into the air.

Swiftly, she darted up to the very top of the zeppelin and hovered down onto the center of the balloon's chassis, where a pair of criss-crossing, rune-studded bulkheads had rattled loose. Griping to herself, she grabbed a few more rivets from her saddlebag and welded them into the right places, tightening the outer framework of the copper airship and silencing the rattling noises for the time being. With a deep breath, the pony briefly sat down on the “roof” of her lone, hovering vessel.

She had no reason to stay there—but something possessed her to delay flying back to the aperture entrance at the lower bow of the gondola below. She raised her goggles and gazed straight up with naked scarlet eyes, watching as twinkling specks of sickly-pale light hovered far above the miasma of the dead globe. A breath escaped the pony's nostrils, but try as she might, she could not tear her lonely gaze away from the horrendous abyss that perpetually engulfed her.

There is no Sun. There is no Moon. There is only ash and perpetual twilight. It isn't day. It isn't night either. The roof of the world remains lit, but fails to snuff itself completely out. It's as if the distant stars are half-heartedly attempting to make up for the celestial bodies that the Princesses used to maintain over Equestria, bodies that are gone forever.

In the end, the result is a constant and unending haze of dimness, as if to gaze towards the sky is to look out through the eyes of an elderly mare on her death bed. Any second, any heartbeat, and everything should go dark. And yet it doesn't.

Sometimes when I sleep—or try to sleep—and the great gray glow continues its pale dance beyond the portholes of the Harmony—I beg for the darkness, I beg for the end of all things. But I stop myself every time. To ask for the end is to give up, and that is not a luxury that I can afford. The darkness will come, some way or another, some time or another. Until then, I can't even pretend to know the time nor the place.

She brought the hammer down one last time over the edge of a horseshoe, straightening its warped edges.Lifting the metal article up to her scarlet gaze, the pony examined it from every angle possible.She pivoted from her workbench, bent over, and started fitting the shoe onto her left forelimb.

Lethargically, she paused to glance up and out the distant windows of the cockpit at the front of the gondola.The world hung in gray clouds of ash outside the Harmony, drifting forever and ever.With a sigh, she finished fitting the horseshoe and stood up to test her weight on it.

I can't even track time efficiently. All I remember is that I was young when the Cataclysm happened. Since then, there has been no Sun to rise or Moon to fall. Hours are your only friend—everything else is just an imaginative figure. In the land of twilight, you have no definition of age.

At some point, when I realized that lightning storms over the Wasteland transpired at regular intervals, it occurred to me that I should try to measure the passage of time. After finding several miraculously-preserved hourglasses in an abandoned Whinniepeg laboratory, I timed the number of occasions I had to rotate them between the regular lightning storms.

I found out that the time between these weather patterns averaged out to approximately one hundred and twenty hours. If the average Equestrian day was twenty-four hours—then that meant there were five days in between regular storms, almost enough to fashion a new “week” by. And if there were three hundred sixty five days in an Equestrian year, then that meant approximately seventy-five storms marked out a year.

Since I began this experiment, I have counted a total of one thousand three hundred and fifty-eight storms. Ultimately, that means that I have been living in the Wasteland for well over eighteen years. I am certainly not a young filly anymore. But, then again, I hardly remember how long I was “young” for.

After mooring the Harmony to a jutting spire of rock, the pegasus descended and trotted through a grand forest at the bottom of a snow-laden plain. However, the large gray bodies that drifted past either side of her weren't trees; they were mushrooms. Giant, six-meter-tall stalks of fungi swayed and bowed in the cold wind.

The last pony marched until she was within hoof's length of a knee-high mushroom. After depositing her saddlebags onto a gray patch of earth and mulch, she produced a long blade from her pack, slapped it hard into the neck of the gigantic mushroom, and began viciously sawing through the body of the thing.

After the structure fell loose, she quickly produced a sharp brass claw and approached the hollow of the thing. Positioning a gas lantern to shine its golden glow into the cylindrical body of the mushroom's stipe, she dug her snout in—teeth gripping the claw—and began carving loose several rubbery flanks of fungal material. These she stuck into a leather pouch. She tied the pouch shut, and dragged the sawblade towards yet another knee-high mushroom to repeat the entire procedure, all the while under a gentle rain of powdery snow.

No Sun means no light. No light means no plants. No plants means I have to bend myself backwards to find the nutrients I need to stay alive. As almost everything that was living before the Cataclysm turned into a grand heap of “dying” afterward, the fungal population exploded through the roof. The same cold winds that kicked the snow and ash around also gave lift to spores, and mystically large mushrooms spread thickly outward from the deepest caves of Tartarus—no longer food for subterranean beasts and with no forested walls to impede their progress.

If, when I was younger, I knew that some day I would be flying over an endless wasteland subsisting entirely on a diet of mold and mushrooms, I would have gagged myself to death. In many ways, I still do—but it's what I have to do to acquire the energy that I need to live.

But energy isn't everything. In a green world vibrant with life, ponies could afford to grow beans, potatoes, carrots, and all sorts of plentiful plants that a healthy diet required. Here—in the realm of oblivion—I've had to do away with conventional pony agriculture. And also, as I would soon discover, I would have to do away with conventional pony ethics...

Marching back towards the Harmony with her saddlebags full of mushroom bits, the pegasus froze. There was a vicious stirring up ahead amidst the powdery mounds of ash. Crouching low, the last pony crawled her way through a field of fungal stalks and peered over a crest of flaking dirt. She reached a hoof up and adjusted the lenses of her goggles. Several meters ahead, blurring into focus, was a full adult cougar with tattered fur. It snarled and hissed, digging its jaws into the scrumptious tendrils of a dead vampire bat caught in its maw. Tearing the wing off its prey to expose more tender muscles, it was briefly oblivious to the four-hoofed survivor spying on it from several snow flurries away.

With a deep breath, the pony shook her flank sideways. Her brass rifle slid loose from its sheath and she caught it. With gentle and silent precision, the pony extended the long shiny barrel, pulled the levers out, and loaded in a cold magazine of dimly glowing runestones. She breathed against them, and the furthest stone in the magazine shone with a purple brilliance. Cocking the wooden stock of the thing against her shoulder, she aimed the barrel icily across the hilltop until the sight of the weapon landed square over the image of the distracted feline.

With no hesitance whatsoever, the weathered mare whispered into the mystical aura of the runestone: “H'rhnum”. The bracelet of horns on her right forelimb flickered. Thunder roared across the dead landscape as the manabullet flew solidly, and the cougar's body fell flat into a crater of snow, moving no longer.

I have eaten meat. I have killed animals and consumed their flesh. I know that these teeth of mine were not granted me by the Goddesses for partaking in anything other than plants and herbs. I know that I was born with hooves instead of claws. I know that every book of law ever written by any society in the history of ponydom can now brand me a savage and an outlaw.

But I also know that I do what I do because the only Goddesses that have ever existed are now dead or gone, and I am not. And being alive has always meant—and shall always mean—doing so at the behest of other things that try to be alive.

In the past, I could afford to overlook what I now know to be a gritty reality. Because resources were in abundance, civilization afforded me the ability to exist above the ranks of a common animal. But I also know that—to preserve any scant trace of that same civilization—I must preserve myself by any means necessary. To climb so high, I must fall so low.

These are paradoxes that only I have to contend with. It does make me wonder, though, if everypony who died could magically come back to life and see me eating meat in desperation for protein, would they be proud of me on account of all of my logical excuses? Would they grant me pardon, even when they discovered that eating meat has been the least of my transgressions...?

She covered the last few centimeters with a burning sweep of her blow torch. Finally, after slicing the last sliver in a metal door, she cut the torch and pressed her entire weight into the entrance frame of a large, marble building in the center of ruined Stalliongrad. Grunting and sweating with her effort, she finally succeeded, her lithe muscles managing to rip the door off its hinges.

There was a large clanging noise. A heap of ash lifted and spewed forth across the atrium of the unsealed building. Not expecting that much dust, she coughed and raised a leather mask over her snout, just in time to shield herself against a rustic stench rising dreadfully from the interior. Sparking the light inside her yoked lanterns, she trotted slowly into the domed building and was only briefly overcome by the melancholic discovery of what lay inside.

The pegasus counted ten... fifteen... twenty five... at least thirty-five bodies. It was a veritable pile of corpses, most of adult stature, some the size of young foals, and they all formed a circle around a bronze altar in the shape of Princess Celestia. This was Stalliongrad's Temple of the Sun, and a good chunk of the neighboring populace had apparently flocked there in desperate prayer the very moment that the Cataclysm had hit. The bodies were well-preserved, right down to their dresspieces and horseshoes. But it wasn't the metal of the shoes that the last pony had interest in, it was the unicorns themselves.

With a sighing breath, she sauntered towards the closest body towards her, the first of two dozen salvageable skeletons just like it. Flicking the metal band on her left hoof, she produced a tiny razor-toothed blade, and began sawing with expert precision at the top of the skull, severing the dead unicorn's horn from its cranium.

An hour or so later, the pegasus trotted out of the Temple of the Sun and towards the center of Stalliongrad where the Harmony was parked. She had hanging from her neck a bag filled to the brim with severed horns. Stepping onboard her airship, she went immediately to her workbench on the top level. She produced a strip of tanned cougar leather. Then she emptied the contents of the bag before her and began stitching together a brand new bracelet of unicorn horns.

When the Sun and Moon disappeared, so did everypony—everypony but me. What rendered all of my species to ash and dust—yet spared myself—I still to this day cannot fathom. But whatever it was, it too brought about the end of Princess Celestia and Luna. Somehow, that meant the magic that bonded them to the galactic elements was severed, and as a result I now hover above a dead carcass of a world, starved of the pools of mana that once animated it.

But magic is a lot like normal mass and energy. It cannot come from nothing, and likewise it cannot become nothing. The magic had to go somewhere, and with everypony in Equestria dead, the world's magic had to collect around the one equine who was an exception: me.

Long ago, I learned that I could perform very minor magic spells—like the ones I learned in the books I collected. But I could not perform the spells very well, no matter how hard I concentrated. Even with all of the magic in the known universe, I wouldn't be able to do much. It's because I am a pegasus, and much like an earth pony, my body is mostly inert in the realm of sorcery.

But the unicorns: they were naturally gifted with being living magic batteries. They could master all forms of enchantment, and when they called upon the holy power of Celestia and other Goddesses like her, they could even perform supernatural feats that rivaled the Creation of Equestria itself. The matter in their horns was the substance of their mystical talent, and even beyond death the cyclical bone structure still acts as a conduit for magical energies. My guess is that when the unicorns died during the Cataclysm, a piece of their life essence—the magical part—was retained in their horns.

Though I am a pegasus, fashioning a bracelet out of unicorn horns has provided me a way to cheat the rules of magic, so long as I am the last pony left to act as a gateway between the physical realm and beyond. With so many horns contained in one place, I can focus a magic spell through them, and perform all sorts of helpful tricks to assist me in my sojourns through the Wastes. Though I cannot harness enough energy to levitate or transmogrify matter, the power granted me by these scavenged buffers have been immeasurably useful in finding, hoarding, and killing whatever the Wasteland randomly tosses my way. But as grim a necessity as the bracelets are, I do not rely on dead bones alone.

In the storage compartment of the Harmony's lower gondola, the pony leaned over an alchemy table full of bubbling glass jars and glowing vials of smoking liquid. Wearing a chemist's pair of wide-lensed glasses, the last pony finished carving a chunk of white moonstone into an arcane shape. Filing away the last jagged chips from the edges of the stone, she lifted the thing in a pair of forceps and dipped them into one steaming beaker after another. Smoke of various shades filled the hangar with a mystic smog as she then cooled the stone off into a trough of water and sprinkled herbs over it. Gazing into a tome, the pony chanted a few archaic words in deep monotone. A glittering aura shone from a bracelet of horns over her right hoof, and the stone within the trough began glowing.

After several minutes, the mare removed the cooled stone from its trough. Staring at the glowing shard closely, she raised an eyebrow and experimentally stuck the letter-shaped chunk of enchanted moonrock into a matching hole in a square black tablet. She then stuck the tablet into the toppiece of a magazine filled with identically crafted stones before finally loading the whole ensemble into her copper rifle. Cocking the weapon, she removed her glasses, marched over towards the circular aperture of the Harmony, and manually opened it. There was the usual flurry of cold wind. The pony aimed the glowing rifle out into the snowy overcast of the Equestrian sky.

Her lips moved icily: “M'wynhrm!” Her bracelet strobed yet again. The freshly crafted runestone burst in a crimson glow, and a bright red manabullet rocketed down the length of the brass barrel and flew deep into a cloudbank. Half a second later, a gigantic explosion of burning red plasma consumed one half square kilometer of misty sky, briefly lighting the dead twilight in a frothing haze, until all was once more ash and soot. The pony steadied herself as the entire two-level gondola of the Harmony rocked and swayed from the explosion. A whistle escaped her lips, and she patted the rifle with meager affection before returning back to her alchemy table.

Runestones: they are the centerpiece of a long-forgotten art of magic, with emphasis on mineral infusion and verbal enchantment. The school of sorcery is almost as old as Celestial Alchemy, though it has always served far less benevolent functions.

The last time runestones were used—much less crafted—was in wartime, long ago, towards the end of the Second Age, when Nightmare Moon turned traitorous and led the armies of the Lunar Empire in a violent attempt to overthrow her sister Celestia. Warhorses marched into battle, holstering explosives and ballistics armed with runestones as their triggers. It was a strange and archaic time when focused mysticism was used almost entirely for bloodshed, unlike the subtler schools of Canterlotlian sorcery taught during the peaceful millennium that followed the war: otherwise known as the Third Age, the Age I was born in.

This was to be the Fourth Age, the Age of Princess Luna's Redemption. This was to be the Age when the Twin Goddesses oversaw the revolutions of the Sun and Moon, as they were naturally born to do. The Fourth Age barely lasted one pathetic year—or so I assume. I vaguely remember one Winter Wrap-Up before the Cataclysm happened. Everything that made up the Fourth Age, including the inane necessity to chronicle the Fourth Age to begin with, was consumed in fire.

How ironic it is, then, that I was fated to stumble upon a book in the ruins of the Royal Palace, explaining the intricacies of the forbidden art of Runestones; and that I adopted its practice for my own use—archaic words of the Lunar Tongue and all—with an abundance of moonrock strewn across the Wastes at my very disposal. Perhaps there is a prophecy that foretells this, that speaks of an era when one pony resurrects the elements of a great war that threatened to kill all ponies, only to use them in an age meant to bless all ponies. But in all of the books that I have scrounged up, I have found no scripture that hints of this apocalypse, of this lonely twilight, of this gray forever-after that dwarfs the brief and anticlimactic return of Princess Luna.

The fact is, I don't need prophecy to explain this dead world to me. I only need to open my eyes, to breathe through my own nostrils, and make do with what I have given to me, in flesh or in text.

I am the end of ponies; I am the Fourth Age.

Under the cadence of Octavia's strings, the pegasus sat at her workbench where she polished several multicolored stones, one after another. There were seven stones total—magnificent translucent gems that shimmered from the distant boiler's burning light, which refracted prismatically through them—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. They gleamed after each polish the pony gave them, rubbing them with a cloth of shaved mane hair.

After making each of the stones sparkling clean, the mare turned her attention toward a lead box lying securely in a shelf just above the corner of the work bench. Placing her cloth down, she reached a hoof over and dragged the lead box towards her. Narrowing her eyes cautiously, she opened the container, bathing herself and the rest of the cabin in a bright red glow. A crimson flamestone shimmered from its holding inside the box. As bright as the thing was, it could have been brighter; the aging mare knew this, and she frowned.

Still, she sighed away her disconcerted thoughts and closed the box before swiveling from her workbench and leaping towards the cockpit. Climbing into the seat, she lowered her goggles and disengaged the autopilot. Eyeing the puttering steam-powered gauges of her dashboard, she made an instinctual judgment of her location and pulled several levers and chain-linked handles, dropping the Harmony into a deep descent and angling the vessel towards a wide plateau stretching beyond the gray mists below.

In the center of the plateau, there was a pony-made structure: a circle of iron-wrought barricades. And in the apex of the circle there rested a thick metal brace ... for the signal ...

What is my purpose? I ask myself that in making every journal entry—which is likely why I rarely go back and re-read them. Because there is no answer—only the question, otherwise why would I still be here?

Why did the Cataclysm kill off everypony and yet I was spared? Why were the beautiful equines of this world destroyed, and yet the uglier and more despicable creatures allowed to fester onward into eternity? Why am I struggling so hard to stay alive day by day? Why has anything ever lived, against all the odds of doing so day after day in the great history of the world?

Why do I kill creatures and turn their hides in for profit? Why do I chop mushrooms to make stew and slay animals to cook meat? Why do I hunt down sacred phoenixes and sell them to double-crossing Dirigible Dogs? Why do I pilfer from Fillydelphian skyscrapers and rob from Stalliongrad tombs? Why do I harness magic that isn't mine to toy with or fashion deadly weapons to carry with me into the ruthless abyss every waking moment? How is it that I came to teach myself to read and write, to appreciate Octavia's music, or to build myself an airship when there was nopony to tell me how to weld steel, or to harness steam, or to even fly with my own naked wings?

Is it enough that I struggle to exist for existence's sake? There are times when I have believed so. But I've come to label such moments as “defeats.” It can't possibly be called a victory when I give into the nihilism that mirrors the opaque cloudscape that has constantly surrounded me these last two decades.

I wrote before that, on some level, I can relate to Princess Celestia. And for all of her many reasons to lament the lonely immortality of her existence, Celestia was somehow convinced to see the silver lining in things, so much so that it constituted the majority of her own personal journal entries. If Princess Celestia—the one and only pony responsible for bringing the Sun to this world—could find a reason to be optimistic, then that means I, the last pony of Equestria, must also discover her reason to be hopeful and to focus on it.

Who knows? I too may find my silver lining. There certainly are enough friggin' clouds for that, at least.

The Harmony was moored by a series of thick metal chains attached to the circle of rusted iron barricades. The airship drifted gently over the pony's shaved mane as the mare slid a heavy metal lattice into position, locking it into the thick iron brace at the center of the barricades. Not wasting a sweating second, the brown mare reached into her saddle bag and produced all seven of the multi-colored stones. Pulling a canvass tarp off the metal lattice, she exposed seven large spotlights to the gray ashen air. One by one, she slid open the lenses to the spotlights and dropped the colored stones in—from Red to Green to Violet and everything in between. Finally, she slid open a brass compartment at the base of the metal lattice. Into this, she deposited the glowing red flamestone, shutting it tight with a metal clang. On the outside of the compartment was the space for a runestone—which she aptly filled with a shimmering moonrock.

The mare next paced around the lattice and rotated it until the lights were aimed directly skyward. After a few precise tilts—with the ease of rotating valves and gear meters—she achieved the precise angle she traditionally desired. She lowered her lips towards the compartment with the glowing rune, and raised her braceleted hoof at the ready. For a moment she lingered, as if in solemn contemplation of an ongoing habit that was suddenly clouded by the gently falling snow settling around her. But she shook this off, lowered her goggles protectively over her scarlet eyes, and throated authoritatively into the runestone: “Y'hnyrr.”

The rune's glow dissipated, and a bright, ghostly fire billowed from within the embroiled compartment of the lattice. The pegasus wrapped a hoof around a rusted metal lever and yanked at it. The lights flickered and sputtered and died. Cursing under her breath, the pony yanked and yanked and yanked again, grunting harder with each effort, until the last swing of the lever connected. The enchanted flamestone burst through a series of built-in prisms until they connected with the lens compartments. The seven multicolored rocks sparked, glittered, and lit up. In a frothing hiss, the seven colors of the rainbow surged upwards and pierced the gray soupy sky, burning through the clouds and impaling the twilight ceiling of Equestria with miraculous color and life—a prismatic beacon—the signal. Everypony's signal. Her signal.

She took a deep breath, gazing up at the solid beam of artificial spectrum. It was dimmer than the last two times she had ignited the signal, as the flamestone was jaded and needed to be replaced with one containing a stronger enchantment. But somehow, less bright or not, the signal was worth the trip, worth the fuel to get there, worth the silver strips earned through scavenging to supply it, worth the restless, lonely nights of self-doubt... just to see it.

The last pony took a deep breath, stared at the grand burning lengths of the conjured rainbow, and then closed her eyes in order to savor the frozen image as she stood there half-naked against the cold wasteland winds.

There was a time when I used to dream in color. I've read books where literary ponies philosophized over the nature of dreams—and that they were all “in black in white.” Perhaps, in another lifetime, that would be true. But that's not the case for me. My life is in black and white; it has been for forever. But when I dream, I live in the past; and the past was something of color, of warmth, of so many amazing and interesting shades that most of them are now eternally lost to me.

That was a time of rainbows, when magic was a nature unto the world, not a resource for a scavenger to exploit. Rainbows existed in a time of prosperity, when there would be a promise of another day with similar blessings, and even more to be had. Rainbows were a sign of hope, of delightful and optimistic expectations for the good things in life granted naturally to everypony. If it weren't for hope, why would ponies dream to begin with?

In this world of ash and twilight, there are no rainbows. There is no hope. Perhaps that is why ages ago I concocted the idea of this signal: the artificial rainbow. It was because I believed that the only place left for rainbows to go was in the world of dreams. And if I could mimic that, if I could capture an essence of that in a bottle, with the best of intentions, I could provide a shining beacon for every living soul in Equestria to see. And if there is even one single pony besides me left in the world, that would have to be a pony that dreams, like I dream—every day—that this is not all that there is, that there is a reason for why my fitful slumbers conjure up shades that contrast the endless gray of this nightmare land, that there is more to life than a single piece of meat with four hooves trying to scrape up a pitiful existence, that I am not the last pony.

This is why I do what I do everyday. This is why I exist to do more than existing. It's to produce this signal, to fire this beacon into the dead sky, to continually beckon and wait for another Equestrian soul besides mine to come and find me, even if beyond the grave, for death has been defeated before during multiple miracles of the First, Second, and Third Age. And maybe—just maybe—somepony, anypony, can come join me, and we can all be the Fourth Age. We can begin things again. We can... begin things again.

We can...

Several hours passed, during which the lonely beacon of rainbow light started to dim and flicker into a dull pale beam. The pony sat, hunched over, in a chair positioned atop a six meter tall tower that flanked the circle of metal barricades and the glowing lattices in the center of them. The copper body of the Harmony hovered overhead, aglow in the dying rainbow's penumbra. Snow fluttered through the soft air, insulating everything in a deathly silence.

The pegasus lingered upon the precipice of consciousness, her hooves kicked up over the railed edge of the tower. Her brown coated body rose and fell in gentle breaths as her head bowed towards her chest, the goggles fogged over with lazy condensation. Moisture beaded off the barrel of the brass rifle propped to her side; the magazine full of glowing runes twinkled restlessly.

After yet another long stretch of silence, a ringing noise filled the naked air. There was brief silence—then another shrill ringing, and the pegasus started, nearly pratfalling out of her seat. Snorting to blinking wakefulness, she wiped the sheen from her goggles and leaned forward, peering across the gray lengths of the plateau.

A dangling string was bouncing from where it stretched out from a rusted stake pounded into the rocky ground. Ages ago, the pony had erected a complex web of cords and yarn in a spiraling formation from the epicenter of the barricaded signal location. Those cords were equipped with custom-made cowbells at every three-meter intervals, all built to alert the pony of any incoming body on four limbs. Right before her, the one ringing noise was joined by several identical clanging sounds, so that she was swiftly engulfed in a cacophony of bedlam zeroing in on her location.

Her pulse raced. With shaking hooves, she raised her goggles, reached back, grabbed a spyglass from her saddlebag, and peered down the extended length of it. Through the dim porthole of light, the pony stared across the mist-laden horizon of the stony plateau. The projected image bobbed and bounced with each throb of her lonely heartbeat. Then—out from the shadows—she saw them.

There were shapes, bodies—not colorfully maned and hooved, but instead leathery and sharp-fanged... bounding towards her on all fours by the dozen. A whooping noise filled the air as a pack of mangy, bone-pale creatures stampeded homicidally towards her elevated location.

She cursed under her breath. Grabbing her rifle, she pounced off the tower, grabbed a dangling chain tethering the Harmony to the earth, and slid agilely down the length of it. After landing in a roll, she yanked hard on all the chains, unhooking them from the airship's clasps above. Next, she scampered over to the lattice where she hastily retrieved the seven colored rocks and the now-dim flamestone. The earthen plateau beneath her shook fiercely; the rusted iron barricades rattled from the angry feet of the blood-thirsty marauders.

Wasting no time, the pony mightily shouldered the weight of the hulking metal lattice on her back, clasped the rifle in a pair of angry teeth, and stretched her wings out, beating them ferociously against the combination of snowy air and ruthless gravity. She somehow managed to lift the entire ensemble, herself included. The pegasus levitated upwards just as the howling and drooling bodies hurled their way over the first barricades and pounced at her. Fanged teeth and razor sharp maws snapped just centimeters beneath her dangling hooves as she desperately hovered her aching body upwards, climbed the last few meters between her and the airship, and finally collapsed—sprawling—at the aperture entranceway of the Harmony's lower gondola.

From there she cocked her rifle and aimed it cautiously down at the leaping, braying creatures. They leered and spat up at her, their eyes like beady, soulless specks that reflected the gray twilight. As they watched their crafty prey rise ever so far away from the stone face of the plateau, they spun back into a slithering mass of herding leather and thundered, howling, back into the blanketing mists where they joined the ghostly hum of the dead Equestrian Wastes. The pegasus took a long, long breath and leaned back against the round entrance of her airship, shutting her eyes and struggling to fight an impervious frown chiseled into her disappointed face.

Trolls. Goddess, I hate them. It figures that when all ponies disappeared from the face of the earth, these soulless beasts crawled out from the woodwork—no longer forced to hide under bridges and dank cave roofs, waiting for unsuspecting victims or passerbys.

More times in the Wasteland than I can count, I've had to deal with them. They track one's scent from miles away, so I did away with the most fragrant part of an exposed pony: her hair. They're attracted to wood-kindled flame, so I switched to using gas lanterns in all of my flashlights. They stampede at cheetah's speed, so I never wear extra armor when I'm trotting across the Equestrian plains, so that I can fly away at the drop of a hat.

But what I hate about them the most, what makes me wish that the Cataclysm had wiped them off the face of the earth instead, is that the last three consecutive times that I had lit the signal, it was them who I attracted. My naive heart would leap every time at the thought that the herd I had called was the one herd I was always looking for. And every one of those times, I was severely disappointed, and rightfully so.

What more can I expect? There are so many ghostly creatures left haunting this world—from dogs to goblins to wolverines to harpies—and almost every one of them has wanted me dead at one time or another. Many of them blame ponydom for the great blight that has befallen the land, never mind the fact that it took the whole of ponydom with it in the holocaust. Many see me as a delicacy—an exotic edible or a future museum curiosity at best. The closest thing I have for allies are soulless mercenaries who only need me for my talents, or begrudgingly register my existence at an exchange of silver strips over a bargaining table stained with dirty blood.

It's when I go through the process of disembarking from the signal that my faith is the lowest, that the artificial rainbow dies away and I wake up once more to the monochromatic singularity of my existence. What is there to hope for in a world where I am the only source of that hope? There's a name for living within the repetitious prison of your own making: and that's “insanity.” These slobbering trolls—these creatures of the night that seek to rend me to ribbons: they are the sane ones. Only a monster who embraces the savage wilderness of eternal twilight has any reason to hope for things in this world. They will last longer. They will leave a deeper imprint, not by shining fake rainbows into the cloudy air, but by raking the earth with the claws of their nefarious passion, and soaking it with the blood of their enemies... as every civilization has done, including my own in Ages passed.

I've been raised—delightfully sprinkled and polluted—with notions of peace, of tolerance, of friendship. All of those values would have worked once, in a lifetime before I had to kill things to survive and make excuses for it afterward. Maybe some day—maybe in a future journal entry—I will realize the one burning truth of who and what I am: that I cannot pretend to be friendly or hopeful in a world where everypony is gone.

Just look at what I'm writing: “everypony.” Over two thousand journal entries into this nonsense, and I really shouldn't bother to write that anymore. From now on, I think I should just chicken-scratch the term “everybody.” For that is all that's left in the graveyard of Equestria: bodies. And I am their grave keeper, for as long as I live to absurdly shine rainbows into the Abyss.

-End of entry.

Chapter Four: Creatures of the Overworld

“Don't fret! I'll be back in—like—half an hour, tops!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed from outside the arcane vault. “I just gotta find Harmony! She'll know how to fix all of this! She has to!”

“Rainbow Dash, don't leave me!” The young filly heard herself sob under the rumbling of Cloudsdale's demise.

“Seriously, kid—Would I let the world be any less cool by disappearing?” And then the pegasus' devilish blue grin was gone.

In its absence, the young pony cried out her name, and then Fluttershy's, and then Applejack's, and eventually: “H-Harmony?!”

The roof of Equestria exploded, reverberating a million times in the gasping pony's throttled head. The royal transport that she was in shuddered as the balloons deflated and the gondola began its spinning descent towards the burning world below. Outside the windows of the arcane vault, thousands of pegasi could be seen, screaming towards oblivion, until a wave of energy singed them to dust and pelted the collapsing airship with the mist of their combined effluence.

Then there was an explosive jolt, a thunderous crash as the gondola hit the boiling skin of the earth. The pony shrieked, her body surging forward as the arcane vault toppled and rolled and skidded to an ugly stop outside the torn iron belly of the collapsed airship. The bitter cold silence that followed was haunting, leading the shocked filly to believe that she was actually dead. Upon opening her twitching eyes, she wished that she had been.

The landscape of Equestria was a barren stretch of burnt trees and copper-brown grass. The riverbeds had dried up, the hilltops had sunken, and the roadways had been entirely evaporated—all in a flash. There was a crack in the arcane vault's door, where streams of purple magic hissed off the bent surfaces exposed to the Cataclysm. With a great deal of effort, the little pony nudged and nudged and finally broke the warped door open. She was immediately pelted with a cold breath of ash and snowy soot.

Trotting out, she found the world slowly blanketed with an endless flurry of white powder, building up and up towards infinity. The wheels in her young head turned faster than they ever had before, and she realized to her utter horror that the snow was none other than the petrified remains of every pegasus that had fallen out of Cloudsdale.

And then... sparks lit the air. Tiny hot pinstreaks of light bulleted down from the heavens. In utter dread, the pony forced herself to look straight up. She saw the twilight for the first time, its milky white grayness coalescing into an eternal miasma of dying stars. In the foreground of it all was a shadowy mass, spreading, thinning, growing into a hot crimson glow as it burned into the atmosphere.

The last pegasus gasped. The moon had exploded, and its smaller parts were falling earthward. The red-hot pinstreaks doubled, quadrupled—and suddenly the dead sky was bathed from east to west with shooting stars. A murderous thunder rolled through the neck of the world as hot frothing meteorites of molten moondust soared into the planet by the hundreds, thousands, millions.

A seething missile of rock soared past the pony, exploding a tree to her right flank. Another slammed into the ground ahead of her, dousing her coat in lifeless gray soil. She turned—shrieking—and flew back towards the collapsed airship as burning rocks leveled the world to shattering craters of glass all around her.

The shaking breast of Equestria knocked her off her hooves, so that she had to crawl—sobbing hysterically—towards a meager iron shell for cover. Once inside, she huddled beneath one of the battered arcane vaults, still laced with the scent of Rainbow Dash, and screamed as a gigantic shadow encased her, and a kilometer-wide husk of moonrock hurled its way towards ground zero.

A ringing noise...

The last pony woke up, gasping in a cold sweat. Octavia's record was looping with the needle bouncing repeatedly off the end of the disc. The lantern light and the boiler of the Harmony's cabin exchanged pulses of gentle flame. Through it all, a ringing noise permeated, rattling the windows to the gray expanse beyond the cockpit. With twitching eyes, the adult pegasus glanced over to see a metal spoke vibrating offensively against the surface of a homemade cowbell. Besides the alarm, a pair of tesla coils sparked incessantly. It was the zeppelin's proximity alarm; she was not alone in the clouds.

Kicking out of the hammock, the mare limped towards the cockpit and checked the gauges. Autopilot was still activated and the airship was set to the same steady hover as it had been when she went to sleep. The young mare then hopped over to the port side, deactivated the signal, and flipped open the nearest porthole. Peering outside into the ashen flurry, she spotted a floating black mass—the unmistakable outline of a sextuple-ballooned dirigible floating perpendicular towards her own.

Frowning, she rushed over to her metal cabinet and diffused the runestone with a grunted word. She grabbed her rifle, holstered it, and dashed over to her port side speaker system. Cranking the valve, she sparked the device to life, pulled the spout closer to the porthole, and cocked the rifle out the window, aiming it at the offensive vessel. In an air of menacing authority, she uttered: “You had best turn around if you know what's good for you! This is my cloud! And if you don't agree, I'll be more than happy to reintroduce you to sea level!”

Her broadcasted voice crackled like thunder across the snowy gray clouds. For a second there, she wondered if perhaps her threat had been diffused amidst the blisteringly loud winds, or perhaps the strange pilot hadn't paid her words any respect. But soon, a pleasantly nuanced thunder returned, and she realized in the haze of her own pitiful grogginess that it was none other than a very familiar voice.

“Ha-HA! I knew I vould find you in dis neck of veather, pony! It is I, Brucie! You should fear nothing of kind friend who vants only to do business, da?”

The brown pegasus rolled her scarlet eyes. “Nnnngh...Bruce.” She retracted the rifle and leaned an apathetic face back into the microphone. “Bruce, this isn't exactly a good time. I just finished a really tough job, and I need to make clear of the Northern Reaches.”

“All better to make exchange of goods, then! You are clever pony! Best not to turn avay opportunity! Vhat is old expression? 'Do not look in mouth of gift horse.' Ha! Get it?”

She took a long breath, her nostrils flaring slowly. She glanced over towards her workbench. The seven colored gems were locked safely away in their drawers. As for the red flamestone, she had left it exposed in its open lead container. All the glimmer of the disenchanted rock was gone. The signal, the ever important beacon, was currently a dead matter.

Grinding her teeth slightly, she leaned her mouth with finality towards the spout. “Alright, Brucie. Bring her around, just like last time.”

“There is good pony! Smart pony! I vill try and not drag mud across your carpet, da? Bringing my port side to your bow!”

Verily, the dark-green silhouette of Bruce's airship pivoted to the right and descended so that a hatch on its port-side was level to the front of the Harmony's storage compartment. With an inward groan, the pegasus strolled back to her cabinet and donned a thin jacket of leather armor. She hoisted a khaki cap over her shaved mane and slid a pair of goggles over her eyes. Just as the Harmony jolted from the flying merchant's ship docking with it, she retracted her gun and slung it over her shoulders, making sure it would be in open sight of her guest. She descended the revolving metal staircase, trotted across the storage compartment, and spoke towards the runes lining the copper aperture entrance: “Y'hnyrr. H'jem.”

Cold white sleet pelted inward as the catseye doorway slid wide, revealing a slick oblong ship of green bulkheads covered with ageless mildew. Six conjoined balloons bobbed and rattled above the awkwardly hammered-together zeppelin, sickly contrasting the degree of professionalism that embodied the Harmony. A metal walkway extended from a square-shaped doorhatch in the merchant's ship and formed a bridge with the Harmony's entrance.

The doorhatch of the opposing vessel slid open with a rusted squeak, and a wave of smoke billowed out, partially shrouding a tiny furball of a figure that climbed out of the hatch upside down before fearlessly backflipping onto the center of the precarious plank. With a bushy tail and gray skin flaps that waved like flags in the high winds, a half-meter-high flying squirrel swaggered his way towards the hangar of the Harmony. Clasped in his mouth was a cigar, which he absent-mindedly flicked before exhaling a wave of putrid fumes that further fogged up his copper-green pilot's goggles.

“Harmony! As Brucie lives and dies—hopefully quicker than you, my friend, for you are more priceless, da? Heheh!”

“Bruce, when am I going to get it through your thick skull?” the pony droned coolly, “'Harmony' is the name of my ship. It has nothing to do with me.”

“Comrade is much like ship!” Bruce chomped on his cigar and patted the clanking bulkheads of the hangar entrance with a smile. “She is unlucky without name! You vould do vell to take advantage of dis! Big reputation you have, dough few opportunities, da? Rumor has it pony's client, Gilliam, had huge cloudship go down in flames! BOOM! Dogs dying in sky! Vhat dogs vere doing in sky, Brucie vill never know! Perhaps pony does?”

She merely glared at him. “No smoking near my ship. Surely you learned that the last time.”

“Vhat? You mean dis cancer stick?” He flicked the cigar again and leaned suavely against the edge of the aperture. “Let Brucie worry about Brucie's own cancer. Are squirrels extinct in Equestria? Nyet, I think not! So vhy should pony fret? Heheh!”

Her goggled eyes narrowed. In one motion, she flung her brown wings forward. The resulting gust of air tore the cigar from Bruce's incisors, sending the nicotine cylinder sailing down into the endless clouds beneath their conjoined vessels.

“Bah...” he waved an apathetic paw. “Plenty more cancer vhere dat comes from! Pffft! Vhy so serious, pony? Live some before you die, maybe?” He nonetheless smiled and motioned with his webbed limbs as he sauntered back towards his ship. “Come! Come! Look at my vares before you toss Brucie down as vell! You obviously know vhat you vant and Brucie knows vhat to give you!”

She followed him, trotting across the metal bridge until she was inside the rodent merchant's foggy vessel. Sickly green lights beamed through the nicotine-filled haze. The pony politely held her breath and gazed closely at several racks of metal knick-knacks, gun stocks, ammo deposits, leather strips, holsters, eating utensils, rusted tools, sharp blades, chemistry sets, an array of expensive seedlings, salvaged artifacts, and handfuls of other assorted junks pilfered from the Equestrian Wastes.

The flying squirrel scampered effortlessly around the cramped cylindrical hollow like it was the inside of a fallen oak tree. “I have recently come across most exceptional scrap from Eastern Shores! Not all of Ocean is dead. You'd be surprised at vhat your seahorse cousins leave behind!” He turned on a record player to give the sudden store a pleasant ambiance—but had to gruntingly kick the thing two or three times before the crumbling speakers half-heartedly played what sounded like a military funeral dirge in a thick, foreign tongue. “My latest pride and joy is seedlings—From fresh patch of trees still thriving in squirrel motherland!” He proudly waved his paws before an electrically illuminated array of vegetation, his bushy tail flapping in emphasis. “Da, the world may be in ashes but City of St Petersbrittle still stands! You still vasting your harvest on bitter mushrooms, pony? Don't lie to friend Brucie! I can smell it on your flanks, and pony is only friend Brucie knows that still bathes! Hah!”

“I've found some beans recently. I think I'm covered on that front.” The pony's goggled gaze skimmed across the smoky interior, looking for the one thing she absolutely needed. In the meantime, she nodded her head towards several brown bands hanging from a rack. “How much for the leather? I've need of some new armor and I don't have much time to go about crafting it.”

“For you, pony, discount of friendship.” He leaned back against the waves of marching music hissing out of the bobbing vessel's speakers and made a figure with his paws. “Twenty-strips per band. Never let fine mare go naked in vilderness; a lesson from Brucie's mother, may goddess rest her fur.”

“Always a charmer, Bruce,” she murmured. She trotted over towards a hammer and chisel dangling off the corner of a metal rack. “I see you have ramcraft. Did you get these tools from the Western Peaks?”

“It depends. Does pony vant them?”

“It's a simple question, Bruce.” She glared his way.“Where'd you scavenge these from?”

“Mmmm...” He wrung his paws and gestured with an innocent smile. “Lonely outpost along northern slopes, below snow line, far from dem ravaging volvervines.Bah! Vas dirty run-down hovel, nothing more, nothing sacred like mountain ram temple, if pony must know.” He pointed knowingly. “Though pony is no stranger to borrowing from goddess' house, da?”

She stared at him, but as the seconds ticked away, she realized she had no response. So, sighing, she nodded and said, “I'll take them too.”

“Undoubtedly for chiseling pony's amazing runestones, da?”

“Nothing amazing about what I do, Bruce. But I'll buy them nonetheless.”

“How many? Brucie has spares in trunk below digging tools. Harmony pony can make lots of vicked stones vith ramcraft like dat.”

“I can't go all out, because there's one thing I need more than ever.”

“Name it!” The squirrel folded his arms and smirked, his green goggles glinting. “Let Brucie be cursed first day he lets down favorite Equestrian customer!”

“Flamestones.” She glanced at him with an arched eyebrow. “Any and all that you may have.”

“Flamestones—I ... erm ...” He suddenly sweated, wringing his paws and chewing on his lower lip with a jagged incisor. Finally, he cleared his throat with a surprise show of strength and changed his expression. “Nyet! Impossible! Pony asks for impossible! Brucie is completely out of flamestones!”

The pony stared lethargically at him. In one movement, she produced a leather pouch full of silver strips from her saddlebag and held it in front of the squirrel.

He blinked and raised a pointed paw. “Brucie is not completely out of flamestones!” Smiling sweatily, Bruce scampered over towards his pilot's chair, lifted the seat, and unraveled a tarp full of bright red rubies that filled the smoky corridor with a glittering kaleidoscope of crimson. “Ta-daaaa! Brucie delivers just in time, da?”

“I'll always be impressed, Bruce,” the pony muttered as she trotted over to get a closer look over the much treasured gems, “so long as your stock of flamestones outlasts your honesty.”

“Pony, you vound me.” He smiled while planting a melodramatic paw over his heart. “Ve all have reasons for silver tongues. Mine is because I bite it so much!”

“Who's putting the pressure on you this time, Bruce?” She raised one of the seven shimmering stones and refocused her lenses to study its enchantment closely. “Harpy pirates? Ogres? The Dirigible Dogs?”

“Bah!” He spat into the floor, frowning. “Golden Gang! Vicked feather bullies badger and threaten Brucie within inch of incisors! Vhat ever happened to friendly skies of death and gloom? Now ve only have regular skies of death and gloom.”

“I know all about the Golden Gang,” she grumbled. Her goggled eyes thinned as the next words came in an otherwordly voice, “Almost too well...”

“They may be bullies, but they give pony protection, da?”

“My brown flank, they do!”She frowned suddenly, but shrugged it off in time to sigh. “These stones all look great, Bruce. How about ... two hundred strips per rock? I'll get them off your paws—Just like last time?”

He shook with a shuddering hesitance. “I vould be glad to—normally—pony, but dis Golden Gang; with flame are they obsessed. Be it flamestone, flamespheres, red flame, yellow flame—Bah! I vould imagine they have enough flame to burn Equestria three times more than the Cataclysm did!” He suddenly blushed and smiled nervously in her presence. “No offense does Brucie intend, of course.”

“None taken,” she murmured. She glanced at him, stared lingeringly at all of his clattering wears, at his pathetically warped record as it tried to spin on the player. The chanting music came in ghostly howls that shook her soul, and soon she surrendered in a sigh. “Fine, Bruce. Gimme just two of them.”

“Deal is most certainly done, pony!” He grinned with sudden euphoria as they exchanged silver bars and flamestones. “Your grace exceeds you! Fitting, perhaps: you are last and yet most polite of hoofed kind!”

“Don't rub it in, roadkill,” she grunted and tucked the stones safely into her saddlebag before marching over towards the leather bands that she had also purchased. “You're my finest source of flamestones. It'd be a shame to have you ripped apart by the Golden Gang before I have a chance to do business with you again.”

“In speaking of flames, pony,” he remarked, pointing an excited paw from across the hazy cabin. “Since you are so... erm... invested in flaming stones, Brucie may have tip for vhere pony can get new contract now dat the Dogs Bollocks are blue! Hah!”

“And lemme guess; this tip costs how much?”

“No, pony.” He shook his head solemnly. “Consider it gift from old merchant's thankful heart. You have made much profit from hunting and collecting magical flame, da?”

“Yes, yes,” she groaned boredly as she picked out the leather bands she desired. “Gold flame. Red flame. Blue flame—We've been through all of this, Bruce. It's how I earn the strips that you keep gobbling out of my hooves. Get to the point—”

“Has Harmony pony in her travels ever stumbled upon green flame?”

The pegasus paused. She glanced back over her shoulder, her goggles curiously reflecting the double image of the grinning squirrel. “Green flame?” Her lips lingered, then creased into a frown. “Green flame is a myth.”

“Is only myth because it existed once!” He scurried over and hung on the ceiling above her, gesturing. “In pony land of Equestria, no less.”

“Equestria is dead—and all that was magic died with it.”She shifted uncomfortably with a frown.“My coat didn't get this dull from lack of grooming.”

“Then vhat has pony harvested all this time? And vhat makes runestones glow with such brilliance?”

“Bruce, are you trying to tell me that you've gotten word of green flame somewhere in the wastelands?” She stared cockeyed at him.

“Brucie hears vhat Brucie hears. And there is truth to rumors in sky, because no survivors are happy enough to bother inventing stories these days! Funny tragedy, da?” He touched down on the rack of leather and perched proudly before her, smirking. “Vord is dat there is not only green flame in vastelands, but it is salvageable! And Brucie knows of spectacular hunter pony who can bottle it!”

“Bottling green flame—if it exists—is nowhere near as easy as ensnaring a phoenix.”She sighed. “And the latter isn't all it's cracked up to be either.”

“Squirrel merchants cannot pretend to know how it vorks, but Brucie can imagine filthy rewards of being successful—!”

“There are creatures throughout the wasteland who would pay the souls of their mothers—Yes, I get it.” She squinted at him. “Where are you leading me with all this, anyways?”

“Brucie cannot show direction, but even pony can suspect who does.” He waggled his eyebrows above his green goggles in emphasis.

The pony blinked, searched the fields of her mind, and all but sank at the prospect. “Pitt.” Her voice came out like a bloody bullet of spittle. “I really, really don't want to go to the M.O.D.D. right now.”

“Vell, good luck to pony's quest for strips!” The squirrel shrugged, grabbed a fresh cigar from an overhead rack. He lit it casually, adding to the steam of the lonesome merchant's dirigible. “But do not say that friend Brucie failed to lend vord of advice!” He puffed a few times, and exhaled with grinning incisors. “Plenty more flames in Equestria for Brucie's cancer stick, da? Heh—Heheheheh!” He laughed merrily, coughing and hacking briefly as he scampered past the last pony's flank.

The mare stared into space for a short span in comprehension. The sickly green haze of the smoky interior coalesced into a precious, impossible fire in her mind. She found herself feeling with resounding disappointment the light weight of the two meager flamestones hanging in her saddlebag. Outside, she knew the gray world floated and flurried endlessly, and there were only so few phenomena in the wastes of Equestria capable of piercing it. Somehow, one way or another—one chunk of the soul sliced off after the previous—it all transformed into the only substance worth anything anymore: silver, and all of it in strips or bars.

The mare sighed. “Thanks, Brucie.” She sauntered back towards the bridge between their ships with her new purchases in tow. “I'll have a talk with Pitt.”

“Best of luck to you, Harmony pony.”

“I'll need it,” she grunted.

The neon sign spelled out “M.O.D.D.” brilliantly, like a bright green beacon, shimmering outward from the northern mountaintop upon which a ramshackle three-story tall building precariously roosted, just at the peak of the clouds. The structure was a bent and splintery wooden thing, sagging towards the east as if it could plunge off the jagged mountainside at any moment. The bowing edges of the structure were supported by several forty-five degree wooden struts that had been haphazardly hammered and re-hammered into place over the crumbling years.

But this easily noticeable structural mishap waiting to happen was hardly a deterrent, as several flocks of airships and hovercraft continuously hovered around the highrise rest stop, mooring and depositing pilots who came from all corners of the cloudy wasteland to eat, barter, trade... and maybe get into a “negotiation” or two.

With a resounding crash, a green goblin was kicked out of the swinging doors of the “M.O.D.D.” labeled bar-in-the-sky. Before he could scamper to his feet, four primates in blue fatigues leaped out after him and clamored all over the squealing figure, pinning him to the slick wet rock with their odorous weight.

“Eat three manticore meat sandwiches and refuse to pay, will you?” one ape howled.

Another whooped, “Since when did goblins bum around without money in their pockets? Heheheheh! What's the blown-up world coming to?”

“Pl-please!” The young goblin stammered and struggled, his cold sweat reflecting the pale twilight above the mountainside. “I was just a p-passenger on board the Diamond Dogs' skytanker, the 'Cloudfang'! They robbed me blind and ditched me! I-I didn't realize my m-money was g-gone until just a few seconds ago—”

“You know what you are?” one of the primates hissed, grinning devilishly. “You are Equestrian filth! And we here at the 'Monkey O'Dozen Den' know just how to treat Equestrian filth! The same way they always used to treat each other! Heheheh!”

Right on cue, a fifth monkey marched out the doors of the Den, wielding a red-hot branding iron in the shape of a horseshoe. “Hot off the grill! Where's the manticore-munching punk, boys?”

“Over here, brother! Eheheheh! Let's teach him a lesson he won't forget, or anyone else he meets, for that matter!”

“No! No!” The goblin paled and struggled to scamper away. The primates held him tighter, their whoops and hollers rising in volume as their brother zeroed in with the steaming hot metal. “Pl-Please! Don't do this to me! I'll never last a night in the wastelands if anyone sees me with—”

“Shut up and take what's coming to ya, cheapscape!” The monkey's eyes flickered red as he swooped low and swung the brand square into the goblin's exposed flank.

Steam and burning skin kissed the air as the lowly creature howled in torment. The primates huddled around him laughed victoriously while several patrons hung out the window of the “M.O.D.D.”, sipping their foamy drinks and pointing amused fingers at the tortured brandee's plight. Once the horseshoe image was permanently fused to the goblin's smoking flesh, the five monkeys flung him like a sack of garbage into a splashing puddle on the far side of the mountain plateau.

“Now go forth and gallop free, Equestrian filth! Hahaha! Soon you'll be dead like the rest of the—” The monkey holding the brand stopped in mid sentence, his mangy eyes twitching upon the sight of who was trotting past the dramatic scene.

With the Harmony quietly moored to a lateral wooden strut of the “M.O.D.D.” behind her, the last pony made her way towards the front steps of the building. She glanced boredly at the whimpering figure of the still-steaming goblin while moving past him. As she coasted by the monkeys, however, she gave her saddlebags a little shake, rattling her brass rifle for good measure. Half of them gulped, the other half of them snickered, until the fifth raised his branding iron, threatening to smack the group into silence. Gradually, the five watched with quiet amusement as the pegasus stepped past the gaze of the flanking patrons, and into the bright lantern light of the “Monkey O'Dozen Den” interior.

Inside, the air had a sour smell to it: like fermented juices laced with buzzing flies, running down the walls and into the splintery corners of the gas-lit hovel. Under lantern-laced chandeliers made from retired and rusted propeller blades, several round tables rattled with the clamoring rum jugs of dozens upon dozens of slobbering, rain-faced pilots at rest. Dirigible dogs, ogres, goblins, slimy reptiles, and other hunch-backed leathernecks of post-apocalyptic quasi-sentience muttered, hissed, sneered, and laughed at one another, filling the careening wooden bar with the sway of drunken bedlam.

Deep beneath the lackadaisical bodies of the many tipsy patrons, a fine cold mist had seeped in from the Equestrian miasma beyond the walls, so that every other lost soul inside the place ever so briefly hung his eyes in a stupor that betrayed the alcoholic reverie of the moment. It was as if someone had arranged an orgy on top of a mountainous grave, and already half of the bacchanalia had succumbed to the endless dirge that would soon call them lurching back towards the merciless twilight outside.

“What happened to the Dog's Bollocks was violent and horrifying,” said a komodo dragon wearing a brown leather pilot's cap.He flicked his long tongue into the foam of his ale and squinted across the table where he sat.“I only wished it happened sooner.”

“Heheheh!”A laughing goblin raised his mug.“Cheers!Friggin' metal head and his mutts had it coming!”

“Hey!” A canine pulled his snout out from a mug, wiped the froth away, and growled.“Gilliam was a—hic—inspirationnnnn to us all!”The dirigible dog pointed with a shaking paw.“He built a metal—hic—warship out of rocks and pony turds!”

“Well, they were obviously flaming turds,” the komodo dragon retorted.He rotated the mug in his claws while leaning back in his chair.“Word is that a large bird of fire tore the ship in half and burned every dog on board.”

“Meh.”The dirigible dog hung his head sadly.“Puppies with no—hic—respecttttt for the air might as well returnnnnn to Gaia.I just wish it wasn'ttttt in flaming piecesssss.”

“I'm glad they burned to bits!” the goblin shrugged and emptied the rest of his ale down his throat.“That spineless ash-breather was suckin' all the steam from the Wasteland!The damaging effects of his monopoly was felt all the way in Petra!”

The lizard glared at the tiny biped.“Petra is a monopoly, you pointy-eared steam stealer.”

“Yeah, well, at least Petra was built to last all sorts of Wasteland freaks.You won't see our empire crumbling from flame birds...”He cast a thin glare across the M.O.D.D. towards a table where three drunken ogres sat.“Or other assorted filth...”

“Did you pilotssssss hear?”The dirigible dog leaned forward, his canine ears twitching.“The wolverines of the north have made a breakkkkkthrough.They've found somethinggggg beneath they ice that's gonna replace steam!”

“Replace steam!Hah!” The goblin turned his mug upside down and shook the last few drops out onto his tongue.“Mmmm... don't make me laugh my way back to Tartarus.”

“No!For reallll!They say what the wolverines found will make every shipppppp one hundred times faster!”

“Like the Golden Gang's Talon?” The reptile smiled.

“Screw the Golden Gang!”

“I'd like to see you try.”

“Grrrrrrr...” the dirigible dog slouched on the table.“Still, if I have to upgraddddddde my zeppelin for the third time in ten stormfrontsssss...”

“It won't happen,” the komodo dragon droned.He adjusted his cap and murmured, “With the Dog's Bollocks gone, there's gonna be a huge vacuum of power across the ashen valley.I think we all know who's gonna win that.”He winked at the goblin.

The tiny creature sighed in response, once more looking at the table of ogres.“Word is, the Mountain faction is losing the defense.Soon, the Fire Ogres will march their way across the Valley of Jewels and overtake Mount Ogreton.”

“Then, my flying featherless friends, we'll know who truly rules the roost over the Wasteland,” the komodo dragon said.“It'll be the largest empire since the great fire wiped out all the—”

“Shhhhh!” the dirigible dog hissed, pointing his hairy paw across the den.“Look what the dead cattttt dragged in...”

The three weathered patrons turned around—as well as most of the creatures nearby—to see the last pony standing at the door to the bar.Silence fell briefly over the drunken scene.With copper goggles, the brown mare coldly reflected the many glaring faces back, then strolled through the hazy thick of the place undaunted.Noise, grunts, and drunken reverie resumed beyond the clopping sound of her hooves.

“Hmmph...” The komodo dragon turned and smirked towards his cohorts.“Well, gentlemen, here there be ghosts...”

“Yeah.”The goblin nodded with a smirk.“Ugly ones too.”

“Hahahahah!”

“Heh heh heh...”

“Woof!”

Flickering lanternlight outlined dozens of heads bent over their meals and drinks.By the time the pony had trotted only halfway into the Monkey O'Dozen Den, three fights had already broken out. One was between two dirigible dogs in the far corner of the room. Another was between two goblins and a diseased creature over a moth-eaten pouch of strips. As for the third—

“Glue Stick!” A hairy paw slammed across the pony's face.

She spat blood, briefly stumbled, then glared straight ahead of her.

“Hrggh!” A mangy raccoon—a bum—shrieked in her face. He was a scrawny scrap of a sentient being, with one metal hind leg and a body covered in sooted rags. He balanced on the edge of a table in front of the pegasus, shuddering, nearly foaming at the mouth. With clattering teeth and eyes wide as bloodshot saucers, he seethed and roared, “You! Nnngh! Filth! Glue stick! Back to Sun Goddess womb! With glue stick! Nnngh! Filth!” He snarled and swung a trembling paw at her again.

She dodged this time, glaring at him as a series of chuckles rose in the air around the scene. Brow creasing, she faked walking away—instead pivoting at the last second to swing her flank roughly into him. The raccoon purposefully took the whole brunt of the blow, bouncing over two rum-filled tables before slamming upside down into an iron stove that singed his fur. The half-sane varmint scrambled on the ground, fighting to put his tail out, before crawling pathetically towards a table full of battle-scarred ogres. They laughed mightily at the scene, gave the pony several thumbs' up, and proceeded to pay up the bum for living up to their dare. As the chuckles subsided, the raccoon-thing drooled at the fresh strips of silver lying in his paws, hyperventilated joyfully, and scrambled on all fours towards the bar counter for a “much needed” pint.

Swishing the collected copper fluids in her mouth, the pony exhaled hard and resumed her beeline towards the far end of the Den. She felt countless bodies eyeing her, murmuring strange and presumably malicious things under their breath as the last pony trotted past them. She had once again graced the filthy interior of that forsaken bar in the sky, and the patrons were hardly pleased.

On a shelf behind the Den's bar, a tight jar rested on a counter, inside which a spherical, pastel-colored insect slept soundly. A gnarled leather hand suddenly lifted the bottle, shaking it and forcing the four-winged creature to open its glistening eyes. Forlornly, the lone parasprite gazed upwards as the lid of the jar unscrewed and the gnarled hand stuck a spoon in, savagely poking its bright exoskeleton.

“Come on. Spit it up, ya little melon fudge,” a voice raspily hissed, forming condensation on the jar.

The parasprite wilted, shuddered, and wretched, vomiting up a large globule of brown matter. Half a breath later, the brown shell of the cocoon shattered with a brand new parasprite joyfully emerging—wings a'flutter. This infant thing reveled as it was raised by the spoon and introduced to a bright toasty world outside the jar.

“There we go, little one,” the hoarse voice briefly chirped.

Just then, there was a crunching noise. The newborn insect's eyes crossed as the petite thing was skewered down the length of its body with a toothpick, which was promptly planted into the top bun of a toasted meat sandwich being slid across the bar counter towards a Diamond Dog.

“There ya go, Fido,” grunted the gnarled bartender, a gray-haired baboon with a ratty tail and spreading bald spot. “Try not to choke on it.”

“Hmmmm—Delish, Delissssssh!” The canine drooled and raised the sandwich for a first bite. He hesitated at the last second, and glared the primate's way with an arched eyebrow. “Hey, justttttt what kind of meat is this anywaysssss?”

“It's nobody you know,” the baboon droned, his red nose flaring. As the diamond dog proceeded to chomp away at the sloppy meal, the owner of the Monkey O'Dozen Den returned to polishing rum mugs and swatting random flies that landed on the shelves of exposed foodstuffs. A petite shadow hoisted itself up to the counter. Without looking, the baboon sniffed the air with his giftedly ugly nose and smirked into the bottom of a mug. “I'm afraid we're fresh out of daisies, Harmony. Though I could fill a trough out back with distilled bat sweat. I've heard a few goblins tell me it tastes almost like Equestrian apple cider did, before the goblins keeled over and died, that is.”

“We've been over this, Pitt,” the pony grumbled. “'Harmony' is the name of—”

“Your ship. I know. By the gods.” The mangy primate rolled his sickly eyes and spat into a mug before wiping it “clean.” “You're a galloping golden goose, and yet you keep your call sign anonymous! I swear, that zeppelin is the only interesting thing about you, which is a crime—don't you think? Harumph... I would have reckoned the last pony on the planet would be a heavy drinker. But, alas, you've surprised me there!” He put the mug up, hung the rag over his shoulder, and leaned against the bar towards her. “Well, 'glue stick,' if it isn't daisy sandwiches that you've come here for, then what?”

At his pointed address, she glanced over her shoulder at the voraciously drinking raccoon several tables behind. She tongued her freshly bruised cheek from the inside. “I never ask for the trouble this Den brings to the table every time I come here. Trouble just comes to me. All I've ever wanted to do is business.”

“Ol' Bruce sent you again, didn't he?” The aptly-named Pitt smiled a row of yellow teeth. “He's a sucker for charity cases, that bushy-tailed numb-tongued fruitcake! Hahah—” He blinked sunkenly at the glare she was giving him. “—Erm, not that you're one to deserve pity. You'd rather be paid in strips, I'm guessing.”

“Running low on them. As well as on luck.” She sighed, leaning sideways against the bar so that her sheathed rifle was furthest from the rest of the interior. She eyed every guzzling patron one at a time, maintaining the instinctual air of caution she had kept since the very moment she strolled in through the swinging doors of the Den. “Bruce sold me a few things I needed, but perhaps the best thing he gave me was a tip. Or at least he suggested you may have a tip.”

“Keep saying the word 'tip' and I am liable to eat my tail in frustration,” Pitt chuckled, grabbing a customer's empty mug and refilling it. “You know, you've never taken me up on the offer to start your own tab.”

“I don't drink,” she grunted.

“Why not? The whole world's miserable!” He winked at a droopy-eyed drunkard as he slid him a tall refill. “Granted, it's always been miserable. Only now it's miserable and in ashes. That's a good combination for getting some joy juice down your gullet, if I ever heard one.”

“Pitt.” She raised her goggles and gazed coldly at him with twin scarlet irises. “A good third of your patrons are so drunk off their butts that they crash into the rocks the first second they undock their dirigibles from your little 'joy juice' stand.”

His red nostrils flared indignantly. “That is an unfounded and seditious lie!”

She gestured blindly with a hoof towards the Den's rattling floorboards. “There's a pile of two dozen burnt-out zeppelins at the base of this mountain alone!”

He shrugged. “So? What better way to attract new customers than to give them something to loot before dropping by?”

“Nnnngh,” she groaned, facehoofing briefly. “This is when I wonder why I'm the one who's endangered.”

“That's the luck of the draw for ya, Harmo—er—'Miss Temperance,'” he smiled, leaning over once more and whispering in a private voice between the two. “Lots of these punks here... they read a little too much into that crud, if you ask me.”

“What crud?”

“Karma crud,” he whispered, then leaned back. “Some of them think that Equestria bought it because your kind bought it. Eheheh.” He chuckled, walking his gnarled monkey fingers across the bar counter and soccer-kicking dead flies one after another. “Now, I'm not the sort of baboon to suggest that ponies were in fact responsible for the mayhem that befell us all. Heck, if it was—I sure ain't complaining! When pegasi, unicorns, and the more boring horses fell off the face of the earth, my kind got the upper arm on the branch! Granted, we've always bred like monkeys—heheh—but this was a new frontier! I don't put much thought into who or what is to blame for... for... for all of this. But if it wasn't for fate, my eleven younger brothers and I wouldn't possess the booming enterprise we have today!”

She glared at him. “I'm glad, Pitt, that the utter extinction of my flesh and blood has paved the way for you to poison deranged pilots to their death from your festering water hole in the sky.”

“See!” He clapped his hairy palms, grinning yellowishly. “Even when you try to be angry, you sound like loose change at the bottom of the well. Heheheh! Why not just crucify yourself to the bow of your ship and make poetry out of your dull-as-nails life already?”

She smiled icily. “I couldn't give you the satisfaction.”

“I kid you, pony. I kid,” Pitt murmured. With a wink, he planted a gnarled hand over his heart. “You should know by now that I'm a good monkey underneath this surly fur.”

Just then, the lights overhead dimmed and flickered. Several of the patrons mumbled and growled their complaints. Cursing, Pitt pounded the bar with his fist.

“Why, that insufferable useless limb!” He turned, took three bold steps towards a door, flung it open, and shouted into the steamy corridor beyond. “Willis! Pssst—Willis! What gives, ya melon fudge?!”

Inside the smoking claustrophobic room, a frighteningly emaciated chimpanzee was pumping his limbs on a rickety bicycle rigged in place to an elaborate gear system that powered several pumps aimed at a triad of boilers. He sweated and strained and stammered through a permanently red face: “I-I'm so sorry, brother! It's the third time today that I've nearly passed out! Can I-I please have some water, now?”

“The only water you should care for is the type you make the moment I beat you within an inch of your life, ya good-for-nothing sissy! Pedal faster or you don't eat tonight!”

“N-no, Pitt! Please, brother, don't leave me alone here another minute—!”

The baboon slammed the door shut, dusted his hands off, and grabbed a glass on the way back towards the bar across from the pony. “I swear, I only keep him alive because 'Monkey O'Eleven Den' doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well.” Clearing his throat, he polished the glass and smirked the pegasus' way. “So, enough monkey talk. Eheheheh—Business?”

“Green flame,” she murmured.

Pitt dropped the glass, shattering it. He sweated nervously under the brief gaze of a few half-curious patrons, and swiftly leaned over the counter to whisper back at the mare. “Uhm ... Who told you and under what kind of duress?”

“Ol' Brucie,” she said, “and he told me to come see you without asking for anything in return. Sucker for charity, remember?”

“Obviously.”

“So, is it true?”

“Is what true?”

Her brow furrowed. “Is there actually any green flame in the Wastes?” She motioned towards the thickly populated bar behind her. “Every creature that has enough intelligence to speak swaggers through your Den at some time or another. If anyone would have heard word about green flame, it'd be you.”

“Perhaps that's true. But you know as well as I do, pony, that rumors stay rumors until one pilot actually has the coconuts to scrounge up something concrete. Until then, it stays in the bag.”

“Well, I'm here,” she said, staring at him fixedly. “Mix and pour.”

He squinted at her, gradually bearing a liquid smirk. His red nostrils flared momentarily as he throated, “You're really not afraid of anything, are you, pony? I wonder if that makes you desperate or if that makes you stupid.”

“I'm hoping it will make me rich.” She reached back into her saddlebag, produced an empty glass jar, and rotated it until the dull runed cap faced the leaning primate. “You know how I do things, Pitt. I find elements and essences of things. I capture them, then I seal them in something like this. Everything I transport is protected by runestones: unbreakable, save for the sound of a word that only I have mastered uttering. You remember—of course—the time I extracted orange flame from the hydra fossils of Froggy Bottom Bog. That burning energy has served as the backbone for the Iron Goblin Brothers' shipping barge for the last five years and running—”

“You don't need to convince me of your professionalism, sweetheart,” Pitt muttered. “I have full faith that you could put a cork over a floating fart of green flame,” he said, but then hesitated, “if you wanted to.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean if I wanted to?”

He raised a finger, smirking. “Here, I'll show ya.” That uttered, the baboon sashayed back to the far side of the backcounter and rummaged through a wooden trunk full of cloth maps and leather atlases.

The pegasus sighed, slumped against the counter. She was only vaguely aware of a swaggering shadow scraping its obese way towards her side until a breath full of rum finally wheezed into her nostrils, slurring, “Well, if it isn't the last—HIC—manure factory in Equestria! You've got some nerve—HIC—prancin' your frilly flank around these parts!”

Bored, she gazed over at what turned out to be a rotund ogre with a mixture of alcohol, slobber, and dried-up vomit lacing his double chins.

He gazed dizzily at her with a half-practiced sneer before planting a jar onto the counter and snapping his finger at a passing monkey. “Double vodka! Keep it comin'!” Struggling to stay standing in one place, he balanced himself through the act of whipping out a cigar from his moldy pants' pocket and lighting it smokily in her face. He hissed, “Didja hear me, Equestrian filth? Or is there too much magic clogged up between yer ears? Heheh—HICCC!” He wretched and barely contained the energy to take a fresh puff of his cigar.

The pony cooly glanced from the ogre towards his table of stupidly drunk buddies laughing and swaying in the distance. The raccoon bum was lying still and plastered between them as they made lewd gestures her way and goaded on their fat buddy's intoxicated ramblings. She glanced stonily back at the fat creature who was presently belching smoke rings. “Can I help you?”

“Ssssshure ya can!” He leered, teetered, all the while pointing with a flick of his cigar. “Ya can start by telling me how you pony wankers—HIC—got off hogging the Sun and Moon all to yourselves for—URP—thousandsssssh of years, and then taking it all away in a flash like it was rubbish! Heh—Hehhehehehhhh—Snrkkkt!” He spat a nicotined loogey into the floor and waited on her reply with bloodshot eyes.

“Look,” she sighed, “I'm just here to do business with Pitt. If you have a problem with me, take it to him. Cuz I'm sure he'd be as angry as I am that a random oaf who's too wasted to smell his own piss bothered to interrupt a lucrative deal in the making.”

“Angry? HIC—You think you'rrrrrrrrre angry?”

“I didn't say—”

“Before everythinnnnnng—ULP—blew up across the world, I was a resssssssshpected citizen of Mount Ogreton!” The obese cretin slobbered. A marmoset waiter flew by, dropping the requested glass of vodka down onto the bar counter beneath him. He half-pawed it while poking the cigar into the pony's personal space. “And then you magical froo-froo horsiessssh just up and drop the ball! Hrckkkt—Ptooie!”

“Nnngh... I don't have time for this,” she muttered into an exhausted hoof.

“What wassssh th-that? H-Huh?”

In belated timing, Pitt returned with a leather map in his gnarled hands. “Here we go. Let's have a look, shall we... ?”

“Hey Pitt!” the drunk ogre slurred at him, “I was talking to this hoofed tyke!”

“Can't you see we're in the middle of something? Try preaching to your mug, bright eyes!”

The Den owner spread the map out before the pegasus, displaying a broad series of brown hash-marks that not-so-artistically represented the crumbled state of modern Equestria.

He murmured, “Okay, so here's the word. A total of five groups of pilots showed up over the past week, claiming to have seen puffs of green flame.” His gnarled finger drew invisible lines across the center of the leather map. “They were all flying identical routes at low altitudes. Most of my patrons, of course, aren't brave enough to scavenge deep into the heart of the Equestrian Wastes like you, pony, but some of them can't resist a good flyby if they could chance upon something profitable, mostly natural gas reserves and the like.”

“Can you get to the point, Pitt? I think I'm suddenly in a hurry,” she said, shiftily casting a side glance towards the smoking ogre who hovered two spits away.

“Right. All five groups gave me nearly identical coordinates of the green flame sighting. They described the sensation as 'bright plumes of emerald,' large enough to see from half a kilometer. Pretty brilliant stuff, if you ask me. I think they were too frightened to check it out. But then again, none of them are all that proficient in runestones.”

“HIC—What're runesssshhtones?” The ogre half-heartedly gripped his tall glass of vodka. “Morrrrre pony hocussssh pocussssh?”

The pegasus rolled her eyes and leaned forward. “Just tell me the coordinates already.”

Pitt stared steadily at her, closely studying her expression as his blistered tongue dripped forth the numbers: “One Hundred and Five, Thirty-Two, Ten.”

The pony's face paled. She stared anxiously at the leather map as if it had suddenly transformed into a viper ready to leap at her snout. She scooted back from the counter, cleared her throat, and in a shaky voice uttered, “You're right. No deal. I'm not going.”

“But Harmony!” Pitt hissed, suddenly desperate. “Green flame—!”

“I don't care!” she snarled back. “I said I'm not gonna do it and I'm not gonna do it!”

“Oooooh!” the ogre slobbered, grinning mockingly. “Tough fillllly—”

“Yo! Can it, sardine breath!” Pitt briefly frowned at him and spun back the pony's way in a desperate bid to salvage the deal. “Girl, there are clients who would pay out the butt for this stuff! I ... would pay out the butt for green flame! And that's coming from a red butt! That's the exact kind of butt honest deals are made of!”

“Save it—”

“With green flame, my brothers and I could raise this business to new heights! Why, we could magically teleport goods across kilometers! We could banish thugs and harpy pirates with a flick of the wand!” He smiled a yellow smile and rubbed his fingers together. “You're just what we need, pony girl. How does nine hundred strips sound?”

“No.”

“Eleven hundred bars—I'm desperate here!”

“I am never—ever—going to those coordinates,” she seethed, her scarlet eyes burning like hot coals. “Not for green flame, red flame, gold flame, your mother's flame—Or anything else for that matter!”

“Isn't it just like any of your other jobs?”

“No, it's not.”

“Why not?”

“Because some things are still sacred in this dead world!” she shouted suddenly, shaking the air around their half of the bar and causing patrons' heads to turn. “I can't expect a silver grabbing, brother slapping, venom blooded simian like you to understand that! Or any of these soulless vermin you call 'customers' for that matter!”

“Live and learn, sweetflanks!” Pitt chuckled helplessly, shrugging towards the map. “That's the kind of world we live in—”

“Well maybe it shouldn't be!” she roared. At the crest of her echoing voice was a sudden dip in silence, permeated briefly by a random cough or two from the rear of the bar. She exhaled, fuming, glancing shakily at all the glaring eyes that were suddenly plastered on her figure.

“Hmmmm-hmmm-hmmm...” The ogre chuckled breathily. He took a wide puff on his cigar and breathed offensively into her snout. “Ssssshoulda thought really hard about how much you loved your world—HIC—before ya trasssshed it, huh, Equestrian filth?”

“Lay off, bucko,” Pitt defeatedly groaned.

“Why shhhhould I?” The ogre breathed into her again. “She's the reason for all thissssh mess! It's all her kind's fault! HIC!—Why, if ssssshe had any real bloody respect for the world, she'd just hang herself right here and now!”

She thinned her eyes through the waves of the ogre's cigar smoke. An artery pulsed at the edge of her cap and goggles. A hissing voice bubbled up through her lips, “Do you know how much I hate smoking?”

“Hmmmm-Eheheh.” The ogre smirked drunkenly at his distant companions and then sputtered her way, “Mmm-No. Why don'tcha tell me?”

She smiled. “Gladly.” With one hard swat, she slammed her hoof into the ogre's blubbery backside. The fat patron instantly spat the lit cigar straight into his glass of vodka. Flames burst out from the alcoholic beverage, which the pony viciously flung straight into the ogre's girth, dousing his torso with burning quaff. The ogre howled, twirling and tossing his limbs as the flames covered him from head to toe. With a silent sneer, the last pony pivoted her hindquarters, reared her hooves, and bucked him burningly across the bar.

Patrons gasped and dashed out of their seats as the ogre's hulking, flaming body sailed across the Monkey O'Dozen Den and landed hard through a splintering table of wood and mugs. The singed drunkard's companions and a dozen other angry pilots jumped up to their feet with a flurry of various blades and knives kissing the Den's air. In one savage line, they marched forward to converge on the pony.

Eyes aflame, the furious mare flung her rifle free from her sheathe. Against Pitt's panicked protests, she slapped it full of glowing runestones and cocked the copper barrel ceilingward as she snarled at the entire room, “What of it?!”

Chapter Five: Reunions

The last pony's gun glinted in the lanternlight.Pitt shrunk away from her, a trembling mess as he saw the bar about to collapse before his and his brothers' eyes.The irate patrons, too angry or buzzed to think rationally, marched towards the mare and her weapon without hesitation.

Before anything exploded, the double-doors flew wide with a flurry of white snow... and feathers. Golden beaks, glinting goggles, and razor-sharp talons lit the room, followed by a cackling voice: “Whoahhhh-ho-ho-ho! What's all the commotion about? Is there some trouble in my favorite watering hole? H-Huh? Huh? Pitt, what gives?”

Pitt, sweating bullets, gave the pony a sideways glance before murmuring under his breath, “'Trouble always comes to you,' h-huh?” Clearing his throat, he leaped over the bar and spread his monkey arms wide with a voice of forced cheerfulness, “Welllll—If it isn't the Golden Gang! My favorite customers ever—WHOOP!” He wheezed as he was forced into a half-nelson in one of the griffons' feathery grasp. “Eh-heh-heh-heh-Why, we're all one happy family today, aren't w-we?!”

“Abso-positiv-olutely, Pitt ol' pal! Cuz if we weren't a happy family, I might have to clean shop! You wouldn't like me doing that, wouldja? I mean, it is your shop, after all!”

“I-I would certainly hope so... Eh heh heh... Oh, and my brothers' too. The smart ones, at l-least.”

“Right—Like I said. It's your shop. Heheh! Everyone calm down! Take it easy!” The head griffon ruffled the hair around Pitt's bald spot and grinned at the group as she waved her majestic wings and sauntered across the hazy interior on all fours. “It's been a long and crazy week of navigating the wastelands! Take a chill pill and enjoy your drinks! The Golden Gang's here to party like it's the Third Age all over again! Don't stop the rum, barkeep!”

By this time, the pony had retracted her rifle, sheathed it, and slumped herself lethargically against the bar. The angry fire in her eyes had long sizzled out. She watched with a forlorn breath as the burnt and wincing ogre struggled to get up. His friends lifted their buddy from the pile of smoldering splinters, leading him—limping—towards the Den's half-hearted excuse for a lavatory. They glanced back over their thick shoulders and frowned at the pegasus, muttering a crazy assortment of obscenities her way. The other patrons were likewise glaring at her, but, under the sudden beaks of the Golden Gang, they reluctantly returned to their tables.

A long breath escaped the mare's lips. She glanced down at the bar counter, at the leather map that Pitt had rolled out. There was still a scratchy impression left in the dead center of the illustrated brown Wastes from where the baboon had excitedly marked out the infamous coordinates of the Green Flame.

A crown of platinum feathers blocked the image of the map. Looking up, the pony found herself staring into the grinning beak of a tall, muscular griffon. Like her six other companions, the half-avian creature sported a leather brown bomber jacket splayed over with the totems of her fallen enemies, bounties that she and her loyal gang of feathered kin had expertly chased down. Nobody dared question their skill or their tactful mercilessness. They were the esteemed bounty hunters of the Equestrian wastes, the mavericks of the twilight. They were the Golden Gang, and this towering figure looming in front of the pony with a swagger and a grin was the squadron's self-appointed leader.

“Well – Well – Well,” she chuckled, a pair of silver goggles glinting in the lantern light. “If you ain't the last pony on Earth! Why's it that I'm always stumbling in on you when you're about to have your head ripped off by all things that live and breathe?”

The pony exhaled long and hard, suddenly staring at the floor as she muttered, “Then maybe you shouldn't bother with 'stumbling,' Gilda.”

“Ohhh ho ho ho—A little spitfire tonight, aren't we?” The adult griffon grabbed a random mug from a dizzied patron, back-handed him to the floor the moment he protested, and took a big swig. After gulping, Gilda exhaled, wiped her beak, and leaned with her back against the bar beside the pony. “I've known you to take on trolls, harpies, and goddess knows how many stormfronts to get what you need for your clients—But tossing around ogres three times your size in a bar crowded with drunken scallywags? Now that's just silly, Harmony!”

“My name's not—” The pony began, remembered who she was talking to, and deflatedly murmured, “Whatever.”

“Why so glum, kiddo?” With a single, sharp talon, Gilda raised her silver goggles up to her headcrest. An amused pair of amber eyes winked down at the last pony. “You're alive, ain't you?”

“For what it's worth.”

“Well, that's all that matters, isn't it?” She suddenly leaned in, forcing the blinking pony's torso into an iron-wrought sidehug. “For you, that is. Heck, if I died, the 'Golden' mantle would just go to Stowe. But who would the 'prancing' mantle go to if you bit the oats?—Whoops, sorry. Old expression. Tough thing to kick. But, hey, you get the idea.”

“I... think...?”

“Hehehe—” Gilda pinched the brown mare's cheek, her claws nearly breaking the mare's skin. “You're so adorable when you're all confused in the head! That's always been one of my guilty pleasures about your kind. Y'all could be so gosh darn cute at the wrong moments, especially when you got angry.” She cleared her feathery throat. “If Equestria hadn't gotten the burn, I think all ponies would have gone extinct from always shoving their hooves into their mouths!”

“I just came here to do business, Gilda.”

“And look where it got you! Seriously, Harmony, at this rate you'll be skinned and mounted in an exhibit by the next stormfront! You gotta learn how to chill and know your role, girl! In the meantime,” she murmured, nochalantly turning her gaze to scan the ceiling. Her “hug” of the pony tightened suggestively. “I should remind you how important it is that you've always got good 'ol Gilda to cover your flank. This place is filled to the brim with nasty no-goods who have all these cockamamie reasons to detest the existence of a sweet, innocent pony like you. Y'know, I can't always barge in at moments like just now. But, you can still have the Gang's protection at all other times...” Gilda's voice oozed. Meanwhile, a prehensile lion's tail roped up from behind the pegasus and tightened mercilessly around mare's neck. “... if you're smart.”

The pony's scarlet eyes darted towards the living noose ensnaring her. Caught between the bar, Gilda's tail, Gilda's talon, and Gilda's cold shoulder, the pony wilted from deep inside herself. Unenthusiastically, she reached into her saddlebag and produced her pouch of silver, all the strips that she still had left from Gilliam's payment for the Phoenix fire. She cast a look up at her griffon “friend,” and the amber glint that returned was colder than an iceberg. Without a word, the pegasus dropped the strips into Gilda's other talon, turning her head to erase the silver bars from her mind.

The Golden Gang leader brightened immediately. “Clever girl.” She beamed, then produced a shrill whistle. Another griffon about Gilda's height flapped over. “Hey, Stowe—Be true to your name and stow these away into the vault on board the Talon, will ya?”

Stowe was a stone-gray feathered griffon whose beak resembled a perpetually grimacing mask. A scar ran over her left eye, and her jacket was laced with fingerbones belonging to several questionable species. Taking the silver, she launched a glare past Gilda and hissed at the pony, “You better not be holding out on us, blank flank! Or I'll gut you in places you never knew you had—”

“Stowe! Shove off or shove it!” Gilda snapped, kicking a lower foot hard into her second-in-command's gut. “This is my good friend you're barking at, ya overgrown cockatoo!”

“I don't see why you waste your frickin' time,” Stowe spat, gave the pony a lasting snarl, and stomped off. “If ya love the glue stick so much, boss—Just marry it already.”

“Yeah, and we'll mount the wedding cake with your gizzard—Ya loudmouth! Take a hike!” Gilda frowned, then chuckled helplessly as she patted the pony's shoulder. “Pfft—'Blank Flank.' Beats the heck out of me where that psychopath gets her insults. Shoot, she couldn't have gotten it from me! I had loads of fun hanging out with ponies back in the day! But you know that, Harmony. And you know that I'd never insult the hoofed pipsqueaks, even if they were friggin' lame-os from time to time. But hey, that's the checks and balances, right?”

“Right...” The pony sighed, stretching her saddlebags wider over her unmarked brown coat in an absent-minded gesture of yesteryear. “Whatever you say, Gilda.”

“Hey Barkeep!” Gilda raised a talon as she swiveled around towards the counter. “Two rum-and-coconuts! On the double!”

The pony droned, “I don't drink.”

“Kiss my tail-feathers!” Gilda stuck a tongue out. “With me, you will!”

“If you're so concerned with my protection,” the pony sneered at her, “you will let me pilot the Harmony sober.”

“Fine—Fine. You win. Who am I to argue, huh?” Gilda snickered, rhythmically rapping her talon fingers against the bar while smirking at her “friend.” “These are your last days, not mine. Guess you're entitled to live out your life the way you want to, huh?”

“I guess...”

“Well, better get it straight, girl! I mean, it's in your blood, right?” She smirked and pointed. “One of the things I always found quirky about ponies is that they constantly pigeon-holed themselves into doing one particular thing in life. Seriously, I never understood your society, even when it was still standing. It was like a frickin' caste system! Remind me; what was the name of those tattoo-thingies on your butts that y'all got so bent out of shape over?”

“Mmmmmmngh...” The pony snorted.“...cutie marks.”

“Ha—Bwaaaaaa ha ha ha ha!” Gilda pounded the counter with her fist and covered her cackling face until a tear or two shed from her squinting, amber eyes. “Haah haah haah haah—Whewwww—Oh wait, you're serious?”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“You ponies actually bent your entire civilization around social strata called 'cutie marks?' Pfft—I've heard some pretty sissy things back in my day, but that takes the cake! Heck, no wonder your kingdom friggin' exploded.”

Two mugs were deposited in front of the griffon. Gilda gladly swooped one up, took a swig, belched, and smiled warmly.

“But not all of you were so namby pamby. Why, a better part of my spritely days were spent flying with the best of y'all.” The Gold Gang Leader exhaled in a sudden softness, choosing strategically to lower her pilot's goggles over her eyes. “If it isn't the darndest thing that you're a pegasus. Cuz those were always my favorites: the winged ponies. While the unicorns were all sewing dresses and the dirt ponies shoving plows, it was the pegasi who really showed Equestria a thing or two about being awesome. They burned paths in the sky that mark the mists of twilight even to this day. If ya squint at the swirling ashes just right after a stormfront's cleared, you can see their wingtrails still there. Hmmmmph—Frickin' sky horses; they would have made a good home in this upside down world we call the Wastes.” She took another guzzling sip, breathed, and squinted the pony's way. “Maybe that's why you've fought the grim reaper for as long as you have, eh kiddo?”

“Don't be silly,” the pony murmured, then gave the griffon a postcard smile. “It's all because of your expert protection.”

“And don't ya forget it!” The Gold Gang Leader pointed a talon, downed the last of her mug, belched, and clasped the second one. This time, Gilda lingered with the drink at the edge of her break, her silver goggles fogging briefly in the Den's hazy light. “You were young, kid. Too dang young, if you ask me. But—heck—those are the cards fate dealt. I knew a pegasus or two who would have done even better than you if they were in your place, who wouldn't have needed protection, who would have done just fine... without m-me.” Her feathers ruffled as she gulped hard, this time at the air. “Just one—I remember just one pegasus, c-come to think of it...”

The pony's brow withered as she breathed towards the floor, “I remember her too, Gilda.”

It took several seconds of silence before she realized how identically frozen the both of them were. The haze settled between their cold bodies like mist in the twilight air outside. Clearing her throat, the pony lowered her goggles over moist eyes and stepped away from the bar.

“Well, thanks for everything. I've bothered Pitt enough. It's time that I headed out.” She trotted off. For a moment there, she imagined she was in the clear—but then Gilda's voice called out—

“Hey, Harmony. Before you walk out on the Gang and I...”

The pony stopped in her hooves. She turned and glanced over her flank.

Gilda smirked, her avian head cocked to the side. “I thought I'd mention that Stowe, the girls, and I ran into a friend of yours recently.”

“A friend? You do remember who you're talking to, right?”

“Heheh. Some toxic-lunged chipmunk named 'Bruce.' Talks like there're marshmallows in his mouth. We did a little... er... business with him the other day; did he mention that?”

The pony stared fixedly at her. She replied, “I haven't heard anything of the sort.”

“Yeah, well, the little scamp gets around. Not as much as you, of course. But when Stowe's scarred face freaked him out, he suddenly went on and on about some crazy nonsense.”

“What kind of nonsense?”

Gilda sipped from her mug, gulped, then uttered, “Something about green flame. Plumes of it, shooting up in random places across the wastelands. From what I hear, the crud's really valuable. Like, you might as well have a leprechaun piss gold right into a jar for ya! Hah!” She gave another sip while a crest feather atop her forehead rose. “You wouldn't happen to have seen this sort of stuff in your travels, huh? Seems like something that would be right up your alley!”

The pegasus looked Gilda's way. Her goggles shielded the griffon from seeing her eyes dart from the Golden Gang Leader to the leather map left on the bar counter and back. “I... will let you know if I hear anything, Gilda.” She smiled briefly and waved a hoof. “It's the least I can do for my best protector.”

Gilda saluted back. “Dang straight, kiddo. Have a safe flight—And don't be picking fights with ogres, ya hear?”

“Right...” The pony turned around, trotted out, and muttered under her breath, “Ogres...”

The pony pulled the lever once, twice, thrice—Finally, in a deep hum, the signal lit up. The fresh flamestone burned prismatically into the seven lenses as the artificial rainbow surged high into the twilight, ten times brighter than before.

It was three dozen hours since her venture to the M.O.D.D. The pony had returned to the plateau for her regular lighting of the spectrum. But as she trotted back from the sight, breathing heavily from the physical effort of forcing life into the machine, her expression waned into a wilting grimace. As amazingly bright as the well-paid-for effect was, it somehow seemed dimmer.

Perhaps it was the creaking noise of the chains moored to the hovering Harmony overhead. Perhaps it was the harsh flurry of snow that dipped surprisingly low for that moment of time between stormfronts. Perhaps it was the taste of blood that resurfaced in the pegasus' bruised mouth. Something was distracting her, so that after ten minutes of staring, she realized that her gaze was fixed on one color of the spectrum and one color alone: the green band.

She exhaled in a gust of frustration; the multiple mishaps of her brief visit to the M.O.D.D. bled down through a curtain of numbness to pinprick her all over. She kicked at the stony earth, and a few clumps of powder splashed unexcitingly across a rusted metal barricade or two, mocking her lonely ire. The permeating silence of the abandoned plateau prophesied to her yet another fruitless night of guarding an unseen spotlight, so that she wondered if the only thing a rainbow dared to dance for was the creature that conjured the spectral band in the first place.

Everything the pony struggled and suffered for—the strips and the flamestones and the lighting rig—all paled to a bone-white malaise, all except for one color. It was the one color that she suddenly refused to look at, the one color that she hated, because she knew beneath all her pathetically collapsible layers of skin that she was afraid of it.

“It's not worth it,” the last pony spoke directly to herself, something she hadn't done in years. “The green flame isn't worth going back there.” She clutched the rifle to her chest in what briefly looked like an infantile hug, before she rolled her scarlet eyes, slid her goggles down, and climbed lethargically up the guard tower where she knew she would sit for several hours, waiting for nothing.

Long after, in the gently swaying haze of the Harmony's upper cabin, the pegasus was lying on her hammock, chest first, her head swimming in the rhythmic lulls of Octavia's strings. Before her, bathed in golden lamplight, the pages of Princess Celestia's Diary spread wide, their ivory surfaces lilting under mighty golden penstrokes of a Goddess long gone. The last pony dutifully read and re-read the same silkily scribed words as she had so many times before, committing the holy paragraphs to memory, turning them over in her mind, allowing the eloquent passages to sweep her away from the flurrying gray mist outside the airship's portholes.

Halfway through the habitual read, a rough gust of turbulence struck the Harmony. The vessel harmlessly buckled for the briefest of seconds, and, in the ensuing jolt, Octavia's record momentarily skipped with an offensive scratching sound.

It was enough to snap the mare out of her umpteenth perusal of the Princess' journal, so that her eyes blinked and refocused squarely on one particular passage that suddenly stood out from the rest. It was an entry dated from halfway through the middle of the Third Age, describing the death of the last noble member of the Honeytail Clan, an aristocratic family of unicorns whose great ancestors several generations before were loyalists to the Lunar Empire, having been given pardon by Princess Celestia following the banishment of Nightmare Moon.

For several centuries, the Honeytail household had lived within the sacred protection of the Celestial Estate, barred off from the rest of the Equestrian population, many of whom were descendants of brave soldiers who died wastefully at the hooves of the Lunar Empire, and who wanted nothing more than to strike vengeance at the Honeytail Clan for so much bad blood built up over the years. The Honeytails were satisfied to stay within the confines of Princess Celestia's domain, and on account of their fear and hesitance, they died out as a hemophiliac strain of inbreds, fading into nothingness with little more than a passive epithet from their forgiving queen in a journal that only one lone pegasus would read after an apocalypse had long come and gone.

The pony's scarlet eyes wandered across the ever-familiar bulkheads of the Harmony, across the windows stained with repetitious cyclones of snow, like her countless days were repetitious, bouncing back and forth between scavenging jobs while dodging murderers and monsters and only randomly communing with a flying squirrel that leeched off her, a monkey that swindled her, and a griffon that drove an invisible knife into her heart and twisted it. Everything about her existence was like a flake of ash, lost in the twirling winds, disguising itself with the faux self-importance of a steam-powered zeppelin armed to the teeth with sacrilegious runestones.

She was the last pony, and if this was living, she wasn't doing a very good job of it. The mare briefly remembered what it meant to take chances before chances took her, what it meant to go for the gold before succumbing to a life that settled for silver, what it meant to fight gravity long before her wings ever paid heed to her audacity. She never asked for Princess Celestia's protection before the cataclysm, and she sure as blazes didn't ask for Gilda's after it.

The young mare clasped the Royal Book closed. Bolting out of the hammock, she slapped the record player off, yanked a scroll from her workbench, and practically leaped into the cockpit seat. Unfurling the map, she clasped a compass in her teeth and charted the distance between her present location, and the dead center of the Equestrian Wastelands, chiefly the coordinates: '105, 32, 10.'

As soon as she mentally prepared the bearings in her head, she snapped the map scroll closed, spat the compass out, and sneered into the stuffy air, “Nopony lives forever. Isn't that right, Princess?” She grasped her goggles, slid them over her eyes, and yanked hard on the levers—banking the Harmony portside and veering the craft swiftly southward.

It was several dozens of hours later when the Harmony finally touched down, and when it had finished mooring, the landscape beneath it couldn't have been a ghostlier sight. Here, in the deepest valley of Equestria, the snow flurries blew savagely across the landscape like an ivory sandstorm. Black stalks of petrified glass shot forth from the scorched earth in obsidian daggers, making it a tough feat in and of itself for the pegasus to land.

Still, she descended bravely, and with a final flap of her wings the pony set hoof down on holy ground. As soon as she landed, a deep shudder left her, as if she was giving up the ghost in her shell to rejoin this deathly graveyard. She stared with chattering teeth, her snout bravely piercing the howling winds. Try as she might to eye the northern horizon, nothing could be seen beyond five meters' distance. All she knew was that this was the last hilltop before the northern dip where Pitt's coordinates pointed her. Beyond the sloping terrain was foreboding obscurity, and it was about to brush bleeding elbows with the horrible shadows of her long forsaken memories.

With a strong gulp, the pony stood straight and tall, feeling the weight of her leather armor, saddlebags, rifle, runestone magazines, and two pairs of rune-capped jars. All of the defensive materials somehow didn't make the next few trots any easier. She had her yoke of lanterns with her, but couldn't persuade herself to light them, not yet. The mare knew that she wouldn't need them to find her way here.

As the mare slowly trudged down the hilltop from the tethered Harmony, the flurrying wind spread the snow before her, revealing a pair of dried up riverbeds converging before a series of multicolored houses, collapsed buildings with their thatched roofs long blown off. The skeletons of various oak trees lurched into view; and finally a deathly, slumbering village bled forth from the gray expanse.

One lone sign by a snow-laden path—bent at an odd angle—shuddered from the proximity of the pegasus' treading hooves. The powdery ash that had collected on its surface fell off, revealing the lonesome words:

“Welcome to Ponyville. Sanctum of Earth Ponies. Population: 1,056'”

Chapter Six: The Refoaling

A crusted white glacier of ice covered the glossy surface. Under the constant howl of bitter winds, a hoof rose up and planted its metal sole against it. With a light scraping, then a harder scraping, the hoof carved a clear path across the surface. It was a curved line, a rainbow arch. After a few more strokes the glacier broke away and the last of the frost fell loose from the surface of the glass. The reflection of a brown mare's face emerged, her goggles glinting unemotionally as she suddenly regarded herself. Leaning in closely, the pegasus stared tightly past the window's reflection in an attempt to gaze inside, but she could only make out the vaguest shape of tattered velvet heaps piled up in the center of the building's sealed atrium. With a fogging breath, the last pony stepped back and stared up at the crumbling height of the Carousel Boutique.

The boutique's top spire had collapsed in on itself, and from the resulting implosion there lay a scattered ring of debris around the cylindrical clothing shop. Both mahogany pony figures that had once graced the third story of the structure were miraculously intact, only now they were lying flank-deep in the snow by the building's foundation. Several icicles hung off their lifeless snouts as their wooden hooves lingered under decades' worth of piling ash.

The mare took a deep breath. Turning away from the building of former extravagance, she padded across a powdery, wind-blown field towards the heart of Ponyville. On either side of her, long-collapsed tents and storage huts lingered in the frosted mire, their canvas bodies forever flapping in the wind like war flags left behind a hasty retreat.

In mid trot, the pegasus raised a hoof to her goggles and refocused the lenses to a specific tint in order to highlight any hue of green that might show up across the barren landscape. Part of her felt immensely silly; she had rarely used that specific lens setting before. Many times she wondered why she even bothered to possess it. In the world of the Equestrian Wastes, the only green thing was the greed that bled out of the eyes of sky pirates and swindlers. The only time she ever saw plants was in the miraculous cargo that Bruce somehow scrounged up from time to time. In nature, the last time she saw vegetation was the first week immediately following the Cataclysm, and it all turned to the color of her coat faster than she could comprehend starving without it.

Green flame, on the other hoof, was a whole different matter. She knew that it existed, along with all of the other elemental fires that dotted the Wasteland. Acquiring it was no easy task, not so much because of the danger involved but the scarcity of finding it. Even if it did exist anywhere in the Wastes with salvageable deposits, it would have been a miracle if such a source hadn't been tapped into already by any and all of the mercantalist factions that spun their zeppelins under the twilight.

The reason Pitt was willing to pay so much for it, she knew, was that even the tiniest fume of green flame would put the mangy baboon ahead of the pack when it came to economic competition.Goblins, ogres, wolverines: all would come to envy Pitt's possession if he stumbled upon such a substance. Some things in the ruined world were actually capable of turning murder and bribery into a work of art, so long as the treasure was valued highly enough.

The one consolation the pony gave herself—aside from the incalculably grand score it would be to land herself some green flame—was the fact that she wouldn't have to be slaying or imprisoning anything to extract the substance this time. In the history of Equestria, green flame was something akin to a magical essence, not a natural phenomenon. So long as Canterlotlian magic existed, green flame did as well. So when Pitt made it clear to her that green flame had been sighted, and in Ponyville of all places, it shook the ghosts in her attic twice as hard.

She was prepared, doubly this time. She wore two fresh bracelets of unicorn horns, one on each hoof. If there was any green flame to be had in Ponyville, the magical bones tied to her limbs would find it, especially if her lenses failed her, which they very likely would. The mare was prepared for a light, any light—be it from the horns or from the horizon—to alert her when she was near her goal.

Until then she had nothing but sacred ground to cover. With each hoofstep she took, she felt like she was driving a knife further down her own chest. Gazing left and right, she shuddered to find the rows of houses doubling, tripling. She knew that she was now deep into the thick of Ponyville, deep into the frosted mane of yesterday's shadow. The wind settled in a calm gasp, so that the bitter howl gave way to a gentle flutter of snow that punctuated the melancholy of the last pony's long delayed return to the land of her foaling—and dying.

The pony softly pattered to a stop on the edge of Ponyville's former town square, now a scattered bed of random wooden shards sticking out of piled-high snow. Bits and pieces of carts and wagons and merchant stands were splayed all around her, as if the petrified splinters had rained down from the sky. She squinted her eyes through her goggles and made out what looked to be a bent metal arch. Stepping slowly towards it, she realized that it was the town's flagpole, a memorial established to the settling of the village by Earth Ponies twelve decades before the beginning of the Fourth Age.

At the base of the lewdly bent flagpole was a concrete slab, and in haunting legibility the pony could spot writing carved long ago into the dried surface with a haystalk: “Faustmare and daughter.” Alongside the cursive words of the village's founder were two hoofprints: that of an old mare, and a tiny mark belonging to a little foal. The lone pegasus reached forward through the drifting snow, and instinctually placed her hoof over that of the foal's imprint first, quite visibly dwarfing it. But that didn't induce her to sigh as much as when she next raised her hoof over the founding mare's imprint and found that her hoof was larger even still.

Gulping, she shuddered to look up across the panoramic desolation of her former home, buried in time and ashes. The post office had been shattered in half, its eastern side crumbling and exposing a skeleton of ramshackled cabinets and billowing seas of papery scraps deep inside. The town's central fountain with its life-sized statue of Princess Celestia had been bent savagely by age, so that the Royal Effigy leaned precariously towards the side, its perforated alicorn wings frozen in mildew and acidic deterioration.

Along a brick wall flanking a garden there fluttered a tattered poster featuring the ghosts of three goggled ponies garbed in blue, a discolored squadron of pegasi soaring impressionistically past their proud profiles. The two-story bed and breakfast that sat, hunched and bowed, at the corner of main street still maintained an iconographic silhouette in the pony's mind. She stared at it, up past it, and briefly blinked her eyes. In that sharp blink, the sapphiric haze of Cloudsdale hovered in a sunny blue sky, just a nose's tilt above the roof of the inn and the lush trees waving gently behind it. Then the blink ended, and the northern sky was once more gray madness, howling coldly over the frozen holocaust.

There was a sudden whining sound—like foals giggling; the pegasus gasped sharply and flashed a look to her right. A guild sign was hanging by one last rusted chain from the front entrance to a hollowed-out store. The hinge upon which the sign dangled was creaking in the cold wind, piercing the pony's ears from afar.

She exhaled long and hard, feeling a heartbeat ricochet up her armored chest and thrash against the sore lump in the scavenger's throat. The mare paced her breaths, trying mentally to stitch herself back together. She was here for the green flame, nothing more. There was no point to this... to this lingering.

But as she padded down the abandoned alleyways and torn streets and shattered courtyards of her place of birth, her hooves slowed and slowed, as if the white fields she was wading across were really pools of ivory tar, weighing her down, forcing her to convulse and twitch until her neck craned about and fed her eyes more, more, more...

The town library. The tall and twisted tree was, miraculously, the most intact structure in the entirety of Ponyville. In perfect irony, the only things devastated about the treehouse were everything pony-made about it. The front door had long fallen off the thing. The windows had been shattered. The miniature observatory platform constructed at the apex of the tree had completely vanished. The only thing in relatively good shape was a lower balcony ledge, now a gaggle of haphazardly angled planks struggling to stay aloft a widely stretching branch that reached further than the pony remembered it. It was almost as if the tree had still grown past the Cataclysm. But no single leaf could be seen upon the gnarled, burnt-black limbs of the thing. From a distant glance, the treehouse was about as hollow as the pony felt at that very moment of melancholic sightseeing.

Sugarcube Corner. Nestled in the thick of Ponyville, just north of downtown, was a jaded spectre of its former self. All of the bright paint had been stripped from the building's exterior, as if by a giant blow torch. The ground beneath it was positively scorched, suggesting a horrible fire had consumed the building, along with the rest of Equestria from the ground up. The higher story windows had caved in, positively melted; and in place of shades of pink were instead brown fluffs of matter as several bits of tattered furniture leaked out from the second floor like a bursting bud of rusted cotton.

The Toy Store. The pony's heart started, for she had completely and utterly forgotten about the place up until that very moment of awestruck gazing. Brief flashes of recollection pelted her mind, of a merry structure built into the absurd shape of a jester's cap with bright colors merrily criss-crossing the surface of the building. The novelty shop was now a tangled mess of exposed concrete and steel supports. Trotting up close, the pegasus could spot a veritable sea of tin shrapnel, the remains of several hoof-crafted wind-up toys that used to line the shelves of the enchanting store. She remembered late winter evenings when she used to hang out inside the place for hours, the store's interior stove toasting the young mare's coat as she beat her infantile wings to get a bouncing look at the place's fantastic wares surrounding her.

By the time another hour had passed, the pony found herself haplessly wandering the halls of collapsed hotels, navigating the run-down corridors of empty apartment buildings, shuffling through the gray-misted kitchens of dark-lit restaurants infested with hives of pests and vermin. She saw paintings, photographs, portraits of dead ponies from an Age forever gone. And then, the very first moment those faces started to become familiar, she buckled under a sudden nausea and swiftly galloped her way back out into the blinding snow.

Leaning against a collapsed wagon, its wheels still hauntingly spinning in the wind, the pony fought to catch her breath. She knew that this was going to be an unpleasant sojourn, but the last pegasus in no way expected this degree of collapse, of the sensation of twenty-thousand atmospheres hammering into her lungs from all sides, of how torturously cold the world suddenly felt, even at sea level. She was there in search of green flame—true—but unlike any other trip into the ruins of Equestria, she couldn't bring herself to pilfer anything, not even scavenging one speck of debris. She could have sworn she strolled by a record disc or two in one of the apartments, but even that she refused to indulge herself in. This was Ponyville; her saddlebags were empty.

Glancing up from the wagon, the pony finally caught her breath, only to lose it again as she realized that she was no longer staring at Ponyville anymore. The entire north side of the village—which should have been at least five blocks thick with buildings—was nowhere to be seen. Trotting cautiously forward, the pegasus squinted through her goggles and glanced down past her hooves. Indeed, as she discovered at the end of one last, crumbling hoof-step, the landscape dipped down below the edge of a vicious drop. The mist cleared momentarily in a harsh breeze of cold wasteland wind, revealing a gigantic ravine at least one hundred meters deep. At the bottom of this inexplicable canyon was a splattering of demolished buildings that looked as if they had been thrown viciously straight into one another.

The pony remembered, as she so often did, that the Cataclysm which consumed Equestria was not only a vanquisher of pegasi but of earth ponies and unicorns as well. While Cloudsdale fell in crumbling chaos and ruin, the world buckled underhoof everyone else, so that whenever she swung the Harmony low enough to see the naked bosom of the Wastes she would occasionally stumble upon these terrestrial scars, these savage dips and breaks in the crust of the world. And one such tremor had happened right there, in the heart of Ponyville, right under her nose. There was no telling what the moonfalls did to the rest of the village that she had yet to see...

But this wasn't bringing her anywhere. She was losing her focus. She lost her focus the moment she had set flight coordinates to these sacred grounds. What was worst—or perhaps best—was that she knew it. Of all the unprofessional mistakes the last pony could possibly have made, coming to that nightmare afterimage of a life long gone was quite possibly her worst choice. At that point, she told herself, actually spotting and getting green flame would be a consolation prize. Walking out of Ponyville with her sanity would be the only true victory.

With a hardened resolve, the mare turned completely around, her flank to the ravine, and trotted swiftly back in the direction from which she woefully came. She would have made good distance between downtown Ponyville and the Harmony, only a bright strobe of light emanated suddenly from both of her hooves. Gasping, she stopped in time to gape down at both of her front limbs. The necklaces of horns were frothing with a fine purple mist, the brightest she had ever seen them glow in all her days of tomb raiding. Something in Ponyville was emitting a magical surge so strong that almost every unicorn bone on the pegasus' articles overloaded at once. The energy was of such intensity that twin ovals of snow melted beneath where her horseshoes had been planted.

“What in the hay... ?” she obligatorily murmured. “That can't be right! The ravine must have ruptured and exposed a leyline—”

Her exclamation was cut prematurely short by a winged shadow sweeping over the white snowbank within which she stood. She let loose a sharp gasp and thrust her saddlebags forward, clasping her rifle while it was airborne and extending it with a clak-a-clak and a glare.

Her goggled eyes scanned the snow-pelted sky above Ponyville's ghostly buildings towards the south. Squinting, she adjusted the lenses with one hoof while leaning against the rifle with her other. Every possible shade and tint flickered across her gaze, bathing the Ponyvillean wastes in several different colors, until an aura appeared, faintly, then disappeared. With a frustrated grunt, the mare all but tore her goggles off and blinked her naked scarlets at the source of the brief light...

The bold round structure of town hall—the tallest building in Ponyville—stood straight before her. It was remarkably intact, with only random sections of the uppermost stories crumbling off towards its west end. Less than half of the windows were shattered, and the outer doors still hung perfectly in their frames. With a steady breath, the pony lowered her goggles once more, keeping her eyes locked on the sight of the building. She flicked one last time through the different lenses, and again she caught it, like a shadow of a hide-and-seeker peeking in and out from behind a huge tree stump. An aura had faded from view, a green aura, and all was once again dull and clear, with town hall at the epicenter of the passing phenomenon.

The pony's brow furrowed. In direct opposition with her throbbing pulse, she padded bravely forward, her rifle slung over her shoulder. She shuffled up to the front steps of the town hall building, stopping briefly to gaze from its dilapidated outer railings up to its grand height of half-shingled overhangs and peeling paint. If there was a source of green flame inside this structure, she could detect no hint from that proximity. But in the graveyard of a city where she didn't want to be, she didn't know any other place to go. So, with a grunt of determination, she marched up to the double doors, protruded a golden blade from her left horseshoe, and pried into the space between the hinges, pulling with all of her might.

After a strain, the doors flung open into a chasm of darkness. Ash and dust scattered like a curtain, blanketing her goggles. She wiped them clean with the side of her hoof, glanced inside—and immediately wished she hadn't. A painful wince ripped across the pony's features as she wrenched her gaze groundward. After a few shuddering breaths, she bravely looked ahead, trotting forward as she approached a veritable heap of dead bodies—skeletons and husks and grainy piles of former Ponyvilleans, stretched across the floor like a necropolitan carpet.

She had seen sights like this in so many ruined cities: the Temple of the Sun in Stalliongrad, the University at Baltimare, even some of the fallen structures of Cloudsdale. Dozens if not hundreds of ponies had run for cover under the roof of a large interior building where their remains would be petrified en masse by the blast wave of the Cataclysm. But every one of those sights were mere curiosities, things to glance upon and then unemotionally rummage through for resources. None of those sights, however grim, viciously gutted her—none like this.

The air tingled with perpetually sterile rust, and yet as she marched deeper into the cornacopia of bodies, so many haunting scents came to her, riding the flanks of hundreds of cheerfully giggling voices in the vestiges of her mind, recalling ponies going about their business in the warm afternoon breeze, of foals playing games with each other along the beaten path, of loved ones nuzzling in the park and families picnicking on the hillsides. Against her better judgment, the pony found herself gazing down at the forms, her heart pulsing sharply with each successive body she glanced at, possibly seeing or possibly not seeing one tell-tale hint after another of somepony or something that she would recognize: a hairbow, a lock of sapphires, a cowgirl hat, a mailbag, party streamers, or anything whatsoever. None of these appeared to her, but the mare was too miserable to be relieved. If anything, she felt a pang of shame wash over her because of her anticipation.

There were several unicorn skeletons amongst the pile, more than she had ever expected for the likes of Ponyville. In the cold pale light wafting into the dark cavern of the town hall, several fresh horns glinted before her goggled gaze. She knew that the magical channeling of her two bracelets had almost entirely worn out, but she couldn't goad herself into sawing off new horns, not this time.

She trotted into the center of the building, above a peculiar pair of skeletons. The body of a middle-aged pegasus—its skull still splotched with a faded mat of blonde straws—was cradling the husk of a tiny unicorn mare, barely past its foal years. Since the first day that the lone survivor began exploring the graveyards of Equestria, she was granted tiny snapshots of the Cataclysmic Horror, much like this one. In spite of all her years of scavenging, she could never quite avoid the deep pit that such sights burned in her stomach. The fact that this was Ponyville brought her nausea to brand new depths. She feared opening her mouth, not sure what would come out first: sobs or bile.

Gazing up, the pony stared into the tall stretching shadows of the Town Hall building, its balconies and upper floors reaching at least a dozen meters high. She remembered another moment with another horror: when Nightmare Moon returned to this very spot, promising an Age of endless night. She remembered seeing the event with her naked eyes, and how her tiny body trembled upon the echoing cackles of the unholy harbinger of doom.

And yet it was a brief horror, an event that was resolved by the Elements of Harmony within the space of a day. If there was a lesson in life that the last pony could etch into the annals of irony, it's that the true apocalypse is always, always unannounced. Nopony could have foreseen the endless twilight, and in a matter of decades nopony would know it had ever happened.

She sighed heavily. All that the town hall offered was memories and darkness. There was no green flame.

Ever exact, the pegasus nevertheless reached a hoof up to her goggles and re-scanned the shadowy interior. She looked for all possible, flickering shades of her elusive target. From the ceiling beams down to the floorboards and the platforms in between, she gazed at everything, but found nothing. Even her horn bracelets had dulled.She was just about to turn and leave with a disgruntled breath when a rustling noise pricked her ear from the side.

Jerking to her left, she blinked at a pile of bodies along the wall. Everything was still, and then the rustling resurfaced. Cautiously, the mare trotted towards the shadowy corner. The rustling stopped, but there was definitely something ahoof. The last pony's sight zeroed in on one skeleton in particular, an earth pony of elder years—judging from the brittle bone structure. Aside from the usual ash and skin flakes, the skeleton was sporting what turned out to be a pair of eyeglasses and a faded white collar with a tattered green neckerchief. Before she could reflect on the finer details of this corpse, the pegasus narrowed her goggled eyes and bent low to inspect it closer.

The skull jumped out at her, and in place of its jaws was a foaming mouth brimming with razor sharp teeth. A pale, snarling creature exploded from beneath the skeleton and chomped its maw straight at the pegasus' unguarded figure.

The last pony barely jerked her body to the side. The teeth of the pouncing creature missed the flesh of her face and shredded into her goggles. The mare slid back, yanking her neck to uncoil herself from the goggles now in the bright figure's claws. She gazed with bright scarlet eyes as the four-limbed cretin thrashed the article in its jaws, crunched them solidly, and hissed towards her.

A troll. She gnashed her teeth and reached back for her rifle, only to experience a thick leathery weight diving into her from behind. Several clawed limbs stabbed and groped at her. In a gasp, she bucked and kicked the thing off into a crashing pile of splinters. She spun her sweating face over her flank and saw three more shadows darting out from hiding and charging straight at her across the carpet of bodies.

Trolls. She yanked her neck down, grabbed the first legbone she could find in her teeth, and unceremoniously flung the entire half of a molding corpse at the advancing trio. They collapsed in a pile of bones and soot as another scream filled the air behind the pegasus. She blindly somersaulted in time to avoid the pounce of another attacker. Rolling into the edge of the town hall's front stage, she unsheathed her rifle and took aim, only to be staring down the sight at no less than four dozen trolls bursting darkly out of the woodwork, hissing and slithering hungrily towards their lonesome prey.

An ambush. They had waited for her. In an age without ponies, they had taken claim of the homeliest village in Equestria and had turned it into a death trap. The earth belonged to the trolls, and Ponyville's town hall was their biggest snare.

“By Celestia's mane, I've been gone for too long.” Snarling, she breathed into the glowing runestones and cocked the weapon. “H'rhnum!”

The first manabullet sailed into the chest of one of the advancing trolls. As the pale creature's body fell down with a splat, its uncountable rows of brethren scampered forward at full speed, claws raking the floor. She barely got a second shot out when they were leaping upon her, beady eyes forming murderous starlight against the canvas of their leather pale flesh.

She kicked up to two hooves and waved the butt of her rifle out, smacking two of the attackers with one throw. Three more clamped their jaws over and wrestled with the brass body of the rifle. The pony struggled and wrestled with them before hissing into the festering pile of sweat: “H'rhnum!” The rifle fired directly into the mouth of one of the creatures. Warm musky liquid splashed through the shadowy air. The pegasus roared and kicked back against the stage, shoving her entire weight into the rifle and plowing her way through a pile of shrieking and flailing bodies.

The pony barreled forward. Her panicked eyes spotted the gray rectangular shape of the exit. The mare’s entire mind and body were now pressed on escape. But as soon as she started galloping over the bodies, something came down from the ceiling and impaled her.

The last pony screamed. Her body throbbed under the most intense agony she had experienced in years. There was a glint of twilight. She snarled to see a troll squatting on top of her, having driven a meter-long beam of steel straight into the brown flesh just beneath her left wing.

The hissing creature snarled and twisted its grip on the spear for added torture. Howling, the pegasus angrily leaped to the side, throwing the creature off so that it fell through a suffocating banner of tattered velvet. She tried galloping away, but the impalement screamed into her flesh, melting her wings and legs into putty. She groaned and slithered—one knee after another—towards the doorway, her breath coming out in awkward squeaks.

Then the clawprints behind her increased to a deafening degree. She spun to see four sets of glinting, sharp teeth. The trolls were dogpiling on her—impaled spear and all. She thrashed and kicked and fought through waves of numbing agony to buck them off. After four or five blinks of adrenalized horror, she realize that she was successful. On ghostly limbs, she summoned the strength to get back up and bolt out the door.

The dull light of the snowy wasteland was like a cosmic blast. Without her goggles, her twitching eyes had to deal with blinding snow and salty ash pelting her from all angles. She didn't bother looking where she was going—so long as she was gone, limping at the fastest possible canter, putting as much distance between her and the town hall death trap behind. Just as her breaths grew to their most ragged wheezes yet, she fell flat on her face, plowing through a snowbank as the intense burning of her torn flesh returned to her in a muffled scream.

Wincing, she glanced towards her left, eyes twitching over the glint of the metal beam lodged under her wing. She heard the slobbering howls of the murderous trolls; she felt the powdery earth vibrating from their incoming stampede. She had no time to hesitate.

Eyes shedding snowflake tears, she twisted her jaws back and clamped her teeth over the stalk of the beam. After a few concentrated grunts under her throat, she pulled and pulled and yanked until the invasive object was ripped out from her flesh, revealing to her dazed eyes a trail of crimson leaking through the white earth behind her... and then an inbound figure charging on four clawed legs.

With a muffled yelp, the mare rolled over onto her throbbing backside, spat out the beam, and lifted it with her front-hooves to take the charge of the first troll head-on. The creature lurched, its eyes bulging as the beam found its way into its throat and came out through the top of its skull. No sooner was this horrifying image burned into the mare's retinae than were two more bodies upon her, snarling and whooping and snapping at any limb that presented itself. She panted, and struggled, and kicked at her attackers before finally offsetting one's balance with her right wing outstretched.She next bit its front paw with her teeth and flung it into the other attacker. Once they were tossed aside, she rolled back onto her hooves, literally bled into a full gallop, and ascended the top of a snowbank.

She then leaped high, stretching out both wings. She shrieked in mid-air, and fell stupidly back to the earth. The pony whimpered; her left wing was on fire. She could feel the blood pumping out of it, draining her, pinning her helplessly to the breast of the cold wasteland.

She couldn't fly. Gasping and wincing, she limped back up to her feet and stared ahead through the blinding mist. The bulbous, copper body of the Harmony lingered ahead, like a phantom in the fog, at the top of a hill that suddenly seemed impossible for any pony to scale. She crawled and hobbled towards it, wheezing for breath, her leather armor feeling like lead weights that squeezed more and more of the blood out of her, forming a scarlet trail that even the dumbest troll could track. The creatures' ravenous cries echoed like banshees, filling the barren alleyways and courtyards of Ponyville with a grim chorus of bedlam as they gained the distance and closed in behind her.

“Stupid stupid stupid!” She choked back sobs and gnashed her teeth with each limping bound. “Should n-never have come! Should never—” Her voice was silenced when her face was suddenly shoved into a mound of powdery snow. She felt a leather body pressed down on top of her. The attacker's weight shifted, and the pony took a chance and dashed her neck directly to the right. The snow next to her face exploded as the jaws of the pouncing troll missed her by a few millimeters. She twisted her face, bit into his ear, and—with the awful sound of snapping cartilage—flung his entire weight off of her. She rolled sideways in time to dodge another pounce, jumped to her hooves, rear-kicked the first body she could find and bucked away another, only to have two more from the impossibly large pack of monsters grab her by the legs.

Synapses fired like they had never fired before in her mind. The first thought was a realization: that she had dropped her rifle several oozing seconds back at the Town Hall when she was first stabbed. The next thought was that she wasn't entirely defenseless. Hooking her hooves with the attackers' limbs in order to offset their balance, she took the moment to reach back into her saddlebag and grab her second magazine of runestones. Clamping them in her teeth, she roared mightily from beneath her ruptured gut and flung the entire, purple-glowing ensemble behind her head. As she did so she screamed skyward: “M'wynhrm!”

The magazine flew directly into the meatwall of leather bodies, and as it did so the magical command caused the entirety of the runes to flicker, dim, then explode as one. Limbs and shrapnel went flying under an explosion of white ash, and as the blast wave reached the pony's form she lunged mightily out from the grasp of her attackers. Spreading both pained wings out, she rode the hot current of air and glided for five heart-stopping seconds, only to slam hard into the crumbling face of central Ponyville's water fountain.

“Unngh!” She slumped down to her hooves, discovering that her two front legs were on fire. The magic in the bracelets had overloaded and the horns had literally burst into flame. Shrieking, the mare flung the two articles off her steaming hooves. She struggled on shaking legs to stand, and at the sound of several whooping voices she looked up and paled to realize that she was surrounded. The entire village's worth of ambushing trolls had formed a solid wall around the circumference of the fountain, and were slowly, menacingly closing in on all sides of the pegasus.

Her left wing was a quivering mess. Even if she could take to the skies right then and there, she might never fly again, and that would spell doom for whatever short life she had intended to live in the twilight of the Equestrian Wastes. But this was her home town, her place of birth, her only place of significance in a dead and lonely kingdom, and she was not about to let her existence end there under the fangs of these leathery freaks of the underworld.

Frowning, she gazed up from the shrinking circle of foes. With a hissing breath, she climbed up the alicorn statue, her body leaking red all over the stone wings of Princess Celestia. With her teeth, she clasped onto the weathered horn and pulled... pulled... pulled. With a snap, the alicorn's spike broke clear from its crown, and the pegasus hung off the Princess' effigy while raising the razor-sharp horn high and proud in her grasp.

“You want the last horse flesh in all Equestria? Huh? Do ya?” She shouted and spat blood at the surrounding creatures, her eyes aflame with scarlet fury. “Come and get it!”

They leered and hissed at her. Smiling fangs and lashing teeth. Beady eyes and snow-raking claws. They clambered up towards the edges of the fountain, skittering and snickering and leaping towards her.

“Come on!” She roared and raised the horn bloodily to strike...

Then, straight from the zenith, a scaled foot the size of a tree trunk flattened four of the beasts in a blink. Pulp and teeth clattered across the exposed cobblestone of the courtyard as a monstrous thunder resounded from the blow. The pegasus gasped. The trolls turned and shrieked as yet another foot—immaculate claws glistening—roared its way down and reduced several more leathery bodies to paste.

The pony looked up, her eyes twitching at the sight of a hulking form blotting out the twilight. From the dangling mists above, a thickly-armored torso bowed and a long neck hovered low to reveal a rigid jaw structure, titanium-solid crests that glistened from beyond the shadows, two slitted emerald eyes, and a pair of nostrils brimming with smoke.

“Oh Goddess...” the last pony murmured. “A dragon.”

The aptly labeled monstrosity roared, rattling the buildings of ruined Ponyville off their hinges.The great winged beast reared up on its hind quarters, spun about, and flung its mighty lashing tail through the entire length of the courtyard. The bodies of trolls went flying, shrieking, before they were clasped mercilessly in midair by draconian claws and flung earthward like shattered pebbles. The leathery bodies ran and clambered each way, only to be pummeled and knocked aside one by one from the muscular limbs of the thrashing drake.

The pony panicked. Her bleeding flank was now an afterthought as she leaped off the fountain and galloped for her life. Trolls dashed left and right in front of her, being pounded and knocked aside by the fitful wrath of the sudden dragon. The pegasus veered in a serpentine fashion, begging that her agile maneuvers could somehow save her from the menacing creature's mighty limbs.

To her utter shock and beating heart, she made it far enough to escape into the side alleyways of Ponyville. With foalish fright, she glanced behind her in time to see the dragon squat down beneath the mists, spread its leathery wings outwards, and spout forth a great plume of billowing flame—green flame—across the lengths of Town Square, roasting several of the squealing trolls in one horrendous breath.

Looking ahead, the galloping pony cursed under her frowning teeth. “Green flame!” she hissed. “Of course! When it's not elementally occurring in Equestria, Green Flame comes from the organs of several species of dragons—Idiot!” She barely had time to snap at herself when the air around her burst with searing hot, gale-force winds. She looked up, and once again her scampering form was covered by the darkening shadow of beating wings. “Oh n-no...” she squeaked forth like a panicked child.

Suddenly, there were several hissing noises ahead. She glanced forward and skidded to a powdery stop as she found her alleyway blocked by a line of razor-fanged trolls. They leered at her and made to leap when—fatefully—the winged shadow swallowed up the entire alleyway, and four legs of iron-thick scales landed in the midst of them, smashing two rows of buildings into rubble. The Dragon lowered its sulfuric maw and finished off the last few screaming creature, who collapsed beneath a seething pile of debris.

She didn't dare look the noble monster directly in the eye. She flung herself to the right and immediately burst into a run-down apartment building. Panting and bleeding, she stumbled over furniture and chairs and cabinets as the entire structure rattled around her from the rampaging footsteps of the dragon outside. It was baiting her, keeping up with her, looming just beyond the rattling window panes. It was a smart thing, and her life was in its hands—unless she moved, and moved now.

Shrieking, she burst out of a door and ran across a garden overrun with snow and thorn bushes. Limping through several brambles, she stampeded her bleeding way through the kitchen door of a tiny cottage just as the dragon's footsteps smashed into the yard behind her. With half of the building's foyer collapsed with clumps of debris, she numbly propelled herself up a stairway and bounded down a long hall upon the second floor. She was halfway towards the far side when a window right in front of her smashed open. A giant scaled hand reached in, grabbing for her. The claws were retracted and the palm delicately felt around for any sign of the pony. The last pegasus paid these details little heed, bounding over the hand and bolting towards a window on the far side which she promptly cannonballed her body through.

With a shower of glass, the pony landed in the middle of Main Street, rolled forwards, and limped onto her hooves once again, just as the earth shook with the utter demolishing of the cottage behind her. The dragon smashed effortlessly through the building and stomped steadily, patiently, after the flightless pegasus, its four limbs sending great tremors through the bowels of Ponyville for the first time since the Cataclysm.

The pegasus limped and crawled away from the creature with all her might. As her scarlet eyes searched in vain for the sight of the Harmony, her heart sank under the numbing reality of her situation. There was no way out of this. This was a dragon chasing her. She was dead—as good as dead; it would be a horribly bitter lesson learned for the inane stupidity and impulsiveness that brought her to those coordinates in the first place. But as long as there was blood left in her coursing veins, she outran her destiny and bolted straight towards a ghostly familiar three-story building looming directly in sight.

“Nnngh!” She grunted as she rammed hard into the front door of Sugarcube Corner. The frame barely budged. The world shook and screamed as the dragon stormed on top of her. “C-come on!” she howled and shoved again. The doorframe gave way and she barreled inside, tumbling into a bloody heap against a shattered stand of petrified crumbs and bread flakes. Waterlogged wooden architecture in the shape of candied sweets bowed on either side of the last pony as she shuffled towards the far corner on her knees, hyperventilating. Then—in mid crawl—she froze, her scarlet eyes blinking under a matted coat of frost and bulbous sweat. The rumbling had stopped. The thunder was replaced with a deathly silence. The dragon was nowhere to be found. Had it gone away... ?

A vicious tear: Cold gray twilight billowed into the room as a good half of the Sugarcube Corner's rooftop was torn from its foundation. The mare gasped and covered her armored self as flakes of ash and splinters rained down on her. She looked up—twitching—to see the iron claws of the dragon pulling the walls apart as its razor-sharp snout gazed down at her. Smoke and glistening emerald eyes: the dragon lowered its maw.

The girl stifled a sob and flung her wing muscles outward in one last attempt to fly. Her left feathers tore on their sockets, sending waves of paralyzing agony through her. She reared up on her hooves, only to fall over pathetically and curl up against the corner, shivering and scrunching away from the reach of the leering dragon.

She wasn't ready for this. It wasn't supposed to end this way. Not like this. The legacy of ponydom, the last blossoming soul of Equestria, all of the Celestial Family's history and accomplishments: it was about to be snuffed away in the strangling jaws of draconian happenstance. It was all her fault, and she shuddered and sputtered forth the most pitiable of voices, begging.

“Please. Pl-please don't do this!” the last pony sobbed through her last sweat and drops of blood. “Have mercy! You don't know what I am—What my life means! I beg you; I'll do anything! My fortune, my airship, my runestones—They'll all be yours if you just... let me live... please—!”

The dragon paid no heed. With a vicious slam, its left hand clamped over her twitching body, pressing her against the tile floor of the Sugarcube Corner like a vice. She gasped and struggled against its claws, watching in confused horror as it grasped a jar in its other hand, popped the container open, and shook the jar over her. In a sudden deluge, the pony was covered from tail to snout in a fine ivory dust, like soot from the bottom of a crematorium.

She coughed and sputtered through the mess with horrified eyes. “Wh-what are you doing—?” She then buckled under its gaze as its jaws came down to encompass her. “No...”

Its mouth opened, and the room's temperature increased as vaporous gases began expelling from deep within its glowing throat.

“No no no no no—!”

Green flame erupted, out over the dragon's tongue, through the gaps in its unbreakable teeth, and enveloped her.

The last pony screamed. The last pony burned. Through billowing waves of emerald plasma, she felt her skin melt away and her bones dissolving with it. Then something happened in the death-blink of utter howling that she did not expect; the pain underneath her left wing disappeared as well.

All pain disappeared. A numbness cascaded over her limbs and she was surprised to blink and see a grand, winding tunnel of jade hues, dancing and vibrating like a birth canal stretching into infinity. The only sensation was that of a centripetal force pulling at her extremities, like she was being flung backwards at impossible speeds along the tongues of emerald ashes. The world was a rubber band, stretching and buckling at a fever pitch from beyond the forested miasma of flickering lights.

Just as quickly as the whole confusing kaleidoscope began, it ended with a jolt. The pegasus' body was shot towards the earth core like a meteor, and yet she was lying perfectly still. Under clenched eyelids she heard the miraculous sound of her heartbeat... alive and well.

The first thing the pony felt was the warmth. Soft, oozing, real warmth. It kissed her from all sides, gently softening her already moist coat as she murmured into a forest of springy grass blades and stirred from where she sat. A pair of eyes opened—groggily—and flashed a thousand reflections off shiny bulbs of dew strewn across a sea of harvest green grass. Something fluttered across her peripheral vision. She blinked wearily at it, then widened her eyes to regard a dangling insect of black and gold wings—petal soft—settling onto her nose, beating its plumage softly, then fluttering off into the golden aura beyond. The pegasus marveled at the thing, until the dark recesses of her mind finally recollected the appropriate name for it: “butterfly.”

A chorus of happily mewling voices pricked at her ears. She gazed across the forest of dew-laden grass as several bounding forms came into focus: with glistening bright coats and pastel-colored manes, bright eyes and giggling wide mouths, hooves trotting gaily and tails a-swishing in a toasty warm breeze.

Ponies. Dozens of tiny, bounding, laughing, living ponies. They were foals, barely past the age of cutie marks, and they were chasing each other and cavorting, playing games in an open field that bordered a playground full of swingsets, slides, and climbing bars. A scarlet red schoolhouse stood in the distance, and as the breathless pegasus tilted her snout up—

She was blinded. She exhaled sharply and shaded her eyes with an outstretched hoof. She was ever so briefly stunned by the queer sensation of a long flowing mane billowing from her scalp—but she ignored it, instead sitting up on wobbly haunches to gaze dumbstruck at the horizon before her. The twilight was gone, the fog was gone, the ash and snow had all vanished. And there, in its burning glory, climbing majestically skyward, was a sun. The Sun. Celestia's gift of life to all of Equestria.

Equestria: with its brilliant white mountains stretched over a glittering lake of pure sapphiric blue that shimmered in the sunrise. Mist hovered gently over the placid waters at a meter's length, as flocks of geese cruised overhead and a random fish or two plopped playfully out of the mirroring surface. The sky was a haze of crisp golden hues, all melting together and forming a sheen of vanilla richness that breathed life into the throbbing, glistening world.

The pegasus' lips quivered. Her heart started as she heard a shrill bell ringing. She tilted her gaze away from the blissful sunlight as she watched a fuchsia-haired mare step out of the entrance of the school, smiling and chirping pleasantly towards all of the foals gathered in the yard. “Alright, students! Time for class! Hurry on, now! There'll be plenty of time for play at recess!”

“Ms. Cheerilee ...” the pegasus exhaled before she could stop the strange voice coming out of her. She watched as the giggling children all lined up—tail to snout—forming a single file of bouncy souls that scampered joyfully into the rich atrium of the school building. “Snails ... Silver Spoon ... Snips ... Twist ...” Her eyes narrowed, and then a breath sharply escaped her shuddering jaw. “...Apple Bl-Bloom?”

Something sparkled in her eyes. She looked up, and all of the years of nightmares left her in a single jolt. The mist over the waters had cleared, evaporating into the crystal blue sky from the rising Sun's rays, and there, arched from the purple mountain tops to the rows upon rows of crisp emerald forests beyond, was a beautiful rainbow, lighting the golden morning hour with every color of the spectrum, reflecting off the lake's waters in prismatic glory.

The pegasus hiccuped, her hooves covering her face as every feature she had melted into a tearful sob. Between each sharp breath, her muscles forged a deeper and deeper smile, crackling around the edges as every bit of weight ever stacked on her shoulders shattered through her skin in an instant.

“Oh Goddess... Oh Goddess alive, it's so real. I can't believe I forgot... I forgot how beautiful...” She shuddered, sniffled, and ran her hooves through her flowing mane as her eyes remained locked on the rainbow, the wind blowing the Sun's kiss over her trembling body once more. “It's real. It is real. Oh thank Celestia above... Thank—”

Just then, everything flickered. The playground buckled, the schoolhouse spread under a ripple of distorted light, and the cascading mountains peeled away, along with the glistening waters. Finally, the rainbow itself shattered as bright green flames burned through the entire landscape—from horizon to sky—with the sizzling fury of a melting photograph in front of her.

She gasped, her brimming eyes wide and ghostly. “N-No...”

Then the erupting world burst through her as the fingers of emerald flame cradled her once more and throttled her forward along the dancing tunnel of green tongues.

“Nnnnngh—!” Her mane disappeared, her coat bled, and a torturous pain knifed its way back into the muscles beneath her left wing as she was flung once again onto the cold, ash-laden floor of Sugarcube corner. “—No!”

She slumped down onto the ground, twitching and hyperventilating while the gray haze of the world snowed in everywhere from the dead Wastes of Ponyville.

For an interminable space in time, her pain-wracked body convulsed against the frigid tile, as every ounce of the schoolyard’s warmth that had ever so briefly kissed her body sunk away with each choked sob. As she curled up into a fetal position, a gentle limb of purple scales reached down and stroked her, then palmed the stab wound under her wing. A deep murmuring voice and a cloud of green smoke billowed down and covered the injury. An enchanted fume filled the room, and suddenly the knifing pain in the pegasus' flank dissipated.

Shivering, she opened her eyes and gazed forlornly at her left wing. She blinked in disbelief to see the wound slowly and magically closing up on its own, leaving dried blood and a pure brown coat in its wake. The pegasus' breath slowed as her senses attempted to process all that was going on, and then a rumbling voice from above thunderously reminded her that she was not alone:

“It's been a long time since you've been... home, hasn't it?”

The mare gasped. Taking advantage of the healed wound, she leaped back onto all fours and looked up. She immediately shrunk back, trembling from the towering sight of the dragon. But before she could think of any way to escape, the hulking beast lowered its snout gently, revealing purple scales in the dim twilight, and a violet pendant hanging from a gold chain around his neck. Green crests shook as his heavy, bass voice drifted warmly into the hollow of the room.

“Then again, did you ever really allow yourself a home to begin with?”

She gulped and murmured confusedly towards the noble creature “Wh-what...?”

The dragon cocked his iron head to the side and spoke knowingly, “It's time that you stopped running, Scootaloo.”

The last pony gasped, her scarlet eyes wide and moist. Her jaw hung in disbelief as she gazed over the length of the dragon's hulking presence and shuddered: “What... Wh-what did you just call...?”

His jaws locked into a soft grin; his razor sharp teeth were suddenly harmless and friendly. “Simply a name, a piece of time forgotten, something that makes us both real, that makes us old friends, nothing less.”

Her eyes darted back and forth. Her wings wilted as a pitiable warmth washed up to her cheeks. She gazed up at him and murmured: “Sp-Spike?

Smoke billowed from the purple dragon's nostrils as he raised a gentlemanly hand to his torso and half-bowed. “Your ever-handsome devil, in the flesh.”

She gulped. Trembling, she made a few meager trots towards him, her neck tilted up to take in his impossible height. She planted a hoof against his front hand, which was twice the size of her meager form. The moment one of his claws welcomingly folded over her grip, she lost all composure. Eyes brimming with tears, she tossed herself forward and hugged his chest, her lonesome body wracked with sobs as she buried her face into his warm scales. He knelt down and wrapped his tail around, engulfing the two of them gently about her collapsing figure as his other hand stroked her shaved mane.

Her voice came out in indecipherable words beneath a cascade of much belated wailing. She shook her face against him, struggling to smile as her tears coated his scales with a glistening purple shine. “I never stopped hoping—I never... never never never...” She broke down once more, overcome with hiccuping convulsions.

The elder dragon nudged her gently with the green crest of his chin and hummed: “And your presence here is a testament to that, Scootaloo. Be at ease.”

For several minutes they huddled together, in the gnarled sarcophagus of yesterday's memories, christened with the ashes of all their long dead friends. After a heavenly blissful release, she sniffled, wiped her face with a foreleg, and gazed up in numbed amazement. “But h-how...? Wh-where was I? Where did you just send me?”

Spike's emerald eyeslits softly reflected her. “To the past, child.”

Her face curved in disbelief. “To the past?”

“Yes.”

“But...” Scootaloo gazed out into the snow-drenched ruins of Ponyville beyond. Her moist eyes tried in vain to recreate the sunrise and rainbow that still burned blissfully at the edges of her soul. “I-I don't understand.”

“You will.” He smiled and patted her lovingly. “You will.” Uncoiling his tail and taking a bold step out of the hovel of Sugarcube Corner, Spike effortlessly lifted the breathless pegasus onto his back and spread his wings wide. “Come with me, my little pony, and I shall give you healing.”

Chapter Seven: Immutable

It was a winter's night, or maybe a spring evening. There were several nameless ponies gathered at the top of a hill under purple starlight. Word had spread through town about a natural lightshow—an amazing meteor shower of sorts. But Scootaloo could care less. All that mattered was one pony and one pony alone.

“Wow, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash smirked between bites of an apple picked up from a picnic spread. “You're lucky to have such a rad assistant. I wish I had someone to do whatever I told them.”

It was right there and then that the orange foal strolled up, and at the sound of the blue pegasus' exclamation, the little filly ecstatically jumped in place. “Oh! Oh! Me! Me! Me!” she smiled warmly. “I'll do whatever you want, Rainbow Dash!”

“Oh yeah, pipsqueak?” The prismatically maned pony squinted the kid's way. “How about taking out the trash?” She tossed an apple core onto the grass.

Scootaloo scooped it up gently as if it were made of gold. “Yes, ma'am!” She flurried over to a garbage can on the very edge of the park and hurriedly rejoined the party.

Minutes bled into an hour as Scootaloo hummed pleasantly in the shadow of Rainbow Dash. A hushed murmur hung over the crowd of Ponyvillean stargazers as the meteor shower began, lighting up the purple night with gentle pinstreaks of white and gold. Conversations drifted back and forth, wavering from Twilight Sparkle's expert recital of trivial astronomical facts to Lady Rarity's sudden inspirations for “star-studded” pageant-wear. The only thing Scootaloo listened to in earnest was a certain pegasus' fanatical thoughts on the latest Wonderbolts airshow.

When the orange foal attempted joining the conversation, she was inevitably drowned out. But she didn't mind, so long as she was seated within the blue aura of the pony whose wings dwarfed her own. With a deep inhale, she was only vaguely aware of a petite, purple shape crawling over to a nearby picnic basket, curling his exhausted, scaled self into the hollow of an empty punch bowl...

And sleeping like an infant.

“Reverse-time,” a ten meter tall Spike explained, his deep voice echoing across a large cavern. “It's the means by which I can send things into the past. It's how I was able to transport you back to Ms. Cheerilee's schoolhouse. And it is also the sole reason for all of my years of bold experimentation, deep introspection, and loneliness. Until now.” His snout melted forth a smile. “Welcome, Scootaloo, to my laboratory.”

The last pony's ears heard the elder dragon's words, but her eyes were still exploring the mesmerizing sights around her. She rested, mending, on a granite table besides the grown dragon in the belly of a cavernous hovel. Under the gnarled roots of the late Twilight Sparkle's treehouse library, the basement had been expanded enormously into a subterranean dragon's roost.

Above a sparkling array of multi-colored gemstones was an elaborate assortment of alchemy tables and shelves upon shelves of magical ingredients encased in glass jars. There were sparkling crystal balls, electrified tesla coils, elaborate, brass-constructed, rotating orreries of the Equestrian solar system, and then a rhythmic albeit noisy assortment of dozens upon dozens of clocks—clocks of all shapes and sizes, of various copper instruments clicking and clanking and spinning with infinitely complex precision across the sparkling lengths of the cave.

A deep, purple haze twinkled throughout the earthen interior beneath the heart of Ponyville, breathing a resurrected spirit of Equestrian sorcery into the air, and the very sight of it made the wide-eyed pegasus' heart leap for the millionth time that eventful afternoon.

“When the Cataclysm befell Equestria, I was a tiny dragon whelp, hardly possessing any more years than the foal that you once were, old friend.” The purple-scaled elder was applying the last of several bandages across Scootaloo's left side, patching the parts of her brown coat that were still sore, even after Spike's miraculous healing inside Sugarcube Corner. “Just like you, I had to deal with a world deprived of everything and everypony I had ever loved. Ponyville was a wasteland. Canterlot was a ghost town. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna fell into the same oblivion as did their Sun and Moon. I was alone. I needed help, I needed guidance, I needed wisdom; but when I cried out her name, drowning in the youthful fits of infinite sorrow, I heard no response. My beloved mentor Twilight Sparkle was dead.”

At the end of his last exhalation, a green fume wafted through the subterranean hideout. Spike's emerald eyeslits faded slightly as a twirling violet pendant reflected the manalight that shimmered off the hundreds upon hundreds of salvaged clockfaces. The cadence of the multiple antique time-keepers floated him back to the present, and he once again smiled softly at the last pony, all the while gently helping her down from the granite lab table.

“My sole inspiration for living may have disappeared, but I would rather have been cursed than let Twilight's spirit die. My desperate mind suddenly remembered an experiment that she and I had embarked upon barely six months before the Cataclysm. The brilliant young unicorn had speculated that it was possible to send items through time via my green flame as we had always been able to send things through space, such as Twilight's letters to Princess Celestia. Our exercises in chronological manipulation proved unfruitful, but like a good scientist I realized that they could be repeated. My young self embarked upon a noble crusade; to see if it was possible to send messages—and perhaps even myself—back through time to before the Cataclysm happened. I locked myself deep within the caverns of the Canterlotlian Mountains, and for years I wracked my draconian brain over every mathematical and magical formula that could make this dream come true.”

Scootaloo limped aside, giving the large, adult dragon room to shuffle past the last pony and towards a granite stretch of wall. With swift precision, Spike breathed hot green flame onto his finger's claw, rendering it to a literal firebrand which he proceeded to etch from left-to-right across the stone. Upon finishing a crude diagram, the elder dragon gestured towards the smoldering illustration. There was a straight horizontal line titled “Past-Ponydom,” and carved to the right of it was a crude “X” labeled “Cataclysm.” To the right of this was a zig-zagged line which Spike simply marked “Wastelands-Fourth Age.”

“Decades passed since the Cataclysm, and finally I made a breakthrough. I discovered reverse-time, a way in which the currents of chronology sink backwards via the same fluidity of forward motion, like waves upon the beach. Excited and enthused beyond measure, I proceeded with great courage to perform the first trip back through time ever committed in this world.”

Spike proceeded to draw a curved line leftwards from a point in the zig-zagged future all the way back to the “X.” There, his burning claw stopped, and he uttered in a cold breath:

“Imagine my horrendous disappointment when I discovered that I could only go as far back as the first day after the Cataclysm. The day that Princess Luna and Princess Celestia died had become an impermeable barrier. The sundering of magic that marked the moment of their perishing acted as a solid wall which my draconian self could not pierce through, no matter how much green flame I conjured. Still, I refused to believe that all of my experimentation was for nothing.”

Spike's finger curved back towards the first time-jump at the right of the zig-zagging diagram, so that his etchings formed double ellipses between the “Cataclysm” and the jump.

“So, after several years of planning and calculation—all the while spent re-living the same period of time in the hollow of the Canterlotlian Mountains’—I again made a voyage back along the pathway of reverse-time, and again I struck the barrier.”

Scootaloo's eyes watched dizzily as Spike's finger formed the loopty-loop course, an infinity symbol, always starting in the future and yet always stopping just to the right of the “X” labeled “Cataclysm” in the center of his grimly etched diagram.

“I repeated this desperate attempt over and over again,” Spike murmured, “everytime growing smarter yet every time growing more and more despondent in my endeavors. After more than fifteen trips back into the past, I had to finally accept the grim truth: there was no going back to warn my loved ones of the horror that ended them all.” He boldly circled the “X” at the point of the diagrammed “Cataclysm” and lowered his sizzling claw with bitter finality. “Equestria was doomed to stay dead forever.”

“Fifteen trips?” Scootaloo finally spoke up, stammering. “Spike—Just how old are you?”

He took a weathered breath. “Taking into account my rate of growth, cross-analyzed by a relativistic calendar that I manufactured for myself long ago, I would say that I am something close to three hundred and seventy-two.”

“Spike!” Her face grimaced. “That's a long time...”

“To ponder the fate of the only world I've ever loved,” he gazed deeply at her, “it's not been long enough.” Spike's woe-some face aged one reflection at a time across a panorama of ticking clockfaces that flanked his reclining figure. “Funny... My life as a whelp, frolicking side by side with close friends in the living green of Equestria, was a scant nine years. And I've spent the better part of three centuries constructing a desperate appendix to what's ultimately been a very trite chapter in my exhausting life. But it's the only chapter that holds any merit, that still makes my heart leap to remember the sound of Twilight's voice when she called for quill and ink from across the library, when she patted me on the back for an assistant's job well done, when she tucked me in at night as I gave into young draconian slumber, dreaming of the magical morning to follow.”

Spike sighed thoughtfully, green fumes kicking into the air and brushing past a rotating array of brass planetoids. After pausing for thought, he turned to smile in the last pony's direction.

“I think that's the real reason why I locked myself inside the sarcophagus of the Eastern Mountains to do my experiments. I refused to stare at the gray sky until I could somehow bring myself to see the Sun once more. It's been over three hundred years, and yet I still hear her voice... and dream of the golden dawn.”

Scootaloo gulped. “Spike?” She trotted limpingly up towards his towering figure and gazed forlornly into his eyeslits. “Do you know how old I am?”

He squinted at her, rearing his green crested neck back in thought. “If my memory still serves me right, you had to have been eight years old at the time of the Cataclysm. And at your chronological level, it has been twenty-five and a half Equestrian revolutions since the end of pony civilization. So that makes you—”

“Thirty-Three,” Scootaloo exhaled. She blinked as the words left her in a misty sigh. “I am thirty-three years of age.”

Her voice wilted as she avoided the gaze of the clockfaces. She stumbled like a blind ghost towards the dead roots sticking out of the earthen rooftop along the opposite side of the cavern.

“I-I remember when I was a little foal, and our teacher—Ms. Cheerilee—told us how old she was: 'Thirty-Three'. And I thought to myself how... how strange it must be, to be over three times as old as I was, to be three decades old, to be an adult.”

She paused to glance at the many chips and dents in her hooves.

“And here I am. And those years have v-vanished in a gray bl-blink.” She gulped, blushed, and gazed apologetically at the purple dragon looming behind her. “I-I'm sorry, Spike. I know th-that can't possibly compare to three hundred years.”

“You would be surprised, child.” He nodded at her. “Centuries all blink the same.”

“And in all those years, in all of that time,” Scootaloo murmured, avoiding his face like she knew she was avoiding his coming response. “You never saw another pony? You never found another soul besides myself?”

Slowly, the elder dragon shook his head. His voice came out like a funeral dirge, “When I wasn't time traveling or experimenting, Scootaloo, I was searching. Searching for Celestia, searching for Luna, searching for... Twilight. In all of my excursions, in all of my cold and lonely flights across this barren world, the only essence of ponydom I ever found was dead essence, until I found you. The fact that you're alive is as much a joy as it is a puzzle, for what shattered the world wasn't a Cataclysm of physical means, but of magical means. The ponies—earthen, unicorn, and pegasus—were all turned to dust by the sheer annihilation of their essence. I am so sorry, Scootaloo, but you shall be the last friend I will have the grace to speak with again. The day that you die will be the true end of ponies.”

The last pony shuddered. She clenched her scarlet eyes shut and bowed towards the ground, as if all of the years that had leeched the brightness from her body had suddenly crumbled all over her at once. She fought the tears, but the sudden and gentle stroke of Spike's hand against her shaved mane told her there was no point in the struggle. She sobbed quietly, shortly, under his soothing shadow, until she finally rediscovered the strength to speak:

“Somehow I knew. I knew it. All these years, alone with my fears and my hopes, I knew the truth. This lifeless world t-told it to me, with heartless gray eyes that flurried on forever. Right now, I c-can't even begin to think of what it was that kept me going—that kept me living. I think, in a lot of ways, I wanted a m-moment like this to come, a reunion with anypony, with anybody, even if it was a dead friend. And as h-happy as I should be to see you alive and well, Spike, I can't be. I want this reunion to matter. It's something th-that I have always dreamed of, in the scant moments in my life when I've actually been able to dream. And yet I can't hardly feel a th-thing. It's all so much, Spike. What this Wasteland has taken from us; it's so m-much that I can h-hardly feel anymore. I hate it. I hate it so dang much.”

“I do too, child,” he murmured towards her. The violet pendant dangled from his neck as he lowered his snout to gaze her lovingly in the eyes. “If there's one philosophy that I've held strong to, that has kept me working so hard all of those time jumps in pursuit of the same impossible goal, it's that it is not always important to feel. Sometimes you only have to be.”

She inhaled sharply, gazing at him with brimming tears. “That's just it, Spike. That is my dilemma. I'm the last pony—All I'll ever do is be, and someday that too will come to an end.”

He squinted his eyeslits at her, bearing a brave and knowing smirk. “You are more than just the last pony. If I assume correctly, you are a scavenger, a hunter, and ultimately a preserver. As you have traveled the skies from east to west, I have traveled the last two and a half decades from future to past. And I too have learned a thing or two about preserving. There's something quaint and amusing about time; if you know how to play with the streams just right, you can make a moment last forever. Suddenly—having no choice but to be can provide an eternal practice, even for you, Scootaloo.”

That uttered, the dragon gestured his clawed hand towards the far side of the laboratory. Scootaloo's scarlet eyes dried in time to gaze clearly across the cave. Hobbling over, she stood gazing in wonderment at a series of bright shapes resting beautifully in an array of glass jars.

“Flowers,” the mare murmured, disbelieving, as she raised a hoof to gently brush the petals of the yellow and gold things blooming before her. They were soft to the touch, just like the wings of a butterfly that danced before her during a phantom sojourn to Ms. Cheerilee's schoolyard. “But—How did you find these? They should be dead!”

“All things should be dead,” Spike said, stomping over towards a pile of rattling gemstones beside her. He perched majestically and folded his wings about his purple self as he said, “But all things that have ever been—even the dead things—are alive forever in memories. That's what's so wonderful about the past. All things considered, history is nothing more than a pile of eternal recollections. To visit the past along the streams of reverse-time is simply a way to relive memories from the inside out, instead of from the outside looking in.”

“But you can't go back into the past, Spike,” Scootaloo murmured aloud as she gently cradled a jar of daisies in her hooves. “At least—You can't go past the Cataclysm. You just told me that...” Her voice trailed off in mid-speech. A pair of wide scarlet eyes blinked at her from the sheen in the glass. She spun around and nearly dropped the flowers as she gazed at Spike with a sudden breathlessness. “But you can send me? How, Spike?!” Her gaze darted nervously towards the burned diagram on the cavern wall. The swirling infinity symbol brushed up against the “Cataclysm” as it brushed up against her soul. “How was I able to go visit Ms. Cheerilee when you couldn't?”

“How is a pony capable of living so long in the absence of the Sun and Moon?” Spike socratically returned. “Why would a dark and dismal world, forever angry at the legacy of ponydom, fail in every aspect to slay its last living target?” He smiled gently. “It's all for the same reason that I have been enamored with equines since the day I was hatched. It's your spirit.”

“Spirit...” Scootaloo droned, gazing defeatedly at the flowers as they rattled in her cold shadow. “Do I really have a spirit, Spike?”

He reached over and planted a hand on her shoulder, smiling. “I'll show you.”

It used to be the Ponyville Skating Rink, a large warehouse of a building where weekend ponies would spend laughable hours rotating the elliptical arena on wheeled hooves in each other's merry company. Beyond the Cataclysm, under the careful alterations of a purple draconian steward, the place had transformed into something else entirely, something beautiful.

Scootaloo stood in a gaping stupor, her eyes reflecting a veritable labyrinth of hanging plants, flower beds, blooming vines, fragrant wreathes, and bowing fruit trees. The luscious vegetation grew joyfully in a naturalistic splash of life across the retrofitted interior of the warehouse. In place of infinitely looping skating platforms there were now gigantic basins of granite that housed soil, moisture, and enough room for several hundred species of flora to flourish.

The fragrant, dew-laden Eden shimmered with green and pastel colors, all the while shimmering beneath one single light source: a gigantic mirror that hung on suspended chains along the ceiling. The vertically hung sheet of glass was framed with gold and crested all along its circumference with ornamented bands of solar swirls. To her heart's stuttering amazement, the last pony immediately recognized the looking-glass from an illustration she had seen in a book scavenged from the Royal Palace of Canterlot. It was none other than—

“Princess Celestia's chamber mirror,” Spike murmured as he strolled mightily past Scootaloo and raised his upper body to once more reignite the manatorches flanking the dangling artifact. “For countless millennia, it served as the sole means by which a retiring Goddess could regard her blinding visage. After so many Ages of basking in the aura of the Bringer of the Sun, it's only natural that some of her glory still resides in it. And, when properly stimulated, it still resonates with her majestic glow—like an immaculate seashell having captured the heart of an ocean.”

The dragon lowered and took a deep breath, gazing proudly at his indoor preserve which basked in the gentle golden rays emanating from the spotless mirror.

“It took several breathless moments—on multiple occasions between my time-jumps—to capture bits of the dying world on the day after the Cataclysm. But everything I managed to salvage I brought here, and the mirror in turn. It took the combined effort of over ten of my past selves to construct this terrarium, piece by piece, but I do believe the labor was worth it. So long as I am alive, I shall look after this living monument to the past. It's the least that I can do. And I'm sure you can relate, Scootaloo, when I say that the least we can do for the Wastelands is ironically the most that we can do.”

“It's amazing, Spike,” she murmured breathlessly. Her brown coat and scarlet eyes stood out like a pale shadow against the screaming colors engulfing her as she trotted across green ground and red mulch. “Half of these things I've already forgotten about.” She squinted as a bizarre insect surged past her, filling the air with a raspy buzz. She squinted long and hard in confusion until she witnessed the thing nestle itself within the crimson bud of a rose. “Bees,” she half-giggled in a queer breath. “I've forgotten about bees...”

“Don't agitate them, child, or else you'll learn that they've not forgotten you.” Spike suddenly darted his snout every which way, looking desperately for something. “Oh, blast, did I forget to bring a mana-prysm? Where is my mind, these days?” Suddenly, the elder dragon lurched. In a wretching motion, he belched forth a plume of green smoke—and out from the flames there dropped a glass container magically into his palm. “Ah! Heheh—Well, that was awfully thoughtful of myself.”

Scootaloo blinked at the container. “Uhm...”

“I brought you here, old friend, to test something.” He strolled over towards her with the tiny jar in his scaled hand. “Though I suppose one could say that the sudden trip I sent you on at Sugarcube Corner was a necessary test in and of itself—But right now I desire to perform an experiment that will hopefully illuminate our situation to a desired degree of clarity and... and...” He blinked suddenly at his lone pony companion. “Scootaloo? Do you see something of interest?”

“As a matter of fact, I friggin' do.” The Wasteland wanderer stumbled up to something that stood out against the pristine oasis. In the center of the transformed skating rink there rested a meter-high hourglass positioned atop a silver platform. Inside the top and bottom glass cases of the thing a bizarre phenomenon was transpiring. At one moment, there was a brilliant plume of violet-blue flowers in the bottom glass. Then, in a blink, the flowers withered and faded to ash—while an identical pile of ashes in the top glass coalesced oppositely into a separate bouquet of violet flowers. Another beat, and the top bouquet withered into dead matter as the ashes in the bottom half of the hourglass grew back at fast-forward. This revolution would proceed infinitely, with opposite jars of the hourglass possessing interchangeably dying and growing flowers in a timely crafted cycle.

“Do you like them?” Spike was suddenly standing above and behind her on his haunches.

She jumped slightly, locking a trembling gaze on the hourglassed cycle. “I'd pay a hundred thousand bars of silver to understand it before I even contemplated freaking out.”

He smiled. “I melted the glass out of Green Flame—the two halves at alternating frequencies. The result is that both are balanced in a flux of time and reverse-time, acting off each other like opposite swings of a pendulum.” The dragon pointed astutely with a glistening claw. “The flowers in each jar are experiencing quantum shifts—forward and reverse—kept in flux by the equal energy of its sibling. I could never have possibly conceived of manufacturing this thing when I first set upon my experiments. But by the ninth occasion that I rode reverse-time back to the Cataclysm, I felt it was appropriate to artistically express just how far I had come along in my research. I frankly never expected to show it to anyone.” Spike gave a warm smile. “But then you came along.”

“And, what, this garden wasn't artistic enough?” She laughed nervously, her eyes still locked on the immortal back-and-forth of the flowers and ashes before her. A soft breath escaped her. “They're... Th-they're beautiful, Spike. Uhm...” She bit her lip ashamedly. “What are they? The fl-flowers, that is.”

“Lavenders,” Spike said. “Very fragrant—As sweet smelling as they are for gazing at.”

“Everything in this place is gorgeous, Spike. But why frame lavenders? What's so special about them?”

“Oh...” The immense dragon's jaws curved into a gentle, iron smile. “They were the favorite of one delightful pony I knew. She was the most resplendent and elegant unicorn in all of Equestria, a mare who set this young whelp's heart a'flutter, long-long ago.” His aged eyeslits narrowed on the dying-and-sprouting twin bouquets as they cast a faded blue hue across his scales. “Having them here, in limbo like this, means that I can appreciate them forever, as I will appreciate her forever. And, one day, when I am long gone, my ashes will dissolve; but these flowers will outlast me, and perhaps her memory will in turn.”

Something long neglected inside the mare's iron-wrought heart fractured briefly, and she let forth a bursting sigh. Making up for it, she smiled bravely up at him and murmured in a wavering voice: “I am most certain she would appreciate that, Spike.”

“Hmmm—She was always an avid appraiser of all things beautiful.” He produced a long breath, then smirked down towards the pony. “And she would thrash you within an inch of your life for so savagely curtailing your own gifts, child!”

“My what-now?” Scootaloo briefly blinked, then blushed. “Oh.” She ran a foreleg over the violet stubble lingering on the back of her neck. “There aren't many frickin' beauty pageants in the Wastelands, not like I was ever into keeping my looks up when I was a little foal anyways. Besides...” She sighed. “My hair has made far better use as insulators and filaments for chemical runecrafting.”

“I completely understand,” Spike nodded. “Though it makes my test here that much harder.” He cleared his smoking throat and smiled politely. “Would it be much of a bother if I asked you to part with one your eyelashes?”

“I beg your pardon?” Scootaloo made a face.

“I promise it won't hurt,” the elder dragon bowed. “And you've suffered enough lately for me to ever bother asking for a blood sample.”

“Eyelash it is.” Scootaloo stood up towards him and softly closed her eyes. “Just be careful where you point those claws of yours.”

“I always am, child,” his voice came closer as a pair of claws lit up under a green exhale. Effortlessly, the gentle dragon plucked a hair from her face and dropped it into the jar.

Scootaloo fluttered her eyes open in time to see the dragon breathe a plume of emerald fire into the glass container. The bright green tongues billowed around the near-indiscernible eyelash as he swiftly closed the jar, twisted it shut, and raised the glowing thing up towards the center of Princess Celestia's mirror. The glass at the top of the ceiling projected a beam of light through the jar—shining through the combined essences of dragon and pony—and out the other side of the prism there refracted a dazzling array of moving pictures framed by billowing green waves of magic.

The last pony watched with mesmerizing disbelief as several memories of her life were being replayed before her in a spinning array of images. A grand, gray kaleidoscope of twenty-five years of Wasteland exile flickered before the two of them. She saw a playback of a drunken ogre harassing her in front of Pitt at the Monkey O'Dozen Den, a goggled rodent smiling from across the hazy interior of his airship, and even a lonely pony reading Princess Celestia's Journal in a swaying hammock under lanternlight.

“Ah—So I was right!” Spike suddenly beamed as he pointed his free finger towards the floating image of a pony lighting up a lattice of prismatic light beams. “You are the source of that rainbow beacon! For years, I've pondered over the source of it, unable to give up my experimentations to investigate closelyHmmm... what other creature in the Wasteland besides a pony would produce something so magnificent?” He smiled and winked her way. “It was in good faith, you see, that I erupted random bits of green flame over the rooftops of Ponyville, figuring that it would attract you in turn.”

“Dang right it did...” Scootaloo numbly droned, still overwhelmed by the spinning kaleidoscope of her memories that were rotating before her. There were so many moments, so many lonely scavenger hunts, so many gray trips into desolation, so many brushes with death—and yet they all looked the same, were colored with the same lifeless hue. A lump formed slowly in her throat.

“Hello...” Spike's eyes narrowed on the cackling face of Gilliam. The Dirigible Dog's metal-plated skull floated translucently between the two of them. “Who's this handsome creature?”

“More like who was that handsome creature,” Scootaloo spat before a clearing of her throat. “Uhm, Spike—Do you mind? I-I'm not entirely enthused about looking at all of these... again.”

“Oh, by all means,” he nodded and gave the jar a little shake as he lowered it from the shimmering face of Celestia's mirror above.

The images were replaced with memories from nearly twenty years ago. A pony with a brighter coat and softer eyes was seen hammering together the pieces of the Harmony, crafting moonrocks, constructing the signal lattice, shaving the hair off her mane and tail. With another shake, Spike lowered the jar further from the preserved sunlight. The spinning images flickered, flickered—then briefly roared with a red flame as Scootaloo's essence leaped the Cataclysmic bridge.

“Yes—There we are.” Suddenly, all the images shone with vibrant color. An orange filly with bright violet eyes rocketed across the shimmering lengths of Ponyville atop a scooter. Dozens of colorful faces smiled into view, of crusaders, of mentors, of friendly strangers and bright smiles. There were rivers, there were mountains, there were clouds—and there was a sky, a blue sky. Finally there flickered forth the laughing and grinning faces of ponies, of foals and blank flanks, of a forest and a clubhouse, of blue feathers and a rainbow mane—

In a flash, the lights all vanished. Scootaloo sharply inhaled the vacuum left behind them, and her eyes twitched moistly to see the green oasis coalesce back into view, buckling slightly from the very real and gray world lurching outside. She was almost too numb to register the words coming from Spike next:

“It is as I thought. I'm able to get glimpses into the past from your essence.Alas, they are nothing more than glimpses, and all subjective to your foalish days in Ponyville.This means that there is much experimentation to be done, especially since the others at my disposal provide us with nothing...”

Scootaloo gulped, rubbed her face with a foreleg, and gazed at him. “The others, Spike?The other what?”

“The samples—The remains of all the ponies who have died before you, child,” Spike said. He handed the smoking jar to Scootaloo, who merely gazed at the smoldering ashen bits of her eyelash inside the container. “Using my green flame as a telescope, I've attempted looking into the past beyond the day of the Cataclysm through which I cannot time travel. To do this, I've required the essences and ashes of dead ponies as a reagent. But your essence—that of a living pony—transcends the Cataclysmic blockade while the others give me nothing but static. If nothing else, your venture to Cheerilee's schoolyard confirms it.As of now, I have no doubt whatsoever.”

Scootaloo gazed confusedly at him as he walked across the lengths of the garden. “N-No doubt of what, Spike?”

“That you can go where I cannot,” he stated matter-of-factly as he strolled over towards a crate full of gardening tools and other supplies on the broad side of the overgrown warehouse. “Because you are the last living pony, I can send you back to a time before the Cataclysm by anchoring the essence of your soul—your soul-self—to the ponies that were just as alive then as you are now. Granted, even that will have limits.” He effortlessly opened a heavy crate with his massive limbs and rummaged through it. “For instance, I will only be able to send you back to the years when I was alive, and within range of the ponies whose souls I was in constant contact with. Ms. Cheerilee is one such example. Because you're alive now, and she was alive then—your common pony essence can make contact, bridging the gap in magic that the Cataclysm sliced when it ended the lives of Celestia and Luna.” He smiled victoriously as he produced a familiar glass jar from the crate. With a hot breath, he covered the container in green flame, sending it back to five minutes ago. “It's only fitting, Scootaloo, that you can venture back to a time where I can't.”

The last pony glanced at the identical jar in her grasp. In a nervous jolt, she dropped it to the garden floor like it was the plague and gazed shakily at the dragon before her. “M-me? Spike, I-I don't know. This is all too... t-too... Nnngh!” She clasped her head in two hooves, fought away the urge to hyperventilate, and all but snarled: “I mean, what the hay, Spike?! Suddenly I can go into the past?! Just like that?”

“It's hardly a development that happened overnight, Scootaloo,” he gazed calmly at her as he strolled back on aging haunches. “To come to this point of epiphany, I had to undergo countless years of magical and mathematical calculations. You are quite simply the missing key I needed to make the journey complete. How ironic is it that the last pony alive would fit into such a puzzle?”

“Ironic?” Scootaloo balked at him. “Maybe it all fits together just fine for you! You, who have spent eons lurking about in caves and laboratories trying to piece this whole mess together! But I've spent barely a fraction of those years trying to deal with just how everypony I've ever cared for died, knowing full well that there was not a single dang thing I could do about it!” She sighed heavily and rested a pair of hooves on one of his arms. “Spike, you can't possibly ask me to do this! Haven't I had enough weight on my shoulders?”

“And what do you think it is that I'm asking of you, child?”

She gulped and gave him a hollow expression, something of mix horror and excitement. “Y-you want me to go back into the past... and change all that has happened, somehow, don't you?”

The last pony was surprised to see how swiftly and solemnly he shook his head. “No, old friend. That is not what I am asking of you.”

“It's n-not?”

“Because the past cannot be changed, Scootaloo. The Cataclysm—in all of its monumental horror and dread—must happen, no matter what you or I do.”

The air of the garden collapsed instantly. Not even the insects buzzed overhead. Celestia's mirror seemed a lot dimmer as Scootaloo's tired scarlet eyes wandered the room in an aimless lurch. Soon, her gaze fell back onto Spike and she murmured in a foalish whine: “But why?”

“Because time is immutable, child.”

“Immutable? How do you mean?”

Spike inhaled deeply. A gentle breath, and he clasped a hand softly over her shoulders. “Here. Walk with me.”

Once more, the soft snow and ash of the wasteland fell coldly on Scootaloo's coat, christening her. She sat her bandaged self atop Spike's broad backside, resting as he gently strolled through the decaying ruins and wounded vistas of Ponyville. Shattered buildings and splintered trees drifted softly past them as the purple dragon carried the lone pony over the fossils of yesteryear.

“Tell me, Scootaloo, with the knowledge from your years of roaming the skies and reading—Who are the Six Alicorn Sisters?”

“Seriously?” She raised a humored eyebrow and smirked at his green neckcrests. “You want me to recite that kindergarten lesson?”

“Humor me, if you would,” he half-chuckled.

The brown-coated mare took a deep breath. Her scarlet eyes scanned an invisible book as she recited emotionlessly to the ashen air, “The Six Alicorn Sisters—as everypony knows—are the divine Alicorn daughters of the Goddess Epona, who ascended to the stars in the Cosmic Exodus after the death of Epona's mate, the God Consus, a celestial stallion whose passing brought about the end of the First Age.”

“And who were the six Alicorns specifically...?”

Scootaloo stirred, then laid herself down atop Spike's bobbing shoulders and monotonously went on: “The Goddesses of Prosperity: Princess Celestia and Princess Luna stayed on earth to oversee the rising of the Sun and Moon over the land of Equestria. The other Four Sisters would leave halfway through the Second Age much like their Cosmic Mother Queen Epona, though their essences remained in the physical world. The first two were the Goddesses of Elements: Princess Elektra, the Goddess of the Land, and Princess Nebula, the Goddess of the Firmaments. The other two were the Goddesses of Law: Princess Gultophine, the Goddess of Life...”

“And who else?”

The last pony blinked, her brown ears twitching in sudden interest as she heard herself murmur: “Princess Entropa, the Goddess of Time.”

“Ah, so you do recollect her.” Spike's snout flexed as the result of a hidden smile. “I'm proud of all the knowledge you've retained, child. You are far from the upstart little foal that used to forsake trips to the library for zip-lining her way through the Everfree Forest.”

Scootaloo produced a bitter smirk as she gently rested her cheek against his back. “You're not the only one who's changed, Spike.”

“Still—It is quite important that you understand the part Princess Entropa plays in the fabric of time,” the dragon spoke as he strolled the two of them across the shattered womb of Ponyville. “She may be a Goddess in perpetual Exodus, like her mother Queen Epona. But she is far from utterly detached. Her essence still animates the flow of time, maintaining it as a law, but not just any law. It is an immutable law. Time cannot be changed. It can be traversed, much like a sailor crosses an ocean. But you cannot convert that ocean into something else. Even when traveling the currents of reverse-time as I have mastered, there is no alteration to time itself. As a consequence, there is no way to change the cause-and-effect of events as managed by time. We cannot go back and prevent the Cataclysm from happening, for it was the tragedy of the Cataclysm itself that gave anyone impetus to time travel in the first place. Changing the Cataclysm would not only be a paradox of logic, but it would be an abomination of Princess Entropa's sacred law, which is simultaneously her essence. What has transpired—no matter how tragic—must remain immutable.”

“But if Princess Entropa's law is so sacred, why would she let something so horrible happen—And to her sisters of all ponies?!” Scootaloo suddenly moaned. “Wouldn't she want living things like us to—I dunno—intervene on behalf of Equestria and stop the Cataclysm from ever happening to begin with?”

“That's a very noble question, child,” Spike's neck bowed. His shoulders briefly stopped lurching as his body came to a stop. “Scootaloo, take a look before us. Do you see where we are?”

Blinking curiously, Scootaloo crawled up to her hooves and trotted a few meters along his neck. As soon as her vision rounded the green crests of his skull, she froze. The mare saw before the two of them an array of dull white stones splotched across a thick, black mound of earth in the center of Ponyville. For all of the cataclysmic horrors that shook the terrain of her home, she was almost as amazed as she was heart-broken to be presently staring at a remarkably well-preserved cemetery, a place that she had rarely ventured to in her foalish years.

“There's always been death in Equestria,” she murmured into the misty air. “I think I see where you're going with this, Spike. Why didn't Entropa intervene on their behalf?”

“Perhaps because it was Gultophine's job to monitor the passage of souls into the great beyond,” Spike somberly nodded. “Or perhaps because Entropa—as a Goddess of Law—necessitated being a princess of neutrality. Whatever the case, our mutual need to question her motive only highlights our mortal nature. Earth ponies gifted in the knowledge of medicine and unicorns employing various talents in mysticism had struggled for millennia to construct countermeasures for death, but they could never in any fashion prevent it. Otherwise, all of these stones here would have been replaced with immortals to this very day.” He turned and gazed over his shoulder at Scootaloo with dim green eyeslits. “Similarly have I—in three hundred years of optimistic searching—attempted to find a way to change the sway of time. And like so many other Equestrian physicians before me, I have failed.”

“But did you at least even try, Spike?” Scootaloo gazed back at him. “Granted, I know you couldn't go back far enough to experiment before the Cataclysm—But in this timeline? In the Fourth Age, surely you had to have tried to change history!”

“An astute assumption on your part,” Spike said with a nod. He turned away from the cemetery and marched back into the depths of Ponyville while the pony settled once more onto the square of his back. “I did experiment, Scootaloo. After my sixth and seventh trips on reverse-time, I performed many acts of blind sabotage on my past selves to see if my interference could alter my present condition in any fashion. What I discovered was that on every single occasion some coincidental event would either catastrophically undo all of my manipulations or else ironically link my affectations to real circumstances that my past selves had chronicled as having happened.”

“Were they all blind experiments?” Scootaloo asked, all the while rubbing her aching head. “Did you ever—Oh, I dunno—try talking to your past self?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

The pony blinked. She nervously chirped: “H-how did that go?”

“Boringly, considering I remembered everything that was asked or answered. A deep discourse with time's doppelgangers doesn't afford any deviance from the immutable truth that confounds us today, Scootaloo. Though, I must admit...” he smiled as a whelpish shade of yesteryear bubbled briefly to the surface of his adult purple scales. “You've never lived until you've played a game of hide-and-seek with your chronological double.”

“So then, that proves it?” Scootaloo murmured defeatedly. “After so many repeated experiments—This is what we have to work with? Could... uhh... could the Cataclysm be somehow different, Spike? Or could I be somehow different?—Because my pony essence allows me to go into the past further than yourself? Maybe time won't be unchangeable for me! Maybe—” Her voice cut off at the sight of him briefly twisting his neck about to gaze sadly at her with a shaking head.

“What I calculated, what I tested, and what I experienced, Scootaloo, is something that can be explained, but never shared. Not directly, at least,” he murmured and faced ahead once more. “But, suffice it to say, it laid in concrete a truth that I could no longer deny. The past can be visited, it can be witnessed, and it can even be supported—But no, child, it cannot be changed. What dies must remain dead. What lives must remain living. It has been that way since the twilight years before the First Age, in the blossoming days of creation, when all that was One split into the forces of Harmony and Discord, and everything has remained necessarily dichotomous since.”

“It's just so... so unfair,” the brown-haired mare murmured. Spike brought the two of them into the skeletal hovel of an old garden behind a hollowed-out restaurant. He let her down with a gentle arm as she trotted forlornly past a cluster of large mushrooms and gazed into a statue of merry foals frozen in mid-gallop. “Why would we be granted the ability to move back and forth in time when we can't even make a difference from it?”

“Why do things live to dream and desire—but only to have death as their ultimate fate?” Spike socratically replied as he settled down against a wall overgrown with burnt brambles. “These are the tests of mortals—We can only question them as we live them.”

“Like I said,” she sighed and squatted down onto a cracked marble bench. “It's unfair.” Her nostrils flared as her scarlet eyes fluttered over the snowy ground. “All I have from the past, Spike, are happy memories and regrets. The memories are happy because they remind me that I used to be something that mattered in a living world. The regrets are always there because I know that the memories will only ever be just that—memories. But now that you and I have reunited, you're telling me that I can relive those memories? Just why in the heck I would want to do that, Spike? At least when I had the tiniest bit of hope that I might not have been the last pony, memories had meaning to them. Now they're just the same dead end as the future is to me. The past is meaningless now.”

“I wouldn't go so far as to say that, child.” He smiled gently towards her. His face and breath surged with a bizarre enchantment of pride and admiration, shaking her to her core. “Something cannot be meaningless and yet hold so many answers.”

“Like what answers?”

“Answers to questions that are as lost to my three hundred years of contemplation as they are to your twenty-five years of courage.” His eyes narrowed and his deep bass voice rumbled: “What caused the Cataclysm? What consumed the lives of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna? Did anypony foresee the holocaust to come? Why is it that all the ponies died, but there are still living creatures meandering across the shadows of the Equestrian kingdom?”

“You had a good guess earlier, Spike,” Scootaloo murmured. “If something attacked the essence of ponies, then maybe that's why they turned to ash. But it doesn't explain why I'm here.”

“You may yet be able to find out,” Spike said with a smile. “We may both be able to find out. But it involves a brave experiment, with journeys that I am not capable of taking—You are. In the past, Scootaloo, there are more than memories and regrets. If I may dare say so, there are answers. But, most of all, there could be healing.”

“Healing?” Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. With a bitter raspberry she shook her head and gazed up towards the dim twilight hanging like an ancient ghost above the dead world. “Do I look like an expert on healing?”

“There's always a place to start, child,” Spike said. “If not for you, then for Equestria.”

Her ears pricked at that. She glanced aside. “For Equestria? How do you mean, Spike?”

“If we can ascertain what it was that caused the Cataclysm—what it was that ended the Goddesses of Prosperity—then we may be able in our current age to find a way to reverse the damage that has been done. Though ponydom is gone forever, Scootaloo, we may yet find a way to bring light back to this land of death and darkness, much like I was able to construct that fabulous garden that mesmerized you earlier.”

“You mean there might be a way to bring the Sun and Moon back,” Scootaloo thought aloud, her eyes blankly wandering the garden around them. “It would be a bright Equestria... only no Equestrians.” She gulped. “Is that really the best outlook we can afford ourselves here, Spike?”

“I did say you could do with some healing, old friend,” he chuckled.

She groaned. “Spike, please—It's not my place.” She slumped forward on the marble bench and sighed. “Not now, not then, not ever.”

“Isn't it?” He leaned his snout to the side and gazed at her sharply. “You are an intelligent, crafty, responsible, and tender-hearted individual, Scootaloo. Even underneath that rough, shaved exterior, you are everything your race has ever endeared itself through the Ages to be. Do not let two and a half decades of tragedy and pain disguise the legend that you have become. You are not only the end of ponies, but the epitome of them.” A gentle exhale, and his face turned melancholic. “Do I honestly, truly think that sending you back will absolutely grant us the ability to undo the curse that has robbed night-and-day from the wastes of Equestria?” He slowly shook his snout. “No, Scootaloo. I do not. But I do know this—You are the last pony. And before you die—and you will someday die, like all of your friends and kin have done before you—would any other soul deserve no less a chance to revisit that which gave her breath, that which gave her purpose, that which gave her the memories of hope—and not regret—to become this amazing creature which you so mightily are right now?”

“I can't say, Spike.” Her voice choked as she struggled for an answer. “What you're asking of me is to attend a funeral for which there will never be a eulogy—Even if I was the one to write it. Because no matter what I do, it all ends with me.”

“Which is why I advise this of you instead.” He stood up on his haunches and paced across the garden. “Leave Ponyville.”

She blinked wildly. “Wh-what?”

“Leave,” he said, gazing softly back at her. “Take off in your splendid airship, spend time inside the womb of Harmony, do what you normally do in the clouds above the wastes. Live out your life like you've always lived it these last two decades. But most of all, do not return until the end of the next coming stormfront. And then... you may come back to me, and—if you wish and only if you wish—I will send you back to the days before dying, and we can write that eulogy together, Scootaloo.” He grinned warmly. “What do you say... ?”

The last pony stared back at her old friend, at the purple shades of the past standing like a surreal ghost before her. And for the briefest of moments, the snow cleared, and in his emerald eyeslits she saw the reflection of a tiny filly, its violet eyes bright and its pink mane fluttering in a draconian twinkle.

There grew something akin to a foalish smile, and Scootaloo breathed: “I'm liking this idea.”

Chapter Eight: Live to Die

Several hours later, somewhere in the bubbling gray clouds of the Central Heights, the Harmony vibrated with the wilting chords of Octavia's melancholic strings. The last pony sat at her work bench with her back to the crackling record player. With her hooves entwined in cylindrical tool braces, she proceeded to fix and tinker the battered copper rifle that she had retrieved from the depths of Ponyville's town hall. As one cello suite bled beautifully into another, she briefly looked up from her diligent engineering and spotted a blurred mirror hanging from a nob below the shelves where she kept her multicolored gems.

Only the barest, upper-left corner of the mirror provided a decent reflection. From beyond a rusted fog, a thirty-three year old mare with a brown coat and tired scarlet eyes shyly came out from hiding. She blinked at her weathered self, noticing the lines beneath her eyes, the nicked and bruised skin that flanked her ears. Finally, she tilted her snout to the side and studied her neck, squinting at a thin forest of violet stubble that came out coarsely to kiss the lantern-lit air of the airship's cabin. She ran a tool-braced hoof over the mane, feeling the tiny stalks, briefly imagining them giving birth to a long dead curtain of pink threads waving gracefully outward from her slender form.

But in a final blink, the shadow of Scootaloo disappeared, replaced once more with the last pony, her fine orange coat having bristled into brown ruggedness, her violet eyes having paled to a bitter scarlet. The rusted air encompassed her like a dried butterfly in a specimen jar. She sighed, and as Octavia's record began skipping at the end of its instrumental, she hung her head towards her half-built weapon and lingered on the images fluttering across her mind.

Journal Entry # 2,352

Today... something happened.

Scootaloo grunted and swung the axe in her teeth's grip one last time. With a mighty crunching noise, the two-meter tall mushroom fell down into a flurry of powdery ash. She dropped to her knees to scrape the edible material out of the hollow of the gigantic fungus, when a flurry of tiny insects swarmed over her in a skittering black blanket. Yelping, she fell back and swung her hooves wildly, fighting a legion of shadowy trolls in her mind.

With a gasp, she opened her eyes wide to see once more a harmless forest of gigantic mushrooms waiting to be cut down. The insects had all scattered, and she was once more alone.

Sighing, she gazed into the hollow of the fungus, disdainfully observing the colony of paper husks that had long filled the spoiled stalk. With a woeful groan, the pony dragged her axe towards the next giant mushroom, and in the shadow of the tethered Harmony she proceeded to hack away at the withered structure.

I have been made an offer. I have been given an opportunity to literally go into the past, to venture into a warm and colorful world that my mind has preserved but my heart has forgotten over these many gray years. And yet, there is no hope for changing anything with this “gift.” There is only the past, the damnable dying past.

The best that all of this potential experimentation can do is end the twilight that hangs above the lengths and widths of Equestria. The worst it can do is probably the only thing it can do—and that's reopen so many festering wounds hiding deep underneath my coat that I shudder to even contemplate them.

What would it be like to see Fluttershy again? Or Applejack? Or Sweetie Bell or Apple Bloom or ... Rainbow Dash?

In the days after ponies died, I've had my life saved twice. Once by Rainbow, and a second time just now by Spike—as he royally trashed the trolls that had ambushed me in Ponyville. In many ways, my whole life—twenty-five years in the Wastes, so I've discovered—has been one gigantic service to the one blue pegasus who saved me, the one pony I have always believed in, and in some ways still do. Does this mean that I owe Spike all the same? I know he obviously doesn't mean to obligate me in such a manner—But how far is he willing to go compared to how far I am able to go?

This is assuming, of course, that I am going anywhere at all.

One day, Scootaloo tore her way through a splintering door. She pierced the center of an abandoned apartment complex along the downtown stretch of Baltimare. As gray filtered light seeped in through the mildewed windows, she spotted several equine corpses lying in a tight circle in the center of a living room. Trotting over to them, she nudged a few bones with her hoof until she finally found what she needed—a unicorn skull.

Squatting down besides the skeleton, she extended a blade from her horseshoe and planted it at the base of the body's horn. It wasn't until half a minute later that Scootaloo realized she hadn't yet begun carving the dead stub off. A deep pale glow washed over her, and she swallowed a lump down her throat.

With a shuddering sigh, she lifted her goggles off her head and ran a hoof over her moistening eyes. She stared miserably past the bodies and at a heap of belongings that had fallen out of a trunk, spilling onto the floor. She saw scattered utensils, toys, Equestrian stationary, and—finally—a pile of faded photographs with several smiling and living faces poised eternally, staring back at her as she lingered over the same family's discarded husks a few meters away.

The legacy of ponydom has given me so much that I have used over the decades. It is only right that I find a way to give back to it. But how does that stack up when all that could possibly change is the bright face of Equestria itself, an Equestrian future with no ponies in it?

I only wished to be a survivor, and perhaps to reunite with some other stray members of my own kind. Now that I know—thanks to Spike—that I am indeed the last pony that will ever breathe, what point is there in trying to bring light to a world with no pure eyes remaining to judge it? It's like a tree that falls alone in the forest—But how selfish of a presumption is that on my part?

What right do I have—or Spike for that matter—to determine how we memorialize this world, when we've done so much to pilfer from it? Does the fact that we're the last living things to care about it all excuse us being the last souls to make something of it?—Even if for the sake of making something?

Scootaloo yanked on the lever and her signal fired its prismatic beams into the air above the stony plateau. The multicolored spectrum pierced the cloudy overcast in a burning swath, but the lingering twilight above remained unphased. The snow and ash was still falling, the mist still covering the circle of metal barricades in an infinite rust. Under the shadow of the Harmony, a disenchanted Scootaloo marched up towards the signal, propped herself onto two hooves with her shoulder leaning against her rifle, and stuck her left limb into the burning beams of light.

The sky briefly strobed as her hoof floated lazily from red to green to indigo and softly back. She watched with momentary fascination as the lights bumped and wavered with each other, but ultimately remained rigidly divided into the seven artificial hues, as directed by Scootaloo's flamestone that shot beams of light into the strategically placed gems.

The last pony tilted her snout up and watched with a sudden boredom, observing the glistening heights of her once-treasured beacon. It was exactly what it always had been, a message to dead ponies. Being the only one to read what the signal had to say made Scootaloo feel dead as well, because she knew where this rainbow began, and could spot with her naked eyes the lingering twilight above where it ultimately ended.

I was sent back in time. Ever so briefly, I tasted of the past. I saw a rainbow—And it was real. I could not see where it began, and I could not see where it ended. I didn't care. It gave me hope, like I always knew it would. But only now do I really understand where that hope stems from.

Hope is a disease, an affliction to all living beings. The only thing sentient creatures such as ponies had ever accomplished was dying, and yet we had always clung to hope. This perhaps made sense in an Age when Goddesses walked the fields of Equestria—But now? Princess Celestia's eternal life ran out. When she and Luna vanished, all that was left was the decaying wasteland of mortality, forever festering in the unburied penumbra of her shadow.

Perhaps that's the way it has always been, and what brought about the explosive end to the Goddesses of Prosperity was not an unknown curse—like Spike suggested—but a self-destructive realization that the Goddesses themselves discovered when it was too late: that life is absurd, that it's always been absurd, even for them.

“The Mountain Ogres suffered another setback,” said the komodo dragon over his mug of ale.His goggles reflected the lanternlight of the M.O.D.D. as he took a sip, belched, and leaned over the table.“Their explosive cache along the east front of the Valley of Jewels caught aflame.The explosion could be felt all the way to the Northern Wastes.There's rumor of sabotage.”

“I wouldn'ttttt put it past the Fire Ogresssss,” the dirigible dog replied with a fanged smirk.“Those heartlessssss bastards are gonna win the war!Probably because they're heartless!”

“Or perhaps because they're cunning enough to fight for Mount Ogreton with zeal.”

“Feh!” the goblin at the table grunted, rotating his mug in tiny hands.His frown was a venomous thing.“Fire Ogres... Mountain Ogres... they're all the same!Ruthless, motherless slavers, I tell you...”

“Hah!” The reptile smirked.“You're one to talk!”

“Yeah, and you're one to sit on a steam propeller and rotate!”Sneering, the goblin flung his mug at the lizard's skull.

“Gahh!”Bleeding, the lizard coiled his tail, sprang, and pounced on the goblin.The two creatures' ensuing scuffle smashed through the table as the dirgible dog leaned back with his pint and guffawed.

Across the Monkey O'Dozen Den, the last pony sat at the bar in a dull slump.Scootaloo's tired scarlet eyes swam over the grime and stains of the countertop as Pitt strolled up, sighing towards the distant fight.

“I'd pray to the monkey gods for one of those three to go extinct, but for the life of me I can't pick one and be happy with it.”He filled a mug with a sudsy beverage and smirked the mare's way.“It's a good thing I don't live out on the Wasteland, or else I'd be killing everything that moves just for some peace and quiet.”

“Instead you're killing everything that comes here with your drinks,” Scootaloo muttered.

“Guess that explains why you ain't extinct,” he said while sliding the mug towards the patron next to her.“You don't even have a tab.”He wiped his hairy palms clean on a rag and raised a moth-eaten eyebrow.“What in Mother Feces' name are you still doing here anyways, Harmony?You paid for your lousy steam catridges, didn't ya?Normally you would have hopped into your floating fart vessel and blown this popsicle joint by now.”

She sighed long and hard.“Suddenly, there's nowhere to go, Pitt.”She gulped, continuing to stare into nothingness.“There's nothing to explore...”

“Pardon me for being a stick in the ash, but when did you ever have anyplace to go, four legs?”

Scootaloo slowly pivoted to bequeath him her deadpan stare.

He smirked.“There are few lively things left in this crap-heap of a world, and you hardly count.I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Harmony, but there really aren't any other saddle-bearing hay-jobs left to gallop circles with, now are there?”

Her nostrils flared.“Pitt, tell me...”She leaned against the bar, squinting her scarlet eyes.“You have eleven brothers, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

“You think you'll be lucky some stormfront to have a zeppelin fly by and magically deposit eleven sisters for you and yoru kind to copulate with?”

“As intriguing as this raunchy conversation is, exactly where are you trotting with it, sweet-cheeks?”

She gulped and said, “What would you do, Pitt, if you knew—beyond the shadow of a doubt—that you were the very last of your kind?”

His nose crests undulated with a deep breath.The balding baboon dropped the rag to the floor and leaned forward to stare fixedly at her.“I would die, Harmony,” Pitt murmured.“And I would keep on dying the way I wanted to die, alone and proud.”His uneven eyes swam lethargically over the Den, brushing past the images of drunken souls and miserable faces and the great gray mist seeping in from the outside wastes to drown it all.“Does any of this look like a place worth living in?”He gazed at the floor and muttered, “Someday, we'll all be extinct, and the ash will have the last laugh.”

She said nothing as he picked up a tray of empty cups and strolled towards the rear of the bar.

“The trick, I suppose...”Pitt tilted his head back towards her with a smirk.“Is ending everything with a worthy punchline.”

And as much as I rationalize to myself the pointlessness of it all—painting a far bleaker picture than I had ever imagined in all of my most bitter of dark-lit scavengings—why is it that I cannot shake the rainbow out of my head, the real rainbow, the real rainbow that I saw with my own eyes?

If hope is a disease, and all it will ever lead me to is misery and self-annihilation, when why do I cling to it so? Why does it make me excited, like I am starved? Why does it always plant me steadily upon this knifing precipice of—dare I say it—joy?

“Why so emoquine, Harmony?”

Scootaloo stared listlessly through a green haze of smoke, her scarlet eyes unwavering. There was a shuffling movement besides her, and a furred paw waved obligatorily before her face.

“Hello? Customer of most esteemed appreciation? Is old Equestrian joke, da? Vhy so glum, pony friend?”

She snapped out of it. She pivoted to glance across the merchant vessel and threw a faded smile the flying squirrel's way. “S-Sorry, Bruce. I've just got a lot on my mind, that's all. What were you offering again?”

“Is more than pony's mind. Brucie thinks it is stomach—or another organ close to it. Hopefully not part of pony sensitive to cancer stick, nyet?” He chuckled under green goggles, flicked his cigar some, and continued showing off a pair of leather bands as their dual ships bobbed in the air, docked to one another. “Forty strips each—Dual reinforced dragonskin! Finest from vhat remains of Zebraharan mountains—”

“No—No!” The mare briefly snarled, shook a shuddering breath off her, and paced across the racks of wares. “Thanks, Bruce. I know that I need new armor, but... anything but dragon leather, if you don't mind.”

“Pray tell Brucie why? Date with sky serpent, pony plans? Bah!” He tossed the thick bands into a pile of collapsing metal knick-knacks while snapping his tiny paws. “Brucie can do something better!” He kicked off a bulkhead, glided over to a coat of armor, and gruntingly lifted a breastplate in his quivering limbs. “Nnnghh—Best in ramcraft! Fashioned out of tempered titanium! Brucie promises—hckk—no fire breathing snakes harmed in process of metallurgy—Ach! Nyet, you overgrowned rust heap—Ugh! Only takes getting used to hauling around! Like you sporting pretty mane made out of iron, da?”

“I know you're doing your best to help me out, Bruce. But—seriously—all I need to do is browse quietly for a bit, and then I'm sure I'll find the... armor that I need,” she murmured, her eyes once again gazing into a grand nothingness beyond the shelves of rattling miscellany.

The green-goggled squirrel saw it. Scratching his furry forehead, he scampered up a metal shelf and perched above her. “Kind of armor pony needs is something no strips could buy, Brucie thinks.

She did not reply.

He rubbed his chin some, then brightened. “Perhaps you are nervous about stormfront?” He smirked and gestured nonchalantly out a nearby porthole. The gray clouds were darkening as several deep flashes of lightning started to bubble from within the wispy clusters herding punctually their way. “Vell, pony should only fear for money bag, because Brucie has greatest lightning rod from squirrel motherland of St Petersbrittle—Guaranteed to protect against any storm, but sure is not cheap!”

“It's not that, Bruce. It's...” She bit her lip, shifted uncomfortably, and finally looked at him, naked eyes to fogged goggles. “Bruce, let me ask you something—Pilot to pilot.”

“To pony's question, Brucie has answer, possibly, maybe—If Harmony needs it.”

She ignored the address and squinted, murmuring: “Do you enjoy what you do?”

“Selling to favorite customer? Absolutely! Brucie is always—”

“No no no—I mean what you do,” Scootaloo emphasized. “Your life, Bruce. Do you—Is this life all that you are willing to accept? Would you be ready to... to change it into something happier, something brighter—If you had the ability to do so?”

“Hrmm...” the overgrown rodent merchant rubbed his chin, puffing on his cigar. “Philosophy is not one of Brucie's strengths. Does not earn silver, only headaches, da?” He smirked wryly and flicked his cigar with emphasis. “If life vas so terrible, perhaps is reason Brucie smokes it away? HaHA!”

She sighed heavily. “But if you could change this—All of this. Would you be willing to do so?”

“Life is life. Sometimes life is too much life, sometimes too little,” he uttered as he squatted in his pilot's seat and propped a leg up, leaning back casually in the green haze of his cramped vessel. “But rather than think of things dat need changing, Brucie likes to focus on things he is glad for and be thankful for them.” A warm smile shone under his reflective, emerald lenses. “Like pony friend! If dis life vas changed, vould not have you to look forward to, da?”

She stared sadly at him. “That's just it, Brucie. The only thing you're guaranteed to run out of in life is friends.” She swallowed sorely. “The reason I know this is because there's so much magic lost from this world. And eventually that too will be gone.”

“Hmm...” he leaned further back and puffed. “All better reason pony has to spend time vith friends...” He smirked. “Or make new ones...”

“...or old ones,” she added in a low breath.

“Vhat vas dat, Harmony?” No sooner had he asked, but a loud rumble filled the roof of the world, forcing the two ships to rock and weave from the thunderous vibrations. “Mother Rushnut! Is getting vorse, the storm!” He kicked out of the seat and rushed up to a porthole, gazing out with a frown. “Brucie is afraid that he and pony friend must cut transaction short! You cannot outrun storm anymore than time itself!”

“Perhaps somepony can,” she once again murmured, then nodded her snout towards a series of brown leather bands along the far end of the gondola. “I'll take five of those over there.”

“Twenty strips each.”

“That works for me.”

“Then done is deal, Harmony!”

After the exchange of silver for goods, the mare trotted towards the metal bridge between his ship and hers. She lingered in his windblown doorway. “Again, Brucie, my name is not Harmony.”

“Da, da! Ve have been over dis! Pony is anonymous! Ha!Hilarious irony ensues—!”

“'Scootaloo.'”

He spun around and squinted at her through cockeyed goggles. “Vhat vas dat?”

“My name is Scootaloo,” she said, fidgeting. “And... I am glad to have you as a friend too, Brucie.”

The squirrel stared at her. After a spell, he smirked, then grinded his cigar to death against a bulkhead. “Another day vorth living, da?” He waved her off. “Off vith you, Scootaloo! Storms of twilight have no friends!”

She took a deep breath as the warmness left her cheeks and she marched outward to her hangar on the other side of the bridge. “Don't I know it...?”

It has been several invisible, gray days since I last saw Spike, and I am no closer to an answer for his proposition than I was the first minute I flew myself away from the strangely inviting sights of Ponyville's ruins. That place is once more a potential home to me, and yet it pains me to see it the way it is. I'm reminded of something Bruce said without quite meaning to put much effort into it: that life is sometimes 'too much life,' sometimes 'too little life.' But when I look out the portholes of my airship, and when I see the desolation all around, I realize that any creature that attempts to neutrally philosophize like that is only attempting to protect my feelings. There is no life out here—only ashes.

The fact is—when Equestria exploded, it had to have been ponydom's fault, in some fashion or another. What Gilda hinted of and what most of the patrons who frequent the Monkey O'Dozen Den believe is at least partially true. The Sun and Moon would still be here today if something horrible hadn't happened to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Equestria was never a land that belonged to only ponies, and the fact that I'm the last living pegasus means that I, in some fashion, owe it to the world to get a second chance at seeing light once more, so that these perpetual shadows will no longer force otherwise harmless creatures into believing that 'life' is simply quantifiable.

A month before now, the same pony who's writing this now would never have given this blighted world a second thought. But as of a few days ago, I now know that I can potentially leave a mark, a very warm, golden, and glowing mark upon what would otherwise remain a world as grave if not even graver than what I now see before me. For years, I gave my all to maintain a rainbow symbol to spark hope into the souls of ponies who I always hoped were alive... but secretly knew really weren't. Now that I know what I can do and whom I can do it for—creatures like Bruce, Gilda, and even Pitt—could that change Equestria for the better? Could it give hope—however absurd—to a new society that might transform it into something beautiful, as opposed to its present ugliness? Can existence transcend essence, even when the likes of Spike and myself are long gone from this potential future kingdom?

It's always been tough being the last pony. And it's even tougher now. If this stormfront I'm flying in doesn't kill me, I think my confusion will. If there should be another entry, it will be by another pony, one who has transcended doubt, as Spike has transcended time. This I promise—this I hope.

-End of entryyyyyyyyyy---

Scootaloo's last penstroke smudged across the page of her journal as the Harmony experienced another jolt. The boiler at the back of the room flickered as it tried to maintain autopilot in the surmounting turbulence surging all around the craft. A warning bell clamored as a couple of sparks flew from a tesla coil on the port side of the cabin.

Cursing breathily, Scootaloo slapped the journal shut, swiveled away from her workbench, and all but pratfalled across the careening gondola, landing awkwardly in the cockpit's seat. As she harnessed herself into place, a wide panorama of bubbling clouds and random bits of lightning surged from beyond the stretched array of windshields. The world had punctually become an obsidian mesh of inky fog as a fresh stormfront rumbled across the rooftop of Equestria on the latest of its regular intervals.

Yanking at a few levers to re-orient the bobbing vessel, Scootaloo flashed an angry glare towards her instrument panel. A red light was flickering as a tiny brass pipe of steam blew through an alarm whistle. Her elaborate warning system was attempting to convey that part of the zeppelin's lateral support struts had loosened dangerously.

“Friggin' figures. Can't ride a storm these days without it turning into a drunken Wonderbolts performance,” she snarled, then silenced herself by clamping her teeth over a hanging chainlinked handle. She pulled hard and the boiler towards the rear billowed, pumping steam into the balloons over the gondola. Slowly, the Harmony lifted above the crashing black promontory of the advancing stormfront, aimed towards the highest point it could go above the dark, lightning-ruptured overcast. A wayward cloudfront thundered angrily at Scootaloo. She snarled back: “Yeah, well, you look fat and ugly too!”

An hour later, safely above the rumbling overcast of stormclouds, the grunting and griping pegasus struggled with a loose set of rivets that she was presently attempting to tighten back into place along the starboard side of the Harmony's zeppelin chassis. The black roof to the Equestrian Wastes groaned and roared beneath her, briefly flickering phantom illuminations of silver lightning hues across her blank flanks as she struggled to finish her task. At one point, the wrench she was twisting flew loose. She inadvertently struck herself in the small of her left foreleg. Scootaloo gave forth a loud groan—something that mutated into a furious snarl—and she banged the rivets with an opposite hoof, half-shocked to hear them rattling back into stubborn looseness.

With a huge deflating sigh, Scootaloo leaned her snout against the copper body of the zeppelin and hung there, brown wings fluttering in the brief winds, as the thunderous world gargled beneath her. She clung to the bosom of the Harmony in a gentle and lonesome sway, for what had to have been the better part of an hour, until she finally opened her scarlet eyes to the ever-lingering twilight overhead.

Distant, gloomy stars half-blinked down at her, never living and never dying. There was no real light in this world, only the half hearted imitation of brightness, like Celestia's mirror in Spike's garden. It almost looked pretty, but it was hardly the real thing. Scootaloo was tired of staring, and yet a strange peace was wafting through her with as much electricity as the stormfronts boiled with far below.

Hooking her wrench and other tools along the lateral struts of the airship, Scootaloo took wing, hovering down several dozens of meters below her hovering vessel. She then did something that she hadn't done since she was a little foal; she touched down with pegasus hooves onto the wispy surface of the overcast cloudbanks. Her legs made contact and she stood upon the dark beds of cloud cover. What had been nothing more than a permeable mist of disgust for two-and-a-half decades was suddenly a grand wafting plain of opaque fog—like a phantom shadow of the Ponyvillean valley—and the twilight above impersonated a childhood sky.

Peacefully—in a tranquil pose—Scootaloo slowly trotted forward across the blackened clouds. With each shuffling hoof, a patch of dark mist brightened strobingly from the deep lightning below, illuminating Scootaloo's brown coat randomly during her 'walk.' She didn't notice, for she had her eyes shut and her snout tilted skyward. With her wings meditatively outstretched, the last pony took several deep breaths, and opened an invisible third eye.

She saw Ms. Cheerilee's schoolhouse—or at least an effluent crimson shade of it. And beyond the schoolhouse was a misty lake of crystal blue water flanked by ivory mountains. The world blossomed with green beauty, like hair that had been shaved for years but was suddenly given the chance to grow again; and it bloomed all around her, kissing her with soft blades that swayed in a deep earthen wind. There were living things in this shady dreamscape, things that fluttered and danced in the breeze instead of slicing mercenary paths through it. And the children—the foals flocked to her, smiling, inviting Scootaloo across the playground into a game of Red Rover. Sweetie Bell's horn glistened in the morning mist, and Apple Bloom's drawling laughter filled the schoolyard with an undercurrent of static excitement, like being at the edge of a waterfall, or prancing along the fringes of the Everfree Forest, or gazing through the window of Sugarcube Corner while the sounds of streetside musicians reverberated off the freshly varnished wood of surrounding storefronts—

—and the thunder swallowed it all once more, with misty black teeth that lurched and hummed dreadfully beneath the twilight expanse. Scootaloo's scarlet eyes opened, and when they did they were not brimming with tears, but instead boiling with a steam of a different sort, a frothing burst of burning air that no amount of pressure forced upon the Harmony's boiler could ever hope to produce, a hissing outburst of blood-throttling menace that two and a half decades of levitating imprisonment had forged ever so demoniacally in the iron-wrought heart of one solitary hoofed creature doomed to aimlessly skim the gray leprous flesh of the planet.

And she screamed. All of her hate and all of her pain and all of her regret she screamed into the gray-on-gray horizons lingering before her, until her wailing voice outroared the great thunder booming from below and scared the strobes of lightning off into hiding, until all of the Equestrian Wasteland finally knew what it had taken from her, and that she was the only living being in the history of time that was capable of giving anything back.

And when the scream was done, and her wings were still heaving as she stood shakily on the womb of the buckling cloudbeds, it was not a sob that graced her face. It was not even a sneer. It was a smirk.

Spike was busying himself with a series of chemical vials in the center of his laboratory when the trap door to Twilight's former treehouse slammed wide open above him. He turned calmly to see a breathless, brown pegasus soaring down and hovering wide-eyed in front of him.

“Send me back, Spike!” Scootaloo panted. “Send me back in time!”

“Now Scootaloo,” the sagely dragon pointed with a clawed finger. “Have you adequately thought about what you're—?”

“There is no thinking,” she glared at him. “There is only now. And I am sick to death of now.”

He raised an eyecrest at that.

She frowned and growlingly reiterated: “I'm ready, Spike. I'm ready to do this. Send me to the past.”

Gradually, he smiled, and gave a gentle nod of his headcrests. “As you wish, old friend.”

- ACT TWO - HOOVES ON THE GROUND - Chapter Nine: The Art of Subtlety

“You will be sent to five months before the Cataclysm. It's important, Scootaloo, that you get a lay of the land in advance of the destruction of Equestria, so that in the present we may both compile all of the things that you have observed, so as to determine what was the cause of the horror.”

“But why bind me to Ms. Cheerilee?” The last pony asked. She stepped back and watched as her purple dragon companion moved several large bits of equipment with his iron-wrought limbs, making an open space across the floor of his cavernous laboratory. “She's sweet and all—But wouldn't she be the least likely pony in Equestria's past to have an answer to what happened? Why not just bind me to Princess Celestia so that I could talk directly to her and get this whole thing over with?”

“That would be an extremely solid solution.” Spike nodded, his violet neck pendant dangling, “If it was possible.” He brushed the rocky floor clean with a green-crested tail before producing a crystal vial of ashes from a nearby cabinet. Using nimble fingers, he started drawing an alchemic circle across the floor with the powdery dust. “Alas, though contacting Princess Celestia would certainly give us the best possible perspective on the eve of the Cataclysm, I cannot send you back in time bound directly to her soul.”

“Why not?” Scootaloo made a face as she watched the mystical designs take form under the dragon's careful motions. “I thought you said that the ponies you could bind me to were friends of yours! Didn't you brush tails with the Princess on multiple occasions while she mentored Twilight Sparkle back in Canterlot?”

“To think of Princess Celestia as a friend of mine is most humbling,” he said with a smile. “And such is undeniably true. But no matter how attuned I may have been with the Royal Alicorns of Canterlot, I would be a fool to think that I could in any way target the essence of a Goddess' soul. Even if I was the most powerful dragon that had ever lived, I would never be capable of binding any time-traveling creature to the life force of Celestia or Luna. Once a mortal, always a mortal; three hundred years of experience is but a pindrop, you see.”

“If you say so,” Scootaloo mumbled. She gulped and glanced briefly about the colorful instruments and chemicals that sparkled across the laboratory, feeling suddenly like she was stumbling before the plank of a very intimidating launchpad aimed into a sea of green fire. “But—still—Ms. Cheerilee? How do I expect a lone school teacher to help us out after I tell her that her whole world is going to die?”

“You don't.”

Scootaloo's scarlet eyes bugged. “I don't?!”

“Scootaloo, you are going back to be an observer. It is you who must find out about the future, not them.”

“You're joking!” Her face contorted as she backtrotted in disbelief. “Spike, if you and I are gonna be serious about unearthing the mystery of the Cataclysm, we're gonna need all the help we can get! And I can't do diddly squat if I pretend like nothing is going to happen to all the ponies whom I meet in the past!”

“The fact that you know what is going to happen is certainly sufficient enough for you to accomplish your tasks, child,” Spike said, finishing the circle and sprinkling the remaining dust back into his crystal vial. “But where your knowledge is an asset to you, I am afraid it will only be a deterrent to them. If you arrive back in time as a harbinger of doom, you will not scrounge up information. You will only arouse panic.”

“But maybe that's the key!” Scootaloo's eyes glistened as she leaned up towards him. “Spike, if we tell everyone what happens, maybe we could—”

“—stop something that will transpire anyways, as is in accordance with the immutable flow of time?” He stared deeply at her, his eyes hanging like cold emeralds.

She deflated, scruffing at the rocky floor with a wayward hoof. “But... Something has to be done, Spike. This... This just doesn't feel right. There's so much pretense about what you're sending me in the past to do. You know, I've done a lot of harsh things in the Wasteland to survive. I've lied to many soulless creatures and I've cheated several mercenaries who I knew would only swindle me in the future.” She paused for a moment, gulping. Her scarlet eyes danced left and right, then calmed as she further, said, “But in a land like Equestria, all I will find are ponies. And to me, any pony is a friend. I don't think I can lie to friends like I've attempted to manipulate everything else within leg's distance of these Wastes.”

“I'm sending you back in the past, Scootaloo, because I know that you are resourceful, intelligent, and brave. But more than any of those attributes, there is one quality that you must master in order to succeed in your newest endeavor.”

“And what is that, pray tell?”

“Subtlety.”

She frowned at him. “I don't do 'subtle.'”

“Hrmmm...What a surprise.” He half-chuckled, his iron nostrils fuming playfully. “Well, I suggest you stretch yourself in that area, old friend. Because where you are about to go, subtlety is richer than oxygen. Once you've landed, I suggest you take many long, even breaths before you so much as talk to a single pony.”

“Just h-how long am I going to be there?” Scootaloo asked with a brief bout of nervousness.

“I've stored up enough green flame in my enchanted fire glands to send you back for a period of five to seven days.” Spike counted his clawed fingers for emphasis. “To stay anchored in the past longer than a week is beyond the range that I am capable of giving you. Also, remember: because you'll be bound to Cheerilee, it is important that you do not leave more than forty meters from her position—Or else your soul will no longer be anchored to its source in the past.”

“What happens either way?” Scootaloo blinked. “If the seven days run out or if I walk 'out of bounds' of the teacher?” She gulped, “D-do I die in a puff of smoke?”

“If you call speedily returning to this laboratory in the presence of my wholesome company 'deadly,' then certainly!” The elder dragon chuckled. “Fear not, Scootaloo. As you are not truly your physical self in the past, you will be oblivious to pain, hunger, and even exhaustion. Your manifested soul-self will be akin to a projection of your essence—The only ones who will think that you are real are those in the past who observe you. So try and make a good first impression.”

“B-but what if they recognize me?” She asked, suddenly wincing.

“I seriously doubt you'll have to worry about that,” Spike stated matter-of-factly. “You'll hardly resemble your past self. For that matter, you'll hardly resemble anypony at all—Heheh—Ahem...” His face glinted at her in a sudden sheen of melancholy. “And in speaking of your past self...”

The mare stared up at him forlornly.

He said, “Though we both know that bumping into your foalish copy will hardly have an effect on the immutable passage of time, I would still advise against it. Meeting a doppleganger from the past is... existentially exhausting, to say the least.”

“I-I'll take your word for it,” she said in a dry voice. “I really have no intention of doing that anyways,” she murmured, turned, and trotted firmly into the circle. “Now send my butt back already!”

“Very well,” he nodded his green crested head, stepped around her, and perched on a mound of gemstones flanking the alchemic circles. “Remember, Scootaloo, subtlety.” He gestured as his shadow rested over her. “Subtlety is the key to success—”

“Yeah yeah—I get the picture—”

“And patience, Scootaloo. If you expect to be there as long as my flames permit, then you will make no progress by rushing things. Once you've arrived back in time, try not to make any harsh decisions. Be calm, be serene, be friendly, or just be silent if you wish. Most of all, watch, listen, observe. And once you've made contact with Cheerilee or any of our other acquaintances, be discreet with them, be courteous, and after you have won their trust—Then and only then may you attempt to proceed higher among the Equestrian strata, and hopefully even contact Princess Celestia herself. You will do well expecting this to be a gradual, systematic, and even relaxing process. Who knows? Perhaps you may even enjoy yourself,” he finished with a smile.

“Enjoy myself?” Scootaloo let loose a girlish laugh. She stood boldly in the center of the circles as she balked at him. “Now I know you're fooling with me, Spike.”

“Hardly, child. I do so sincerely wish for our 'experiment' here to succeed, for the sake of Equestria's future. But, more importantly, I hope that you will gain from this something that will bring you both peace and contentment.”

“Spike, I'll worry about closure when I'm dead.”

He nodded. “I was afraid of that.” He pointed. “Close your eyes, Scootaloo.”

She squinted at him in brief perplexity, but ultimately obeyed. With a shuddering breath, she allowed the world to turn dark around her. Her coat's hairs stood on end as she felt the sterile cold air around her, expecting all of it to start burning off her body in the simple flash of a green torch. Just as she began settling her trembling limbs, she sensed a dim aura spilling through her eyelids. A high pitched vibration filled the static air. Her heart started racing, and she clenched her teeth tight, preparing to plummet at any moment. Instead, she was struck with a far more alien sensation: a wave of frosted powder billowing over her figure.

Scootaloo couldn't help it. Her scarlet eyes flew open, and she gasped to see a layer of dust blanketing her mane, forehead, and hooves. The coarse gray filament matched the material that formed the now-green-glowing alchemic circles beneath her. Jaw quivering, she gazed up at Spike. “Wh-whose ashes are th-these...?”

His body was a somber shadow with cold marble eyes. “Cheerilee's,” he said, closing a jar once more in his grasp.

“Wh-what?” she stammered.

“I'm sorry, Scootaloo. It's the only way.” He leaned forward, opened his mouth, and covered half of the room in vaporous emerald light.

“Spike—!” she started, but suddenly saw his image slide away from her at two million kilometers per second. She was screaming backwards down a quivering snake skin of hundreds of refracting lenses, eating away at her flesh and bone with acidic clouds of forest-green chaos. The ivory band of Cheerilee's powdery ashes wafted off of her and coalesced around the pegasus' echoing heartbeat like a porcelain cocoon, and at the bottom of the typhoonesque collapse, the ashen egg broke away and deposited a grunting pony into a warm basin of color, smells, and life. “Nngh—Wait!” Scootaloo shouted, but her voice wasn't hers. “Hoboy...”

Her eyes flickered under the shiver of a gasp, then squinted, for a very foreign beacon of light was once more slicing its way up an alien sky, cradling her in its solar arms. Hissing, sputtering for breath, the mare wobbled up to her knees and stared up into the Sun, a thing she hadn't done in so many years that she briefly forgot what a danger it was. And yet, as long as she stared, her eyes weren't burning, as if they were made of queerly stronger stuff than granite.

She needed focus, so Scootaloo finally ripped her gaze from the Sun and looked around her. She saw the porcelain Southern Mountains, the crystal-blue lake at the base of the hills, the billowing edges of the Everfree Forest, and—coasting over the edge of a warm and sizzling eastern horizon—the first of many gold thatched rooftops that prophesied the edge of downtown Ponyville.

“Oh Spike...” she murmured in a whimpering voice, once more a breath that sounded alien to her, but she hardly cared. “You didn't send me into the past, you sent me to heaven.” She bit her lip and tried to steady herself as the emotions flooded back in a single overwhelming heap. Scootaloo felt her lungs quivering, her panting breaths coming out in tiny hyperventilating chirps. She tried to remember something that the purple dragon had taught her, about taking steady breaths, about being serene, about blending in with her surroundings. But as her eyes watered and her limbs quivered, she couldn't take into account any of those things, instead searching, gazing, piercing the sky for the one thing. “The r-rainbow, wh-where is it?”

She looked once more above the crystalline reflective surface of the lake. The prismatic band was gone. There was a lot less fog and decidedly more heat than the last time Spike had sent her to this spot. It took a few dumbfounded moments for Scootaloo to realize why: this was the afternoon, not the morning. In two and a half decades of Wasteland grayscape, the mare had forgotten that there used to be a time cycle within the span of a day. And yet, her heart rejoiced at the revelation; it was like riding her scooter again.

Her scooter... her childhood... Equestria. “Praise Celestia, it's all so magnificent,” the voice inside her half-sobbed. She limped forward on stone legs, nearly drooling. “Now where's that dang schoolhouse? I'm liable to kiss Cheerilee when I see—ACK!”

She shrieked as she suddenly slid down a long incline of red wooden shingles. Uncontrollably, she smacked into the belltower on the schoolhouse's roof, toppled over twice, and fell like an anvil off the side of the building where she had materialized back in time.

“Ummmfff!” She plunged into a wide drinking trough standing aside the playground, snout first. “Blbllblllb—” Scootaloo tossed herself out in a sputtering spray of water and plopped hard into the dirt, gasping for air. Fully soaked, she instinctually shook her coat into a flimsy facsimile of dryness and shuddered: “Wh-what did Spike say about taking deep breaths? Oh yeah, duh.”

She tilted her snout up to glance across the playground, and in so doing she peripherally noticed a wet mat of mane-hair curling over the side of her neck. Blinking, she raised a hoof to push some of the threads into closer view. What she saw was a soaked cluster of black threads, with the faintest hint of amber. Her face scrunched as she glanced every which way, then ultimately turned to face the water trough.

Trotting over and peering in, she watched as the liquid surface settled from her brief collapse into the basin. As the water smoothed, the reflection of a strange pegasus came into being: a young mare with a rusted copper coat—like the color of earthen clay—from her hooves to her feathery wings, shining far brighter and richer than the dull brown coat of future Scootaloo, or even the orange sheen that she had as a foal. And instead of violet or aged-scarlet eyes, there reflected twin marbles of bright amber, as if sculpted out of the vein of a tree in spring. Finally, her mane flowed with an elegant sheen of black silken threads—with a thin streak of amber running down the middle that matched the color of her blinking eyes.

“Well, hello there,” she murmured with drunken amusement into the bobbing reflection. “Who are you?” She finally took a moment to recognize the strange voice coming out of her. Just like everything else about her 'projection,' the voice was different, younger and deeper than her future self, but still laced with the same inflection and murmuring qualities of her experienced soul. Scootaloo judged that, whoever she looked like, she appeared no older than twenty-two winters, which—for that point in the timeline—placed her at about the same age as Fluttershy, Twilight Sparkle, and many of the older ponies whom Scootaloo looked up to in her youthful days. It all seemed strangely, even fatefully appropriate; all fears about anypony recognizing her flew out an invisible window. If she could somehow come back to the future looking and sounding like this, she was certain even Spike himself would scratch a scaled head in confusion.

The transplanted mare ran a hoof one more time through her obsidian threads, before a sudden movement in front of her grabbed her attention. Glancing up, she realized that she was standing in front of a window to the schoolhouse. A veil of curtains hung over the pane, but there was a ruby shadow shuffling from within, followed by a muffled feminine voice and several young murmurs replying in cadence. Twenty-five-and-a-quarter years into the past, school was in session; Scootaloo's heart skipped a beat. She glanced at the warm landscape buzzing around her. She smelled the crisp spring air and she heard the singing of birds and the murmur of cicadas. Spike's Ponyvillean terrarium was a pathetic pindrop in the great throbbing basin of life that was now encompassing her, hugging her. She had every reason to stand right there and soak in that moment forever.

She didn't.

“Can anyone tell me what a harpy is?” Several hooves lifted into the classroom air with mixed levels of enthusiasm. An adult mare sporting a joyful mane of fuchsia looked over her students and picked out the most eager of the bunch. “Yes, Snips? Do you know?”

“Oh—! Uhm—A 'harpy' is like that cutie mark on the lady who owns the music store in downtown!” A chorus of giggles lit the room. The rotund little unicorn in the center of the laughing circle sunk shamefully in his desk seat.

The ruby-coated schoolteacher chuckled sweetly. “No no, Snips—And for clarification, Ms. Heartstring's cutie mark is aptly named a 'lyre,' not a 'harp.'” Cheerilee cleared her throat and smiled at all of the students. “A harpy is a sentient creature that resembles a falcon. It has the body of a bird of prey, including sharp talons and broad wings, but its upper half consists of the head of a simian, only with a pronounced beak.” She trotted over towards a picture stand and unveiled a poster of the avian monstrosity. Half of the class gasped, the other half murmured 'ooohs' and stared forward with tilting interest. “Over ninety percent of their population is female. They feast mostly on the meat of rodents and smaller birds, and they live in nocturnal clusters along the bluffs of the Eastern Ocean shore.”

“Ewwww..” A pink coated pony with a tiara for a cutie mark made a wretching face. “Like—Who in their right mind would actually eat meat?”

“Yeah, that's so gross!” A silver filly mirrored her friend's nauseated voice from one desk over. “They might as well just chomp on each other!”

“Hmmm... An understandable reaction.” Cheerilee nodded. “Eating meat is very taboo in pony culture. But, as a matter of fact, there are many sentient creatures in Equestria who eat meat on a regular basis, such as our allies, the Griffons to the Northwest. And they live out their lives in relative peace and tranquility.” The teacher motioned once more to the beastly picture propped before the class. “Even many harpies today live a pacifist existence. But that hasn't always been the case. Equestria used to be swarming with violent flocks of the creatures, ruthless pirates who ravaged the countryside during the Chaos Wars that preceded the Second Age. And—”

Cheerilee's gaze glanced up at the sound of clopping hooves, and her green eyes twitched. Something of a grimace graced her figure, but she suppressed it at the last second, clearing her throat and smiling presently in the company of the little foals.

“Ahem—Erm... Why, h-hello there! Is there—uhm—something I can help you with?”

The faces of three dozen foals twisted confusedly. With the creaking of wooden desk seats, they gradually turned around to see a curious sight at the back of the classroom. A young adult pegasus stood, her long black mane a wet and tangled mess, her copper coat dripping a puddle of moisture over the floorboards. The open doors basked her in a platinum aura, like a golden visitor from beyond. Nopony knew any wiser.

Scootaloo gulped, dumbly gazing at the forty-odd young sets of eyes blinking up at her, the first time in years that any ponies had stared at her ever. Her heart was beating so hard, she had a difficult time standing. To keep her legs from wobbling, she stepped a hoof forward, but jumped the first moment she saw the foals' bright eyes moving along with her. Clenching her teeth, she leaned back into a row of bookshelves and gulped, exhaling in a wheeze: “H-hi there...”

“Hello.” “Hiya.” “Hi there.” “Hello, ma'am.” “Hello'm.” “Hi.”

“Hoboy...” Scootaloo shuddered, a sore lump forming in her throat. So many eyes; so many ashes. A wave of gray overcast washed over her vision until her last blink ended, and the schoolroom was staring at her once again, the many young faces scrunching in confusion. There was not a single frightened expression amongst them. The last pony suddenly felt like hugging every individual one—

“Did you have a delivery of school supplies to make?” Cheerilee's chirpy voice rocked Scootaloo back onto her hooves. “The deposit box is out in the back. I happen to... uh... be teaching class at the moment.” She cleared her voice and added with a wink. “Unless you want to take a seat and learn about the carnivorous habit of harpies!”

Rows of seats giggled amusedly.

“N-no, I... I-I...” Scootaloo murmured, trotting slowly around the circumference of the one-room class as the many heads swiveled innocently to follow her. “Er—I m-mean sure. I'm... a delivery pony... Or something like that... Y-yes...” Her voice deflated under a raspy air of nervous chokes. She coughed, shook her wet black mane a bit drier, and stumbled into a pole bearing the flag of the Celestial Crest. She winced—jittering—and set the rocking banner still. With a calming breath, she stood back on four hooves. “J-Just, passing through... and... uhm...”

“Who sent you?” Cheerilee spoke in a suddenly hushed voice that was meant for the two of them alone. She trotted over slightly. “Do you have a working permit?”

“I... uhm...” Scootaloo turned and instinctively tilted her head up, until she realized she had to lower her face to stare Cheerilee eye-to-eye. “Jeez, you're shorter than I remembered.”

The schoolteacher's green eyes blinked crookedly at that.

Suddenly, a filly gasped girlishly from the front row and pointed an excited hoof. “Oooooh! Look at her cutie mark!”

“Wowwww!” “That's so awesome!” “Coool!” “I've never seen one like that!” “Pretttttty!”

Cheerilee seized the moment, her face brightening as she stood aside the visitor's flank. “Oh, yes! It is a most splendid cutie mark, isn't it!”

“Huh?” Scootaloo blinked at the teacher. She glanced back at her hindquarters and did a double-take, her amber eyes exploding. “Holy manure castles!”

Emblazoned across her copper coat was an elaborate masterpiece of magical branding. A celestial ring of black and amber sunflares encircled an ink-dark pair of loops, like a stretched-out figure '8.' Judging from its sideways angle, it had to have been some natural version of the 'infinity' symbol, complete with what could be best described as an abstract mimic of the Celestial Crest. Scootaloo performed a few dashing glances back and forth from her sudden mark to the flag in the corner of the schoolroom just to be sure, and there was no doubt about it.

“Well, if that isn't the most awesome thing ever that ever awesome'd...”

“Class—Remember our lessons on the cutie mark last month? Can anyone tell me what that crest on her flank means?” A few hooves rose up. Cheerilee pointed towards the center of the room. “Yes, Twist?”

“It meanth that thhe'th in the Royal Thervice of Canterlot Court!”

“Royal Service of What-Now?” Scootaloo gave a sweating grimace.

“Absolutely, Twist!” Cheerilee grinned, standing boldly next to the immeasurably confused visitor. “All ponies born with that crest are lucky enough to become servants in Princess Celestia's Court! It means that they get to live out their lives as overseers and watchhorses, spreading the Sun Goddess' influence far and wide and maintaining order across Equestria! We're very lucky to have this special guest here with us, today!”

The teacher spun and grinned in Scootaloo's face with a sudden foalish giddiness as she hopped in place, whispering:

“IsthisabouttherequestforthefieldtriptovisittheWhinniepegMuseum?”

Scootaloo's copper temples lost grip of a sizable sweatdrop. “I-I... Actually, I-I just wanted to—”

“Most esteemed servant to her Highness, Princess Celestia...!” Cheerilee proudly swept her muzzle towards the classroom, her voice like a sugar-coated megaphone. “...why don't you grace the students with what exactly it is that you do for our Keeper of the Sun?!”

The copper mare's eyes bulged. She glanced nervously across the rows upon rows of pastel colored eyes staring felicitously at her. It was a veritable sea of infant lungs holding a giant breath in anticipation of Scootaloo's next charming words...

“I... I-I deliver... p-packages for the... Royal... R-Royal Office of... uhm...,” She blinked. “Fl-Flamestones.” She winced, but brightened slightly as the class murmured in awe at her fabrication.

“What'th a Flamethtone?” a spritely redhead with thick eyeglasses gaped.

“A flamestone...” Scootaloo exhaled, speaking suddenly with natural ease: “Ahem. It's a type of gem that has been enchanted with elemental red flame as a result of severe compression brought upon by the collapsing chunks of the moon that collided with the face of the Equestrian Wasteland immediately after the Caaaaaat-aaaaa-clyyyyyysmmmmm—” Her face twisted into an endless wince as she swiftly registered the words that had been spat out of her mouth.

The class stared prolongly at her, a mosaic of blank faces. A long necked unicorn, his brown face scrunched, throated: “Derr—What's a cat of clysm?”

“It m-means a destructive event that forever changes the face of the Earth—Excuse me, class,” Cheerilee nervously spun around and looked worriedly in Scootaloo's face. “Ma'am, is everything alright? No offense, but you don't look or sound too well. Are you feeling ill?” Cheerilee's green eyes blinked. “Ma'am?”

Scootaloo was staring at the children, face after face, snout after snout, horns and ears and manes—But no hairbows. “Wh-where is Apple Bloom...?” She murmured in a childish voice. Then, a startled gasp escaped her lips as Scootaloo's amber eyes darted towards the center of the room. She focused on a hauntingly familiar seat that stood empty before her. “Where am I today?!”

“Erm—The Apple Family's daughter is home sick for the day. As for you... erm...”

“This is early spring...” Scootaloo gulped. “Apple Bloom was sick with the pony pox,” she thought out loud. “Sweetie Belle was with her parents for a month, and I...” She bit her lip. “I was hungry... t-too friggin' hungry to even walk. Sweet Celestia...”

“Eh heh heh heh...” Cheerilee shifted awkwardly, gulping. “Ahem—Ma'am, may I have a word with you in the atrium for a quick moment—?”

“They're all going to die...” Scootaloo slurred, her eyes quivering at all of the happy, innocent faces. “Every single one of them.” She hissed through clenched teeth and tilted her wincing snout ceilingward in a maddening stupor. “This building—I've seen it from the clouds. Not one stone is lying on top of another...”

“M-ma'am!” Cheerilee gasped, nervously glancing from the class to the pegasus and back. She leaned into her, nudging a little. “Please—Let's take this into the other room. You'll scare the children—”

At the word 'scare,' Scootaloo's eyes flashed open. Trailing on her lashes were scores of lantern-lit memories, of pale leathery trolls thrashing at her through the darkness, of billowing stormfronts that threatened to tear her zeppelin apart, of lonely nights spent lying in a swaying hammock and reading about the immortal sorrows of a dead Princess. A pained breath surfaced at the base of her lungs and came out in the form of a menacing snarl. She had seen the world consumed in fire, and she had ridden the tongues of flame back to this shuddering moment in time. The holocaust had to end somewhere.

“I'm sorry, Spike. But screw it.” She spun and stared daggers into Cheerilee's eyes. “You. You need to contact Princess Celestia now.”

“M-me...?” The ruby-coated teacher wilted backwards. She chuckled nervously, “B-but I'm not the Royal Servant to the Court of Canterlot! Eh heh heh... You're the one qualified to—”

“Will you stuff it with this 'Royal Servant' nonsense?!” Scootaloo barked, eliciting several foalish gasps from the classroom. She took a few vicious hoofsteps towards the teacher. “The only business I'm here for is to send a message. And it's a message that has to be sent to Princess Celestia! Nopony else! And I don't have much time—”

“I-I can't be expected to leave th-this classroom now to deliver anything!” Cheerilee frowned. “Even if I could contact the Princess—”

“This is not a joke!” Scootaloo snarled, her voice echoing across the schoolroom as she leered above Cheerilee. “Something horrible is going to happen! Something really bad! Ponies are going to die—Not just some ponies, but everypony—”

“Please—You're making a scene—”

“Dang right I am! Now let's stop beating around the bush and go see the Princess! I'm not going to be here forever—Time is of the essence! And, girl, you have no idea how true that statement is!”

“Uhm...I don't know what you're—”

“The end of ponies!” Scootaloo's amber eyes flared as she breathed in desperate heaves. “A burning wave of magic that will render all of equine life to ash! You have no idea—No clue what kind of devastation I'm talking about! The Sun and the Moon—They will be gone! Vanished! Leaving nothing but endless twilight—”

Scootaloo's voice stopped, her ears pricking for having heard something like a whimper. She gazed aside and twitched to see the four-eyed redhead cowering behind her desk, her glasses fogged. To her sides and behind her, several more students were trembling, scrunched away from the sight of the rambling stranger. There were tears, tears...

“No no no—It's... It's not so bad—I mean, yes, it is bad—” Scootaloo smiled crookedly, trying to straighten her frazzled black threads as she trotted towards the desks. The entire classroom shrugged away from her in one fluid jolt. She stopped in her tracks and gulped. “Okay—So it's terrible. But m-most of you are still young, so—Uh—You should be enjoying all of this while it lasts! Everypony dies at some point, but it's just the nature of—” A few more confused sobs filled the air. Scootaloo snarled: “Look, it's not like I brought the end of the world, okay? So don't be scared of me!” They still trembled and shivered. She barked: “I said don't be scared!”

The foals winced, covering their eyes to avoid her snarling gaze. She blinked at them, starting to hyperventilate as the impossible situation crumbled more and more. There was a whispering sound towards the rear of the room. She spun around to see that Cheerilee was no longer by her side. Instead, the jittery teacher was squatting beside the long-necked unicorn, murmuring into the colt's ear.

“Snails, go to the corner of Fifth and McCracken, and fetch Officer Silvertrot.”

“Y-Yes, Ms. Cheerilee,” the colt nervously jolted, bounded out of his seat, and galloped out of the school entrance.

“Wh-what are you doing—?” Scootaloo blinked wildly.

Cheerilee motioned towards the doors, trotting over to shut them. “Why don't you just calm down and have a seat—”

“No!” Scootaloo rushed over, forcing Cheerilee to jump. “Don't leave! Don't—” She nudged Cheerilee away from the door and smiled in a frazzled mess. “G-good. Don't leave me—If you walk away too far, I-I might vanish and go back to the future—”

“Th-the future?” Cheerilee gazed at her, dumbfounded.

“It's a long story. But that's not for you to hear.” Scootaloo patted the teacher's wincing shoulder. “That's for the Princess. She'll understand—Or at least she'd better. She can't prevent the world from ending, but maybe she can help me figure out how it happened—” She grunted at the sound of several sobs and flashed a frown over her shoulder. “Stop crying! It'll all be fine! I just gotta talk to the Princess—”

“Maybe you should just sit down while I'll prepare a letter—”

“Not a stupid letter, girl! I need to talk to Princess Celestia personally!” Scootaloo exclaimed. She suddenly started at a sight over Cheerilee's flank. Through a sunny window, she could see the unicorn colt galloping back with two blue uniformed adult ponies in tow. “Y-you fetched the police on me?”

“I-I...” Cheerilee shivered, staring forlornly at the distraught classroom and then back at the raving pegasus. “P-please, just t-try to stay calm, Ma'am—”

“No, that's good!” Scootaloo beamed, clasping Cheerilee's wide-eyed face with a pair of hooves. “Go on and call the police! Fetch the Royal Guard while you're at it! I need Princess Celestia's attention! She's gotta know one way or another—Nnnngh!—Oh Goddess, this sunlight feels so good!” she briefly panted as she gazed out the window to happily watch the arrival of the police. “It's like I'm on fire—but in a good way! I wonder if I'll see the sunset?! It's been ages since I've seen a sunset! The world is so cold and dead and lifeless—I've forgotten just how... just how... Nnngh!” She spat over her shoulder again. “Stop crying already! Don't confirm all the crap Gilda's ever said! I thought ponies were stronger than this!”

“I-I got 'em, Mrs. Cheerilee!” Snails panted suddenly from the back of the room. He bowed out of the way as two tall stallions marched in, gazing sternly in Scootaloo's direction.

“Ma'am, is there a problem?”

“Stallions!... Ha HA!” Scootaloo guffawed and clapped her hooves, wide-eyed. “Dang it to blazes—Where were you after I hit puberty?!” She cleared her throat, straightened her lips, and strongly orated, “I need to see Princess Celestia right away.”

One uniformed pony raised his eyebrow. “Is that a fact?”

“Absolutely. I don't care if you need to arrest me or whatever—Just take me to her. This can't wait.”

“And what exactly is it that can't wait, ma'am?” The two officers marched towards her.

She eyed them warily, her wings flexing. “How many times am I going to have to spell it out and to how many ponies?” She furrowed her brow. “Five months from now, the world is going to end in fire! Every living pony is going to turn to ash while the Sun and Moon die! I need to talk to the Princess and figure out how this is going to happen so I can undo the damage that will be done!”

The officers glanced at the wilting sight of the classroom, then back at the pegasus. “How about you just come with us—?”

“Yes. Fine. Take me—But as long as we talk to the Princess!”

“Th-thank you, officers,” Cheerilee murmured, backtrotting towards the classroom. “I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't—”

Scootaloo gasped at her. “Don't you stay here!” She shouted and leaped towards her. “We have to stay together! Or else I'll be zapped forward in time—” She jolted as the two police ponies suddenly grabbed her by the flank and tail. “Nnngh—Let go!”

“Easy now—!” The stallions struggled and applied their weight. “You've done quite enough—!”

“Didn't you hear me?” Scootaloo wrangled her wings under one of the colts with veteran tenacity and easily flung the surprised officer across the room so that he crashed into a filing cabinet, forcing the room full of foals to shriek. “We have to stay together! I'm not even going to pretend to argue with you!”

“Ma'am! If you don't calm down, we'll be forced to—!”

“The world is going to die in flames and you're telling me to 'calm down'?” Scootaloo snarled and lowered on her haunches, her copper wings poised to spring while the two officers stumbled back onto their hooves and circled her. “I'm not going to ask this again, you good-for-nothing punks! Take me to the Princess or I will—”

“It's alright!” Cheerilee suddenly ran in the officers' way, blocking the space between them and the menacing pegasus. “Please—It's okay. Th-there's no need for a struggle.” She gulped. “I'll go with her to see the Princess.” She turned from the blinking stallions and smiled gently at Scootaloo. Her coat was a ruby glaze of cold sweat. “We're not going to get separated, okay? Just stick with me—We'll go see the Princess together.”

Scootaloo breathed easier. She stood up straight and rode the cresting descent of adrenaline in her bloodstream. “Whew... That's more like it! Looks like at least one pony in Equestria gives a crap about the future!” She trotted towards the schoolhouse entrance, pausing to look back and make sure Cheerilee was walking with her as well. She smiled as the teacher strolled up. “I'm so sorry to be such a bother, but you g-gotta understand how important this is...”

“Oh, absolutely!” Cheerilee grinned back. “You've obviously been through an awful lot, and it's so very noble of you to give us this warning. I'm sure Princess Celestia will be in your debt—Not to mention all of Ponyville.”

“I'm not doing all of this for glory or fame—I just want to find a way to make my world sunny again. You like sunsets, don't you?”

“Indubitably!” Cheerilee nodded, briefly glancing back and squinting at the two colts. The officers followed as the four of them marched away from the schoolyard and towards the fringes of Ponyville. “If you would follow me, ma'am, I know a place where we can send a telegram to Princess Celestia—”

“I thought I friggin' told you I needed to speak to her face to face!”

“Oh, of course! But the telegrams are sent by pegasi like you—This will be the fastest we can get her to come see us!”

“Oh, well that's just fine. Yes, just fine—Nnnngh—Gawd, this grass is so amazing! Isn't the grass amazing? There's no grass in the future, y'know...”

“And the birds? Nope. All dead. Isn't that a shame? Though, to be frank, I never cared much for chickens. But that's a long story that I won't get into.”

“Uh huh...” Cheerilee nodded as the two ducked into the rear door of a two-story cinderblocked building on the edge of Ponyville. The sounds of theirs and the officers' hooves echoed across brightly lit corridors as they took a left, a right, and descended a series of steps into a dimly lit basement. “You certainly miss a lot of things where you come from.”

“Pfft—I'm just rambling off a list of random crud that I see. Do forgive me.” Scootaloo chuckled against her shadows on the walls. “It's just been so long since I talked to another pony—What with all of you being dead and stuff. I'm amazed that I didn't take to talking to myself after so many years of being alone. I used to always think that's what bums did. But wait—Did Ponyville have bums? I must be getting my memories mixed up with that one summer I spent at a foster home in Manehattan. Boy did I laugh when I found that place flooded with sea water and harpy turds after the Cataclysm.”

“Wow—That does sound funny!” Cheerilee droned, her smile a plastic one as she finally stopped in her tracks, glancing over Scootaloo's shoulders and towards the officers.

“Pfft—Why would you find that funny?” Scootaloo smirked, blinked, then glanced stupidly around the basement. There were several barred cells lining the corridor. “Wait, where in the hay are we—?”

Suddenly, both stallions gave her a vicious shove. She stumbled—gasping—into one of the jail cells, collapsing onto the floor as the metal barred door was slammed shut behind her. She sputtered, gasped, and clamored up to her hooves.

“No—No!” She ran up and rammed the door with her full weight. The bars clanged and rattled, filling the basement with a thunderous echo. Even the officers jumped back at her unnatural strength, but breathed easier as the doors held. “Don't do this!” Scootaloo shouted. “I'm so close to contacting the Princess! If you just allow me to speak with her—” She blinked, and her eyes narrowed on the quivering face of Cheerilee. “You lied to me, didn't you?”

“Th-thank you, officers.” The ruby-haired schoolteacher finally broke down, collapsing into the forelimbs of one of the uniformed stallions as he gently patted her shoulder. “I-I didn't know what else to do. She was sc-scaring the ch-children. I... I-I was afraid that she was going to do worse!”

“You did the right thing, Ms. Cheerilee,” the officer said, settling her trembling form. “Bluestone...” He motioned towards the other officer. “Go and fetch Nurse Red Heart. See if she can use her fancy schmancy degree in psychiatry to sort this poor soul out.”

“Roger. On it.” The other trotted away.

“You... Y-You think I'm crazy?” Scootaloo murmured. She frowned, then snarled, banging against the bars with copper hooves. “Well maybe there's a reason to be crazy! Did you ever think of that? What if you were the last living pony stuck in a world full of endless destruction and blood?! You'd go crazy too! But—dang it—I'm trying to do something good here! We can save Equestria! We can figure out why all this death and destruction happened—If you would just let me talk to the Princess!”

“You'll talk to someone alright.” The officer nodded towards her, his face emotionless and cool. “Now calm down or Nurse Heart's gonna have to replace these bars with something more padded!” He moved Cheerilee away from the raving pegasus. “You, have a seat, darling. I'll get you something to drink. I already sent Officer Haybreeze to watch over your class. Everything's gonna be fine. Your kids are okay.”

“H-how could anyone j-just walk up to a classroom of foals and d-disturb the peace like that?” Cheerilee shuddered and sniffled as the two walked towards a couch just around the corner from Scootaloo's vision. “In all my years of teaching, nothing like that has ever happened! What c-could that poor soul have gone through to be so... so lost?”

“I don't pretend to understand the mind of a pony, Ms. Cheerilee. My only job is to keep the peace.”

The word 'peace' rang through Scootaloo's ears, laced with the distant gasps of Cheerilee's sobbing voice. The breaths mutated into an invisible schoolroom full of frightened, quivering foals, their eyes brimming with tears, their eyes wide and horrified, their eyes staring at her.

“Why is everyone so easily scared?” She slumped down to her haunches and plowed her hooves through her flustered black mane. “They have to know. They have to know what's going to happen,” she stammered and quivered, rocking back and forth in the center of the dimly lit jail cell. “We're all going to die. We're all going to die. I just want to tell them all. I just want...” She clenched her eyes shut as the images of the foals' frightened faces flashed once more across her mind in a spinning kaleidoscope. “Nnnngh—No-No-No! You do not know the horror! Not like I do! Stop crying—Stop it... Stop it... Stop—!”

Suddenly, the cell lit up in a green aura. Scootaloo gasped. For a moment, she thought that one of the police ponies had trotted back with a lantern of some sort in his grasp, but Cheerilee and Officer Silvertrot had been seated well beyond sight. Once more, the immense emerald glow flickered, burning from the barren cot to the floorboards to the cinderblock foundation of the place.

Scootaloo stood up, shivering, and watched as a sea of green flames curtained across the room, billowed around her legs, and wafted over her. There was sudden rising sensation, like riding the Harmony up through a cloudbed, and Scootaloo's copper body burned to brown, her mane melted down into tiny violet stubble, and her eyes blinked from amber to scarlet. She was standing numbly in the burnt out alchemic circles drawn into the stone floor of a cavernous laboratory, under the the shadow of a calmly gazing, unamused Spike.

“I...” the last pony blinked. “I-I'm back? Already?” She gazed up at the purple dragon, her face pale. “B-but... But I thought I was supposed to be in the past for no less than five days!”

He stared at her, his green-crested chin propped on a hand of serrated claws. “I distinctly remember saying that I had stored enough green flame to send you back for a week. However, I did not state that I was indeed going to give you that much.”

“But... B-but why, Spike?” Scootaloo stammered; her natural voice was once again a frail thing aged by time and suffering. “I thought you were sending me back to get information.”

There was a knowing glint to Spike's emerald eyes as the elder dragon murmured: “You said it yourself, Scootaloo. You 'don't do subtle'.” He planted both hands down and bent over to stare deep into her soul. “You didn't follow an ounce of my advice, now did you?”

She wilted from his gaze, her eyes wavering like so many images of frightened foals still burned into her vision. Guiltily, she hung her snout towards the dull circles and muttered: “How did you know?”

“Because I know you, Scootaloo.” The noble dragon paced around her and came to a stop in the center of the laboratory. He reached over and rested a gentle hand on her shaved mane. “And though you've learned countless things in your years, read innumerable books, survived hundreds of horrors, outrun packs of bloodthirsty monstrosities—You are still, underneath all of that, the same dashing, bold, courageous, albeit impulsive little foal that nearly ran over fellow Ponyvilleans in the road with her scooter.” His lips curved slightly. “Underneath all of your hardened exterior, you are still that spunky little filly who once beat up a pair of colts for making fun of me, even though you didn't know that we were just joking around one rainy afternoon in April. And that little dragon, though honored by the way you tried to defend me, couldn't help but wish that she had thought a little more with her senses, at least as much as she did with her heart.”

She gnashed her teeth. She gazed up at him with moist eyes. “I told them, Spike.”

“Told who, Scootaloo?”

“Ms. Cheerilee. These two police officers. The... The f-foals...” She shuddered painfully. “Th-they all heard me talking about the end of the world. They thought I was rambling...” A wince. “And I was. Dang it, I was. But... But...” She shivered and buckled.

“Don't hold back, child—”

“Do you really realize what you're asking me to do, Spike?!” She shouted up at him, a tear or two trickling down her cheeks. “You want me to keep this awful truth built up like a raging boiler inside of me! And yet, I'm somehow supposed get these ponies to help me figure out why the world dies? I have to tell someone, Spike! How else am I going to learn anything?”

“And surely you can share the truth, but you have to do it tactfully,” Spike said, stroking her mane and leaning down so his large snout was even with hers. “Subtlety, Scootaloo. I cannot emphasize it enough. These ponies have not been through all the turmoils and struggles that you have. If you go galloping through the streets, screaming that the world is going to end, what else can you expect from them but disbelief or utter shock?”

“I was standing in the warmth of the Sun...” Scootaloo hiccuped, wiping her tears away with a trembling hoof. “And there was grass, and birds, and the children—Oh Goddess—the children! I scared them, Spike—I shouted at them.” She clenched her eyes shut and trembled. “I don't know why! It was like... It was like—”

“You were angry at them.”

Her eyes flashed open. She gazed sickly up at her old friend. “How horrible is that?” She breathed. “What did they ever do for me to envy them so much?”

“They died, Scootaloo. All of them died, as you and I will someday die,” he said. “Whatever the disaster, whatever the Cataclysm, it is still our greatest commonality. There will always be time for pity and envy, as they are often two halves of the same misguided coin. But that doesn't mean you should announce their doom while they're standing right in front of you. Epitaphs are meant to be engraved on ponies' stones, not on their faces.”

She paced over limply towards a lone laboratory table and slumped down against it. She nuzzled her face tiredly into a pair of folded hooves. “What use is any of that now?” She gazed up pathetically at the burnt diagram of the past and future on the cave wall, at the jaded lines plastered to an encircled 'Xl' “I blew it, Spike. The first trip back in time, and I've blown my cover. I've made a mess of everything.”

“I wouldn't be so certain of that,” he said in a slight smile, shuffling across the room. “Yes, a mess you indeed made. But you've hardly ruined things.”

“Oh really?!” She tilted her gaze up at him, frowning. “So terrorizing a classroom full of young children doesn't qualify as 'ruining things?' You've spent waaaaay too many centuries inside a mountain, Spike.”

“Like a good lab assistant, I've done my homework,” the elder dragon remarked as he thumbed his clawed fingers through a shelf of parchments. Finally, he pulled out a rolled-up scroll that resembled a flake of scrap paper in his monstrous palm. Marching back on scaled legs, he knelt down and placed the document before her. “While all things living have died in the hovels of Ponyville, the legacy they have left behind remains remarkably intact, including the most inane bits of data that one with enough free time can scrounge up from the ruins of—oh, say—the Ponyvillean Police Department Records.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. Curiously, she slid the scroll towards herself, unsealed it, and stretched the quarter-century-old document open. Her scarlet eyes danced down the rows of neatly scribbled words, and her optics brightened at the end of the perusal. Her jaw dropped as she murmured: “The report talks about a 'deranged pegasus' that was escorted to the jail cell for immediate psychiatric evaluation following an incident at Ms. Cheerilee's schoolhouse. But as soon as the officers sent for the village nurse—The suspect disappeared...” She blinked into the stone extremities of the cavernous lair. “Spike, that 'deranged suspect' was me!”

“An apt description, I would imagine.” He chuckled softly.

“You... You knew about this?” She squinted up at him.

He innocently smoothed his green spines back. “I... suspected it. It wouldn't be the first occasion that I've witnessed time perform a perfect full circle before my eyes. So it's hardly of any surprise to me. If anything, it should be something of consolation for the two of us.” He pointed with a clawed finger. “Does it say anything about the fate of that certain pegasus? Hmm?”

Scootaloo glanced once more at the document, her scarlet eyes narrowing. She murmured aloud: “'Cheerilee and several students were interviewed to compile a list of details to describe the suspect, but no matches were found in the immediate search. Within two weeks, Sheriff Goldmane decided the case did not warrant wanted posters—',” she made a face. “The heck?! I thought I traumatized those kids!”

“Do not be so quick to demonize yourself, child,” Spike said. “If I recall correctly, Cheerilee's schoolhouse was no stranger to bizarre incidents. In one winter month alone, the windows had to be replaced on three separate occasions from a single wayward postal worker flying far too low for pegasus standards. You must realize, what made life in Ponyville exciting is far different from what makes existence in the Wastes exciting.” He smiled slyly.

“Do...uh...” she gulped, sliding the scroll back towards him. “Do you have any more written evidences of my time traveling self in your 'library', Spike?”

He took the scroll, shaking his scaled snout with a dangle of his violet pendant. “Not that I've found, child. But, if you ask me, that can only be a marvelous thing.”

“Why's that?”

“Because it means you'll be following my advice!” he grinned toothily, shelving the scroll away and closing the cabinet drawers. “And the next time you go to the past, you will try to do things with subtlety.”

She blinked, eyes wide. “Y-you're sending me back? Right now? Right after I just made a mule out of myself?”

“Oh, I could very well send you soon.” Spike nodded. “But it won't be so soon in the past.” He marched over towards another cabinet and picked up a lead metal box in his clawed hands. “For the sake of caution, I plan to send you a month after your—mmm—'Cheerilee incident'.”

“So it will be four months before the Cataclysm,” Scootaloo remarked. Her eyes narrowed knowingly on the purple dragon. “You planned this from the beginning, didn't you? Ms. Cheerilee was a test!”

“Hmmm. Indeed.” He nodded, shuffling over on iron haunches with the box in his grasp. He placed it down onto the lab table just above Scootaloo. “And where you'll be going next, you'll be facing another test, a test of your tenacity for blending in with the world, a test of your ability to adopt a face and a name—and even a backstory. Because where you'll be going, your strength in finding truth will inevitably go through the crucible of bending it.”

“Something tells me you're not stressing where you'll be sending me as much as who you'll sending me to,” she muttered, standing up alongside him and glancing briefly at the box. “Is this someone's elses ashes?”

“No, Scootaloo. I do not have the ashes for whom we both seek.”

“Y-you don't?” Scootaloo blinked. “H-how come?”

“Though I may be the master of time travel,” he said as he undid the lock to the lead box and opened it with a rusted creak. “I am anything but the Wasteland's chief scavenger.” He reached into the box and pulled out several necklaces tied to tiny white shards of calcium. “If you are truly committed to this experiment, Scootaloo, and if you are willing to go the lengths required to avoid an incident like what happened with Ms. Cheerilee from henceforth, then it will be up to you to find the lasting ingredients.”

“How come everything is a test with you?” She smirked briefly up at him. The last pony then motioned her snout towards the shards dangling in the dragon's grasp. “What are these?”

“Baby dragon teeth, renown for their sensitivity to enchantment.”

“Whose dragon teeth?” Scootaloo blinked, then rolled her scarlet eyes. “Oh, lemme guess...”

“But of course.” He smiled, then melted his expression into a neutral sigh as he uttered, “I've stored them centuries ago for such a time when they could be of supreme use, and—alas—that moment has come.” He danced the dangling tooths between his scaled fingers as they glistened in the purple mana lanterns lining the cavern. “Most of them are attuned to specific souls, each being the soul of a pony who I knew in the past, and who I can anchor your soul-self to. With these enchanted teeth, you can find the remains of our former friends among the Wastes of Equestria. And once you do...”

“I'll have their ashes.” Scootaloo gulped. “The ashes we need to perform the binding.” She looked sadly up at the dragon. “Spike—Why didn't you warn me about Cheerilee's remains before you sent me back?”

His nostrils fumed somberly. “I suspected it may have made you reticent to take the necessary first step.”

“You can't protect me forever, Spike.”

“A truth that I acknowledge whole-heartedly,” he said with a nod, then handed her a single dragon's tooth on an orange string. “Which is why I believe you are completely and fully ready for performing this search, as it will prepare you for the next chronal leap at hoof.”

She hung the orange-tinted tooth before her eyes, squinting at it. “How do you know it'll work with me—The tooth that is?”

“The same way I'm able to send you into the past beyond the Cataclysm while I myself cannot go that far,” he said with a faint, knowing smirk. “The soul essence of ponies is the heart of the enchantment. The dragon tooth will be able to take you straight to the target's remains, while it will be completely dull to me, even if the fang itself came from my whelpish body.”

She stared intently at tooth, sweating. “I... I-I'm not sensing a thing, Spike.”

“Shhhh,” he exhaled calmly. “Relax, child. Do not stress—Only feel.”

She took a deep breath. She held the dangling tooth close to her heart and closed her eyes. Through solid inhales, she tried to form a picture in her mind.

What she got instead was a scent—The fragrance of dry barn hay, of rich soil and dirt, of rusted plows and wooden yokes and rows upon rows of delicious red fruit—And then a panorama of luscious green trees flickered through her shut eyelids, and when she snapped her scarlet optics open, they were dilating under the persistent weight of truth.

“Applejack.”

Chapter Ten: Where You Lay Your Head

Waves of wooden skeletons swam out of the gray mist in droves, hundreds upon hundreds of gnarled black branches, charred into soot and cinders by the flames of the Cataclysm. The leathery flakes of dead fruit hung off them as they came closer into view, their trunks hollowed out by the decay of time. The soil between the lifeless trees had been blasted away to barren rock, with black powder randomly cycloning above the sterile landscape like brief spurts of volcanic ash, and then settling once more into the perpetual silence of the dead acres.

Scootaloo leveled her descent and pushed at her cockpit levers, keeping the Harmony at a steady altitude as she skimmed the surface of the singed groves. Her goggled gaze narrowed in on an opening in the wasteland where the gnarled branches parted ways for a few dozen meters. Deciding it was the best location, she slowed the airship's speed and drifted the craft until it was nearly touching one large tree standing darkly above the rest. When she extended the port-side claw towards it, however, the petrified stalk crumbled to ashes. Sighing, she engaged the stabilizers, put the vessel into a permanent hover, and exited through the storage compartment's aperture.

After twenty minutes of prolonged effort, she managed to moor the levitating vessel with four chains stabbed into separate black stumps. Meekly satisfied with the anchorage, she gathered the rest of her equipment and stepped forward from the parked craft, heading southwest. In mid trot, the last pony raised the baby dragon's tooth up to her goggles. It hung from her neck by an orange string, and as her face stared closely at it, she felt a gentle aura pointing her forward and slightly toward the left.

She marched appropriately, following the enchanted shard's cue. On either side of her, petrified apple trees slunched over like rows of bound corpses, their limbs flaking off into ash even as she passed underneath them. The stony earth was splotched every now and then with feathery-white scrapes, the quarter-century old effigies of fallen songbirds. There was a sterile smell about this part of the wasteland, something deader than dead that permeated the shifting white mists that twirled tornadically through the hollow groves. Even the giant mushrooms of the Wasteland refused to leech off the petrified acres.

At last, the ground gave way beneath her in a clawed slope, as if a huge canyon had been gouged suddenly through the belly of Equestria. Scootaloo swiftly discovered the reason for the parting in the trees that allowed her to moor the Harmony so close to her destination. The mists cleared to reveal a gigantic sinkhole that had consumed the heart of Sweet Apple Acres, reducing the land into a gaping hole full of gravel and shifting soot. The upended bodies of long-dead fruit trees blanketed the open grave, their twisted roots scratching eternally through the gray fog.

With a somber breath, Scootaloo took wing, her pegasus feathers flying her through the bitter cold winds as she hovered steadily over the inexplicable ravine yawning beneath her. On either side of the trench, petrified apple trees leaned inward at awkward angles, some of them looking as though they could fall into the jaws of the earth at any second; others had done just that over the past two decades. Below her, bits and pieces of a faded red barn rested in splintery bits like a smashed coffin. In the center of it all, a lone and rusted weather-vane spun its rooster crests squeakily from the endless gusts.

In mid-flight, Scootaloo glanced once more at her toothy necklace. The chunk of infant dragon-matter was pointing her forwards, magically filling her senses with a nauseatingly sweet aroma of yesteryear. Fighting a sudden chill, Scootaloo glanced up and adjusted her goggles in time to spot a break in the mist.

The southern end of the sinkhole appeared in a sudden bluff, and hanging off its edges—barely intact—was the rickety wooden shell of the Apple Family's farmhouse. It leaned sickly on its haunches, the upper floors having sagged several meters into its lower foundation as the whole thing leaned crunchingly northward. A few paces to the east, a gazebo leaned precariously on the edge of the sinkhole, half of its floorboards having long fallen into the abyss. A brown wooden fence dangled like exposed bone in a similar fashion, and the hollow ribcages of pigs formed a pile beside a line of troughs overflowing with ashes.

The last pony touched down on even ground. She gasped to feel a chunk of black soil crumbling behind her and rolling its way down the cliffside of the ravine. Recovering her senses, she slowly trotted around the edge of the house, her eyes peering through amber goggles for the one thing she did not want to see. The dragon tooth urged her on, riding the pulsating throbs of her heartbeat, angling her hooves so that she rounded the last corner of the crumpled house—And stopped in a vibrating hum.

A breath left Scootaloo. Before her was the double-doored entrance to the Apple Family's storm shelter. The entrance was closed with rickety wooden panels, and lying broadly across the foundation—its broad girth adding weight to the flimsy barrier—was the hulking skeleton of an enormous, broad-shouldered stallion. Braced around the corpse's neckline was a mold-strewn wooden yoke with rusted iron spikes penetrating the body of the mechanism. The entirety of the pony's body was pressed to the door, its jaws turned aside with teeth forever biting into the finish. Judging from closer inspection, the metal hinges of the storm cellar's door appeared to have been shattered loose. The stallion must have done all he could to keep the door shut, right up to the bitter, burning end.

With a somber exhale, Scootaloo trotted over and began nudging the body with her snout. It wouldn't move. She snarled, struggled, and strained with all of her experienced might, but even then it took her several minutes to finally disentangle the stallion's skeleton from its diligent post. With the bones free, she effortlessly opened one door, only to watch both brittle panels crumble from their hinges. A loud echo of splinters emanated from the pitch-black cellar stairway below, and then all was once more silence and mist.

Slowly, Scootaloo descended the steps, lighting the yoke of lanterns around her shaved mane. The cellar turned into a hollow tube of bouncing shadows as she scaled the steps. Trotting down onto an even floor, the pegasus navigated a forest of cobwebs and skittering black shapes. She slowed to a shuffle, shining her halo of light left and right across the claustrophobic chamber of dust. In one corner, a pile of decayed foodstuffs lingered in a mountain of soot and rat droppings. In the opposite corner, a wave of earth had broken through the brick-laid walls and filled the room with the black dust of the sinkhole. And in yet another corner—

The dragon's tooth strobed once and was dead. Scootaloo's eyes twitched, perhaps in an attempt to erase the image in her mind before it could be committed to memory. Bravely, she stepped forward and knelt down besides a pile of bodies: three separate skeletons of completely different make, all huddled together in an embrace of crooked limbs and ratty hooves. One body was a mare of exceeding age with jagged joints and brittle marrow. A second was a tiny foal with next to no muscle mass. And the third...

The skull was obscured by a circular halo of tattered brown felt, moth-eaten along the brim and laced with spiderwebs. It took Scootaloo a few shivering seconds to move the hat before she was staring into the spaces of two hollow sockets that suddenly seemed livelier than her own.

In a strange breath of courage, she gulped and murmured, “Hey, AJ.” A brief beat: the sterile air of the room closed in around her, and she fought back the last drop of hesitance. “No hard feelings.”

That said, she produced a brass blade from her saddlebag, aimed it at the skeleton's spine, and began sawing.

Scootaloo marched back up the rows of dead orchards, her face blank, her saddlebag hanging a little heavier from her flanks. The mist cleared as she reached the Harmony. But just as she flew up to the aperture entrance of the lower gondola's storage compartment, murmuring a command for the runestones to unlock—She froze. Her gaze was aimed westward, just beyond a line of dead trees that curved in a direction opposite of the rest of the singed Acres. Her heart was pounding anew, but this time the dragon tooth was no longer strobing, for she had already acquired what she had come there for. Or at least, she almost had, Scootaloo suddenly realized.

Removing the saddlebag completely from her brown backside, she slid the thing a few meters into the safety of the storage compartment, floated back out, and commanded the runes in the door to seal the ship tight. She soared through the mists and touched down lightly, trotting west from the moored Harmony and piercing the line of awkward trees.

A few branches hung low, along with thorny brambles that dipped at eye-level. She pushed these clusters of dead vines away with minimal effort, ducking low past a couple of gnarled limbs, and climbing over a heap of charred earth until she finally came upon a clearing... and saw it.

Immediately, she raised her goggles and exposed two pained scarlet eyes, staring in disbelief at the sight before her. In a ghostlike trance, Scootaloo trotted forward into the company of a blistered wooden building, propped precariously two and a half meters from the ground in the cradled limbs of a burnt apple tree. The clubhouse was remarkably intact, a feat it had rarely ever accomplished even in the years before the Cataclysm. Its shingles were peeling and its windowpane had long fallen off in a heap, but the four walls were still carrying the weight of the tiny building, and the roof provided a dark shade from the blinking gray twilight above.

With a lump in her throat, Scootaloo numbly approached the careening plank that formed a walkway up to the balcony of the clubhouse. But with so much as one hoof placed down onto the wooden beam, the entire platform crunched into a belated pile of splinters. She didn't gasp, as her somberness greatly outweighed her shock. She exhaled, and with wings that wouldn't possibly have lifted her when she was a foal, Scootaloo effortlessly levitated herself to the balcony in a single bound. The floorboards creaked and wheezed dustily under her weight as she shuffled into the hollow of the shack.

The interior was nightmarishly quiet, like being inside a concrete block drowned in the center of the earth. She couldn't have asked for anything more. Scootaloo gazed silently as her eyes traveled the lengths of the room, observing tattered brown flakes of paper plastered to the walls, indecipherable illustrations of crusaders from an age long gone, of dreams long woken up from, of friends long dead. The floor was a sea of dust, with her fresh hoof prints looking bizarrely large to the scale of her wheezing recollection. The place had a smell to it that brought Scootaloo instantly back to nights of songs, crickets, and fireflies dancing in the moonlight. She ever so delicately wanted to scream.

She was about to turn around when a glint of twilight shimmered off something in the corner. Turning in a blink, the adult pegasus narrowed her eyes and trotted over until something took form in the penumbra of gray dimness wafting in from the crumbled windowpanes. The breath that left her was a wilting one, and she all but collapsed to her knees, her lower hooves folding numbly under her weight. She shuffled two forelegs and shifted something out of a pile of dust, something long and weighted, something glisteningly sublime. Its handlebars shone like polished cherries in the deep miasma of the doubly-dead world; its bent wheels squeaked like confused newborns that reflected her aged face.

Scootaloo could no longer contain it. She buckled, silently cradling the object in her lap, as she hung her head to the cadence of a haunting chorus in her lonesome ears.

A young orange pegasus twisted the wrench around the spokes of her scooter's wheels, finally tightening them with expert craftsponyship. Scootaloo tossed the wrench into a saddlebag resting against the log she was sitting on and spun the wheels for good measure. They practically sang on their axes, a tell-tale sign that they would glide smoothely for her over the next week of speeding randomly across Ponyville. Smirking, the winged foal gazed up across the flickering campfire as an orange-coated mare finished her exciting tale before the attendance of four other sets of ears.

“And it was right at that moment, when the elements of Harmony were lyin' all shattered on the stone floor of the abandoned temple, that Nightmare Moon was fixin' to make true to her threat of Eternal Night.” Applejack leaned forward with a wicked grin. “When what would happen; but the five girls and I reunited with Twilight, and in her eyes there was a spark—a magical spark! And wouldn't y'all know it? She taught us right then and there that the true Elements of Harmony were restin' inside of us the whole time! And all we really needed to defeat Nightmare Moon was our companionship, a joinin' of hooves if ya will. In a heapin' flash of colors, these purdy sparklin' jewels formed on our necks, and a solid beam'o'rainbow light soared straight at Nightmare Moon, lassoin' her up like a startled hog, and cleaned Princess Luna of all the nastiness that had clouded the poor Alicorn's soul for a thousand long years!”

“Coooooool,” Sweetie Bell and Apple Bloom cooed as one. They squatted side by side with sparkling eyes lit alive by the night-laced electricity of Applejack's story. A campfire crackled in the center of a crater of wooden logs, nestled in the front yard of the Apple Family's farmhouse under a purple curtain of twinkling stars.

“I had no idea Nightmare Moon was defeated like that!” Sweetie Bell beamed, balancing a roasted marshmallow on the end of a stick. “I always thought that night was a whole lot scarier!”

“Oh darling, of course it was a dreadful event up until that penultimate moment of victory!” Rarity's operatic voice announced her presence. The fashionista sat on a velvet pillow that she had hauled over to Sweet Apple Acres. The ivory unicorn nibbled delicately on a silver platter of marshmallow bits, all the while regaling her younger sibling, “There were phantom pegasi, ghoulish trees, a raging manticore, and a most horribly distraught sea serpent! If Twilight Sparkle hadn't had her mystical moment of sudden epiphany, I'm afraid your older sister and all of her companions would be rotting away in some unsavory dungeon made of moonrocks!”

“Hey!” Applejack briefly frowned. “Were you tellin' this here story or was I?”

“Please, Applejack...” Rarity smiled with fluttering blue eyes across the embers. “Far be it from me to detract from your rightful place in the limelight, but your recollection of that night's events could surely use a bit more dramatic flare and suspension of disbelief!”

“I reckon I told it just fine! It's getting' late, so shoot me for not wantin' to scare the fillies something fierce!” She upturned her snout, juggled a few marshmallows into her mouth, and downed them in a gulp. “Mmmm—Besides, if I hoofed the reins of the story to you, the whole lotta of us woulda been put to sleep by you gabbin' on forever about how plum dumbstruck yer were by them necklaces we were sportin'!”

“But weren't they the most splendid pieces of jewelry?! As if they were carved in the dawn of the First Age itself!—(Sweetie Bell, chew with your mouth closed, dear. There's a good lady.)—Ahem. But you were quite accurate towards the end, Applejack. I'll give you that much merit.”

“Did a rainbow really lasso up that nasty Nightmare Moon, sis?” Apple Bloom blinked over twin sticks of marshmallows.

“Heh heh! That's right! Slapped the gloominess square off her noggin'!”

Young Scootaloo raspberried. “How in the heck can a rainbow smack around a pony?” She spun the wheels on the scooter she was examining once more and smirked. “Much less a stupid dark moon goddess come to enslave us all?”

“It's not so much that the rainbow throttled Nightmare Moon within an inch of her life, but rather—” Rarity began, but at the sound of an orange mare's throat viciously clearing, she shifted nervously on her pillow and smiled. “R-right. Do carry on, Applejack.”

“Ahem. Much obliged.” She turned and gazed with soft green eyes Scootaloo's way. “Y'all must realize that a rainbow means a lot more than just a fancy blendin' of lights—or whatever it is that they're teachin' you in them textbooks nowadays. Nah, Rainbows are symbols of hope, like when good friends come together and make magic happen. That's exactly what took place when the elements of Harmony came together with the six of us. The fact that it produced a rainbow was just... just... erm—”

“A matter of ironic theatrics,” Rarity said, smiling between marshmallow nibbles.

Applejack grumbled into a mouthful of sugary dough. “Mmmf... Showoff...”

“Well, I think it's a great story!” Apple Bloom positively squealed. “Y'all were so brave, especially you, Sis!”

“Awww, shucks, Apple Bloom. Yer makin' yer big sister blush.”

“Pffft—Of course she'd root for her sister the whole time!” Sweetie Bell rolled her eyes.

Apple Bloom stuck her tongue out at the unicorn. “So what if I did! Yer just bummed cuz AJ saved Twilight Sparkle from fallin' off a cliff and all yer sister did was dress up a giant snake!”

“Hey! She was showing generosity! Go choke on a marshmallow!”

“I would if I could swallow ya!”

“Girls—Girls!” Rarity tsk'd-tsk'd. “Now what's so 'harmonious' about this kind of an attitude? Why—Applejack, myself, and the rest of us would never have defeated Nightmare Moon if we carried on with such awful bickering!”

“You're riiiiight.” Sweetie Bell sighed, shifted where she sat on her log and mumbled, “I'm sorryyyyy, Apple Bloom.”

“Me too, Sweetie Bell.” Apple Bloom smiled sweetly at her. “I think we both should be happy that we have such brave sisters.”

“And such delicious marshmallows!” Sweetie Bell's eyes twinkled as she beamed across the campfire at Scootaloo. “Thanks for fetching these, Scootaloo!”

“Yeah, thanks, girl!” Apple Bloom giggled. “They really make a bonfire worth gatherin' wood for!”

“Hey—It's my pleasure,” Scootaloo smirked rosily. “Figured it'd be a crime to listen to an awesome story over a fire without something to snack on!”

“Well I whole-heartedly agree; they are a finer delicacy than I normally give them credit for.” Rarity winked. “Wherever did you purchase them from?”

“Ohhh—Sugarcube Corner. Mr. Cake makes them himself. Not even the candy stores in Canterlot make 'em as tasty, I'm willing to bet.”

“Ain't you gonna have a bite yerself, kiddo?” Applejack murmured through a mouthful.

“Yeah, Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom guiltily frowned. “We don't wanna be hoggin' them all!”

“Pffft—I got them all for you to enjoy, so enjoy them!” She leaned her scooter on the log next to her bag and reclined lackadaisically. “Besides, I get all the marshmallows I could ever want.”

“Really?”

“My parents give me this craaaaaazy awesome allowance.” Scootaloo rolled her violet eyes. “Seriously—With all the nights my dad works to bring home the bits, I'm spoiled rotten!”

“That makes the four of us.” Rarity hummed after another bite and cleaned her empty plate off daintily. “Mmm—That reminds me. Applejack, did you hear that Twilight Sparkle has begun a book of memoirs?”

“A book of what-now?”

“A collection of all her experiences in Ponyville as written from a first-pony perspective!” Rarity smiled. “It's been almost six months since she arrived in town, and she's already been inspired to write a personal summary of all her letters to Princess Celestia. She regaled me about it this afternoon over brunch. I think it's a positively splendid idea.”

“Yer don't say. What's she fixin' to name this thang?”

“'The Harmony Chronicles.' It has a nice ring to it, don't you think?”

“Ugh!” Scootaloo clopped her hooves briefly against her forehead and groaned, “Seriously—What's the whole big deal about 'harmony?' Not that your stories aren't awesome or what-not, but everyone uses that word like a social disease!”

Applejack spat and choked briefly on a chunk of marshmallows as Apple Bloom blinked innocently.

Sweetie Bell glanced crookedly up at her sister. “Rare? What's a 'social disease?'”

“Erm—(I-I'll tell you when it's time to buy you a bridle, dear),” Rarity stammered and smiled nervously Scootaloo's way. “Ahem—Colorful metaphors aside, Scootaloo, 'harmony' is the essence of friendship, at least when it comes to Applejack, myself, and our little circle of fillies.”

“So that's all it is?” Scootaloo raised a vexed eyebrow. “Just a bunch of racket about 'friendship?'”

“It's more than that, sugarcube,” Applejack remarked. She cleared her throat with a gulp of apple cider, exhaled, and smiled the filly pegasus' way. “'Harmony' means bein' at peace with yerself, as well as with those around you. It's about finding that magical place in yer heart where yer no longer afraid of the little things—or the big things in life, cuz you've got everythang all together-like.”

“So only when you have friends do you get to experience 'harmony?'” Scootaloo made a face.

“Mmm—Not necessarily, I suppose,” Applejack thought aloud, then smiled. “I reckon even solitary ponies can be at peace with themselves. Every soul floats through life a slightly different way, but the difference between those who are harmonious and those who ain't is that the ones with harmony feel like they don't have to stress the weight of the world, because they can manage things just fine. I reckon you could say 'harmony' is like a state of being. It's like... It's like...”

“It's like never being lost!” Sweetie Bell hopped up in her seat. “It's like being at home, no matter where you are!”

Scootaloo blinked the young unicorn's way. Her breath left her under a faltering heartbeat, and her violet eyes gazed down at the firelit earth.

“Y'know what—That's a plum good way of puttin' it.” Applejack smiled. “Kudos to you, Rarity, for polishin' your little sister's head up just right with them homeschool courses!”

“H-Hey!” Apple Bloom barked. “I'm bright too!”

“Of course you are, darlin'. Just don't be shocked when yer my age and you discover that bein' literate don't get no apples down from the trees!”

“Pffft—Maybe I'll just move in with Aunt and Uncle Orange!”

“Ha! The day you do that is the day I grow a mule out of my left ear!”

Sweetie Bell and Rarity giggled at that. Apple Bloom helplessly joined their cadence as the campfire crackled to a sudden dimness, so that the blue-maned fashionista suddenly sauntered up to her hooves and exclaimed, “Well, it has gotten exceedingly late, and I have many silk supplies to pick up from the next Trottingham shipment in the morning. Sweetie Bell, honey, it is high time that we headed our way back home.”

“Awwwwww—But can't we stay just a little bit longer?”

“It's been delightful, Sweetie Bell, but we have a strict lesson plan tomorrow and I shan't fail at my responsibilities to your future!”

“What's so great about my future? The next research assignment is about some dumb old fossils!”

“Those aren't just dumb fossils! They're the excavated remains of the Second Age's Lunar Dynasty—only the most influential designers of earth pony wear in millennia—Nnngh—Ahem, we shall talk about it in the morning.”

“Yessssss, sissss.” Sweetie Bell sighed, finished the last of her marshmallows, and smiled Apple Bloom's way. “Thanks so much for inviting us over! I do hope we get to do this again sometime!”

“I would love that! So long as my sister and I still have wood to burn!”

“Heh.” Applejack stood up and stretched. “I'm kinda fancyin' this sort of communion myself, to be perfectly honest.”

“And you always are honest, dear.” Rarity winked at her, then glanced Scootaloo's way. “Scootaloo, dear, would you like us to walk you home?”

The orange-coated filly snapped out of her stupor. She looked up with a practiced grin. “Hmm—Ohhh, nah. That's awfully nice of you, Miss Rarity, but I'll be fine.”

“Are you sure? How in heaven's name do you manage to get around on that device at such dark hours of the evening?”

Scootaloo stood up and kicked the edge of her scooter so that it dramatically bounced up, unfolded, and propped itself under her hoof. “It's nature! All pegasi have a built-in radar they use to navigate the world like homing pigeons. 'Wing sense.'” She winked. “Look it up!”

Rarity stared for a few prolonged seconds, then smiled. “Well, if you insist, but the offer still remains.” She shouldered her pillow like a saddle and trotted off with her foalish sibling. “Come along, Sweetie Bell. Stay by my side.”

“So long, Apple Bloom! Scootaloo! AJ!”

“Bye Bye, Sweetie Bell!”

“Y'all stay safe! Don't walk into the Everfree Forest or nothin' goofy-like!”

“Applejack!—What do you take me for, a plowhorse? A lady certainly knows her way home!”

“Just don't get yer horn rammed into a tree!”

“Oh puh-leeeease!”

“Heh heh heh.”

Scootaloo watched with forlorn muteness as the party dissipated. She liquidly mounted her scooter, wincing slightly as a deep bass sound obscenely emanated from her belly. She hid it with a loud clearing of her throat. A shadow before the campfire wafted over her. She glanced up, blinking.

Applejack smiled down at her. “Yer sure we can't walk ya home? I hate to think yer parents fancy the Apple family to be irresponsible with their guests!”

“Believe me—They rather not bother anypony this time of night.” Scootaloo grinned slyly. “Besides, Mom's probably trying to sleep, and Dad's reading his latest issue of Equestria Daily. They know I can look after myself.” She bit her lip, her eyes glancing over at a barrel just a few meters beyond the penumbra of the crackling fire. A sparkling horde of delicious apples lingered from the latest harvest. Scootaloo swiftly wrenched her gaze off and resumed smirking. “It's the pegasus way, y'know.”

“Mmmm... I reckon,” Applejack muttered, but she tactfully followed the line of Scootaloo's sight. “But the least I can do is offer a token of Apple Family hospitality.” She then trotted over to the barrel, lowered her hat, grabbed three whole apples, and deposited the three of them into the little pegasus' bag. “There ya go—Something for yer family to munch on.”

Scootaloo gasped, “Oh AJ—I couldn't! Besides, I spent all of my allowance on those marshmallows and—”

“Oh go soak yer head!” Applejack rolled her eyes and stuck her cowgirl hat back on. “It's a gift, sugarcube! Compliments of a family that appreciates yer good manners and friendship.”

“Yeah! Besides, those marshmallows were delicious!” Apple Bloom trotted up, beaming.

Scootaloo gulped, her face hidden in the shadows of the dying fire, so that the weakness of her smile was barely noticeable. “Well... uh... I guess I could convince Mom and Dad to have these for dessert tomorrow night.” She sealed the bag of apples and tools and slung it all over her shoulder. “Th-Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“Mmmm—'Dessert,'” Applejack thought aloud as she shuffled over towards the other end of the yard. “Now there's a lick of sense—Focus more on advertising Apple Fritters and less on Apple Cider. Especially with the holidays comin' around, that would positively roll in the bits!”

Apple Bloom shook her head with a smile and trotted over, momentarily nuzzling Scootaloo. “Stay safe, Scoots. I'll see ya tomorrow, ya hear?”

“Y-yeah...” The filly pegasus strapped her helmet on and gripped her scooter. She smirked at the hairbow'd earth pony. “Try not to wet your bed, Miss Cider!”

“Try not to lay an egg, chicken!”

“Ba-COCCK!—Eat my feathers!” Scootaloo winked and blazed a trail down the stretch of night-kissed orchards, her wings beating her forward atop the scooter. She rounded the hills overlooking Sweet Apple Acres, then took a sudden east turn and ascended a rise in earth bordering the Southern Forest. There, she paused and glanced down breathlessly towards the distant farmhouse of the Apple Family.

The campfire sputtered and sparkled for a few lingering minutes, until the shadow of an orange pony finally extinguished it in a puff of gray mist that floated towards the heavens, dissipating against the purple haze of the Milky Way. Two sisterly shapes sauntered up to the front door of the farmhouse, and in a matter of minutes every light in the building turned black.

Scootaloo lingered there, leaning her upper body over the handles of her scooter in a melancholic slump. Her curved eyes focused long and hard on the dark outline of the humble home, until the crickets hovering about the line of trees behind her dragged her back to the dark heartbeat of the moment. She exhaled a weathered breath, spun about, and pushed her scooter into the forest, piercing the trees with the sluggish charm of a flightless bird.

Less than an hour later, she arrived at a dark shape that lay in a heap at the center of a forested clearing. It was the structure of a barn, constructed uncountable years before the colony that would become Ponyville spread north into the open riverbed beyond the trees. The wooden beams and support struts of the barn were in decent shape—decent enough not to collapse at any given moment.

Scootaloo pedaled her way inside, skidded to an unenthusiastic stop, and propped her scooter up against an abandoned stable. With shivering orange wings, she climbed a wooden ladder up to the loft of the splintery-roofed barn, where a month-old spread of crinkled hay and a tattered canvas sheet served as a bed. She reached into a cluster of straw and uncovered a hidden suitcase, inside which were several basic necessities and mechanical tools, mostly crafted by the filly herself. She opened her bag and produced the three apples, watching as they glistened in the purple starlight filtering down from the cosmos, unsurprised at a pair of reflected violets that watered half as much as her mouth did that very moment.

She stuck two of the apples safely into the suitcase. The third apple, she eagerly devoured, savoring her first meal in nearly two days. The other fruits would have to be conserved over the course of the week, long after the lonely night had taken its course, long after she had tossed and turned in the straw under a futile search for sleep, long after the tears had redoubled—as they always did under the moonlight—but this time pondering a new question, a question that ached her head with enough pain to rival the perpetual pit in her stomach.

Was this 'harmony'?

“I'm sorry, Scootaloo.” Spike turned and glanced up from where he was reading an old journal of self-scribbled math equations. “What did you say?”

“You have a nice home,” the last pegasus remarked. She shuffled down a series of worn steps from the first level of Twilight's old treehouse and removed her saddlebag. “It's cozy, it's got everything you need, and it's so nicely decorated.”

The purple dragon lowered a pair of large crystalline spectacles from his emerald eyes and smiled sagely. “It is a gaping hole in the ground that I only carved wider with my bare claws a few scant years ago.”

“Still—It counts for something,” she said, her eyes falling emotionlessly over the shelves of mystical ingredients. “A long time ago, I came to believe that 'home' is wherever you lay your head. But even that is a stretch. I think the only time you're ever home is when you die.”

Spike shrugged his aged arms. “You've done well for yourself all these years, if I may say so. You've always had the Harmony, yes?”

“Who hasn't?”

“Indeed.” With a deep fuming breath, he leaned forward, his violet pendant twinkling earnestly in the manalight. “Did you find what you were searching for, Scootaloo?”

The brown pegasus slumped the dull weight of the saddlebag onto a granite tabletop with a flurry of dust. “She's here, Spike,” she muttered.

He slowly nodded. Putting aside his journal, he slithered over and delicately opened the bag before examining its grim contents. The pegasus strutted across the laboratory, gazing up at the lengths of the purple-hazed interior as more and more details revealed themselves to her with each passing visit.

“It wasn't easy at first to sleep in my airship,” she rambled. “What, with the gray world outside always being the same constant shade of ugliness, no day and no night. There's no need for a cycle, because everything is so static. So eventually, you're staying awake all the time, and when you sleep—it's only for pathetically short thirty-minute spurts every eight hours or so. But then it's not really sleep, is it? It's more like you're half alive, half awake, half dreaming—I dunno how to describe it. But when you lie down, you know that you're just fooling yourself. All that matters is your next task, your next tomb raiding, your next run-in with a monster—thinking about all the ways you gotta keep yourself alive to keep yourself alive another dayless day... Heck, even now, I'm not even sure if I'm dreaming or if I'm thinking of dreaming.”

“Which do you think it is, Scootaloo?” Spike asked in a distant voice.

“I'll let you know the soonest I open my eyes,” she said with a bitter smirk. She turned around. “Hey, mister Triple Centenarian, do you still bother with sleep?” Silence. She blinked. “Sp-Spike?”

“Please, Scootaloo,” her scaled friend murmured in a low voice. “A moment, if you will.”

She squinted curiously at him, momentarily numb to his solemnity, until she saw him hoist the hollow pony skull out of the saddlebag and place it gently onto the table. She clenched her jaw and gazed towards the stone floor, drowning herself in a pool of silence for Spike's sake, and for the sake of another ghost that lingered dustily in the sudden, grave hole that surrounded them all.

Minutes into the muteness, Spike's clawed finger gently stroked the hollow at the base of the skull's nostrils. Scootaloo trotted over as the dragon gulped his scaled throat and murmured, “I do not envy the task that I have set before you, Scootaloo. It is one thing to know that the necessary ingredients for the green flame's binding are the ashes of our loved ones, but it's another thing altogether to dig them up, something that has been forced upon you no matter how many ways I wish to paint the truth otherwise.”

“Jee, Spike,” she muttered. “You're speaking as if I haven't done things as bad if not worse already.” She pulled her goggles completely off and set them on the table besides the skull whose hollow she was being absorbed in. “I've pulled things off of bodies. I've pried teeth loose, sliced horns off of unicorns, carved rings off of fingers—” She paused in mid-confession, her face caught upon the precipice of a wretch as she dove deeper and deeper into the hollow, finding it incredibly hard to flutter her way back. “...I-I've eaten meat, Spike. I've murdered creatures in cold blood. I've robbed from the halls of Princess Celestia and the graves of the innocent.” She snapped her eyes in a concrete blink and cleared her throat. “You shouldn't feel bad about sending me to do the unthinkable. I've lived all my life with the intention that the ends justify the means. Why should this moment be any different, when we've come this far, when we have an entire Equestria to bring beauty back to... s-somehow...?”

“Because this isn't just our moment,” the dragon said, gently cradling the equine skull as his tired green eyes studied it like a lost limb. “This is an entire sunken well of moments, strung together from eternity to eternity—moments that belong to all that has died, and all that will die again, no matter how many times we dive down into the warm currents of the past—Their past.”

He glanced aside at Scootaloo and motioned with his head towards the skull.

“She was having a family reunion when I first saw her,” he said. “There were nearly a hundred ponies in the Apple Family, and they treated me, a perfect stranger, like royalty the first moment Twilight and I set hoof on her property. There was so much bounty—So much pie. Heheheh—Twilight's belly practically bowed from her obligatory indulgence. I tell you, Scootaloo, there is no earth pony who absolutely loved, took care of, and relished in the fruits of the earth than Applejack. And what should rightfully be buried in that earth we must now disturb so that we might ascertain the truth of those last burning moments that only residually belonged to us in the first place. Believe me when I say this, Scootaloo: this is a brutal irony that I had long hoped to share with myself alone.”

“Save your apologies for when you've wet the bed, Spike,” Scootaloo blurted. “Let's just do what needs to be done.”

“Your impulsiveness for once has a twinge of wisdom to it, old friend,” Spike bowed his head and reached into a cabinet, from which he produced a tool that he proceeded to scrape edges of the skull with, forming a fine dust that he then shuffled into the hollow of a crystal vial. “I've already prepared the alchemic circles. You may take your place when you are ready.”

Scootaloo nodded, stripping off her armor and gear as she trotted over towards the space of stone floor in question. “I promise that things will go much better this time, Spike, if not for our sake—then for Applejack's.”

“Of that I have no doubt.”

“Though—There's one major detail that I'm curious about,” she remarked.

“Hmmm?” He finished gathering the necessary dust and planted the skull safely back down onto the tabletop. “And what is that?”

She made a face, her brown muzzle scrunching. “You said my appearance would look different when my soul essence manifested itself in the past....”

“And did it?”

“Yes. I had a completely different coat. It was—like—a rusted shade of copper. And then my eyes resembled the colors of my goggles. And then my hair—”

“—was a black flowing mane with an amber streak to match the eyes?” He smiled over his scaled shoulder at her.

“Er—Yes.”

“And I imagine, then, that you were also rather surprised to find the most remarkable emblem on your flank.” Spike strolled over towards the threshhold of the next time jump. He suddenly coughed, hacking up a cloud of fumes that he nonchalantly batted away before stating, “A rather belated cutie mark, if I must say so.”

“It's like nothing I've ever seen before!” Scootaloo breathlessly stammered. “And I wasn't the only pony to think that! Ms. Cheerilee's entire class was gasping at it. And then she went on and on about how I'm some sort of 'royal member of Canterlot Court' or what-crap.”

“Well, if I recall—It's a rather pristine solar crest that you are bearing. And in the center of which is—”

“—an infinity symbol.” Scootaloo nodded, glancing once more at the etched cave wall before squinting back towards him. “Just how in the heck do you know what it looks like?”

“Because it isn't just any royal cutie mark.” Spike smiled. “It is the very same mark worn by Princess Entropa.”

“The Goddess of Time?” Scootaloo's eyes twitched. “But... B-but how is that possible?”

“Simple—I am threading you back through time via a current of the Goddess' very own essence, yes?”

“I... guess...?”

“The way that you look, and the way that you appear to others, is a result of the fact that your projected self has become an extension of Princess Entropa's glory. You are, in every sense of the term, made manifest in her image,” he said, then chuckled briefly. “Though, I imagine, you are hardly an Alicorn. You are still your own soul, pegasus guile and all.”

“Huh... That's kind of nifty,” Scootaloo murmured, gazing down at the circles framing her. “But, with the crest and all, it’s like everyone assumes that I'm a servant or clerk of Princess Celestia...”

“Something that you can take advantage of, no doubt.”

“How do you mean, Spike?”

“Simple—Our greatest goal here is for you to make contact with the Goddess of the Sun, yes?” Spike smirked sideways. “What better way to do that than to convince the ponies you meet that you are an ambassador visiting abroad on her behalf?”

“Spike—You should know me by now.” Scootaloo lethargically glared at him. “The only thing royal about me is the way I burp after a broth of mushroom stew.”

“Then perhaps you should perfect your fine art of belching,” he leaned broadly over her with the jar. “You are going to a farmstead where there is much to eat, after all.”

She gulped. “I hope to be doing much more than that, Spike.”

The dragon nodded. In a solemn tone, he murmured: “Take care, Scootaloo. Remember my words of wisdom—But more importantly, latch onto those of your own.”

“The moment I think them up, I'll consider it,” she said with a lasting smile. Then she sighed and shut her eyes. “I-I'm ready.”

“Very well, child.” The dragon leaned over, anointing Scootaloo's forehead with the ashes of Applejack. After the frozen pony's upper coat was succinctly doused, he took a step back, inhaled sharply, and managed in a fuming green breath, “Keep your hooves on the earth.”

Scootaloo burned while all gravity spun around her. As she felt her mane grow long and her eyes flicker from scarlet to amber under their lids, she nodded her head and deliriously murmured back to her friend, “I'll do my best.”

She opened her eyes—and the blue horizon was upside down.

“Whoah—”

She flailed, gasped, and clambored over a bouncing forest of brown branches and bobbing apples. Green leaves and stems flickered past her lopsided vision, providing a crimson kaleidoscope of hundreds of thousands of dangling fruit across glistening orchards. Another jolt, and she surged towards the ground for another meter before wedging her body obscenely through two scissoring branches, suspended like an awkward pendulum above a dirt path just beyond hooves' reach.

“Oh yeah... This is fun,” she hissed, waved her hooves madly, and flailed wild copper wings in the leaf-littered air. “Nnnnnngh—Ugh!” She dangled, her amber-streaked hair forming a black flag beneath her twitching ears. “Hoboy—Well, this couldn't get any worse.

“There ya are! I'm gonna rip yer gullet out, yer mangy varmint!”

“Huh—?” Scootaloo's dangling head spun and her amber eyes pulsed wide as a trio of serrated metal teeth sliced its way through the air and straight at her snout. “Gahhh!”

An orange mare in the glare of the noonday Sun froze in mid lunge, her pitchfork stopping a bare centimeter from the dangling pony's eyeballs. “What in tarnation—?” She glanced cockeyed as a red stallion marched up beside her, brandishing a likewise threatening spade in his strong teeth. “Oh for cryin' out loud! I thought yer were something else!”

“You m-mean something other than a crucified pony?” Scootaloo hissed, caught her tongue—then rolled her eyes at herself. “Ahem—I'm sorry. My manners—You see, I kinda got stuck here—”

There was a loud metallic ring, and the bladed pitchfork was once more vibrating point blank in Scootaloo's face. “Which would never have happened if you weren't so dag blame'd beant on trespassin' like a freeloadin' mule!” Applejack's teeth glistened angrily in the spring air. “I swear—pegasi think they own the skies! Well, these here skies happen to be the roof of this land—Our land! And if ya'll wanna come out of this with slightly less holes poked in ya—Ya better start singin' or Big Macintosh here will really give you something to write home about!”

The red workhorse nodded, spat out the spade in his teeth, and opened his mouth to speak—

“Don't you worry, Macky. I've got this,” Apple Jack frowned and poked the winged pony threateningly in the chest. “Now spit it out! What were you doin' in our trees?”

“Yeesh—I don't ever remember you guys being this psycho!” Scootaloo frowned. “What gives? What was this 'something else' you thought I was?”

“You ain't knowin' nothin' about us because we ain't never met before, smart aleck!” Applejack scowled. “Now what's yer name?”

“Uhhhh...” Scootaloo blinked, helplessly dangling. “M-my name??”

“You heard me! Don't you know it's impolite to ignore a question when it's aimed at y'all?”

“I... I'm... Uh...” The copper pegasus bit her lip. She glanced past Applejack's glistening image in the noonlight. She saw a hauntingly familiar ring of wooden logs lying in front of an upside down farmhouse. Her amber eyes caught the distant bobbing figure of Granny Smith in a rockingchair. Besides the deliriously smiling elder was a table, atop of which was a record player—playing faint music, like cello strings, like a lullaby, a hammock, a bobbing homeless home in the gray twilight...

“Well...?”

“Harmony...” The last pony smiled nervously and stammered the cowgirl's way. “M-my name is H-Harmony.”

Chapter Eleven: A Wonder to be Alive

“That's a mighty purdy name you've got there, Harmony, but it doesn't do a lick of good excusin' you for pokin' yer wings through these here apple trees!”

“H-hey! You asked me who I was, didn't you?” Scootaloo—or “Harmony”—hissed and wiggled, the faces of her two interrogators frowning upside down before her as she dangled from the upper branches of the apple tree. “Whatever happened to country hospitality anyways?”

“Y'all must be thinkin' about another country—a country full of hay-brained idiots!” Applejack leaned obstinately on her pitch-fork in front of the topsy-turvy pegasus and spat into the ground before growling, “You think we're stupid? In these parts, we don't take kindly to wayward leaf rummagin'!”

The time traveler's amber eyes narrowed. “Did it ever occur to you that I might simply be a visitor?”

“Front door's thattaway.” Applejack lethargically pointed a hoof towards the Apple Family farmhouse beyond the red barn. “But y'all can forget about droppin' in for a cup of tea. Big Macintosh here and I have lots of work to do and we ain't gonna be makin' no progress on account of random ponies usin' our orchards for landing pads!”

“I swear, this whole thing was an accident,” Harmony confessed in total honesty. She tongued the inside of her mouth and shot her eyes towards the corners of her sockets in an attempt to scoop up something meatier, yet not nearly as honest. “I-I'm not all that accustomed to flying around this area of Ponyville!” Then she produced something half-true, at least: “I'm a stranger to these parts, you see.”

The farm mare's green eyes focused on the outsider's face with squinting suspicion. “I've never known a pegasus this far from Cloudsdale to have so much trouble navigatin' the treetops of Ponyville,” Applejack muttered. “Don't y'all get grilled on a daily basis at them fancy schmancy flight schools of yers? How could they let a winged pony as loopy as you get herself a diploma?”

“Jee, I dunno.” Harmony frowned, reaching into the back of her blood-pumping mind and salvaging: “They've let even loopier ones deliver the mail, haven't they?”

A deep bass chuckle filled the air; the red stallion aptly named Big Macintosh snickered before producing a smile and an “Eeeyup.”

Applejack frowned at him, then gave Harmony a haughty glance. “I swear, even when y'all are on the ground, you pegasi still have yer head in the clouds.”

“Better than having our heads up something else,” Harmony grunted, flailed one last time, and sweated with a dull glare. “Can somepony let me down now?”

Applejack rolled her eyes, then whistled at Big Macintosh. The stallion nodded, marched up, and nudged half of the pegasus' body upwards with the back of his neck. He then stretched a mighty leg out to buck the tree trunk. The resulting impact expertly shook the black-maned visitor from the forking branches. She spun in the air with a girlish shriek before being caught effortlessly across Big Mac's backside. The stallion lowered gently to his knees, and she stumbled off of him, reeling with dizzied amber eyes.

“Ughhh... I've eaten mushrooms all my life, and now I'm seeing stars,” she muttered quietly to herself, shook the cobwebs out of her head, and gazed up at the stallion. “Thank you very much, Mister—”

Harmony stopped in mid-sentence, for she realized that she was... gazing at a stallion. Not just any stallion, but a tall and concrete-built workhorse whom the chronologically displaced pony remembered, only none of those memories belonged to a grown mare. Now, all of her foalish recollections of a softly-spoken, hay-chewing, freckle-faced farmcolt suddenly melted under the reality of this razor-chiseled, earth-scented, blonde thoroughbred who was presently towering like a great crimson mountain of masculinity before her. He blinked at her with quizzical green eyes that melted her to the lonesome core of her suddenly fluttering heart.

“—Mister Big... Mac,” she ultimately exhaled, her copper cheeks burning with an extra rust.

The stallion's blonde sister rose into view, her frowning freckles occupying the entirety of Harmony's flustered eyesight. “Had yer fill, yet?”

“I... er... uhm...” Harmony gulped, shrinking back slightly towards the trunk of the tree she had been hanging from. “Please, listen—There was a reason why I came here.” The mare listened to herself begin, but winced at the thought of finishing it.

“I reckon ya do—But ain't nothin' to it! I've said it before and I'll say it again—There's work to be done around here, and the longer we have to deal with ya, the longer it's wastin' our valuable time!”

“Care to be a little bit more specific?” Harmony raised an eyebrow. “Maybe if you gave me a chance, I could make it up to you for—y'know—committing the crime of flying into your precious apple orchards. Or do you wanna keep treating me like a sack of manure?”

“Don't tempt me!”

“Why are you so off your rocker to begin with, Applejack?” Harmony exclaimed—but suddenly wanted to bite her own tongue off.

“None of yer beeswax—!” The orange mare began, but then went cockeyed. “Wait—How'd you know my name?”

“Uhhh—”

“Is this one of Rainbow's and Pinkie's pranks?” She stomped her hooves. “Gul-durn it!—I don't have time for this horse hockey!”

Big Macintosh cleared his throat. Catching his irascible sister's attention, the sweating stallion pointed a nervous hoof towards the edge of Harmony's flank. Applejack took one glance, saw the celestially crested infinity symbol, and instantly covered her gasping mouth with two shaking hooves.

“Mountains of Elektra!” the blonde mare sputtered, her knees shaking. “A servant of the Royal Court of Canterlot ...!”

“Huh? Where?” Harmony glanced stupidly around, blinked, then brightened. “Yes!” She caught herself, cleared her throat, and struck a haughty pose with her copper neck tilted upwards regally. “Yes—That's right. I'm here on official business of Her Majesty, Princess Celestia. It's an honor to meet you, Applejack and Macintosh. Your work here at Sweet Apple Acres is...” She bit her lip momentarily. “...uhh—Renowned over half of Equestria!”

“I'm so sorry, Miss Harmony! I had no idea!” Applejack all but collapsed in her breathless attempt to placate the still-frazzled pegasus with the fabulous cutie mark. “All this time, I thought yer were just a fence-hoppin' tramp! We've had our fair share of monkey business lately around these here parts; it was a total misunderstandin', honest!”

“And I believe you, Applejack.” Harmony smiled warmly, breathing slightly easier as she finally managed to get a hoofhold of the conversation. “It's obvious that you—uhhh—hold so much pride and responsibility in your family farm. It's not only natural that you defend it so rigorously, but it's also commendable.”

Big Mac leaned in and whispered into his sister's ear. Applejack nodded, gulping. “Yer right, Macky. She even talks like one of them fancy Canterlot folks.” She cleared her throat and adjusted the brim of her hat, smiling awkwardly. “What can we do yer for, Miss Harmony, representative of Her Highness?”

“Well, you can—” Harmony started speaking, but fell off the proverbial cliff of her brain. She saw the immensity of the wide-stretching apple trees around her, blanketing the horizon. Her skin sang under the bright glistening sunlight; her amber eyes wilted under the deep blue sky. Everything around her was so overwhelmingly alive. There she was under the gun of Applejack's trust, and she suddenly had nothing to deliver. She floated with a sudden numbness, tangled in the gray webs of her ash-laden mind, and it took several seconds for her to plunge back to the blistering moment, struggling to bring her hooves back down to the earth. She fell a few centimeters short and hovered in an invisible cloud that ultimately tripped her. “Actually,” she coughed up the words and chased them awkwardly like a foal prancing after a rubber ball. “I'm here for a check-up.”

Macintosh and Applejack exchanged glances. They squinted as one in the pegasus' direction. “Ch-check-up?”

“You are the prime supplier of Canterlotlian apple goods, yes?”

“Right as rain, we are!”

Harmony exhaled victoriously at her memory and dove off the platform of it. “Well, the seasons are changing.” In mid-speech, she glanced her amber eyes around at the lushness of the Earth. It was already early spring. “The Summer Sun Celebration will be in four months.” She looked into their eyes for an adverse reaction; there was none. So she finished with, “And Her Highness Princess Celestia wants to be sure that there'll be plenty of fruit to go around for the annual event!”

At this point, however, Applejack's vicious frown had resurfaced. “Miss Harmony—correct me if I'm wrong—but the Summer Sun Celebration is at Stalliongrad this year, ain't it?”

Harmony blinked, for she had suddenly remembered that. With the warm breeze and fragrant senses of Sweet Apple Acres wafting around her, the mare's foalish memories bloomed at the surface of her brain.

She recalled several things in order: a chilling autumn, the village's first successful Winter Wrap-Up, a warm spring, the curious absence of Sweetie Belle and her sister Rarity, a strange creature falling into the Everfree Forest, Rainbow Dash and her weather team taking a trip to the northwest Griffon lands, a disastorous visit to Whinniepeg, sick foals visiting from distant rock farms, a Summer Sun Celebration at Ponyville—without Celestia—and then ... Cataclysm.

For the first time in a quarter-of-a-century of navigating the perpetual gray twilight of a dead Equestria, the last living events of the Fourth Age came to the last pony in bitterly blissful clarity. The Cataclysm had immediately followed the Summer Sun Celebration, almost an exact year after the return of Nightmare Moon. And here she was, four months until the Apocalypse, and she was stammering to make any sense of herself while a certain blonde farmfilly stared her down.

Try as she might to focus on the situation at hand, the memories overwhelmed her. Between each blink, Harmony saw in particular the bodies of dark trees against a Whinniepeg night sky. She felt warm, loving forelimbs encircling her while frigid tears escaped into the starlight. The phantom sensation chilled her to her core, so that Harmony was almost glad that the apocalyptic holocaust had made her forget things that were both cheerful and chilling to her childish soul.

“Uhm...” Harmony gulped hard, her own voice bringing her back to the sweaty moment at hoof. “Yes—uhm—the Summer Sun Celebration is in Stalliongrad this year.” Harmony struggled to recollect her authoritarian airs. “But since the marvelous turnout of last year's Celebration in Ponyville, Her Highness Princess Celestia desires to spread the wealth of her most beloved town of earth ponies to the far ends of Equestria. In short, she would like to take a marvelous bounty of Sweet Apple Acres' fruit with her to Stalliongrad. But before she can so much as propose that sort of an endeavor, she needs to... uhh ...give your farm a check-up!”

Applejack raised an irate eyebrow. “Don'tcha mean 'inspection'?”

“Sure why not?” Harmony muttered, winced, then said in a stronger voice: “Y-yes. I am... here for the inspection, Her Majesty Princess Celestia's inspection. So... let's inspect away, shall we?” She smiled a plastic grin. “How about them apples, huh?”

Applejack's eyes resembled emerald daggers at this point. She spat once more into the dirt and grunted her older brother's way. “Macky, I reckon we have ourselves here a fibber.”

“Eeyup,” he chirped with a disbelieving look cast towards the pegasus.

Harmony blinked nervously between the two apple farmers. “H-Huh...?”

Applejack trotted towards her with icy menace. “This ain't about no cotton-pickin' Summer Sun Celebration, is it?”

“Uhhh...” The time traveler stumbled back from her, wincing sheepishly. “I... guess not...?”

“It's about why me and Big Macintosh here have been settin' forth on collectin' apples so much sooner than traditional Apple Buck Season....”

“Uhh... S-sure...?”

“It's about all the commotion that's been botherin' the other farmers who border our Acres at night...”

“Yes...?”

“And it's about how last year's Apple Buck Season was a complete ramshackled mess on account of Macky bein' all hurt and me doin' my darnedest to buck all the apples on my lonesome, and how it was a hasty decision on my part that may or may not have led to a bunny rabbit stampede and several counts of food poisonin' in the heart of Ponyville!”

Harmony backed up into a tree, her body scrunching up like a copper accordion as she sweated under Applejack's point-blank glare. “Uhhh—Eheheh—Yeah. About all that—”

“I knew it!” The farm mare stomped backwards, all but tossing her hat down onto the dirt path being kicked up beneath her. “You ain't no freeloadin' pegasus! You're a dang bureaucrat! And of all the rotten timing—Y'all just had to come snoopin' around my farm this week of all weeks!”

“I'm not here to snoop, Ms. Applejack!” Harmony blinked and stood up straight, shaking the sweat off her black mane. “This is just a cordial visit from the Royal Court of Canterlot!”

“Cordial visit my flank!” Applejack hissed. “I should expect more trust from the Princess! Yes, I made a lot mistakes last year, but I turned a new leaf! And with the help of all my friends—including her faithful student Twilight—I got all of the fruit harvested in time for the end of Apple Buck season! So I rightly don't see why anypony at Canterlot has to be ridin' my tail this year! Especially if I'm gettin' stuff done ahead of time!”

“Miss Applejack, it's an investigation,” Harmony exclaimed. “Not an inquisition. And if I may be so bold, you two realllllly seem on edge.” She smiled hopefully. “Look at this whole thing as an opportunity to get an upper hoof on Apple Buck Season, aside from starting early. I've only been sent here to help.”

“If you wanna help”—Applejack spun and leered in front of Harmony—“Then get out of our mane!” After a long, deep breath, Applejack took her hat off and fanned herself. In a calmer voice, she said, “Look—Miss Harmony—I mean no direspect to the Princess. But this is completely unlike her. For the better part of five years, our farm has supplied Canterlot with all the apples y'all could ever need. But to suddenly find out that I'm under some investigation—well, it sure don't float my boat nothin' proper. If the Princess is so gul-durn worried about how I run my farm—then I politefully expect her to send me a written letter through Twilight—Like she normally does! But all of this 'Royal Court of Canterlot' investigation hogwash is angerin' me something fierce! I don't have time for it, and I don't have time for you. Now make like an apple tree and buck off!”

As Applejack marched away in a huff, Harmony frowned at her backside. “Hey! I may not be Princess Celestia herself—But that doesn't mean you gotta treat me like some pitchfork you accidentally rolled onto this morning!”

Applejack paused to blink back at her. “Like some pitchfork I what-now?”

“I flew all of this way to help you and that's final!” Harmony slammed her hoof down for emphasis, but to her misfortune her limb caught the open end of Big Mac's discarded spade. The tool's wooden handle flew mechanically into the copper pegasus' snout, sending stars spinning around her skull. “Unnnngh.” Harmony teetered, the numbness of her projected self vibrating in and out of focus, and yet she wasn't feeling pain. She should have been hurt, but she wasn't. Only the flimsy, green-fuming facsimile of pain briefly jolted her otherwise bright Entropan senses.

Applejack laughed pathetically, her eyes rolling back. She waved a lazy hoof towards the visitor. “Ohhhh, sugarcube. Take a look at yerself, why don't ya? Yer a clerk of the Court of Canterlot. You ain't no workhorse! So don't go writin' checks that yer flank can't catch!”

“Blblbllb—” Harmony shook the cosmic rays of dizziness away and frowned bruisedly in the earth pony's direction. “Are you suggesting that I don't have what it takes to work on a farm?”

“Girl, you'd be lucky if you could work on a dinner plate!”

An untested kernel of pride nestled deep in the icy heart of the last pony popped to the surface. She shook her mane and trotted furiously up towards Applejack. “I'll have you know that I can handle anything and everything that apple bucking could toss at me! The Royal Court of Canterlot doesn't hire ponies just for their good charm, y'know.”

“I reckon that much is obvious.”

“You got a test in mind?”

“As a matter of fact, I do!” Applejack trotted over towards a tree and bucked it lightly, forcing only two glistening fruits to fall loose. These she caught in nimble hooves before bearing a jester's smirk. “I call this here the 'test of preservation!'”

Big Macintosh instantly muttered something, rolled his eyes, and marched away with a humored expression. Harmony blinked at him confusedly, but then found herself staring at a green and red reflection of herself.

“The first and most important thang one needs to know about apple buckin'”—Applejack glared at the pegasus from over the two fruit stems—“is that yer product is more important than anything else. You can kick trees until the cows come home, but if you let a single one of these here apples bite the dust, then that translates to bits flyin' straight out of yer pocket! T'ain't a good thang, ya hear?”

“Is there a point to this brilliant platitude?” Harmony said, squinting nervously at her.

“The point, Miss Harmony, is that if y'all wanna help me buck apples, y'all gotta be prepared to preserve 'em!” She juggled the green and red fruits in her hooves, winking slyly. “If yer fast on them wings of yers, it should be no trouble performin' this here first test!”

“Yeah...?”

“I'll buck both apples high into the sky. All ya gotta do is catch 'em. So long as neither of them get smashed into little seedlings, then I'll employ yer royal help, ya hear?”

“Nnnngh...” Harmony rubbed her head as an artery pulsed at her frustrated temple.

“Somethin' wrong, copper-bottom?”

“This is silly and pointless!” The last pony frowned. “Now you're wasting my time! Let's just get to the point. Do you want my help or not?”

“Now yer soundin' like another stubborn pegasus I know.” Applejack smirked. “Granted, she woulda been mighty fine at meetin' my challenge. Goddess knows what's chompin' at yer bits, Miss Harmony.” She finished juggling the two apples and balanced them expertly on top of each other upon one hoof. “What's the matter? Yer chicken?”

The time traveler's amber eyes narrowed. In a hissing voice, she throated: “Nopony—And I mean nopony calls me 'chicken.'”

“That's a right mighty fine inspiration if I ever did hear it!”

“You gonna toss your fruit or what?” Harmony struck her copper wings out with emphasis.

“Go get'em, hot shot!” Applejack grunted and tossed both apples skyward. Pivoting on her front limbs, the orange farm mare stuck her rear hooves up and knocked each apple towards opposite ends of the shimmering horizon.

Harmony was airborne in a flash, forcing the green leaves of several bordering orchards to flail in the sudden breeze of her flapping wings. Squinting through the flashing sunlight, she spun like a barreling rocket towards the first target as it reached the peak of its red arc.

“Gotcha!”

She effortlessly caught the thing in between two hooves, banked around, and throttled towards the second object that was already plummeting like a green meteor.

“Let's see a side of poultry do this!”

Harmony smirked, twisted her dive at the last second, and clamped her jaws over the stem, so that the second fruit dangled victoriously in her grinning teeth.

“Hah-Hah! Dhid youff thee dat, Mithh Applejag?”

There was the brief sound of clopping hooves—growing faint—then dissipating into the green haze of springtime drowning beneath her. Harmony glanced down past her flapping wings and immediately dropped both fruits in a stupified gasp. Applejack was nowhere to be found. Even the pitchfork and spade left at Harmony's brief scene of awkward dangling had vanished.

“She... sh-she ditched me!” Harmony gasped. She then blinked, and finally yelped in horror. “Oh no—Oh no Oh no Oh no—I'm still bound to her!”

Harmony panicked and flew frantic circles over the green treetops, glancing through rows upon rows of reflective red apples, gazing desperately for any sign of the blonde soul to whom she was anchored.

“Applejack? M-Miss Applejack?” She flew, she zig-zagged around orchards, she circumnavigated wooden fences and water wells. “Hey! Prized Pony of Ponyville Award winner!—Grrr—Show yourself, you Celestia-forsaken corn-shucker!”

Harmony's exclamations were cut short as she once again absent-mindedly hurt herself, this time colliding straightway into a tree trunk. Her body swam through a soupy thick numbness, hauntingly devoid of any cyclonic currents of pain. She was woken from this stupid lapse in comprehension by a half-dozen apples pelting her from above. Instinctually, she rubbed her skull with a groan, gazing towards the red barn on the far side of the farm. She saw an old-old mare, a lime-colored ghost of the past whom her foalish mind ambivalently labeled as “Granny Smith.” The aged pony could be seen from a distance, sitting on the edge of her rocker, listening to a record player—But she wasn't alone. In the mare's company, pleasantly sharing a conversation... was a copper-coated pegasus.

“H-huh?” Harmony awkwardly blinked through her dizziness. But before she could even make sense of that unsightly sight, her amber eyes pivoted towards the side and saw the distant image of two siblings—an orange mare and a red stallion—marching away at twenty meters... thirty meters... forty...

Green tongues of flame started eating away at Harmony's peripheral vision. She gasped and flailed her hooves through a curtain of emerald fire. “N-no! Not yet!” She shrieked and tore through the air towards the terminally distant sight of Applejack. “Gotta catch up! Gotta—” The entire green expanse of Sweet Apple Acres melted under a tunneling blaze. “No-No-No-No-No!” The mare hissed, rocketed forward, and broke through the flames...

...only to sail smack-dab into a granite laboratory table under purple manalight. A resounding thunder filled the cavern. A purple dragon stood up from closely monitoring a chemical experiment. Turning his snout about, Spike narrowed his spectacled gaze on the collapsed time traveler.

“Well, that was most certainly quick.”

“Gnnnnghhh!” Scootaloo—no longer “Harmony”—stood up, ignoring her suddenly throbbing bruises as she paced angrily around the stone floor of the bone-chillingly painful present. “I swear to Epona! It's like trying to talk a zebra into speaking out of rhyme!”

“I can see that you're frustrated, child, but must we resort to stigmatic hyperboles?”

“Spike—What gives?” The adrenalized pegasus unceremoniously hopped up onto the edge of a lab table and frowned into his green-crested snout. “I remember Applejack being the element of honesty. Not stubbornness!”

“When you or I know what is true, do we defend it with any less fervor?”

“Only she's not telling me what that truth is!” Scootaloo scowled. “I dropped in on her and Big Macintosh, and out of nowhere they were pointing razor-sharp farm tools at my jugular vein!”

“Scootaloo...”

“I didn't spout out anything about the end of the world this time! I swear it!” She crossed her heart and poked her left eyelid with separate hooves. “Something's obviously rubbing them the wrong way, and it's so bad that it's making them tackle Apple Buck Season early! Now they think that I'm some sort of nosy goody-goody-four-horseshoes sent from Canterlot to spy on them!”

“Did you find this out before or after you flew out of the limit of the soul binding?” Spike raised an eye-crest.

“Huh? OH! Pffft—That was... Ungh!” Scootaloo ran her forelimbs frustratingly through her mane, only to remember that she didn't have a mane. She sighed and muttered in embarrassment: “I was saying anything I could think of to get Applejack to let me stick around her longer. She told me that she would let me help her on the farm if I could catch two of her apples from midair—”

“She did the 'test of preservation' trick with you?!” Spike grinned wide. “With the double-apple tossing, yes?!” He yanked his crystal glasses off and laughed fumingly, filling the air with a green haze that betrayed the otherwise solemn complexion of the elder dragon. The violet pendant twirled and spun from his cackling neck. “Ohhhhhh, that is most exceedingly rich!”

Scootaloo slumped down on the edge of the table, folding her front hooves with a frown. “I don't see what's so friggin' hilarious.”

“Oh, child...” Spike wiped a tear, exhaled, and slid his spectacles back on as he lowered to her level. “That's an old disappearing act that Applejack performed on anypony she deemed trespassing on her family's property. She did it with Rainbow Dash quite a few times. It almost became a game between the two of them. You may not have the capacity to believe this in the midst of your current ire, but I would count what she did as a very subtle sign of your having won her respect.”

“Well, the girl needs to work on her signs, or someone's liable to kick them over in the dirt,” Scootaloo muttered and rubbed her face with a hoof. “I'm so sorry, Spike. I blew it again. You might as well send me back to Ms. Cheerilee, or let me find another pony. Because, I swear, Applejack is a literal brick wall.”

“Now, with that sort of attitude, you'll never get any information,” Spike said as he strolled across the laboratory.

“What information?!” Scootaloo cackled, waving her front limbs dramatically. “Spike—She's obviously in a very bad mood! I don't see how in the name of all that's holy I might possibly be capable of getting her to connect me with Princess Celestia, much less anypony else for that matter!”

“I do believe the key here, old friend, is not to think of how these ponies can help us,” Spike said. He coughed briefly, hacking up a cloud of fumes and waving them clear with a scaled hand. The dragon grabbed the crystal jar of Applejack's ashes once more and shuffled back towards his tiny companion. “But rather we must focus on how we can help them.”

“I don't see how that's going to get us anywhere in our little 'experiment', Spike,” the pegasus grunted. “Besides, the last thing in the world Applejack wants right now is help.”

“It wouldn't be the first time she's refused any and all assistance.” The dragon smirked at her. “When Twilight Sparkle first came to town, Applejack had to tackle Apple Buck Season all on her lonesome. That means she tried to harvest every single fruit from the entirety of Sweet Apple Acres without anypony else to lend her a hoof. It was a supremely impossible task, given her self-appointed deadline. But she convinced herself and other ponies that it had to be done, at least until Twilight convinced her otherwise.”

“Yes, I think I remember Apple Bloom telling me about that.” Scootaloo nodded, then squinted up at the purple dragon. “Just how did Twilight succeed anyways?”

“Persistence, my good friend,” Spike smiled. “You'll find that it's an avid companion to subtlety.”

“Ughhhh...” Scootaloo slumped down onto the floor, gripping her skull dramatically. “Somepony, anypony, gag me with rusted stirrups...”

“Right. Let's send you back—”

“What?!” She glanced up at him, bug-eyed. “You're sending me back to Applejack?”

“But of course.” The dragon uncorked the vial and motioned her towards the alchemic circles. “Applejack's penchant for honesty is easily masked by her stubbornness, both grayer shades of her immaculate sense of self-righteousness. But all of those robust surfaces can be broken; all it takes is a kind and humble heart, and she will open up to you. Of this, I can promise.”

“I wish I had the faith in Applejack that you have in me, Spike,” Scootaloo murmured.

“That too, you can find for yourself.” He smiled. “But do make it a commitment to not leave your anchorage to her this time. There is only so much green flame I have available to give at a moment's notice. Also, I cannot send you back to a single pony's soul too many times in a row without losing cohesion.”

“Losing 'cohesion?'” Scootaloo blinked queerly at him as she trotted back over the circles. “What does that mean?”

“Simply that I would have to junction you to a completely different soul for a while before I could possibly send you back to Applejack again,” Spike explained as his shadow spread over her. “So it would behoove you to make the most of this trip back. Stick to Applejack like sawdust. Be subtle—but also persistent. You are built of hardened stuff, Scootaloo, more than our late apple-bucking friend can possibly imagine. The moment your own stubbornness exceeds hers—and I have every faith that it will—you'll find the task ahead of you to be a lot easier. Then and only then will the floodbanks of her honesty open up, and mayhaps she can help us in the way that you'll help her.”

“Assuming I survive the whole thing.” Scootaloo sighed. She stood up straight and closed her eyes. “I'm ready, Spike. You're sending me back a day later or something—Right?”

“Mmmm...” he dashed a sneeze of ashes into his scaled palm. “I was thinking more along the lines of two minutes earlier.”

Scootaloo's eyes reopened confusedly. “Earlier? But Spike, wouldn't I run into myself?”

“Somehow, I doubt it.” He anointed her with the ashes and lowered his fuming jaws. “Think of it this way: Applejack just got through tricking you. I think it's only appropriate that we get the jump on her.”

“How so?”

He answered her with a gust of green flames. Scootaloo winced as she rode back on billowing emerald currents. The flickering tongues solidified behind her scalp in the form of black mane hair, settling to her suddenly copper shoulders as she stood smokily besides the red barn of Sweet Apple Acres, serenaded by the sweet melody of a melancholic violin.

“Mmmm...” Harmony murmured aloud. “Early Third Age... Stallionivarius?” She spun a glance to her side, and was pleasantly amused to see a rustic record player crackling forth beautiful strings into the hay-scented air. “I knew it!”

A voice snorted to life beside her. Harmony was suddenly made aware of a gray-haired, brittle-limbed mare squatting on the edge of a rocking chair, her clouded eyes flickering to life as she woke from a midday slumber.

“H-huh? Whazzit—Who goes there? Apple Bl-Bloom?”

Harmony's heart jumped. Following a foalish instinct, she curtsied politely with a bending of hooves. “Granny Smith, I'm sorry to have woken you.”

The lime-coated pony elder squinted the visitor's way. “Eh??? D-do I know you...?”

“I... Er...” Harmony glanced over the horizon of orchards.

She blinked suddenly to see two farmhorses marching towards her: an orange mare and a red stallion. Far behind them, a copper-equine figure was surging through the air, only to be consumed in a puff of green smoke that nobody saw but the pegasus. The sight sent synapses firing pleasantly in Harmony's mind, so that she managed a gentle smile and hummed Granny Smith's way.

“I'm simply a fellow aficionado of good music, ma'am.”

“Aficionado of what-now?” the senior pony shivered to say.

Harmony gestured towards the crackling record player. “Stallionivarius' Adagio for Princess Luna, if I'm not mistaken.”

She breathed the spring air with deep tranquility, feeling her projected body filled with a sudden easiness that sharply contrasted the bitter frustration from earlier. It was a beautiful day, the greatest of days. The trees sang around her.

“It's a classic piece,” Harmony continued, “evocative of the Artistic Elegy of Mourning that predominated so many musical symphonies memorializing Princess Luna after Nightmare Moon's banishment at the start of the Third Age.”

“Eh? Eh heh heh—Now if that ain't somethin'!” Granny Smith smiled with tired eyes. “A filly yer age, appreciatin' such fine tastes; now I've truly seen everything! You've ever heard this rendition before?”

“Erm...heh heh... No, to be honest.” Harmony blushed slightly as she paced about and stood besides the gray mare's rocking chair. “But I am familiar with Stallionivarius. He pioneered the Canterlotlian violin for centuries of musicians to come. I've got to say, as much as I love Octavia's composition, Stallionivarius' version of Adagio for Princess Luna sounds far more appropriately mournful. I wish I had heard it sooner.”

“Ah, yes, Octavia. Heheh.” The Apple family grandmother coughed briefly, then sat tall and proud at the edge of her rocking chair. “She is all the rage with the rich upstarts of Canterlot, these days. However, like all young musicians, she has talent but the substance is plum missin'! Bah! Give me Stallionivarius any day!”

“There's a lot to be said about Octavia's revolutionizing of the cello,” Harmony remarked. “But it certainly can't replace the traditional strings of this version of Adagio. But, then again...” She giggled in a sudden, flighty breath at hearing herself say this: “With Princess Luna having just returned to her formal glory, what need is there for Equestria to keep mourning?”

“Mmmm... How times have changed.” The old mare gazed off into an invisible horizon beyond the red barn. “I remember when I was a lil' filly, and Nightmare Moon was a name that struck fear in the hearts of foals everywhere. I grew up, married, foaled, and retired under the shadow of the same cursed moon that haunted all of the Third Age for centuries. To think that in my time I would see things changin' so dramatic-like. It's a wonder to be alive, young one.”

Harmony took a deep breath, gazing at the spinning black gloss of the record. “I wish everypony would live long enough to witness such wonders.”

“Mmmm—Eheh—Certainly a purdy wish, young'n. But that's somethin' reserved for the few.”

The copper pegasus gulped and produced a bitter smile. “Or the one.”

“I'm sorry; do pardon an old farmer for makin' a necessary inquisition, but...” The aptly named Granny Smith shuffled in her seat and squinted earnestly in the time traveler's direction. “Have we met before?”

Something that felt like a heart jumped in the center of Harmony's Entropan body. The crystal clean joy of the moment briefly quivered, like a curtain of rain water dancing between the two ponies and their years upon years of distance and obscurity. Two orange dots that resembled a bouncy foal shimmered in the graying eyes of the elder. The ghostly scents of baked pies, tattered aprons, and wrinkled skin christened the air above them, and it hurt—for the first time since descending to the apple-kissed land of green it hurt to lie.

Harmony thought briefly of Spike's garden, of how his flowers and trees choked one limping stormfront after another under a siphoned sunlight. The future was a barren graveyard that this glistening past—for all of its children and saints—could not comprehend. For the first of many desperate occasions, Harmony gladly took the numbness of her Entropan body, wrapped it about her neck like a shawl, and danced a silver tongue directly in the elder's face.

“No, ma'am.” Her face was a concrete wall and the smile was still drying. “We've never met before. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, it's probably just yer taste in music, but I coulda sworn I've seen you before. You have a shine to ya, darlin'. Yer coat is like a bright gold from yesteryear, somethang that this day and age rarely sees.”

“Where I come from, Ms. Smith, my coat doesn't have a reason to shine,” Harmony said in a brief breath of honesty that she felt purified the moment. With a cheerful murmur, her teeth mimicked the sudden twinkle in Granny's eyes. “But I imagine your delightful farm here is giving it a good enough reason to as we speak.”

“Heheh—You got that right, child. Heheheh.”

Harmony briefly couldn't tell what sounded more heavenly, the record player or the chuckling equine who was suddenly outshining it. She smiled all the same, a chronological prisoner to the warmth of it all.

Just then, the clopping hoofsteps of Big Macintosh and Applejack crossed over into the echo of the beautifully crackling strings. “Heheh—Boy, Macky! I'm tellin' ya! You shoulda seen the look on that goofy pegasus' face when—” She took one glance at Harmony, and in mid-laugh suffered a melting expression of her own. “Now how in blazes did you get here so darn quick-like?”

“Yeah—uh—One moment, if you will.” Harmony waved the farm mare off and smirked back towards Granny Smith. “Have you ever listened to the compositions of Marezart?”

“Hah! That old string plucker?! Who hasn't, child? But she is so goddess-darned overrated.”

“Yes—But one can argue that she paved the way towards the dynamic phase of Mid-Third Age Canterlotlian chamber music. Without her, we wouldn't have the 'Celestial Medleys I – IX'.”

“Oh, those old ditties! Why, those made great background music for tea ceremonies, at least before the Big Band phase that inundated Equestria during the Second Zebraharan Conflict.”

Harmony gasped wide. “I didn't know that the Big Band phenomenon transpired simultaneous to wartime!”

“H-Hey!” Applejack noisily barked in the background, flailing a cowfilly hat in her hoof.

“If you live long enough to notice it, dearie, you'll find that the sweetest music is enjoyed during times of great duress.”

“Heheh—Don't I know it, Ms Smith.”

“Hello?! Uhhhh—Howdy?!” Applejack frowned and stood in between the pegasus, the grandmother, and the warbling record player. She glared into the copper visitor's face. “I do believe I was callin' out to y'all!”

“Applejack!” Granny Smith hissed, shaking a wrinkly, lime forearm. “Be polite! I was just chewin' the fat with our guest here!”

Applejack did a double-take. “Our 'guest?'”

“Yes! This fine filly by the name of... name of... Ehhh...” The elder mare squinted at the pegasus. “I rightly apologize—What was yer name again?”

“Allow me to introduce myself.” Harmony smiled gently and re-curtseyed. “My name is Harmony. And I am positively enraptured to meet somepony who appreciates classical music like I do, if not moreso.”

“She knows who Stallionivarius is, Applejack!” Granny Smith beamed, her limbs creaking as she stood up from her rocking chair and waddled about the record player. “I can't count how many times I've tried to get these here whippersnappers to listen to the greats.” She winked Harmony's way.

“Heheh—They sure don't know what they're missing.” The visitor smirked back.

“Granny, this ain't no simple guest!” Applejack flung an accusatory hoof at the pegasus while sneering. “This here's a nosy, bothersome clerk sent straight from the—”

“—Royal Court of Canterlot!” Granny Smith suddenly gasped, holding a hoof over her heart as she regarded 'Harmony's' cutie mark with widening eyes. “Now it all makes a lick of sense! Why, I would recognize that there celestial crest anywhere!” She smiled warmly the pegasus' way. “You know, it was a finely-trimmed pegasus much like you who came to do a census on Sweet Apple Acres several decades ago when I foaled these here seedlings' papa, Apple Shine—Goddess Gultophine rest his soul. I was always entranced by just how polite and downright neighborly Princess Celestia's servants could be. That same pegasus even came back for Apple Shine's first foalday!”

“Well, isn't that quaint?” Harmony smiled and was subtly gazing Applejack's way as she added, “It's too bad politeness isn't as rich today as it was in the Third Age.”

The orange mare fumed, a fountain of steam building beneath her twitching ears.

“Why, whatever do you mean by that, child?” Granny Smith blinked, then squinted confusedly Applejack's way. “AJ, what's goin' on?”

“Nothin', Granny,” she snarled. “Just a simple matter of miscommunication—”

“Out with it, girl!” Granny Smith stomped her hoof, bearing a wrinkled frown. “I know when the apple has fallen far from the tree—Now don't I?”

Before Applejack so much as opened her mouth, Harmony strolled into view and smiled placidly the elder's way. “I believe the fault is entirely my own, Ms. Smith. I was clumsy and I flew awkwardly into one of your family's exceptional apple trees while on a mission for the Princess. One rightfully can't blame your two strong grandfoals for getting the wrong idea about me from the start. But I assure all of you”—she paced about and took in the three ponies with a smiling face—“I only wish to lend a helping hoof. The Princess isn't so much concerned about this Apple Buck Season's bounty as she is about the morale of the equine tilling the land that so dedicatedly provides Canterlot with such delicious apples.” She smiled with the barest hint of a regal sparkle to her teeth.

Applejack's frown was venomous. Macintosh was rolling his green eyes. Granny Smith was electrified: “Well, if that ain't just divine!” she cooed. “Any occasion we have to treat a guest visitin' on behalf of the Royal Family is a fine day to be alive, if I ever did see one! On behalf of the Apple Family, I whole-heartedly welcome any assistance y'all have to give us! Besides, we did start out Apple Buck Season early, and it would be a shame not to use an extra pair of hooves, especially if it means that the Princess is smilin' on the whole lot of us in approval!”

“But Granny Smith!” Applejack began, her orange face paling with each centimeter of the situation slipping loose from her grip. “Things have been hectic enough at it is at night! At this rate, we can't afford t'humor her with—!”

“Did I or did I not just welcome her on behalf of the Apple Family? Hmm? Carnsarnit!” Smith shook a wrinkly hoof and all but trampled the obstinate mare at a bone-rattling twenty millimeters per hour. “Now go out into them there orchards and find some work for her t'do! Time's a'wastin', y'know! Don't make me force Big Mac into talkin' some sense into ya!”

Applejack glanced at Macintosh. Macintosh glanced boredly back at her, shrugging. With a heavy groan, Applejack shuffled past Harmony. “Nnnngh—Fine. Get along, little doggies...” The last exclamation came out like a dying cat.

“Fantastic!” Harmony hummed, trotted after the farmfilly, and called back to Granny Smith. “The Princess will be most pleased at your limitless hospitality! Oh—And don't forget to let me hear more of your records sometime, Ms. Smith! I'd love to know what your opinion is on Sebastian Buck or Prancerecki!”

“Eheheh—A pleasure I hold most dear, child!”

Harmony smiled and gazed towards the many rows of orchards as the three strolled along. “An old copy of Stallionivarius! Who'd a thunk it?” Her pleasant expression was swiftly smacked away by a full blond tail swatting angrily across her face. She shook her snout and glanced aside with a wary eyebrow.

Applejack hissed at her. “I don't take kindly to yer sneakin' around the barn and persuadin' my own family against me! That's downright dirty-like!”

“You can't get stuff done without getting a little dirty.” Harmony winked back. “Or is that not one of the traditional earth pony proverbs?”

“Don't you mish-mash my own words on me!” The orange mare sneered. “You took advantage of a frail old pony in order to get yer silly bureaucratic job done against our better wishes!”

“Excuse me, Miss Applejack.” Harmony spoke with narrow eyes. “But that 'frail old pony,' if I'm not mistaken, is as much a living-breathing member of your marvelous family as you and your handsome brother here. She obviously knows that this farm needs some extra help during the Apple Buck Season, and if you had half the respect for her that you're so eagerly defending at the moment, then you would do well to emulate her natural gumption for generosity!”

“This is why I hate havin' to deal with you red tape runnin' Canterlot clerks!” Applejack snarled. “Dang politics! One way or another y'all are always spinnin' the argument around to yer favor! Rest assured, I'm only lettin' you lend a hoof because Granny Smith told me to, and from the way I was raised, it's always the elders who have their say.”

“You have a golden conscience, Miss Applejack.” Harmony grinned. “Even if it is buried underneath the rigid exterior of an obstinate mule.”

“Eeeyup.” Macintosh strolled ahead of them with a sly smirk.

“Don't you encourage her!” Applejack barked at him and pointed a hoof at the infecting pegasus. “As soon as it's sundown and Granny Smith is asleep, I'm bucking her clear out of Sweet Apple Acres!”

“You make it sound like I'm a plague.”

Applejack turned her nose up at the visitor. “Say what ya fancy sayin'. But I ain't lettin' you out of my sights for one second! Heck, y'all will be lucky if I so much as allow you to buck one single tree!”

“Pffft—Under those circumstances, nopony will get any work done! All it takes is a leap of faith, Miss Applejack.” Harmony then added with a mischievous smirk, “Or are you chicken?”

Applejack stared back like a blank wall of stone. She marched icily ahead, grumbling under her breath: “Y'all just follow me.”

“Heheh,” Harmony chuckled proudly and trotted after her. “We'all intend to.”

Along the east side of the acres, under a glisteningly warm sun, Applejack finished nudging the last of many apple baskets beneath a tree full of bright red fruit. She took a deep breath of the rich, earthy environment, smiled at the neatly arranged halos of baskets around each nearby orchard, and strolled halfway towards a dirt path cutting straight through the fields.

“Alright. Y'all listen up,” she spoke without looking at the 'Servant of Canterlot.' “True apple buckin' takes several days, so it's important to plan out just right which field to tackle first. A month and a half ago we had to gather a few bushels of apples early, on account of havin' to cater to the Ponyvillean Anniversary in April and all. We took what we could from the west fields, but we spared these here trees in the east. Reason bein', we wanted to give 'em a longer time to freshen up and bask in the glow of the late Spring Season. And now that that the time has come for a total harvest, we thin out these here groves first and work our way west. That way the youngest of fruit get all the time we reckon they need to bud up and become harvest-worthy by the time we buck'em down.”

Applejack trotted around the tree and motioned towards it with a proud hoof while further delivering her speech.

“Now when it comes to the buckin' itself, the key is not to sweat givin' it a might bit more force than you'd imagine was necessary for a tree. The bark on these things is made out of stern stuff, as if Princess Elektra herself carved them out of the strongest iron. I reckon you could trot all across Ponyville—or the entirety of Equestria for that matter—and still you wouldn't find a tree as versatile as what the Apple Family grows right here. So, don't be afraid to kick the trees hard. If they could talk, they'd just think we were lovin' on them, is all! Now watch and learn—”

Applejack snarled her teeth in a fierce grin, pivoted on her front limbs, expertly swiveled her rear legs, and catapulted her hooves murderously into the side of the tree. The entirety of the trunk shook like a gigantic wooden tuning fork, and, in a magical exploit of gravity, every single apple from the branches fell expertly into the soft wicker baskets waiting for them below.

Applejack let loose a satisfied sigh, dusted her hooves off, and trotted proudly around the containers now brimming with red fruit. “The key is to make the orchards shake so much that the stems plum give up holdin' the apples in the air,” she said. “Mother Nature does the rest. It takes a lot of effort and practice to get just the right aim and kickin' pose down pat. But the most important thing is to put yer back into it and be firm with the tree! Think of it like yer chastisin' the thang for making a mess on the porch. Eheheh—” She blushed and rubbed her head underneath her brown hat. “—I reckon that sounds a bit silly—ahem. But when you've lived your whole life around these here trees, you almost start treatin' yer crops like part of the family, especially figurin' that they've been around for more generations than most Ponyvillean citizens can count.” She cleared her throat and glanced aside at a red stallion who was setting up the last of many baskets around another tree. “Macky—Care to give it a go yerself?”

Big Macintosh smirked at her, winked, and spun with a mighty arc of massive legs. A thunderous clap filled the east end of the Acres, and the apples literally hovered above the branches—spinning—before falling like plummeting red and green gyroscopes into the wicker containers below. Macintosh twisted the haystalk in his mouth and proudly bowed with a gesture towards the expertly filled baskets.

Applejack whistled. “That's my big brother, alright: always makin' me look bad. Heaven help Apple Bloom when she gets to buckin' age. She may just give up and resort to pie bakin' like her grandma.” She turned and faced the visitor again. “But you saw how Big Macintosh didn't hesitate none when he took a swing at the tree, right? We ain't dealin' with stalks of celery here. Apple Buck Season is like an endless Iron Pony Competition: you gotta give it yer all, through and through. So, then, are y'all still bent on gettin' yer hooves dirty or what?”

There was no response. Applejack squinted and tilted the brim of her hat up to get a better look...

Harmony was basking in the warm sunlight, smiling drunkenly as she marveled at the feel of the green earth underneath her squirming hooves. “Epona Alive! I forgot how... how springy grass felt! Heeheehee—Oooh!” She raised her hoof as several darting green insects waltzed across her limb. “Aphids! I found aphids! Would you imagine that—?!” She glanced at the two blanching farm ponies, blushed, and cleared her throat. “Ahem—So, y-yeah. Apple bucking: it's just like loving on a tree... r-really hard?”

Big Macintosh murmured something in Applejack's ear. The orange mare nodded numbly and gave the pegasus a cockeyed loot. “Why do we get the feelin' that y'all burn more than mana-torches over at Canterlot Court?”

“I'm very sorry for being distracted. It's been... er... a long week of flying around to random farms and being given the third degree by obstinate horses wearing hats.”

“Hardy har.” Applejack rolled her eyes and backtrotted with a hoof pointed at an apple tree surrounded by empty baskets. “Step up to the plate, sugarcube. You've talked yer way this far. Reckon we should see if yer hooves can dance as well as ya sing.”

“Pfft—Why not?” Harmony walked up and stared at the looming tree before her. “I mean, how hard can it be?”

Macintosh and Applejack exchanged amused smirks. “Well, Celestia forbid that one of her ever respectful, ever dainty royal clerks should get her limbs dirty!” The farm mare snickered. “I bet y'all think that kickin' apples out of trees is just as easy as writin' letters and settin' up appointments!”

“You really don't think Princess Celestia would have sent me to get a good idea of how you run this farm without expecting me to go all the way, do you?”

“I may not be the charming country pony that you expected to gab with today, but I'd be lyin' if I said I actually wanted to see ya get hurt!” Applejack stretched a hoof out cautiously. “Just tap it a bit, why don't ya?”

“B-But I thought you said that true Apple Bucking required being forceful with the tree—”

“I'd rather you not break anything, sugarcube!” Applejack smirked. “Especially if you expect to return to Canterlot in one piece! Those are some pretty fragile lookin' wings yer sportin' there, after all!” Big Macintosh snickered behind her and Applejack snorted to avoid breaking into giggles herself.

Harmony rolled her eyes, spun her flank towards the tree, and raised her hooves. “Right—Just a tap.”

With a girlish grunt, she slapped just one leg against the tree. Suddenly, her ears popped, as if she was piercing the gray overcast of the Wastelands in the Harmony. She blinked in sudden dizziness and let her gaze fall to the earth, spotting several apples rolling dirtily through the grass.

“Whoops—Dang it.” She blushed under her copper skin and gazed up at the two farm ponies. “I'm sorry. Looks like I totally missed the baskets—” Harmony stopped in mid speech, squinting curiously at the two siblings.

They were gazing up above Harmony's black mane with wide eyes and open jaws. Macintosh's haystalk fell loose from his lips.

“Wh-what?” Harmony blinked up at the tree—and jumped back at the sight of it leaning forty-five degrees off its foundation and away from her. “Waaah!” She winced as the hulking trunk literally fell over with a thud, its exposed roots dangling nakedly in the air as the shaking ground loosened even more apples from the rattlings baskets surrounding the gruesome catastrophe. She bit her lip, sweatdropping as she gazed back and forth from the tumbled tree and the gawking farm ponies.

Macintosh's eyes were still wide. Meanwhile, his sister swung her hat off, clenched her green eyes shut, and slapped her skull with a right hoof a few times before shaking her entire snout and glancing once more at the sight with a twitching expression. Slowly, the two swiveled their necks until they were gazing mutely at “Harmony” with a blank plea for an explanation.

The time traveler was no less confused. “Eh heh heh... G-guess that was a weak one. My bad. Uhm...” She glanced left, right, behind her—“Oh, here we go!” She marched over towards another tree she spotted and aimed her hind quarters at it. “Ahem—Maybe if I just aim a little bit higher.” She bucked it, once more with a “tap.” “Nnngh!”

It exploded. With a sound that mimicked several fireworks rocketing skyward, two dozen apples simultaneously lifted off the tossed branches of the kicked tree and soared clear across the east orchards, landing in a chicken coop behind the barn. This ended with several thunderous claps, followed by a chorus of blood-curdling clucks that filled the otherwise tranquil air.

Harmony bit her lip and glanced across the horizons of her mind. She briefly remembered something Spike had told her about the durability of her projected self, that while her time displaced soul was wearing this “avatar” of the Goddess of Time—complete with a coat and mane painted in the image of Princess Entropa—she would be impervious to hunger, exhaustion, and thirst. It suddenly occurred to the crafty survivalist inside that numb shell of a body that another “benefit” to her chronological displacement was an unearthly strength that was variably related to her imperviousness.

“So... Yeah!” Harmony wasted no more mute seconds and hopped up to all fours, a bright smile plastered desperately across her face. “Apple Bucking! Maybe I should just... uhm... Do it the 'dainty' Canterlotlian way...” She smiled sheepishly and marched off towards the next tree. “I'll... Uhm... buck in the direction opposite of the chicken coop from now on...”

Applejack gulped and slapped her hat back onto her mane. “Macky, do yer little sister a favor. Next time I'm lucky to be invited to the Grand Galloping Gala, remind me to look into a Canterlotlian gymnasium.”

“Eeeyup.”

Chapter Twelve: Give to the Earth

The warm afternoon carried on stunningly—or so Harmony felt.

The sun sang overhead as the three ponies carried on with the dutiful task of apple bucking. Their task floated from one cluster of trees to another, filling the air with falling fruit and the rich scent of settling green leaves. With each bunch of baskets filled, there were more empty ones to replace them. Harmony's head spun from the process, as her body itself spun, glancing back at one second to see so many trees picked of apples, but then glancing forward to see four, eight, sixteen times as many trees across the orchards that still needed to be bucked clean.

Applejack and Big Macintosh sweated and breathed evenly with the severe ritual of exercise. It was more than obvious to the time-travelling pegasus that they were born and raised in this tradition of apple-lopping, which is why she felt all the more awkward and even guilty that she had barely broken a sweat since the beginning of the whole process.

Harmony had found her “tap;” she discovered the right force and pressure with which to kick the trees so as to make the apples fall naturally without any unforeseen consequences. This, of course, kept her preoccupied with getting as much apple bucking done as possible, for she was ever instilled with Spike's insistence that she “help” the Apple family while she was there in the past.

But with each passing glance that she gave Applejack and her crimson-coated older brother, she took into account the severity of their exhaustion. Solely for the sake of evading their suspicion, she slowed her effort of apple bucking, and even sullied her own attempts in order to maintain the airs of being a novice to farmwork.

In reality, Harmony never expected herself to be a natural farmhoof. She chalked up her ease of apple bucking to the rather unnatural state that she was in. As a projection of her soul self, she was merely a physical manifestation of her own essence from the future. She wondered briefly what would happen if she had been impaled by a pitchfork when Applejack first met her—Would she even bleed? More to the point—Would it even hurt?

The past was a place of color, of warmth, of life everlasting... until the Cataclysm would one day pull the rug out from underneath it all. It was a struggle for the time traveler to feel like anything but a walking blemish from beyond, casting a gray shadow on the green land through the mere miracle of some purple dragon's transcendent research. Spike undoubtedly thought that Harmony was “helping” the Apple Family by being there. The last pony could only hope to be that enthusiastic.

As the day wore on and the farm ponies wore down, there Harmony stood, looking onwards, resting blissful and cool in the shade of her Entropan shell, and yet in her heart of hearts she felt like a cheater.

A legitimate challenge constantly hounding Harmony was the ever throbbing need to stay within “range” of Applejack. The time traveler was consistently afraid of focusing too hard on the apple trees, only to look over her shoulder and see that her “anchor” had trotted off towards the barn to get supplies or take a break—and then the whole burning green world would melt hopelessly around the pegasus. If worst came to worst, what would Harmony say to convince Applejack to stay within twenty-to-thirty meters of her copper self?

It didn't help that Applejack had been relatively hostile to her presence since the first moment Harmony arrived from the future. So much of what the pegasus was witnessing didn't make sense to her. Harmony's memories of Applejack consisted of a smiling, endearing, sisterly mare with a heart of gold and a voluntary desire to defend everypony she deemed a friend. It was perhaps true that the politeness that Applejack exercised was reserved only for her loved ones, but even that Harmony doubted. The Apple Family had built their legacy on the foundation of neighborly hospitality and generosity; strangers were no less embraced with tender-hearted kindness than close companions.

So why was it that Applejack's attitude threatened to tear “Harmony's” wings from her spine?

Harmony imagined that there were ponies alive in Ponyville who legitimately had a problem with Princess Celestia or just Canterlot in general, but that didn't explain things to the last pony any better. No—There had to have been a severe problem ahoof in Sweet Apple Acres, and the only thing Harmony could guess was that Applejack—the element of honesty—was hiding something. She could imagine no better explanation for a respectable pony tripping over herself in such a bizarre fashion.

If Harmony's presence could disturb Applejack so much, then she figured that it was only a matter of time before she unearthed exactly what the hidden truth was. Suddenly, Spike's advice on persistence began to make sense, and as the thick afternoon of heated farmwork continued, Harmony sharply observed everything around her. But instead of focusing entirely on the expressions on Applejack's and Macintosh's sweating figures, she gazed about the orchards with the expert eyes of a Wasteland scavenger, taking notice of little details and bits of information that bled forth from the earth itself.

It suddenly occurred to her that the apple trees weren't nearly as perfect and immaculate as Applejack had touted them as being. As a matter of fact, there were several scars on the barks, scrapes and nicks and scratches that almost looked like claw marks. What was more, Harmony noticed apples lying besides a few trees that hadn't been bucked, and a good many of the fruit had burst open as if obviously bitten into. Then there were random bits of splintered wood besides the fences, shattered clumps of farm tools underneath the shade of orchards, and even more evidence of debris—all leading in a disturbed path towards a line of forested trees that bordered the extreme southeast side of the farmland.

During the time it took Harmony to observe these things, it occurred to her that Applejack and Macintosh were acting stranger and stranger. For instance, upon every moment Harmony took subtle notice of the half-eaten fruit, Applejack swiftly galloped over and scurried the ruined apples away into the high grass. When the pegasus took a prolonged time staring at a scratched bark of wood, the two farm ponies would usher her towards the next row of trees to be bucked, even if the last job hadn't been thoroughly completed. Finally, Harmony could have sworn she saw—from far across the orchards as she pretended to be engrossed in kicking apples loose—the sight of Big Macintosh setting up a metal caged structure or two alongside the fences bordering the farmland. But as soon as her amber eyes narrowed in on the distant spectacle, Applejack's frowning face would trot into view, and farm mare would gab on and on about “lost time,” forcing the two towards the next line of unbucked trees.

Though the last pegasus was obviously occupied with this developing mystery, she couldn't help but get caught up in the mesmerizing hum of the moment. As the minutes crept into hours,
her copper body sang with the thrilling sensations of sunlight, the intoxicating smell of grass, the fresh and pliable apples that bounced about the baskets she shoved from tree to tree. A part of her almost wished that her projection was susceptible to wear and tear, if only for the feeling of sweating her muscles to a trembling lull, hunched under a sky that kissed her with warm rays instead of blanketing her with snowy ash. Not even the brightest lit lantern or the hottest setting of the Harmony's boiler could make her feel as toasty as she did under those sky-cooked apple trees. If she could have Granny Smith's record playing within earshot of the dirt path alongside the orchards, Harmony would have been in absolute heaven.

What was it that Spike had said? Something about “enjoying herself?”

Harmony swiftly shook her head loose of that cobwebbed possibility and glanced over at Applejack once more. The farm mare was a sweaty mess, obviously urging herself to keep up with the “dainty Canterlotlian Clerk's” energy. Harmony was almost tempted to slow her apple bucking down further, if only to give the orange mare some relief. But—out of necessity more than cruelty—she kept her pace constant. What mattered most was that she was wearing Applejack down in some way or another. Hopefully, it would only be a matter of time before the Element of Honesty lived up to her title and treated the pegasus like the one friend she only ever meant to be.

Some way or another, it always boiled down to time. Harmony let the irony of that contemplation sink in as she rotated herself to another tree, lopping the redness off of the branches of Sweet Apple Acres slowly—from the inside out—like a healing salve that knew nothing of reluctance, but embodied everything about persistence...

The sun was starting to melt into a golden haze above the western horizon when Harmony first heard Granny Smith's sing-songy voice swishing through the green leaves. She kicked the last of many vibrating trees and glanced over her shoulder to see the elderly pony cresting the top of a hill, pushing a wooden cart decorated with a pitcher of water and three tall glasses.

“Break time, kiddies!” she chirped, a wrinkled grin plastered firmly across her lime muzzle. “Hard-workin' earth ponies deserve a hard-worker's glass of water! Pegasi too!” She giggled with a bizarre youth, even for the rest of them. “Get it while it's cold, y'all!”

Macintosh hummed pleasantly, batting the sweat off his ears as he trotted eagerly towards the wooden cart. Applejack stumbled less gracefully after him. “Th-Thanks, Granny...” the orange mare began, then did a double-take. “Granny Smith! You came all this way without yer walker? What in tarnation were you thinkin'?”

“I'm feelin' right as rain, girl!” The elder pony flexed a forearm, nevertheless wobbling slightly. She chuckled: “There's just somethin' so inspirin' about watchin' the whole lot of you gettin' so much accomplished. I admit, I had my own reservations about the success of this year's Apple Buck Season. But ever since Miss Harmony showed up, I'm startin' to have hope again. Thank you once again for coming, dearie.”

“Don't mention it.” Harmony smiled. “I'm happy to help. And I'm sure that—when it comes time for me to write Princess Celestia—I'll only have good things to say about how diligent your grandfoals are in their attention to the farm that you've so humbly helped raise.”

“Unngh... Drag me to the woodshed,” Applejack muttered with rolling eyes.

“What was that, AJ?”

“Nothin', Granny. Thanks for the water.”

“Plenty more where that came from!” Granny Smith made to walk back to the farmhouse, but took a second-glance at Harmony. “Why, good heavens!” She blinked. “You hardly have a drop of sweat on you, darlin'!”

“Oh. Uhm...” Harmony gulped and smiled nervously. “It's a pegasus thing—On account of our feathers and all. The oil we secrete hides our perspiration.”

“Well, I'll be...”Granny Smith shook her head and chuckled as she sauntered slowly, slowly back to her distant rocking-chair on jittery haunches. “Even in so many years, Canterlotlian Pegasi still amaze me. Y'all are like gifts from the goddesses. I'll be thinkin' of ya when I listen to Stallionivarius!”

Harmony breathed easier as she watched the elder pony trot gently away. She had been called many things in life: “last pony” by Dirigible Dogs, “loyal customer” by Bruce, “glue stick” by M.O.D.D. patrons. The irony poisoned her as much as it tickled her: that it would take a twenty-five year backflip through time for any living thing to call her a “gift.” The last pony would have felt special, if only this was her brown and weathered body bearing the warmth of the notion—and not some copper chronological carpet flimsily enshrouding her.

“Yer still a rotten fibber,” Applejack muttered between heavy gulps of water.

The stark, loveless honesty of the accusation carried a stale gray taste, like mushroom stew in the lonely sway of the Harmony. The time traveler glanced her way. “I beg your pardon?”

Applejack sipped the water heartily, swallowed, and exhaled, “Two of my best friends happen to be pegasi. I've seen enough drops of sweat between the two of them to fill the Eastern Seaboard.” She squinted in trademark suspicion. “Just how come you ain't fazed none by all them apple trees you've hit so hard?”

“Well, y'know—I do what you do!” Harmony shrugged her shoulders and chuckled. “I drink lots of water.” Her vision dripped aside and ricocheted off the chiseled muscles of Big Macintosh standing across the wooden cart from her, his sweat-stained, crimson coat glistening over every veiny contour of his broad shoulders as he eagerly drank from a cup. “Ahem—Lots of cold, cold, freezing-cold water.” Harmony clamped her hoof around the entire pitcher, doused her neck, tossed her black mane back, and exhaled loudly. “Mmmm—Yeeeeha! Heheheh...”

“That refreshin' enough for y'all?” Applejack bitterly smirked.

Harmony instinctually wanted to explain that it tasted a great deal better than recycled urine. “Oh, yes. Absolutely—I thank you very much for... y'know... the cold water. Eheheh...”

Applejack took a last few sips herself, placed her glass down, and sauntered around the cart towards her. “So, humor me, Miss Harmony. What exactly have you gotten from this whole buckin' afternoon that is gonna make yer job for the Princess worth all the messin' around with our farm in the first place?”

“Well... Uhm...” Harmony gulped and rummaged through the dirty alleyways of her synapses. “You and Macintosh have to cover so much acreage, and yet the two of you alone make more progress in less time than an entire—uhm—commune of Canterlotlian sharecroppers!”

“That's because the most Canterlotlian farmers ever worry about is potted petunias.”

“Well, okay. You got me there.” Harmony cleared her throat and smiled hopefully. “But still, you two are like a well-oiled machine. A machine that feels, of course. I was almost scared that I would be slowing you down for a moment there when I joined in.”

“Well, to be perfectly frank—No, you haven't slown us down at all.”

Harmony exhaled joyfully. “See? Was there really such a need to give me the third degree when I offered my assistance in the first place—?”

“But it still doesn't mean that you have any business prancin' about on our lands! You said it yerself—Big Mac and I are like a well-oiled machine. And though I can't pretend to know half as much about mechanical engineerin' as unicorns and pegasi, I reckon yer words should speak for the whole of Sweet Apple Acres. We're meetin' the schedule of Apple Buck Season just fine and dandy.”

“Now, about that.” Harmony glanced sideways at the earth pony. “Apple Buck Season normally happens later in the year, doesn't it?”

“Actually, Apple Buck Season stretches from spring into early fall,” Applejack explained, trotting over and steadying a few baskets full of apples. “The actual harvestin' is relative from farm to farm, as contractually arranged between producers and clients.”

“Really? In that case, when are you and Big Mac contracted to finish harvesting all of these apples, Miss Applejack?”

The far mare's features sagged. She stared down pitifully into a basket full of apples, murmuring something underneath her breath.

“What was that?” Harmony leaned in, curious.

Applejack gave a furious sigh. She glared up at Harmony with a shake of her hat. “In two days.”

“Snkkkt—In two days?!” Harmony's amber eyes nearly bugged out.

“Shhh—Hush, will ya?”

“AJ—hrkk--Miss Applejack!” Harmony nearly pratfalled as she rebounded from that blow of information. “Well-oiled machine or not; the two of you have poured your hearts over the Eastern fields all afternoon, with my help to boot, and still not even half of this side of the Acres has been harvested!” She took a deep breath, her wings fluttering in and out to assist her lungs in recovery. “How in Celestia's sparkling mane do you expect to finish gathering the rest of the apples in two days—no—a day and a half at this rate?!”

Applejack frowned back at her. “It's not like I didn't make it clear that we had no time to waste when y'all first dropped in on us!”

“I don't see how I could have any impact on this situation whatsoever! It's just that—nngh—if Princess Celestia knew this was the case, she would have sent a friggin' squadron of pegasi! I may be a 'fibber' in your book, but even the both of us know that's true!”

“Thanks for makin' my case for me!”Applejack growled and leaned against a tree, fanning her forlorn self with a hat. “The last thing I wanted was for anypony to make a huge fuss about this. But I assure you...” She looked up with a burning emerald gaze. “My brother and I will get the job done!”

“How?—If I may ask?” Harmony gawked as she paced around the earth pony. “I've... er... studied up on Ponyvillean history. You aren't adverse to requesting the help of your friends, Miss Applejack. Why is this situation any different? I mean—It's not like your brother is injured this year. Surely history should teach you that—”

“This has nothin' to do about history! It's about tradition! It's about land!”

Harmony made a face. “Land?” She blinked confusedly at the pony. “Sorry for sounding like a dense piece of wood, but what's that got to do with anything?”

“Pfft—Everythang!” Applejack gestured towards the wide expanse of red-glinted orchards. “It's always about the land! What it yields is equal to what a pony puts into it! It's more than just karma—It's about treatin' the land responsibly, and takin' into account everythang you've contributed to the trees even long before the harvest comes!”

“And this is something you guys can only do alone?” Harmony squinted. “Where's the logic in that?”

“Unngh...Logic, Logic, Logic...” Applejack rubbed her head beneath her brown hat and muttered. “Dang you one-track-minded Canterlotlians...” She paused, glanced up at the tree, then over at Harmony. She put her hat back on and approached the tree. “Miss Harmony, sugarcube, I wantcha to do somethin' for me.”

“Anything!” Harmony nodded emphatically.

Applejack reached her snout up towards a low-hanging branch and snapped an apple loose from its stem. She caught it in her tail, juggled it over her rump, and elbowed it expertly in mid-air so that it flew and landed in the pegasus' jittery grasp. “Take a bite out of that if ya would.”

“Uhm...”Harmony raised an eyebrow. “Not that I'm against the idea of a generous refreshment, but what for?”

“Y'all supposed to be conductin' an investigation of Sweet Apple Acres! Well, ain't ya? Then investigate with yer full senses, girl! Don't just calculate like a clerk—feel like a pony. Take a bite!”

Harmony stared at Applejack long and hard. But under her stubborn gaze, she naturally relented. It wasn't until her teeth were halfway through piercing the soft skin of the apple that the last pony finally took into account exactly what she was doing.

The next moment she knew it, she was being overwhelmed by a deluge of taste that nearly made her stagger from sheer shock. Years of subsisting off of mushroom stew, reclaimed water, and bland Wasteland meats hadn't prepared her for this. Taste buds that had been long retired in the back of her mouth exploded to life, throttling her brain back to the days when a pink haired foal shared cookies, cupcakes, and soda with two other blank flanks under a pink roofed Sugarcube Corner.

With a fluttering of eyelashes, she was brought back to the hay-strewn loft of an abandoned barn in the middle of a forest, experiencing the week's first leap of euphoria under a starry night sky. It was a sparkling sensation, the joy of filling a starved stomach. It was the shimmering expectation of living for another scooter-gliding day in Ponyville, of sharing the earth with so many colorful and friendly ponies, of pretending so much to be something that was loved that the little foal almost believed it was true.

“Well? Does it match yer royal seal of approval?” some strange voice drawled from beyond the nether.

“It's... the absolute best thing I've ever tasted.” Harmony's voice came in a bizarre whimper. She felt the moist apple bits sliding down her esophagus, warming her stomach like an inside-out hug. A breath left her nostrils, and it was several seconds before she realized that Applejack was staring at her. With a strange sensation alighting her cheek, the pegasus realized why. Harmony rubbed the left side of her face dry before uttering in a voice of forced composure: “Most acceptable. Ahem. It's fresh, it's delicious—Undeniably healthy. Princess Celestia would be pleased.”

“There's a reason why it tastes so magnificent,” Applejack said, strolling from tree to tree as Harmony watched her, apple in hoof. “The Apple Family has been workin' these here orchards for generations. As a matter of fact, we colonized here barely a decade after Faustmare's caravan first arrived in the Great Equestrian Valley. What we've put into the trees is more than just hard work—It's tradition. It's heart. All of our lives that we've poured into this here land. It's what we breathe for, dream for, and aspire to do—and nothin' else. If that wasn't the case, a single cutie mark would have broken the line of dedicated Apple Family members a century ago. And in all that time, nopony's branched off. Not even one.”

She took a deep breath, spun with a twirling of blonde threads, and gazed at Harmony with a sweet face that rivaled the rich fruit still lacing the pegasus' twitching taste buds.

“My Pa had a sayin', something that was hoofed down to him from his Papa and his Papa's Papa before him.” Applejack trotted gently towards “Harmony” and quoted: “'Give to the Earth, and the Earth gives back'.” She breathed in the air of the land and exhaled. “This has been our family's motto for generations. It's in our blood. I don't rightfully expect you to understand the importance of it—what, with you bein' a pegasus and all. And that's fine, but you have to trust me when I tell you it means everything to an earth pony. We don't mind sharin' our produce. We don't mind dusting off our front doorstep for visitors. But when it comes to treatin' our land right and makin' do with what the land gives us back, it is our business and nopony else's. We're responsible for givin' to the Earth, and we're accountable for what the Earth returns. And when the time comes that our labors our finished and we have no breaths left in our bodies, we return ourselves to the Earth, as it gives us everythang for us to live off of to begin with.”

“That's very noble, Miss Applejack,” Harmony gently replied. “But if you respect the Earth so much, then you'll know that this land will mean nothing if something horrible was to happen that would cause you to lose claim to it.” She motioned towards the rows upon rows of unbucked trees. “So maybe you and Macintosh try to do all of this alone. And maybe, Celestia forbid, you fail to get the Apple Buck Harvest done in two days' time. I'm not sure what the immediate repercussions will be exactly, but I certainly can imagine. It won't bode well for your farm—or any harvests you attempt in the future—if word gets around Equestria that you can't deliver on time! And why?—Because you refused the help that was given you at the most opportune time?”

Applejack sighed, hanging her head. “Ain't nothin' to it.”

“Why? Could you at least explain to me why?”

“Yes, Big Mac and I made a contract with our clients...” Applejack gazed up at her. “But first and foremost we made a contract with the Earth. There are... mistakes that have been made. And we've got to own up to it. Nopony else.”

“Mistakes?” Harmony made a face. “Is that why you started the Apple Bucking so early? You're trying to make up for something that happened with the orchards that you feel responsible for?” She glanced briefly over Applejack's shoulder. Along a distant crest of a hill, she once again caught sight of a glinting metal cage, intended to be hidden alongside the wooden fence of the Acres. “Miss Applejack, I'll buy that working the land has its own style of karma, but there are some things that even the Earth itself can't take into account.” She gulped and murmured in a low voice. “Cataclysmic things.”

“In the end, all that matters is that we answer to the land. The Apple Family.” Applejack trotted with sudden briskness towards the opposite rows of trees. “To drag anypony else in—especially from Canterlot—is just muddyin' the issue. Now come on. If y'all ain't finished with yer hooves-on investigation, there's still plenty of apple trees to buck. After all, the afternoon isn't dead until it's dead!”

Harmony gazed after her, all of her pent-up frustration crumbling suddenly under a cascade of confusion and sympathy. Helpless, she regarded the fruit in her hoof, and took another bite. It somehow tasted less sweet, but she knew better.

“Nothing ever dies enough,” she mumbled with a mouthful, then trotted off to join the rest of the day's work.

The world no longer sang. To perceive otherwise would be a travesty, or so Harmony felt. The bright colors and springy warmth of the green land around her suddenly paled as what was once a task of joy had crumbled into a quagmire of desperation, squeezed between the jaws of a schedule that had broken the copper pegasus' brain as hard as it was currently breaking Applejack's and Macintosh's backs.

The time traveler couldn't even write a novel on this laughable irony. She and Spike possessed thirty-odd years of reverse-time to work with and enough green flame to dance merrily across the lengths of them, and here she was—thrust into this infinitesimal moment of all moments—and there were barely forty-eight hours at hoof for her to salvage anything from the Apple Family, before an apple-flavored train wreck encompassed the entirety of their livelihood, before there would be nothing at all left to be salvaged.

Harmony's brain swam circles, mimicking the hard black lines of her cutie mark's infinity symbol as she bucked away under the melting red Sun. She pondered over what possessed a full-grown pony like Applejack—in a world replete of color and happiness—to do something so self-destructive, to make a contract that was as impossible as it was daring, to risk her entire family's hard-earned work on a delivery that was too soon to be feasibly met.

Absurdly desperate gambles belonged to creatures of the Wasteland. Last time Harmony checked, Applejack was an organism of Equestrian splendor. She couldn't possibly have been influenced by the future's gray psychosis, unless the time traveler's presence there had somehow tainted the sanity of that age, transmogrifying the “gift” that Granny Smith perceived into the “curse” that Harmony very somberly knew she herself was.

No. Harmony sighed and bucked on. Applejack had been digging this grave for a long time. Glancing across the lines of orchards, the last pony could see it in her eyes. The farm filly and her brother were like ghosts, pale shades of themselves as they limped from tree to tree. There was something that bled from their twitching irises, something that refused to reflect the rich red gloss of the apples, something alien that they must have seen which drained the love from their earthen passion. In all of her foalish years, Harmony couldn't recall the Apple Family siblings having ever appeared so... hollow.

Perhaps something horrible had happened recently. In a sudden, startling backflip of the heart, Harmony realized that she hadn't even seen a blink of Apple Bloom since she had first arrived there. A brief panic bubbled within her, like the rising crest of a Wasteland stormfront. She swiftly calmed herself, panting between apple orchards, realizing that if something truly terrible had happened to her childhood friend, then Applejack—the element of Honesty—would have definitely said something about it. Besides, Harmony was beginning to remember enough about the immutable past to know that Apple Bloom was perfectly fine. The vision of Whinniepeg trees danced before her blinking eyelids, and she shuddered.

Thinking back to the present, Harmony pondered over a true paradox that was transpiring on that farm. Applejack was hiding something; she had to have been. Everything in her body chemistry spelled it out and spilled it out, from the breathless limping between trees to the surly grumbles in the peripheral vision of the time traveler. Applejack was losing her sensible qualities like the trees were losing fruit all around her. Of course, Harmony knew that it would be an utter apocalypse before Applejack would admit to anything. In a shuddering breath, Harmony hoped that such a presumption wouldn't translate literally.

The melting sun glittered orange between the trees in a bright flash that held foalish hues. Harmony's twitching mind jolted back and forth, and she suddenly and forlornly remembered a storm cellar on the edge of a cliff that yawned into the ashen madness of tomorrow. The last pony had the unfortunate curse of knowing that the Apple Family had died, and yet she had the fortunate blessing of knowing how. In four months' time, the farm ponies—Applejack, Macintosh, Granny Smith, and Apple Bloom—would all be corpses. It was the Cataclysm that finished them off, as their skeletal husks were just as lifelessly intact as the rest of the Wasteland fossils that the last pony had ever encountered.

Were their lives filled with such anxiety as what clouded them now? Even until the end of their beating hearts, did they breathe the air of their farm with pride? Was it the same pride that struggled so hard to drive “Harmony” away? Or was it something righteous, something that they were yet to find, something that Harmony was destined to help them find?

It never occurred to the last pony before that there could have been a purpose to her presence there. Lurching between trees in the suspended shell of Princess Entropa, the visitor expected only to be a witness. She had plummeted there on the green flaming waves of reverse-time to find out what happened to Equestria. Instead, she was learning a depressing truth about one tiny farm on a speck of land that dotted the incomprehensibly vast bosom of a doomed world, and she suddenly didn't know what was worrying her more.

This past was too fragile, too alive, too perfect. She couldn't be a mere witness any longer, at least not so much as she had simplistically assumed time travelers to be pariahs. Nopony was ever foaled to be untouchable; Harmony had only survived her many years in the gray skies of desolation because she had known there was something better, something warmer, something hopeful into which she was originally born and out from which she forever bled.

But here—damnably here—where the smells of childhood cradled the sobbing void of all she had ever lost or dreamed of, there was no desolation, there was no grayness, there was no pain. With numb Entropan limbs, she punished hardened trunks of fruit plastered trees, fighting with every centimeter of her soul to preserve that painlessness, to impossibly salvage the soil from Applejack's grave, to scoop from the land whatever absurd principle the farm filly believed in, so that Harmony might cradle it, examine it, and scavenge forth what it was that Applejack held dear, so that she may understand it too—and endeavor to find a way to save her.

Equestria would someday die. There was a sun and moon somewhere to bring back to a sullen husk of a world. The time traveler knew that she may have been failing Spike, she may have been failing the future, and she may have been failing herself, but she suddenly and inexplicably couldn't bring herself to fail Applejack. Falling short of that would just be... painful. So with a firm jaw and a quiet disposition, she bucked on.

It would take the soft shuffling of lime hooves to briefly shake her from this suddenly noble exercise. “Your stamina is inspiring, Miss Harmony. It's nice to know that Canterlot is still made of stern stuff these days.”

Harmony breathlessly glanced up in time to witness the silhouette of an elderly mare in the sun's collapsing glow. “When was it not?” she mused with nonchalance. “I heard Miss Applejack say that you use a walker.”

“I use a lot of things.” The gray-haired pony smiled. With a wincing wheeze, she bravely lowered her body down onto folded hooves and sat upon the crest of gathering shadows before the time traveler. “I just do my darndest to not let them use me.”

“What's on your mind, Ms. Smith?” Harmony asked, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder at the mare's two laboring grandfoals. The farm ponies were swiftly bucking down the line of trees. If Harmony remained in one place for too long, the green flames could hoist her away from her anchor at any second. “I kind of promised that I wouldn't rest until I've helped your granddaughter with all of these trees.”

“Even if you bucked with the might of a thousand war horses, child, you wouldn't accomplish the task any more quick-like—at least not like we desperately need at the moment.”

Harmony bit her lip and peered up with soft amber eyes. “So you know all about the crazy schedule, huh?”

“I know everythang that there is to know about this here farm,” Granny Smith said with a weathered expression that clung on the precipice of wakefulness. “At least, I know more than them whippersnappers give me credit for. Harumph.” She briefly glared gray daggers the two ponies' way, but punctuated it with the softest of surrendering smiles. “I couldn't love them for better gumption. When I was their age, I reckon I assumed nopony else knew the ins-and-outs of the orchards but me.”

“What do you think, Ms. Smith?”

“I think that Octavia's music deserves a second chance under the needle. There's a certain richness to her cello pluckin' that's missin' from the classics. It's the vitality of youth, I reckon.”

Harmony managed a chuckle, something that had been robbed from her for the past hour or so. “That's nice to hear, Ms. Smith. But what I meant to ask was—what do you think of the situation?” She gulped. “Have Miss Applejack and Big Macintosh really doomed this farm?”

“Fillies these days; they are all about doom and gloom. Please don't remind me of Miss Lily from the village. If so much as an acorn hits the cobblestone, that sheepish pony screams bloody murder to the townsfolk—as if the world is coming to an end.”

“When... or if that happens, Ms. Smith”—Harmony winced even as the sardonic words instinctually dripped out from her lips—“I assure you it won't be through an acorn.”

“Hmm-hmm-hmm...” The elder breathily chuckled. Thin, sweet eyes wafted over Harmony in a gray baptism. “I have lived too long and seen too many things to focus on 'doom,' child. When you've gained as many years as I have... and lost as many ponies close to you, you come to realize that things come and go. Sometimes it's all for a reason, sometimes it's not. But the comin' and the goin' is just a matter of livin' and someday not livin'. Being too desperately affixed to a worrisome dot in the whole confusin' length of it all is just not worth the sweat, in my books.”

The last pony swam through the thick of Granny Smith's words, too terribly humble to bother vocalizing the familiarity of them all. She cast a nervous glance in the direction of the two young ponies and caught them gazing with less enthusiasm back at the “Canterlotlian visitor.”

“Well, your flesh and blood over there is focused on something,” Harmony said with a nod of her amber-streaked mane. “I really wish I knew what it was.” There was a pause, and she glanced squintingly down at the seated elder. “I don't suppose you could fill me in, any?”

“That wouldn't be my place,” Granny Smith replied with a knowing smirk. “I may be able to pull Applejack's ear from time to time, but it's AJ who runs this farm—not me. I'm not always approvin' of her judgment, but I sure as heck respect it. It was Apple Shine's wish, after all.”

“What wish is that?” Harmony asked.

Either Granny Smith ignored that or she was too desperately sailing towards a distant thought. She instead said, “You shouldn't be so hungry for facts, Miss Harmony. You can't rightly be blamed for a code of conduct taught by them Canterlotlian nobles that makes you so bent on uncoverin' the truth in all of its raw numbers. Instead, look towards the land. Bear witness to the fruit that we've brought to blossomin' all healthy-like. Isn't the quality of my grandchildren's work enough to impress Her Highness?”

“I... Nnngh...” Harmony ran a tired hoof over her features, sighing. “Ms. Smith, in all due respect, I need facts. I need to know exactly what it is that's making Applejack push this farm downhill on a crashing wagon with only one wheel! Otherwise, how am I... h-how am I going to be able to help her?”

“Mmmm...” Granny Smith smiled placidly. “I knew it.”

Harmony raised an eyebrow. “You knew what?”

“Yer the selfless type, Miss Harmony. That's a once-in-a-lifetime thang. Well, twice-in-a-lifetime, I reckon. Heheh. If I actually believed in reincarnation, then maybe I wouldn't feel so plum crazy,” the old country mare mused. “But with each passin' second, you remind me of that darlin' pegasus who visited me after Apple Shine was born. She was so genteel and graceful in every respect. Why—if Princess Celestia or one of her divine Alicorn Sisters had come to visit this here ranch, I would have been none the wiser. In some ways, I used to think that all Canterlotlian clerks bore at least an ounce of royal blood, in that they performed their tasks in an gorgeous air that mimicked the Goddesses themselves. Bein' around the farm during that year's census just gave the land that much more shine, that much more hope. I couldn't have asked for a finer guest—and here I am again, blessed to be in the gifted presence of one of y'all. Like I said, child, it's a wonder to be alive.”

Harmony tried to smile; it came across more like a wound. Gazing at Granny Smith's gentle face, she somehow wouldn't be shocked if the lime wrinkles and gray hair were suddenly replaced by purple scales and green crests. For yet another uncountable moment, the last pony felt loved and lonely at the same time.

“You say that I'm a 'gift,' Ms. Smith,” Harmony finally spoke. “And I respect that. I find it flattering—but I only wish it was true.” She gave a deflated breath and gazed across the labored lengths of the ill-fated apple bucking. “A real gift wouldn't feel so useless.”

“Real gifts take time to make themselves useful, and even more time for some lucky ponies to recognize what's fallen into their laps.” Granny Smith chuckled as her eyes regarded her descendants bucking their way across the immutable lengths of orchards like so many generational shadows before them. Her gray eyes turned grayer for a brief moment. “Elektra built this earth out of her own hooves, and Gultophine gave it life with her own breath. But it took time to make it grow into somethang as pristine and beautiful as the land I've been blessed to live on today... and to be buried in tomorrow.” She took a deep breath, and the twinkle returned to her in double copper hues. “I don't know where exactly you hail from, Miss Harmony, and can't rightly pretend to be understandin' how or why you're here, but all I can say is that you bein' here... is timely.”

Harmony shivered on the edge Smith's words. Something funneled through her, something cold, like the rancid teeth of yesterday's snowy rockfaces. So she hid deeper beneath her Entropan skin and fled from the pain, reveling in the toasty mirage of the past that danced around the wrinkled elder's meditative pose. Perhaps that far down, that deep into the moment, she might come to understand the living pony's words.

“I can only hope you're right, Miss Smith. For Miss Applejack's sake, for your family's sake, for—” She jolted suddenly, her amber eyes twitching up as she was suddenly overcome with a great red hue. The sky was bleeding, and for a feverish breath the last pony thought the Cataclysm was happening three months early. “By Celestia's m-mane! What's that?!”

Granny Smith blinked. She stared up, her gray hairs fluttering in the wind. A deep snort rose from her nostrils and bulleted through her lungs as she wobbled up on thin limbs. “Good heavens, child! Surely yer pullin' an old lady's tail!” She winked and sashayed away. “Why, that's the sunset! What else could it be?”

Two hours and hundreds of trees later, a good two-thirds of the Eastern Orchards had been bucked clean. A veritable mountain of baskets bulged with apples, most of which were presently being loaded up into the back of a large wooden cart. Big Macintosh harnessed himself to the wheels and marched firmly downhill towards the big red barn in the center of the Acres.

Along the path beside him, Applejack finished stacking several baskets aside for the brother's next trip back. Wiping her matted blonde bangs with a foreleg, she glanced over her shoulder and saw a dark silhouette atop the nearby hill.

Harmony stood frozen on a mound of black soil and bent grass, staring breathlessly into a great burning sight before her. The sun was setting in the west—the first sunset the last pony had seen in decades. It was a molten gold sensation, like being set ablaze from the inside out—hooves to mane—with liquid red fire.

The pegasus breathed bravely into the gentle crimson inferno, and as a brisk wind billowed over the hilltop, she shut her amber eyes and drank it in, settling down on her haunches in order to free her upper limbs. She stretched them outward as if they were secondary wings, riding the heated breeze as it kicked through her black mane and dashed her amber streaks like hidden streamers. The smells that wafted off the land were spiced with fluttering leaves and blossoming seeds, so that Harmony felt like she was flying for once without her wings, navigating a bizarrely warm world that had somehow evaded her for years, hidden behind cold ash and even colder memories.

“I reckon y'all Canterlot clerks don't get outside much.” Applejack's hoofsteps crunched up from behind. “Surely the sunsets are purdy enough in yer neck of the woods.”

The pegasus inhaled, opening her moist eyes into the melting horizon. “The only truly pretty things are what you capture by accident. They're the things that you'll forever fly away from, only to think back on how you'll miss them forever.” Her wings shifted involuntarily. She took another breath and tossed a bittersweet smile back at Applejack. “I think I finally have a reason to envy earth ponies like you. You know an awesome thing when you see it, and then you stick to it.”

“If I might make a lil' confession.” Applejack smirked slightly and winked Harmony's way. “I've always dreamed that I could fly with some fancy pegasus wings of my own someday.” There was a slight, girlish giggle. “Just a foalish daydream I used to have.”

“Keep it a daydream,” Harmony said in a droning voice, gazing once more as the horizon ate up the last of the glistening, golden sun. “The only reason anypony has wings is to escape things.” She gulped. “I wish I'd never have to escape this.”

Applejack's green eyes softened slightly. But—with a firm exhale—she nudged Harmony's mane and motioned southward with her snout. “Come along, Miss Harmony. There's somethin' I gots'ta show y'all.” She trotted off.

Harmony obediently followed, breaking into a slight canter to keep up with her orange host. Applejack led her past the last edge of the orchards, through a metal arch enshrouded in vines, and straight into a lush grove of bright white flowerbeds. The rolling expanse of Equestria lingered beyond a distant line of fences, the horizon turning purple under the advent of a coolly falling evening. The copper pegasus was so engrossed in this equally mesmerizing sight that she barely noticed that Applejack had stopped in her tracks. Glancing down in front of the earth pony, Harmony somberly realized why.

There were gravestones, many of them. Eight.. twelve... twenty... At least thirty that Harmony could immediately count. They were bleached-white, immaculate marble heads, with only slight aging noticeable in the stones that dotted the furthest distance. Each row, Harmony realized, stood for a subsequent generation of the Apple Family, with far too many names than she could discern, except for the freshest stones that lingered directly in front of Applejack and the pegasus in turn.

“Apple Shine – Devoted Father – Most Dependable Earth Pony”

“Orange Blossom – Loving Mother – Ponyville's Pride and Joy”

Harmony gazed quietly. Her amber eyes fell over the fresh lilies that had been placed recently before the two graves. In front of the mother's stone in particular she could spot a few foal-sized hoofprints that had been left in the soft earth. There was so much beauty surrounding the place, from the lulling unplucked fruit trees to the shadowed beds of white flowers that fluttered in the settling evening's breeze. For once, death actually looked peaceful to the last pony. A part of her was almost envious.

“I brought y'all here to show that I wasn't just blowin' hot steam with what I said earlier,” Applejack said in a hushed tone. She knelt briefly before the two stones and brushed an orange hoof betwixt them, murmuring a few sweet words with her mouth closed. She brought the same hoof to her lips, kissed it, and gently tapped both stones in turn. Once finished, she gazed across the many white faces reflecting her from across the grove. “We really do give everythang to the Earth—includin' ourselves in the end. This land of ours is more than just soil and appleseeds. It's flesh and bone. Every piece of fruit we pick is a piece of us. And—to be perfectly honest—I wouldn't have it any other way.”

The earth pony stood up, trotted around, and paced towards Harmony.

“When my Pa died, he managed to tell me somethin'. He said: 'Always remember to be strong, Applejack.'” She gazed at the breeze-blown apple trees in the distance. “Celestia knows, after all these years, I've taken him up on his word. I've been strong for him, for the family, for this here land. I've been so strong for so long that I rightly don't remember what use it is to cry anymore; it's a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. The rest of the family: they can afford it. That's just the way things happened to be. Apple Bloom was far too young and precious to be the strong one. Granny Smith—Epona bless her heart—she's always been the spirit of the Apple Family, but she no longer has the bones for the job. Big Macintosh has the muscle, but he's so sweet and soft-spoken. He may not look it, but he ain't the one to bear the weight. It all came down to me—And that's quite alright. I'm happy to be spearheadin' the family. It's my job and I'm stickin' to it. These days, it means more than just livin' up to what Pa wanted of me. I've seen what I can do for this land, and what it can do for me. And I'm startin' to realize just what it must have felt like for Pa when he had to leave this world so soon, when everythang he ever cared for was snatched away from him and Ma in a blink. I love this family with all my heart—but, just like Pa felt—I love this land all the same. Because it's all the same, ya see? The life, the legacy, the land—it all comes full circle. And in my humble eyes, that's a finer poetry than even your finest writers nestled in Canterlot could ever hope to put to paper.”

Harmony listened intently. Even her heartbeat quieted to give air to Applejack's words. Gradually, the farm mare turned her face to stare the pegasus straight in her amber eyes.

“Miss Harmony, when mornin' comes, and the sun rises once more over this land, you will be gone. You will be back in Canterlot, deliverin' everythang yer reckon you've learned from today and today alone.” She slowly shook her head. “I'm sorry if this sounds all intimidating-like. But what I'm stating is a fact; because if Big Macintosh and I wake up to do the rest of our apple buckin'—and we see you there waitin' at the front gate to inspect us some more—it will be I who will be writin' a letter to Princess Celestia. And I promise you—on the very graves that lie before us—it will not be a pretty letter. The Goddess of the Sun may control the sky, but she sure as hay doesn't control the Earth. Sweet Apple Acres business is our business, and that's the way it's gonna be, even until the end of time.”

Harmony nodded, waited for several seconds of silence to ensue, then bravely replied, “That's the funny thing about time, Miss Applejack—the end of it, at least. Nopony can know when it happens. It could...” she fidgeted. “It could be a lot sooner than you think.”

“My statement is still final,” Applejack said. “Even if the world ended tonight, I stand by my word—and my word is my flesh and blood. I'm sorry to have treated ya so viciously earlier. There is no hard work that ain't stressful work, and y'all caught us at a bad time. You may leave now, Miss Harmony. And if ever I see you in the future, that will be a future when all will be made right between the Apple Family and the Earth. Maybe then you'll be lucky enough to see my friendlier side, and I can show you the gratitude that you deserve.” She smiled sweetly. “I don't fancy you a bad pony, just not entirely an honest one. And that don't sit right with me.”

“Naturally, it wouldn't,” Harmony defeatedly murmured. She extended her wings and prepared to soar away—but paused briefly to glance back and utter, “But even you should realize, Miss Applejack, that a lie of omission is still a lie.”

Applejack fidgeted, digging the edge of her hoof into the ground. It was a gesture that appeared anything but strong. Rather than allow the awkwardness to go on for any longer, Harmony immediately took to the air and flew majestically towards the darkening horizon, disappearing behind a purple line of trees.

The farm mare exhaled the entire afternoon's weight out her mouth. Paying the graves one last bit of respect, she turned around and slowly trotted out of the grove. She walked back towards the orchards alone... or so she thought.

From behind a row of trees, unseen in the settling curtain of night, the shadow of a pegasus stealthily danced across the blossoming stars. With a pair of reflective amber eyes locked on Applejack, she hovered quietly over the treetops and kept within distance of the soul's anchor.

“You might be strong—But you've got a lot to learn about persistence, girl.” Then Harmony made like a gust of wind.

The Apple Family had retired for the night. After trucking in the last of the day's harvested apples and shutting them inside various woodsheds, Applejack and Big Macintosh tended to the last livestock chores before shuffling lethargically into the family farmhouse. A few lights lingered pitifully through several windows of the humble abode until they too blinked away to match the sleepy darkness that had settled over the land. For several hours afterwards, a tranquil peace wafted over the farmstead in a purple haze, accompanied by the chirping of crickets and distant hoots of owls.

All of this, Harmony witnessed—of course—because she was stealthily perched atop the roof of the red barn sitting straight across from the Apple Family's house, stretching her soul to the furthest reach of her projection's binding to Applejack's sleeping form.

“Hey, I just realized. There's a bum living in Ponyville. And it's me.”

The pegasus sighed and slumped down so that she was lying with her chin rested aside a rusted weathervane in the shape of a rooster. Her legs were unenthusiastically folded underneath herself as she waited... and waited... and waited.

She couldn't succumb to slumber. It wasn't because of the nearly nonexistent sleeping schedule that she had developed from all the gray years of piloting the Harmony. It wasn't because of some deep-rooted tingling of excitement billowing through her veins from being displaced in time. It was simply because she... couldn't sleep. She was incapable of it—so long as she was in this form, this materialized projection of her soul self. She had briefly figured—from Spike's description—that this would be a blessing. But suddenly, in the wake of having failed to pierce through Applejack's stubborn defenses, it appeared to be nothing more than a curse. Harmony could just as well have been a ghost, an age-old insomniac poltergeist forced to forever haunt the grounds of Sweet Apple Acres, beset with ponies who would very gladly ignore her existence. It was a supremely surreal flip of the coin from her very real, very lonesome life in the Wastelands.

“And just what is that smell?” Harmony sniffed the air while murmuring hushedly towards herself. “I sure as heck don't remember that from visiting Apple Bloom!”

The mare sighed. Her head spun with all of the many things she would have to deal with in the morning. There were still days left to her time travel, she figured. Of course she couldn't quit on Applejack. When the sun rose, she would have to plop herself down onto the earth in front of a startled pair of farm ponies and somehow convince them not to skewer her to death with pitchforks for having the audacity to betray their exceedingly solemn request for her to leave.

And why shouldn't she leave? Harmony wasn't entirely convinced that she knew what she was there to do in the first place. All she wanted was to bridge a simple communication gap, to get Applejack to open up to her, to get her to trust her. Then and only then might she come out with the truth, that she was there for reasons that exceeded the historically superficial issue of Apple Buck Season, that soon there would no longer be a season for anything, because all manner of measuring time and harvesting would utterly vanish along with the sun, the moon... and civilization.

“Who am I kidding?” The pegasus girlishly toyed with her alien mane of long black hair and gazed forlornly into the starlit haze of the Earth. “So long as I'm not honest with the Element of Honesty, the Element of Honesty can't possibly be expected to 'fess up to me.”

Perhaps that was the key. Applejack was no Ms. Cheerilee. She was strong, she had her faculties centered upon the rigid spokes of reality. If Harmony dove in on Applejack and divulged her the horrible fate of Equestria, the wheels turning in the orange mare's head would be absolutely well-greased to spin true. She would gladly do what she could to contact Princess Celestia. She may even open up enough to Harmony to accept her help with the farm—

Harmony went crosseyed. She facehoofed with a groan. “Dang it—That's not my concern! It shouldn't be my concern!”

The only reason Harmony came back in time to begin with was to find an answer to what caused the Cataclysm and the deaths of Princess Celestia and Luna. That should have been on the forefront of her troubled mind—not all of this business with Applejack's stubbornness, her family's legacy, an impossible harvest that needed to be completed in less than two days, a farm's future that could be put in jeopardy if the two farm ponies didn't just give up and accept much needed help...

Harmony sat up on her haunches, exhaling hard through her Entropan nostrils. No matter how hard she tried to make herself think of something more important, the issue with Applejack and her Apple Buck Season fiasco constantly bubbled to the surface. Even then and there, none of what she was doing made any sense. How would helping the Apple Family with one measly harvest shed any light on the End of Equestria—or how to reverse the damage done in a wasted future to boot?

A fit of anger reverberated through the time traveler. Where there was anger, there was pain. Where there was pain, there was ash. Where there was ash, there was home, a forever after of forever afters—alone.

Harmony didn't realize what she had done until a loud metallic ringing noise echoed across the lengths of the barn. She blinked briefly, watching as the metal rooster that formed the weather vane spun offensively before her. The pegasus glanced down at her hoof. She had struck the metal figurine at full force, and she hadn't felt a thing. It was a heavy weathervane—at least parts of her had to have stung from the contact. Alas, everything was a numb cocoon of bewilderment.

The last pony bit her lip. Out of curious experimentation—as opposed to somber angst—she once more raised a copper limb and aimed the soft part of it against the serrated beak of the rusted rooster as it rotated to a stop. She pressed her coat to the sharpest point; she pressed harder, until the skin bent and sunk under the menacing beak. It should have hurt. It should have broken blood. But try as she might, Harmony could not pierce the outer shell of her Entropan form.

So much of this projection was still new to her, from the amber streak in her black mane to the immaculate curves of her hooves. Harmony felt like she had been encased in a reverse time capsule, a copper glistening thing that Spike had randomly shot backwards in time via a green sneeze. If Harmony stuck herself inside a cannon and aimed it at the heart of the planet, she had no doubt whatsoever that the discharge would send her living brick of a body flying out the crust on the other side. It all seemed too terribly convenient, and yet inconvenient. Sent back to an era doomed to die, Harmony was temporarily immortal. But could she feel?

That day had been a warm day. The grass had been green grass, the apples had been red apples, the fruit that slid down Harmony's throat had sent her on waves of bitter sweet euphoria, the likes of which she had never experienced and would very likely not come close to relishing ever again. Every succulent morsel that had clambored together to paint the luxurious canvas of Sweet Apple Acres had not been lost to Harmony's senses, and they were such heavenly living senses that the ghostly gray future would stifle for so long.

Here, atop the red barn's roof, in a settling splash of momentary anger, Harmony reached once more into the nebulous past dancing all around her on cricket-song, and she couldn't feel pain. Or at least... she wouldn't. After a day's worth of effortless, sweatless, tireless apple bucking, she had suddenly become the pariah she imagined time travelers to be. Only, it was a different untouchableness, a cold and arrogant immutability, like time itself. Beyond the dull bass hum of the night, Harmony imagined a voice—sounding mystically like Princess Entropa's—and it was laughing, hooting like an owl.

She gave a shuddering breath, then gazed up at the stars in a desperate bid to distract herself. She had been engrossed in such an act for the last three hours straight. As soon as the lights went out in the Apple Family's farmhouse, Harmony had begun stargazing. This was a far different sky than the twilight that infected the gray roof of the future. It was dark—deathly dark—but the stars that twinkled beyond the curtain of oblivion were alive, blissful, and resplendent with the trailing Exodus of Goddess Epona.

And in the center of such a gorgeous canvas, their hung the brightest jewel of all: the moon. It wasn't just any moon, but the most precious of satellites, something that sat unblemished in the sky for no longer than a solitary year, when the shadow of Nightmare Moon had faded from its ivory body as a beautifully unassuming harbinger of the disastrous Cataclysm to come. And here Harmony was, a detached soul from the future, the only lucky (or unlucky) pegasus in the whole of existence to be granted the chance to visit such an abridged page in history, the last page, the bitterly brief appendix of all things that would ever be.

“I wonder... When Luna was up there for a thousand years, could she give to the Earth?” Harmony murmured allowed. A lump formed in her throat as her eyes melted away from the mesmerizing orb in the sky, and she uttered, “Spike, what kind of Earth will we have to give to when all is said and done?”

There was no answer. Instead, there was a noisy pattering of paws. Harmony's heart jumped—for the only thing that the last pony expected to witness after that sort of sound was a flurry of glisteningly sharp polearms. In a breath, she instinctually bounded up to her hooves and spun to face the other side of the barn, snarling.

She was confronted with the gloriously stupid grin of a farm dog panting up at her, its tail wagging. It was a rough collie, with gorgeous flowing calico fur and nimble limbs. Harmony's perplexed eyes followed a series of crates, outhouse rooftops, and rain gutters—until her mind explained to her exactly how the tiny mutt had managed to clambor onto the top of the barn without wings. The cleverness of the creature struck her funny, until a foalish corner of her brain mumbled forth a name that had long been in hibernation: “W... Wi-... Winona?”

The dog barked once, grinned even more stupidly, and all but pounced on the copper-coated pegasus, giving her several slobbering tongue-lashes across her face and mane. The pegasus hissed, growled—giggled once—and all but shoved the canine off her like she was a skunk.

“Okay—Okay! I get it! Not all of the Apple Family is angry to see a 'Canterlotlian Servant!'” She settled back down on folded hooves as she amusedly watched the excitable collie jog four-legged circles around her. “Just don't drool all over me. Sweetie Bell's the one who tasted like marshmallows, not me—Remember?”

Winona barked and sat before her, panting steadily as if attempting to relay some joyous secret code in tongued dribbles.

“Heh, silly little fuzzball,” Harmony managed a slight smirk. “It's an awful shame that your distant cousins will take to flying giant metal behemoths in the future and try to kill me.”

Winona tilted her calico head to the side.

“Meh—Gilliam was kind of cute, in his own disheveled, nauseating, predictably homicidal way. But he didn't have your eyes though.” She winked.

The collie nodded stupidly—but then her head shot up and her ears perked. In a blink, she snarled and faced southeast, glaring off the edge of the barn.

“Hmmm...?” The last pony raised an eyebrow. “Now what's gotten you all spooked?”

Winona barked loudly, snarled once more, and bounded fearlessly off the side of the barn. Rolling down a mound of hay, the farm dog broke into a full sprint, rocketing towards the distant edges of night-drenched orchards.

“What I wouldn't give to have a companion like that in the Wastes.” Harmony strolled up to the edge of the barn, blinking. “Eh, who am I friggin' kidding? I'd probably eat her—Wait a minute.” She squinted hard, nearly teetering over the edge of the rooftop.

Two large shadows were galloping from the front door of the family farmhouse and darting their way southeast. Moonlight glinted off a pitchfork in one of the ponies' grasp. As they pierced the obscurity of the apple trees, a shrill ringing noise could be heard off in the distance.

“Kind of late to be bucking apples, huh, girlfriend?” Harmony's face was caught between a smirk and a frown. She didn't think much of it; she took off and glided gently after the shadows, staying silently within the range of her anchor to Applejack, but most importantly staying silent.

“Just a few more meters, Macky,” Applejack murmured in a hushed tone. She strolled hatless under several waving branches of apple trees as she snuck over a darklit hill with her pitchfork aimed sharply ahead of her. “I toldja that trap would be loud enough to wake a dragon from its slumber! We got 'em this time!”

The red stallion merely glared through the darkness as he shuffled alongside his younger sister. He tried his hardest to pierce through the veil of night with his vision, but was only faintly aware of a glinting shape rattling due east of where they were presently sneaking.

“You did wire that thing to snap shut at a feather's touch, right, Big Mac?”

“Eeeyup,” he hushedly managed, suddenly stopping his sister's trot with a mighty forearm. A tiny shadow had just darted straight past them.

“What in tarnation—?” Applejack gasped, then wilted in the moonlight from a loud chorus of barking noises. “Awww shoot! Winona! We plum forgot to shut her in the barn! C'mon! Let's hurry it there before one of 'em hurts her bad!”

The two rushed over rustling high grass and bushes until they were out in the open. In the ivory glow of the waxing moon, the silhouette of Winona pranced and bounced viciously around a rattling cage lying just before the line of wooden fences that marked the edge of Sweet Apple Acres. A series of bells suspended on strings rung loudly from the sides of the metal container that they were attached to—until the cage itself stopped shaking altogether.

“Shhh! Hold yer hooves!” Applejack hissed.

She and her brother skidded to a stop, gazing with sudden trepidation at the stone-still cage. The ringing noise had stopped. The southeast end of the orchards was still, eerily cold, and quiet. Sitting inside the metal contraption, a pale shape sat—sporting two beady white eyes that stared back at them. Its body rose and fell slowly in dark, leathery breaths.

“What in the hay is it just staring at us for?” Applejack gulped. Suddenly, Winona's barking stopped. The collie paced nervously over towards the two ponies, her voice reduced to a deep whine as her ears drooped. Applejack whispered: “Macky, I don't like this—”

Two shrieking figures dove in from a cluster of bushes and slammed Applejack to the ground. Spinning, Big Macintosh galloped over to rescue her—but four more bodies jumped out of a nearby apple tree and wrestled with the stallion, weathering his snarling kicks and bucks as he struggled to shake them off.

Applejack grunted and headbutted the first of the two leathery creatures clawing at her before reverse-kicking the second. She limped up onto three hooves with the aid of her pitchfork. “Darn Celestia-forsaken varmints!—They sprung a trap with our trap!”

Macintosh shouted and backtrotted hard into an apple tree. The entire thing shook, dropping heavy fruit down onto the heads of the various creatures clinging to him. He managed to shake off three of them with his mighty limbs, but four more shadows scampered in from the underbrush and tackled the stallion with a shriek. They shoved him across the orchards until he spilled violently through the wooden fences bordering the farm. Under the combined weight of the whooping leathery monstrosities and the collapsed beams, Big Mac was helpless to get back up to his hooves. The creatures clamored all over the stallion, bearing razor sharp claws and pointed fangs.

“I'm a'coming, Big Mac!” Applejack fearlessly plowed her way through three creatures, leaped over a leathery sea of more ambushers, and galloped the last heartstopping lengths separating her from her encumbered sibling. But before she could so much as get within a hair's length, the one creature inside the cage effortlessly snapped the bars open and pounced on her with a scream. “Unnggh!” She cried out as she was slammed hard to the splashing dirt.

Her pitchfork tumbled uselessly to the side as she gazed up in horror to see a drooling face full of fanged teeth leering above her. Winona suddenly dove into the scene with a growl, biting hard into the creature's shoulder. The monster hissed, flicked its limb, and smacked Winona off of him. The collie ricocheted across the earth's floor with a yelping cry as more leathery forms closed in from all sides. Applejack and Macintosh were suddenly awash in a sea of mangy carnivores, and the air sang as all the abominations extended their claws as one and made to slash flesh from bone—

A copper blur soared through the moonlight, and suddenly the monster straddling Applejack was gone. “H-huh?!” The frazzled blonde mare blinked, rolled up to her haunches, and glanced breathlessly aside.

A winged figure was stamping her hooves down into the side of the shrieking creature, filling the night air with the sickly crunch of bones. Two more monsters leaped at the pegasus' backside, only to be effortlessly bucked hard through a row of exploding wooden fences. With amber eyes flickering, the shadow of Harmony burned across the inky black earth and bowled through the pile of bodies that had clambored over Macintosh. Several thrashing hooves met hard leather skulls, and half of the creatures were already bolting off under a cadence of pained shrieks. The other half of the murderous group closed in, spurred on by the sudden heroine's audacious attack.

“Y-you again!” Applejack gasped, scampering immediately over towards a dazed Macintosh's side. “Nnngh—Carnsarnit, Miss Harmony! Why can't I quit you?”

“You're welcome,” Harmony blindly snarled. Frowning, she spun about—eyed all of the surrounding creatures—and then flashed a look to the earth. She saw the pitchfork lying dormant in the grass. Harmony slammed a hoof down and spun the thing upwards until she clasped its wooden handle in her teeth.

In one roaring charge, the monsters converged on her, but the last pony was more than ready. She swung her snout in a wide swath—her black mane flowing with an amber streak—and she mercilessly slashed the razor-sharp length of the pitchfork's teeth across an advancing row of leather flesh. Wet black juice splashed hotly through the night. Several creatures retreated in a howl of pain and defeat; a last trio stupidly rushed Harmony from behind.

The pegasus breathlessly kicked one creature, twirled on one hoof, and smacked another monster skyward with the pitchfork. She then tossed the farming utensil onto her back, twirled it over her outstretched wings, and kicked the handle of the weapon in midair with one well-aimed buck. The thing sang through the air before it sliced across the silhouette of a gasping monster's skull. With a wooden thud, the pitchfork embedded into a tree trunk across the clearing—with a severed ear spinning to a stop on the leftmost tooth of the bloodied tool. The last creature wailed, clutching its leaking head and hobbling off to join its scampering brethren just beyond the line of fences and into the pitch-black forest beyond. A dizzied Winona limped up to her feet, shook her head clear, and ran up just to the edge of the fenceline, barking canine obscenities into the great beyond.

Applejack panted, exhausted simply from watching the entire fight unfold. She shook Macintosh's shoulders, gazing at him with mute concern. He winced slightly but was moderately bruised, nothing more. The stallion climbed halfway out from the pile of wooden fence lumber and paused to pat Applejack's forelimb with a reassuring hoof. Gulping, the blonde mare helped him to all fours and gazed forlornly Harmony's way.

“Th-thank you. I m-mean it in all sincerity, Miss Harmony. Thank you for savin' our lives. We've had all we can take from them nasty varmints over the past few weeks—”

“Trolls.”

“I beg yer pardon?” Applejack blinked in the suddenly blinding moonlight.

“They're called 'trolls,'” Harmony spat, facing off into the forest beyond Winona's furious barkings. “And they're not gone.”

“Th-they're not?!?” Applejack gasped. Her and her brother's teeth clattered suddenly.

Harmony shook her head and motioned towards the woods with her snout. “They're still out there, in between the trees, watching us. No doubt they want to stage another attack before sunrise—The sun is their bane you see. Uh uh—There's no getting rid of trolls, not that easily at least.”

“H-how do you know all of this?”

“Because I know trolls, among other things,” Harmony said, turning to gaze down at the stumbling sight of the exhausted siblings. She raised an eyebrow. “All this time—That was it? You've been dealing with trolls?”

“It's n-not as bad as it looks—”

“Miss Applejack, it's worse than it looks! Trolls shouldn't be this deep in Equestria in this time period—er—in early spring, I mean! Why haven't you asked for any help with them up until now?!”

“Didn't y'all learn anythang from what I told you earlier?” Applejack murmured melancholically. She and Macintosh gazed sickly at the line of trees and the many pairs of pale eyes staring hauntingly back at them. “We have to deal with them alone—It's our land.”

“But why, Miss Applejack?” Harmony exclaimed, but somehow she already knew the answer.

“Because... Because we're the reason they're on our land to begin with.”

Chapter Thirteen: Faith's Beacon

Scootaloo was seventeen years old, but she didn't know it. All that the last pony knew was pain.

On three panicked limbs and a bloodstained hoof she limped madly towards the cliffside. Through gnashing teeth she hissed, her tortured breaths billowing out in frantic vapors that joined the gray mist wafting through the ruins of central Whinniepeg. The deep canyon that divided the city loomed ahead, and within the foreground of her bobbing vision there danced a bulbous copper shape in and out of focus. The Harmony hovered a mere seventy meters away. As Scootaloo limped and panted towards it, she could have sworn it was anchored to another continent.

Their howls: they split the streets of Whinniepeg like the savage ravine that had cataclysmically carved straight through the urbanscape. Stupidly, the young brown mare glanced back over her quivering flank. Through crooked goggles, she saw them: a wave of pale leather shapes that bounded after her, shaking the snow loose from the cobblestone with their ravenous stampede.

Scootaloo's breath shrieked against the cocoon of pain engulfing her. She hobbled and hobbled, every bone-crunching lurch spitting redder and redder blood against the monochromatic streets blurring underneath. A bright glint of steel laughed in the pale twilight; a crude metal weapon had been lodged into her left forelimb, and with each meter she traveled it bit and bit deeper at her muscles with rusted teeth. The leg would snap off at any moment; Scootaloo only galloped faster.

The Harmony tilted and spun gently on its anchored sway. Its copper frame blurred once more as the blood reached Scootaloo's scarlet eyes. The world crackled like a billowing stove beyond the veil of her throbbing skull, and she ran through it—she ran through the pain, her best and only friend in the Wasteland. And her friend caught her; in thorny gloves it hoisted her by the wings and yanked her off the cliffside, just as the leather bodies leaped screamily towards her hooves.

“H'jem!” the filly shouted in the death throes of weightlessness. The catseye aperture of the Harmony blindly flew open, and Scootaloo went crashing through, collapsing inside a womb of darkness. The last pony slammed against a workbench on the port side of the storage compartment. Runescaping tools and scraps of moonstone rained all over her as she sat up, eyes exploding through the veil to see the edge of the Whinniepeg ravine looming outside, and a solid wall of toad-skinned bodies flailing and rearing upon the precipice, their forest of beady white eyes locked on her. In their anger and hunger, several of the monstrosities jumped towards the Harmony—screaming—only to stupidly fall into the heart of a dead Equestria looming blackly below. The rest of them cursed and sneered at her, their fanged maws drooling, hissing, grinning.

The last pony swallowed down a rising geyser of bile. Sputtering, she finally managed a hoarse and whimpering “M'rhlym” into her quivering bracelet of horns. There shimmered a purple glow, and the magic incantation triggered a rune fastened to the Harmony's controls. With one simple directive, the airship magically lifted up, up, up towards the ashen gray miasma.

Scootaloo pivoted forward—collapsed to her agonized chest with a yelp—and desperately crawled towards the entrance of the hangar. The trolls whooped and cackled at her struggles from a distance. Before the airship could reach the length of its chains, Scootaloo stifled a howl and flung her one good forelimb towards the emergency release, severing all four anchor bolts with a hiss of steam. The gray snow outside billowed furiously as the ship's ascension reached a fever pitch, taking her away from the bifurcated graveyard of Whinniepeg and up into the cold embrace of the clouds.

Scootaloo quivered, cemented to the ground in the coalescing frost of her pulsating nerves. There was a fire inside her left front leg, eating her from the inside out. She didn't want to—she knew she didn't want to—but she had to see how bad it was. She prayed it didn't look nearly as massacred as it felt. “Mmmmnngh-Y-Y-Y-Y'lynwyn!”

Runes flickered on opposite sides of the storage compartment. Lanterns burned to life, casting a mournful glow over the swaying metal bulkheads littered with her tools... stained with her blood, hot blood, warm blood, pulsing blood. She no longer had a leg; it was a fountain. The fact that it still had the audacity to remain attached to her torso made the filly finally vomit into her mouth.

Spitting a green soup into the far corner, Scootaloo then rolled over with another shriek and took a quivering look at the invading metal shard. The trollish weapon sang a funeral dirge into the meat just above her knee, and the chorus was a crimson-soaked sea of copper barbs. No killing machine fashioned by trolls was ever meant to just break the flesh; the thing was undoubtedly brimming with some horrible poison or another, dredged up from the bowels of sundered Whinniepeg. The fact that it was hanging off Scootaloo's limb was not nearly as horrifying as the fact that it had to come out, and it had to come out now.

The sobs came sooner than she expected them to. She was stronger than this; she had prepared for this. She fought the tears as she fought to strip the leather saddlebag off of her. Pliable brown armor clattered apathetically towards the floor. Something rolled out—glowing sapphirically—a bottle of rune-capped blue flame that Gilliam had sent her there for, that he hadn't anticipated might kill her, that he probably didn't care about in the least.

Soon, she was naked, save for the sliver of unsightly metal violating her body. She towed it as she towed her other quivering limbs—scuffling—towards a rack of runestones. She fumbled with one good hoof until she knocked a white-and-red painted moonrock off its shelf and into her lap. Reaching next to a metal first aid box, she produced a tight leather bag of medicinal herbs that she had bought off of a strange flying squirrel she had just met a few weeks ago. The thought of his smoke-stained incisors briefly distracted her from the hellish task at hoof; she never understood why some creatures of this Wasteland would willfully destroy themselves from the inside out... not until now.

Eyes tearing, she yanked the pouch of herbs open with her snout and spread them in a cinnamon shower over the pulsating sinkhole gouged in her limb. It scorched her like acid rain. She hissed and whimpered like she was foaling death itself straight out of her torn flesh. This was just the start of the flames.

As the teetering Harmony surged her upwards to the heavens, she slowed her hyperventilation until her body became a wind instrument, hissing in tune with the gray ash outside. She had to do this quick, quick like the Cataclysm. She was strong enough. She was strong enough. She was—

The mare whimpered as she clamped her teeth over the wooden handle of the weapon, gripping to it like a rudder. Her brown ears drooped numbly. Cold eyes shut hard to a colder world and dove slowly, hellishly into the burning crimson heart beyond it. “Snkkt-Nnnghhhh!”

She pulled it out; she tore it out. Her soul splashed inside-out after it. Her eyes screamed open, and she wished that they hadn't. Strands of meat, a flash of bone—white horror, and it filled her insides like a million ghosts bleeding thunderously out her neck. The last pony had every sound in the world to scream, but she forced her knife-licking tongue to let loose one word and one word alone:

“W'rhynnym!”

Instantly, the white and red moonrock burned in a violet glow. The rune seared red-hot, and the pony slammed the tool straight into the sopping hole excavated from her leg. The unicorn bracelet burst in manalight, and the inflamed stone began cauterizing the wound. There flew a gust of steam; Scootaloo smelled her flesh burning. She would have choked, were it not for the unearthly howl bursting up the opposite end of her trachea.

She spat the weapon onto the floor with an offending clatter, and followed it up with an encore of noise, deathly noise, the only noise she had ever grown to know—her noise. She twisted her maneless neck. She slammed and slammed the bulkheads with her one good forelimb. Her hooves clomped and formed scarlet-stained dents in the floor as she tossed and turned underneath the cloud of her cooked flesh. Tears rolled down her orange-brown snout, outracing the blood trickling from her bit lips as she curled up into the torture, sputtering and hiccuping like the little orange foal that had suddenly bubbled up to the brown surface.

“... Nnnnghh... D-D-Dghh... D-Dash... Dashieeee...nnnghhhh-Dashiiiiee...”

She screamed and murmured through the searing hot length of her healing, her words lost to the lifeless clouds billowing outside, the embrace of an empty world, the trolls' home, her home, the only home.

Harmony's amber eyes remained locked on the bloody metal teeth of the pitchfork. She licked her lips—only to remember that they weren't her own. The Entropan flesh tasted numb, devoid of all copper juices. There was a warmth that was once again cascading over the filly's flesh. The alien kiss of distant morning sunlight cradled her to the surreal moment at hand. She wrapped herself inside the spaces between her breaths and glanced dazedly towards the rest of the Apple Family.

“It all started a little over a month ago,” Applejack murmured. She leaned back against the wooden railings of the Apple Family's household porch beside Harmony. A few hooftrots away, Granny Smith sat on the edge of a wooden crate, wrapping a white bandage around one of Macintosh's bruised legs. The cold curtain of night had long melted, filling the air with a dew-laden haze that magnified the exhausted tone of the farm mare's voice. “Big Mac and I were fixin' to dig ourselves a new well along the north side of the acres. That plot of land always gets dry this time of year, ya see. We figured that if we built a new ditch to hold moisture, we could make waterin' trips to the northern orchards a might less tedious.”

Macintosh sighed, wincing slightly as Granny Smith closed one bandage, sliced the slack of the gauze off with a green cutting knife, and then proceeded to wrap another strip around the opposite limb of the crimson stallion. She too listened intently as her graying eyes reflected the distant glow of morning haze coming up over the starry horizon.

“Well, wouldn't you know it?” Applejack continued, glancing sideways at Harmony. “We dug and we dug and we dug—And suddenly the earth gave way all muddy-like, and we found this deep cavern hidden beneath the roots of our apple orchards. It was no ordinary cave, mind you. I roped myself down and gave it a little look-see. I was startled to find a bunch of gray statues of these creepy bug-eyed creatures lyin' in the depths of the hole-in-the-ground. It scared me something fierce, but Big Macintosh thought differently. He said that we had stumbled upon an Ancient Wonder of the First Age or some nonsense. I seriously don't know where he gets those silly ideas of his. I mean, you let 'em open his mouth just once and he takes off!”

The red-coated stallion in question cleared his throat with a slight frown, motioning his blonde head towards Harmony.

Applejack smiled sheepishly. “R-Right. Sorry, Macky,” she murmured, kicking her hooves against the wooden floorboards of the porch. “So we figured we'd call in Twilight to take a look at what we found, and see if she could put that noggin' of hers to good use and figure out just what we found. We slept on it. But when morning came, we visited the hole once again—and all of the statues were gone from the cave! At first, we reckoned it was magic. Them were some pretty strange statues, to say the least. Who knows why they were left so deep in the earth to begin with—or just what they were capable of doing.”

The orange mare shot her green eyes emphatically at Harmony, her lips quivering in the fright that was aroused by the following memories:

“But as the nights went by, we found out pretty darn quick what happened to the statues. They had become those creatures that you saw attack us! At first, though, it wasn't all that bad. We had little bits of property damage here and there across the farm. We figured it was a bunch of foals pullin' pranks on us. But as the weeks went on, things got worse. Them thick-skinned varmints came prancin' out of the forest, whoopin' and a'hollerin', smashin' into our granary, runnin' off with our work tools, and even spookin' the livestock. Then, one day, they began gettin' into their thick skulls just what it was that meant the most to our family, and they started eatin' at the apple trees, desecratin' the fruit, even settin' fire to an orchard or two. It was positively dreadful.”

With a sigh, Applejack stepped down on all fours and strolled lethargically towards Macintosh and Granny Smith.

“So, we took to comin' out at night, formin' a tiny little militia: Macky and myself—and we tried scarin' em away. That didn't work. So we resorted to chasin' them back into the woods every night. The whole time, they were merely playin' games with us. Finally, we sharpened our pitchforks and shovels and plotted to get the stomp on them mangy creatures once and for all. They only laughed at us, and started attackin' in twice the numbers, even vandalizin' our farmhouse when we were too plum scared out of our wits to come out and face them. Poor Macintosh here almost got bitten on three different occasions before y'all dropped in.”

Applejack sweetly nuzzled Big Macintosh's mane. The large stallion smiled gently at her, exhaling as the last of his bandages were applied by the elderly mare seated aside him. Applejack turned around, standing next to her kin as she gazed with a twinge of shame Harmony's way.

“I've never had to deal with a pest of this sort in all my years of managin' Sweet Apple Acres. Well, true, the parasprite swarm was pretty bad, but at least them critters were forgiveably cute. These... These 'trolls', though—there's no doubt that they're after our blood. It only figures; they've done everythang else that is in their ability to make us miserable. But we soon realized it wasn't just the four of us livin' on the farm that they wanted to upset. They wanted to get us through our apples. At the rate at which we were battlin' them, it was only a matter of time before they stripped our orchards of everythang we held dear. So, between Macky and me, we made the decision to perform the Apple Buck Season harvest as early as possible. We even contracted ourselves to deliver on the date that happens to be a day and a half from now. We thought we could get a jump on them varmints by shippin' the apples out early, as if that would make 'em bored and they'd just go away. But... we were wrong.”

Harmony slowly nodded as she digested all of this. In a firm voice, she replied, “Miss Applejack, it was brave of you to do what you did. Obviously your family has undergone a great deal of hardship with these trolls. But did it ever occur to you that it might become an issue for Ponyville as well? About a year ago, Canterlotlian... uh... records—yes, Canterlotlian records chronicled an incident in your village's downtown where an Ursa Minor went on an inexplicable rampage and caused several cases of property damage. It goes without saying that this sort of a thing can instantly collect the attention of Princess Celestia—especially if it could have been stifled long before it became a threat.”

“Applejack, dearie...” Granny Smith placed the green cutting knife down onto a wooden crate before shakily swiveling her lime snout the orange mare's way. “You told me that you and Macintosh had a hoofhold of this situation! And look at you now! You've sparked the attention of the Canterlotlian Agricultural Committee or what-not!”

“And I thought that Macintosh and I had everythang under control! Honest, I did!” Applejack gulped and wrenched her shuddering gaze from Granny Smith and onto Harmony. “Miss Harmony, please believe me. We never meant to begin some sort of horrible incident. Truth is, we found them creatures when they were nothin' but harmless stone statues in the dirt. The next thing we knew, we were dealing with some mangy punks comin' out of the forest! We never realized they would be so blood-thirsty and dangerous! By the time we had gotten knee-deep in tusslin' with them, it became apparent just what kind of a mess we were in. But we had every intention of dealin' with it ourselves! We figured that once we got the apples away, they'd be gone! But... But obviously they don't fancy us getting' that far.”

“Even if you can get the harvest done on time, all that's going to do is save the apples,” Harmony said. “I know how much your produce means to you, Miss Applejack, but I also know that your family and your land means so much more. And I hate to say it—but the trolls aren't interested in your land. They're interested in you.”

“Us?” Applejack, Granny Smith, and Macintosh blinked as one.

“Your misery, your suffering, and your sorrow,” Harmony spoke as she paced before them on steadily clopping hooves. “There's a reason why trolls naturally live underground, under bridges, or in the shadows of forests. They were such a murderous blight upon the primordial landscape of Equestria, that Princess Celestia locked them away in Tartarus long ago, even before the First Age had ended. At the first exposure to sunlight, they turn instantly to stone. This is the sort of curse that can only be countered by exposure to twilight, which history can thank Discord for.”

“D-Discord?” Applejack blinked innocently. Macintosh was similarly scratching his mane with a confused hoof. Granny Smith sat gravely still.

Harmony blinked, briefly seeing the many golden words of Princess Celestia threading across immaculate ivory pages that shimmered in the Harmony's lanternlight. The time travelling pegasus swiftly explained, “Discord was a powerful, malevolent entity that poisoned the earth during the Second Age, following the Sundering of the God Consus and the Goddess Epona's Exodus into the Cosmos. Canterlotlian history books blame Discord for the Chaos Wars, during which time trolls—as well as other monstrosities—murderously skittered across the fertile landscape, doing Discord's bidding, biting into and shredding apart every living thing that they could see. Miss Applejack, when you dug up the hole with the buried statues inside, you incidentally gave these creatures a chance to be exposed to twilight once again. They must have risen out of the well during the night and made a home in the forest. Even ten thousand years of being encased in stone can't drain these freaks of the will-to-mayhem that Discord enhanced within them. All they know is that earth ponies gave them freedom once more, and they will stop at nothing until they have caused those same ponies—until they have caused you—as much misery and suffering as possible.”

“But... But why?” Applejack exclaimed with a disgusted expression.

“Just because, Miss Applejack,” Harmony muttered. “They're trolls.”

“Yer book smarts on these varmints is impeccable,” Granny Smith stammered. “They really do teach ya a lot in the Royal Court of Canterlot, now don't they?”

Harmony smiled, but with subtlety. “Many things I have simply taught myself, ma'am. You'll be surprised how much a good grasp of history can help you...” Her lips trailed and her eyes briefly darted towards the dawn's horizon. “...in the future.”

“I just feel so plum horrible,” Applejack exclaimed. She sniffled slightly, then leaned over to nuzzle Macintosh once more. “If I had known that Macintosh here would nearly have bitten the proverbial poison apple, I would never have considered trappin' those varmints from the get-go!”

“Don't be so hard on yourself, Miss Applejack.” Harmony walked over and gently smiled at her. “Nopony this side of Equestria has dealt with a band of trolls like this in centuries—millennia, even. I don't think any citizen—farmer, magician, or flier—could have dealt with what your family has gone through all this time.”

“And it would have killed us too.” Applejack gulped. “But then you showed up. Because of you, Macintosh and I are still alive. Miss Harmony, I-I don't rightly know how I can thank you enough.”

“I didn't come here to make anyone indebted to me—To be perfectly frank, I'm just as surprised as you are.” Harmony sighed as she rubbed her chin and murmured into the quiet air surrounding herself: “Why are they here, Spike? Why now?” A deep gulp, and she added. “Why am I here...?”

“You...” Applejack bit her lip. “You reckon that you'll be flyin' back to Canterlot and callin' in the Royal Guard? I mean—on account of the mess we've made and all?”

Harmony looked up at her to say something, but her mouth lingered in a numbing gape. She gazed briefly past the three sets of eyes being thrown her way. All of that strength and earth pony pride crumbled in an instant, like famined horses shrinking into a deep corner for fear of a great hammer being thrown down upon them. It was such a sickly pathetic sight that Harmony almost wished that the green flames had yanked her back to the future right then and there.

Beyond them was another sickly sight, one that still reverberated across the hollowed-out spirit of the thirty-three year old time traveler. She saw a lone filly bleeding against metal bulkheads, curling into a pathetic fetal position under cauterizing steam. Somepony's named was called out, a whimper that was as immutable as time, but everything was all too quickly crumbling under the emotionless hiss of a gray world enshrouding her.

Right there, on the front porch of the Apple Family, twenty-five years before a pegasus would stand bleeding atop a fountain in the middle of a Ponyvillean graveyard surrounded by her eternal enemies, that same grayness was spreading—like a cancer—and its pale leathery roots were twisting about the eye sockets of all three ponies staring her way. The trolls were invaders from the past, but Harmony knew better. They brought with their teeth and claws the bitter poison of an unbearable Wasteland beyond. Their sheer presence on the farm was too timely, too sadistically and maliciously appropriate for the last pony's infinitely unpredictable arrival then and there.

The Apple Family had become victims of a battlefield drawn up in a limbo of irony before the dawn of time. This farm was now the unwitting site for a clash between the chaos of the past and the misery of future. The sinister presence of those creatures had infected the farm ponies, had leeched their souls of their Elektran spirit. Harmony could see their faces awash in hopelessness, like dried-up bone, and before ghostly black hollows threatened to burrow outward from the centers of their skulls, Harmony prayed for something—anything—that might cosmically salvage that pitiful moment, as she in all her Entropan charisma had utterly failed to do thus far.

Before Harmony could formulate a much-needed response to Applejack's statement, there was a creaking noise just behind her. The heads of the Apple Family turned, and the pegasus swiveled as well. She froze in place, as if a burning hoof had clasped firmly over her heart.

A tiny pale foal with a fountain of red hair stood, blinking dazedly in the frame of the half-opened screen door of the porch. Her hooves were clad in dainty pink socks and her mane was a tussled, crimson mess. “Mac? AJ? Granny? What's goin' on out here? Have the scary things come back t'haunt us tonight?”

“Nothin' that yer older brother and sister can't tackle, Apple Bloom. Go back to bed—T'ain't mornin' yet.”

“But you guys are makin' such a racket—” The blank-flanked filly yawned her petite mouth and teetered where she dazedly stood. “I was havin' a dream that I got my cutie mark.”

“Then go lie down and you just might get it: A big fluffy pillow laced with sparkles—Now git!”

“Mmmm—alright.” The child was about to slink back into the house when her thinned eyes caught hold of Harmony's frame. She looked up at her. “Wh-who are you?”

Harmony's chest thundered. She stood frozen in place like she was a statue herself, and she was too far gone from the twilight of the Wasteland to melt back. All she had was this burning naked now, and it terrified her as much as it enraptured her.

“This here's Harmony, Apple Bloom—darlin',” Granny Smith interjected with a sweet smile. “She's here to help us with the farm. Everything's alright, though. Just adult pony business: that's why we're all up so early.”

“Oh, okay.” Apple Bloom smiled tiredly. “Hello, Miss Harmony.”

Harmony's lips gently parted, a soft smile melting forth as she forced her head to tilt down towards her old, old friend. “H-hello there, Apple Bloom.” She swallowed something sore down her throat and breathed, “You have really gorgeous hair, sw-sweetie.”

“Mmmm...” The yellow-coated foal blushed slightly and reached a hoof up to her cowlicked mane. “If y'all say so.” A slight smile. “You should see me when I'm wearin' a pink bow in it.”

“I... I-I imagine that would be quite a sight.” Harmony nearly choked, keeping her hooves steady. They felt like they were three meters off the ground, and numb.

“Well, so long, Miss Harmony.” Apple Bloom adorably yawned yet again, swiveled around, and padded her way into the shadowed depths of the house towards her bedroom.

Harmony gazed into the varnished foundation of the farmhouse, her brow cascading weakly over her eyes as several memories of treehouse escapades, musical rehearsals, and mid-afternoon wagon rides flickered across her weathered mind like so much ash and snow. The thoughts sunk away at the speed of light, only to bounce back to the mind's surface with all of the combined smells, sights, and sounds of that thickly real farmland surrounding her—and suddenly her time traveling soul self trembled, as if suddenly aware of a thousand razor-toothed bodies closing in from all sides.

The trolls would rip and tear Sweet Apple Acres to the ground, and Apple Bloom along with it. No amount of metal traps, no multitude of stampeding hooves, no army of warhorses in all of Equestria could stop this bright green earth from suffering the molestation that was coming to it. The spilling of blood and the sundering of the land: these heartless monstrosities had already set it all in motion long before the time traveler had even arrived there.

The Cataclysm could not be avoided. Harmony knew this. The trolls, however—they did not belong to this world. They belonged to the Wasteland; they would inherit it. Everything about their presence in Applejack's warm and lovely time felt wrong, just like Harmony in the numb shell of her Entropan projection felt wrong, though she hesitated to stop savoring the warm breath of the fleeting moment to admit such nausea.

Harmony had suddenly and unwittingly acquired the means to contact Princess Celestia, but such a victory could only come about after riding the crest of a bloody melee that would take several ponies' blood, if not their lives. The trolls were none of Harmony's concern; they shouldn't have been her concern. Still, they were there; and she was there. A coincidental juncture of several souls possessed with violence and one shadow of a soul tempered by violence was too miraculous to overlook, too significant to ignore, and too shameful to toss frivolously into the authoritarian hooves of a long-dead Princess, even if for the sake of scrubbing clean a future that only one pony could ever see, even if for a fleeting few years of lonely misery that mimicked the poison that dripped off the fangs of those sick and viral beasts.

The Apple Family had given all of their lives to the earth. In just one day, Harmony had arrived, and all she had managed to give the land was a fleeting respect that rode the coattails of a desperate experiment that wouldn't be concocted until twenty-five years from then, where a purple dragon stood side by side with the last pony—swimming helplessly in the all-encompassing hollow of a farm mare's skull—pondering over the depths to which this green flamed scavenger might dip into the golden moments of Equestrian innocence, but never once anticipating to what degree she might pollute it.

“What good would Celestia do us now, Spike?” she murmured silently to the air. He didn't answer her, but her voice came back to whisper above any hint of the notion. “What good could I do now?”

A veritable eon of contemplation was really just a naked seven seconds, at the end of which Granny Smith's voice could be heard gently shaking the silence. “There's only one thing that should be done at this point,” she said in perfect somberness aimed Applejack's way. “We should let Miss Harmony here contact them guard ponies from Canterlot. They can certainly take care of the trolls.”

“But Granny!” Applejack's voice hissed. “What would become of the farm?! The Canterlotlian Court would slap our name onto a list of Equestrian laughing stocks! Nopony would want to buy from our harvest next year! Heck—if it turns out that we just plum resurrected the chaotic army of some nasty feller named Discord, I rightly wouldn't blame Celestia for wantin' to banish every single one of us to the moon!”

“AJ, darlin'—I've been living on this farm a long time. And I know more than anypony how important it is to give to the earth. But it so happens that this very same land gave me you, Macintosh, and lil' Apple Bloom. And I'd be plum sore if I went to my dyin' stable knowin' that I allowed the three of you to suffer from these horrible creatures because you were so gul-durn concerned about making sure the apples were delivered. We need Canterlot's help!”

“No.”

They all looked Harmony's way. “M-Miss Harmony...?”

“Ahem...” Harmony cleared her throat, blinked her eyes dry, and spun around to gaze at them firmly. “What I mean to say is: No, seeking Canterlot's help isn't the best option right now, at least if you want to keep your farm—and your lives in check.”

“Are ya serious?” Applejack squinted through the haze of the coming dawn. “Ya mean to say that after all this time of badgerin' me and Macky here to play along with yer chivalrous routine—You've got the gall to say we shouldn't contact yer Royal Court over this troll nonsense?”

“It's because there's an extent of truth to your concerns here, Miss Applejack.”

The farm mare blinked nervously. “Th-there is?”

Harmony took a deep breath. The sunrise was blossoming behind her. She knew it; she could feel it, but for this suddenly brave and shamefully dashing moment she refused her Entropan self the chance to turn around and bask in it. A daring breath was bubbling up through her, and if this coming slight of hoof did not pass the lucid scrutiny of the Element of Honesty before her, she might as well have returned to the future and told Spike to suck in the rest of his green breath, for there would be no more use of time traveling after this.

Navigating the thorny labyrinth of a split second gambit, “Harmony” authoritatively spouted forth: “Trolls are as old as Equestrian Civilization. As a result, there has been... litigation that has lasted as long as Equestrian Civilization.” Harmony eyed the curves in Applejack's face like she navigated the crumbling fjords of her conscience, speaking, “Namely, if anypony or ponies are discovered to have been harboring the living refuse of the Chaos Wars—in any fashion—they and all of their assets will be immediately seized by the Royal Court of Canterlot... indefinitely.”

Applejack and Macintosh immediately paled, as if having stared down the incoming kiss of a deathly locomotive.

Granny Smith spoke up, tossing a quizzical squint at the pegasus. “What is the name of this here fancy litigation?”

Harmony fearlessly stared back at the graying mare. “It's called the 'Act of Accord,' and it's as harsh a regulation at it is ancient, though no less impermeable. In her long life of ruling over Equestria, Princess Celestia has seen to it that no mercy is granted to the proliferation or preservation of yesterday's weapons of chaos. The penalties for crimes committed under the 'Act of Accord' are far too devastating to imagine befalling a quaint and well-to-do farm as what your family has grown here at Sweet Apple Acres.”

“But... I've met Princess Celestia!” Applejack briefly removed her hat and murmured from a deepening shadow. “Surely Her Majesty could see that what's happened here has been purely an accident!”

Harmony shook her head with carefully constructed moroseness. “I wish that were true, Miss Applejack, but it's not. When it comes to the 'Act of Accord,' even the Princess must work against her typical spirit of mercy. The last time she had shown leniency to transgressors was just prior to the Third Age, and it resulted in Nightmare Moon suddenly acquiring new legions to the Lunar Republic's Army. There is no feasible way that the Canterlotlian Court will simply overlook the waking of the trolls that has happened here. To so much as breathe a word to my superiors about this would mean the utter end of this farm, and everything you've ever worked for.”

The silence that followed Harmony's brash proclamation was deafening. She watched with muted anxiety as the wheels turned in Applejack's mind from afar. To her somber relief, the heinous weight of a week's load of bucking apples and battling trolls had softened the hardened edges of Applejack's suspicion, so that the intravenous fabrication fluttered down and enshrouded the farm mare like a gentle melancholic cloak.

Harmony's words had circumnavigated the fortress of the Element of Honesty. It deserved no celebration, especially as she saw a pair of gray eyes—suddenly piercing—hovering from behind the hung heads of the two younger farm ponies. Granny Smith was staring decidedly at Harmony, and Harmony stared back. In a pale and naked breath, the two souls shared a common gaze, and strategically kept the bridge silent in the advent of the morning sun.

“Then...” Applejack murmured like the helpless foal she suddenly was. “Wh-what do you mean to propose, Miss H-Harmony?”

A copper smile returned placidly to the time traveler's face as she flung her eyes back towards Applejack by the simple grace of Granny Smith's silence. “What I mean to say is a simple reinforcement of what you told me earlier, Miss Applejack,” Harmony said as she paced over towards the three of them. She stared decidedly at the two younger ponies as she spoke, “You have all done nothing but give to the earth. And it wasn't the Earth that gave you these trolls. Cataclysmic things happen in an unfair world. But, for once, I'm not going to buy it. Not this time. I'm not about to let strong and honorable ponies like yourselves be defeated so easily. What happens on your land stays on your land—but you can't do it all on your own like you've tried so far. You're going to need my help. And for once, it's time that I stated a fact. And that fact is that I am not—and I repeat—not going to take 'no' for an answer. You're going to let me help you, and together we will get the apples harvested in time for your client's delivery. All of the apples.”

Applejack gazed back at Macintosh and Granny Smith. Macintosh nodded helplessly, Granny Smith knowingly and solemnly. Gulping, the farmfilly nevertheless looked towards Harmony with a nervous expression. “B-but... What do you reckon about them varmints? We're helpless without the assistance of Canterlot, and yet we're doomed with them knowin' about it! Just what does that leave us with, Miss Harmony?”

“Let me worry about the trolls. I...” Harmony sighed and rubbed a hoof over an aching temple. “I-I'll think of something. Trust me, if there's one thing I've learned in my life”—she breathed with a gentle, weathered smile—“it's that I do my best thinking when I'm working hard to survive. And believe you me—I intend to do a lot of hard work, as soon as Her Majesty's Sun rises up over the horizon there. The question is, are you going to let me?”

Applejack swallowed, dusted off a lock of her blonde mane and flung it over her neck. Stamping her hooves down, she smirked Harmony's way. “Well, what are y'all waitin' for? Time to get them dainty wings of yers dirty, copper-bottom!”

Harmony's first breath of relief in hours came like an autumn wind. She smiled briefly at Applejack, but once more returned her gaze to the piercing gray eyes of an elder mare. With a polite nod, she murmured, “You and your brother should get prepared. I will join you briefly. There's a lot to be done. I should probably... uhm... m-meditate... or something first.”

“Suit yerself. I personally tend to meditate over a steamin' bowl of oatmeal.” Applejack swiftly trotted past the copper pegasus and whistled over her shoulder. “Big Mac! Let's get 'er done! Time's a-waistin'!”

The red stallion marched after her. The clopping sounds of the farm ponies danced in the echo of the nearby barn, followed by a rattling cadence of wicker baskets, wagon wheels, and farm tools. Harmony glanced over her shoulder, briefly worrying that her anchor might incidentally canter too far off. This anxiety was all too appropriately curtailed by a gray shadow that swallowed the golden rays of an invisible sunrisen. Granny Smith had waddled up and was gazing at the time traveler with a stern softness.

“Miss Harmony, there ain't no such thing as an 'Act of Accord'.”

Harmony took a deep breath, cowardly avoiding the elderly mare's gaze. “I know.”

“I've been around long enough to know what's what in the Court of Canterlot. Not only are you outright lyin' to my flesh and blood, but by decidin' to take on these horrible varmints on yer own, you're riskin' the lives of everypony I've ever held dear.”

“I-I know...”

“Miss Harmony, look at me.”

The pegasus bit her lip. She glanced up from underneath a mat of black mane hair and obediently made eye contact.

Granny Smith's pupils were like twin pools of acid, but a placid heart bubbled patiently underneath. Nevertheless, she silkily grilled the visitor. “What makes you think that you and you alone could somehow possibly... feasibly be the solution to this here troll problem?”

“An even better question,” Harmony bravely spoke, “is what inspires you to not raise a peep about this in front of your grandfoals, since you're obviously so concerned?”

“Faith, child,” Granny Smith murmured in a stale voice. “I still have faith in a gift, a gift that was given me by this ever-surprisin' world. It was a gift that saw me through the first winter of raisin' young Apple Shine. It was a gift that gave me hope and joy on his first foalday. And it was a gift that gave me rhyme and reason to walk today—unassisted by newfangled gadgetry—so that I strolled around the farm with an energy that I didn't reckon I still had. It was all because I saw you, and was overjoyed and inspired by you. But now I need to know—and you need to help this frail old lady know—whether or not her faith deserves to be where it is. Are you a gift, or are you a curse, Miss Harmony?”

Harmony took a deep breath. The shadows shifted before Granny Smith's endless gaze, so that the pegasus briefly imagined a brown coat and a shaved mane flickering beneath a pathetic spectrum. She glanced once more over her shoulder, towards the reddening barn in the sunrise, towards the two young farm ponies beneath, and towards the rusted metal weathervane above it all... a sharp weathervane.

The time traveler blinked. The simplicity of what had to follow next was like the roof to Sugarcube Corner being raised over a bleeding scavenger. She sauntered past the lime-coated elder and immediately swiped the green cutting knife from atop the wooden crate.

Granny Smith blinked at her with sudden and unnerving fright. “Miss Harmony, what in tarnation are you—?”

“Be calm, Ms. Smith,” Harmony breathed in a low voice, “And watch.”

That said, the copper pegasus held the sharp blade high and fearlessly slammed it into the soft flesh of her left knee. The shattering noise that followed could have pierced eardrums; Granny Smith was too numb to even flinch. Anchored by bright eyes, she watched incredulously as the solid metal blade bent and broke into several indiscernible shards. As for the “Canterlotlian Clerk's” foreleg...

There was not a scratch on her.

“Ms. Smith,” a gentle voice entreated.

The lime-coated pony shuddered.

“Ms. Smith,” Harmony repeated, approaching her with gently clopping hooves.

“Oh G-Goddess,” Smith stumbled back and sunk deflatedly to her haunches. “Oh Goddess, Oh Goddess, Oh Goddess!” The shuddering gesture pathetically bled into something resembling a deep and frightened bow. “Epona, forgive me—!”

“Ms. Smith!” Harmony squatted down and grasped her hooves around the elder's. “Breathe with me. Just breathe. It's okay. Don't be scared.” She stared deep into the old mare's gray eyes, like navigating an ashen fog of tomorrow. Effortlessly, the last pony said, “I don't know who you think I am, or what you think I am. But let me assure you, I'm none of those things. I'm something different.” She took a brave breath and then gently uttered, “And yet I'm something more.”

The old mare trembled, struggling to stay still in the visitor's calm grasp. She rattled like a bag of half-buried bones, barely keeping within the gaze of those amber eyes reflecting her. “B-but how... But how... Wh-what are you made of, child? Your leg... Oh Elektra alive, your leg!”

“I have some of the answers, but not enough of them. That's more or less why I'm here, Ms. Smith. I can't pretend to tell you more, because I rightly don't know more. But I do know this—Something which you yourself know, because you yourself have told me.” She swallowed deeply and summoned the hardest smile of her life in order to pacify the shuddering soul before her. “I may or may not be a gift. I may or may not be a curse. But if there's one thing that I definitely am—it's timely. The trolls are here, and I am here, and it's too good an opportunity for me to pass up. I must take care of this, and it must be me alone. To let this go into any other pony's hooves—royal or not—would desecrate the opportunity here.”

“What opportunity?” Granny Smith stammered, though her shivers were fading in Harmony's immutable embrace. “Why tell me about this and not my grandchildren? Why show me and not Canterlot, child?”

“Because we have something in common, Ms. Smith, even if you cannot immediately fathom it. You and I—we both know what it means to lose things. We both understand the irredeemable agonies that the tragic lengths of life can unfold upon a pony. But your children, this land, this beautiful and spotless world—it's not ready for pain the likes of which these trolls bring. And while I have it within my power to put a stop to them, it would be a crime to fall short of that contingency.”

“But do you have the power to do such a thing, child?” Ms. Smith swallowed and murmured, “Your body is like the spirit of an Alicorn, but your voice echoes loneliness and despair. I can hear it now: it's like a dusty bell tower that hasn't been rung in forever. Can I have faith in... in something that doesn't have faith in itself?”

Harmony's amber eyes moistened slightly. She choked back something bitter and gently stroked the calming elder's cheek. “I'm starting to.” She painfully smiled. “Because a pony like you—however briefly—had faith in the first place. Where I come from, Ms. Smith, a living pony's faith like that could light my path for years.” The pegasus took a deep breath, blinked her eyes towards the ceiling of the porch until they were once more dry. She desperately murmured, “Please... please continue to trust me, Ms. Smith. I will make things work out. I may not know how yet, but time is on my side—on our side, in ways that neither of us can begin to guess, much less need to.” She cleared her throat and smiled with sudden bravery. “Your family has given so much to the Earth. Could it be possible that the Earth has given you me?”

Granny Smith had suddenly been drawn to the moist pools blinking before her. She reached a hoof out and stroked the unblemished coat of the pegasus' foreleg. “I had always dreamt of a gift... but never in such heavenly packaging.” She smiled like the proud mother she once was—and forever would be. “It's a wonder to be alive, child.”

The last pony blinked away the flames of the future and whispered, “I'll make sure of it.”

Chapter Fourteen: To Touch the Ground

The morning Sun was songfully bright. The world bloomed one orchard at a time as the radiant dawn spread its rays over the treetops and across the manes of three ponies in the throes of deep labor. On one row of apples, a red stallion and an orange mare bucked trunk after trunk with well-hardened precision. Across another flank of trees, within a soul's anchorage, Harmony filled basket after basket with red and green fruit, fighting steadily to ooze her way across the grand expanse of Sweet Apple Acres in a heroic race against time.

In such mechanical precision, the allied equines completed the last of the East Orchards. They stumbled breathlessly towards the Southern fields—or at least Macintosh and Applejack were breathless. Harmony cringed to see the siblings' natural bodies wearing down under the persistent hurdles that they were scaling to get the impossible job done. The morning's length of work had no effect whatsoever on the time traveler's projected limbs, and what she saw the previous day as an advantage in getting Applejack to open up had instead transformed into an obligatory crutch.

She briefly considered coming out with the truth—not just the truth about the “Act of Accord”—but the total truth, something three hundred thousand times more palpable than the confidence she had constructed so belatedly between herself and Ms. Smith. She imagined taking Applejack and Macintosh over into the shade and telling them all about the future, about the Cataclysm, about being the last pony, about how everything that the farmhooves saw and felt would someday end up in flames. It would certainly dwarf everything that they were struggling to accomplish then and there.

But would it help them?

The horrified faces of Ms. Cheerilee and her many foalish students flickered across Harmony's shuddering mind. Somehow, her guilt over that circumstance had severely degraded over the last several hours of scavenging and time traveling. But the prospect of seeing those same terrified faces plastered across Macintosh and Applejack—ponies whom Harmony especially knew—was something she never wanted to conceive.

And just what would knowledge of the future do for them? The curse of the trolls had sapped enough color from them as it was.

Applejack's farm was under attack by horrible monstrosities, and she was barely a day away from the biggest failure in apple bucking. Harmony realized that the family of earth ponies presently had enough truth to worry about. The gruesome future suddenly seemed like a very flimsy appendix to an ever prevalent, ever bleeding now.

Perhaps that is the way it had always been, Harmony wiltingly pondered. Lives are best lived without the knowledge of Death, and yet within Death. Was that what Spike was trying to convince her?

Harmony shook the shadowed clouds of doubt off her shoulders and bucked her worries away—forcing apple cluster after apple cluster to fall succinctly into the baskets. It was such a simple, mechanical, yet trying exercise. She could suspend herself into that task forever, and she knew very well that her two friends across the field could and would. There might come a time when the visitor from the future would tell the Apple Family the worst news they could ever hear. But right then—Celestia forgive her—Harmony's job was to help them, in the only way that she was capable of doing, in the only way she was ever capable of helping them, though she didn't yet know what that way exactly was.

The memory of her “Act of Accord” fabrication was an ever present, ever guilty spur in her flanks, making her vibrate over the green landscape with a quickening pace of fear, panic, and desperation. The colors of a living Equestria shimmered about her. She reveled in it; she had no choice. It was in her pony nature to breathe and sing from the inside out with that magnificent garden of delight. Yet, there was a numbness, a garrote wire of remorse that strung her—dangling—bare centimeters above the glistening grass that formed a springy soft floor beneath.

Harmony was there in body and spirit—though it was a fake body and a courageously dishonest spirit—but try as she might, she could never truly get her hooves on the ground. She didn't need wings to stay aloft the way she was; this farm... this home was not meant for her. It was never meant for her. Even as a filly, cradling a scooter along the fringes of a campfire, she refused herself relaxation like she refused herself the marshmallows that she herself had bought for all her friends at a campfire eons ago.

Applejack's strength had kept her from crying all these years. In a dark-lit parallel, Harmony's foalish determination had kept her from sleeping, so that the childish filly had settled for nocturnal shivers of loneliness in the random vacant hovels that her nomadic scavengings could afford. Harmony never needed a Cataclysm to be the last pony. For as long as she could remember, the filly's years were carved by the cold claws of isolation, a self-imposed crusade that superseded cutie marks or even prismatic idol-worship.

She never settled, never relented, never caved in to the invitation of another pony's bed to lie down in, for a dinner table to eat at, for a home to live, laugh, grow, and eventually die in. There were, of course, exceptions: Cutie Mark Crusader sleepovers, rainy days spent at Fluttershy's place, a trip to Twilight Sparkle's library; but all of those were mere childish excursions through the ether of juvenile whimsy, and nothing permanent, nothing she could ever handsomely afford herself. This was because—in all of her years of running and searching—Harmony could never be strong enough, or at least not so much that she figured she deserved any of those sweet and permanently endearing things. As a result, she had always been on the go, a scooter-shoving blur of audacious delinquency.

Even now—a dizzied and hapless time traveler who was being rubber banded back and forth through the ages—Harmony couldn't allow her hooves to touch down to the earth, to embrace something that was so warmly and invitingly offered to her. In tiny samples, she tasted of it, only to fall back into the numb limbo that this Entropan body was temptingly granting her: a safe and relaxingly static flux.

Spike had seen that in her, had plucked the thorns out from her frazzled brown body with those illuminating and wisened green eyeslits of his. He had told her in the ruins of Sugarcube Corner that it was time that she stopped running, and yet here Harmony was: having been thrown down a quarter-century's length of reverse-time, and the same creatures that had punctured her life to tatters—that had run all of her strength down into a paltry fetal sob against blood-stained bulkheads—were waiting for her once again. Spike was right, she never had a home. Until she could be sure that the Apple Family would, Harmony couldn't pretend to make sense out of her being there. She couldn't tell Applejack and Macintosh the truth about the bleakness of it all; she couldn't touch her hooves down to the earth.

As the sun crept to a high noon and the heat rose in vapors off the thick green leaves of the orchards, the three ponies trudged their strained hooves across the trees, and yet they barely made it past one third of the Southern Field. At that rate, success was not only difficult, it was inconceivable. Sweet Apple Acres leaned on the precipice of a veritable Cataclysm of its own. A lonely copper pariah found herself gazing forlornly at their home from a billion sighs away. It wouldn't have been her first time.

“I never thought I'd hear myself say this...” Applejack sweated through a damp mat of blonde hair as she slapped three stacks of burgeoning fruit baskets atop a wooden crate resting on a dirt path between apple orchards. “But this is startin' to look plum impossible.” She leaned against the cart and fanned her scalp with the whole of her brown hat. “What in the hay was I thinkin' when I made this contract?”

“You were thinking that your family needed to be rid of those horrible trolls once and for all, and in your desperation, this was your only option,” Harmony uttered as she stacked up a column of baskets herself. “But regretting the past only drags time, and we don't have much to thank time for right now.” She glanced briefly at the noonday Sun, then squinted her way across the horizon to where a thoroughly sweating Macintosh was slaving away at another row of trees with his kicking hooves. “I don't know about you, but I've always held the past in high regard. I think it makes for a healthier lifestyle.”

“Yer philosophy is just as inspirin' as yer physique, Miss Harmony.” Applejack winced against the fanning of her hat but nevertheless managed a gentle smirk. “I swear—I wish I knew yer secret. If I had bucked nearly as many trees as you, I would have died of heat stroke by now.”

“Hey, I eat my oats. So sue me,” Harmony mumbled as her amber eyes scanned the horizon. An invisible line of leather bodies scoffed at her. She shook it off and returned to the skin she was donning. “Applejack, I might be a bureaucratic clerk of Canterlot, but I consider myself to be... an engineer by trade.” She blinked at the words coming out of her mouth, but stammered on regardless: “I really wish I could... I dunno... hammer together some device that could mechanize this whole operation and make it work a billion times faster for you.”

“Nuh uh. Nothin' to it.” Applejack upturned her nose and slapped her hat back onto her head. “It's a trademark of the Sweet Apple Acres harvest that everythang is hoof-picked. We never cater to none of them factory contraptions the likes of which you see all over cities like Stalliongrad or Manehattan. With the way of progress and all, you witness less and less homely businesses like the Apple Family's farmstead across Equestria these days.”

“Still, there's got to be a way to make this process faster! If we could just do something grandiose yet organized—to fill all of these baskets with apples!”

“Well...” Applejack rubbed her chin with an orange hoof. “Hmmmm... nahhh.”

Harmony squinted hard at her. “Miss Applejack, I have more ears than you have corn.”

“Well...” Applejack fidgeted, then nervously smiled. “I was just recollectin' this one time my friends and I paid my cousin Braeburn a visit over yonder in his pioneerin' town of Appleloosa. They grow apple orchards out in the desert and—to this very day—they cut harvest time in half by allowin' the local tribes of buffalo to perform their ritualistic stampede down the dirt roads between the rows of fruit trees. The shakin' of the earth made by all them mighty buffalo's hooves cause the apples to fall off all proper-like. Then the buffalo get a free share of the bounty! The whole thang is what paved the way towards happy Appleloosan coexistence!” She smiled proudly.

Harmony stared at her with bored amber eyes. She droned, “That is by far the stupidest thing I ever heard of.”

Applejack cleared her throat and shrugged. “Well, t'ain't like I was the one who thought of it or nothin'.”

Harmony ran a hoof over her amber-streaked mane and scrunched her forehead in thought. “But...” She tongued her lips, blinked, then brightened with a goofy grin. The wall of midnight trolls disappeared before the suddenly blossoming fields of her mind. “I think I know of something stupider.” She even giggled. “And it just might work! Come on!” Harmony galloped towards a row of trees beyond Macintosh.

Applejack stumbled to follow her in a swift canter. “Whatcha got in mind, copper-bottom?”

“Grab a bunch of baskets and I'll show you—And for the love of flamestones, stop calling me that!”

Under the glittering afternoon Sun, Harmony finished setting the last of many baskets up against two parallel rows of apple trees. She stepped back besides a blinking pair of siblings and smiled at her own hoofwork.

“Right—So here's the idea.” She spun about and smirked at them. “You guys know that I have this freakish stamina—am I right?”

“Eeeyup.”

“Right—Well, I think I can make use of it.” Harmony twirled again and pointed a hoof at the trees. “Rather then buck all of these trees one at a time, I'm going to shoot for hitting them all at once—or, well—close to it.”

“And how in tarnation to you plan to do that?!” Applejack asked with a righteous lift of her eyebrow. “I've seen you tackle trolls in the dark like nopony's business, but apple trees are a delicate matter!”

“Are not! You said so yourself yesterday, did you not?”

“I... Er... Uhhh...”

“Right—so, let's see if I can put these things”—she flexed her wings—“to use. Applejack, I'm gonna be flying fast and low across these trees; so I need you to gallop quickly in order to keep up with me.”

“To keep up with you? Sugarcube, what in the hay do you need me runnin' along with you for?”

Harmony glanced at her. She wanted to say she needed Applejack close by because she only had so much range to her soul's anchorage. She wanted to say that she was awfully afraid that this stunt might accidentally fling her back into the future on green tongues of flame. She said, “I need somepony to spot me as I strike the trees, and I also wanna make sure that I'm not hurting the orchards any. Deal?”

“Mmm...Fine.” Applejack eventually grunted to Harmony's satisfaction. “Let's just see how this goes.”

“You do the sight-seeing.” Harmony smirked and hovered up into midair on copper wings. “I'll do the rest.”

“You've got my attention already.” Applejack broke into a light trot. Beside her, Macintosh stared with sweat-stained curiosity.

Harmony took a deep breath. “Here goes.”

She gulped. She reached her hooves up for her goggles, realized she didn't have any in this timeline, and rolled her eyes. Regaining her composure, Harmony flew towards the edge of the orchards, banked around, waited for Applejack to break into a full gallop, and then—“Nnnnngh!”—Harmony rocketed into a high speed glide down the “trench” of apple trees. She curved her wings, flexed her legs, and immediately veered to the left.

At high speed, she slammed hard into one wooden trunk hooves-first, flexed her knees, and bounced off at a seventy-five degree angle. Spinning in mid lunge, Harmony brought her hooves around and landed against the tree on the opposite side. With another thud, she bounded off, spun, flew across the “trench,” and landed against the next opposite tree. This whole interchange of tree-bouncing proceeded at an alarming speed, so that, in swift measure, the pegasus had ricocheted against two rows of apple trees. She resembled a copper pinball in her precision, all the while the galloping Applejack on the ground gazed in blinking amazement.

Her dizzying task done, Harmony landed, skidding across two and a half meters of splashing soil. She exhaled hard, spun around, and inspected her work from afar. To her dazzling joy, every single one of the trees that she had collided with had magically lost its supply of fruit—dropping them like an astounded audience's roses into all of the neatly arranged baskets resting against the trunks.

Macintosh whistled shrilly. Applejack came to a sliding stop and marveled. “Son of a bridlemaid! That's the fastest I've ever seen a non-magical pony pluck an orchard of its fruit! I swear, y'all pegasi never cease to amaze me!”

“To be honest...” Harmony dusted herself off and smirked through a frazzled spray of settling black mane hair. “I wasn't all that sure it was gonna work until I tried it. Pretty cool, huh?” She blew an amber streak out from her brow and smiled the earth pony's way.

“Miraculous is what it is! Macky, what do you think?”

The red stallion nodded in earnest, grinning.

Harmony breathed momentarily as if she had come to the surface of a frigid lake for the first time in hours. The world glittered around her with sudden dazzlement. The trolls ever so briefly returned to the gray malaise of yesterday and tomorrow, and all that stood before the last pony was the joyously vibrant now. There was no better feeling than being useful, and for the briefest moment it excused every vicious lie she had forced herself to construct in front of Applejack. Soon, though, that moment ended, and the time traveler was thrown back into the sweat-stained situation under the desperate ring of Applejack's voice.

“Any chance y'all might be able to pull that trick off a few more times?” Applejack stammered. She gulped, “And when I say 'a few more times,' I mean a hundred more times? Perhaps across the rest of the southern fields? That is—if you're able.”

“Does Bruce talk like he's got marshmallows in his mouth?”

“The hay is that supposed t'mean?”

“It means, simply, that I'm liking this idea.” Harmony gave a trademark smirk.

The rest of the afternoon blistered by with insanely mechanical precision. Applejack and Macintosh would line up the baskets, Harmony would concoct a flight path, the orange mare would get a galloping start—and together they roared down the rows of orchards, two columns at a time, with the copper pegasus breathlessly pinballing her way from tree to tree so as to drop the apples by the hundreds.

The result was akin to mowing a large yard of all its red spots, so that the entire Southern Fields were harvested clean of fruit within the span of four hours. As the Sun sloped its way down towards a darkening horizon, the hope within the hearts of the three equines brightened immeasurably. There were still two whole quarters of the whole Acres left to cover, but if that day's unfolding held any legitimate prophecy of the next morning to come, the last day of Apple Bucking could prove to be a miraculous day.

Harmony felt it. With the crisp golden hues of the coming sunset, her projected self's eyes glazed to witness a day's work phenomenally accomplished. She was a dizzy, loopy-brained, frazzled-winged pony from the twirling effort of it all, but somehow the numbness almost equated sore muscles, so that the time traveler sensed—to her reverie—the signs of having done a fine day's job indeed.

Applejack and Macintosh—of course—were at their limit. This was no more evident than around the twentieth time of stacking baskets onto the back of a wooden cart. Harmony hummed to herself, ready to soar off towards another row of apples, when Applejack all but collapsed directly in front of her path.

“Sugarcube—Seriously—for all that is holy in this heapin' crazy world, let's take a moment's breather, ya reckon?”

Harmony giggled foalishly, cleared her throat, and murmured in a more adult voice: “Y-Yes. Sure thing, Miss Applejack. I'm... I-I'm really sorry. I guess I just got carried away—”

“Oh, heavens to Betsy!” Applejack slumped down onto a rich emerald hillside of green grass. “Please, by all means, get carried away more often! I haven't seen that much fancy flyin' and laborin' since Twilight Sparkle became Team Organizer of last year's Winter Wrap-Up!”

On a whim, Harmony feigned ignorance: “This Twilight Sparkle must be some pegasus!”

“Oh, shucks, no.” Applejack laughed. “She's just a fancy bookworm of a unicorn who really knows how to organize stuff. But I do love her to death.” She took a deep breath and gazed across the glistening, fruitless trees of the Southern Acres that remained from a long day's work. “And just like you, she helped me when I needed it most.” A soft smile fluttered across Applejack's face, and she rested her sweaty muzzle down over folded hooves. “Mmm... This last year or two has been a true sight, to think that I would make such wonderfully fine friends.”

“You're a lucky mare, Miss Applejack,” Harmony said, a touch of somberness returning to the last pony's voice.

“Most of the time, I reckon,” the farm mare murmured. She glanced the pegasus' way with a forlorn pair of eyes. “I don't suppose the same brain noodle of yers that thought up that ricochet-apple-buckin' trick has also come up with a dazzlin' solution to our troll problem by now?”

Harmony sighed long and hard. The numbness returned, and with it came a phantom sea of bright beady eyes. The waning day was a living time bomb, and the shorter and shorter fuse sparkled with green flame. “I'm very sorry, Miss Applejack,” Harmony coldly droned. “I like to think that I'm pretty good at multi-tasking, but I've been so absorbed in getting all of those apples down—I can't say that I've managed to come up with a good plan.” She squatted down in the grass besides Applejack as a lulling evening breeze drifted pleasantly across their manes. “And even if I could headbutt my one-track-mind against it, I'm not sure I could come upon an epiphany any faster.”

“Y'all have done some mighty fine work on our trees, Miss Harmony. But in all seriousness,” Applejack muttered in a sad face, “I cannot ask you to use yer same pegasus skills against those varmints after nightfall. It just ain't proper. Nopony is invincible. Not even you.”

Harmony thought of a rusted weathervane, a shattered green cutting knife, and Granny Smith's shuddering breaths. Applejack was as lucky as she was thoughtful to have worried about Harmony's projected safety. When Harmony briefly considered arguing against her, the frigid catacombs of her mind reminded her of a weeping teenage filly bleeding in the womb of the Harmony. “Thinking I'm invincible wouldn't have kept me alive all these years,” Harmony uttered without thinking.

“I beg yer pardon?”

Harmony sighed into the breezy afternoon. “Nothing.” She smirked the earth pony's way. “If Twilight Sparkle was here, what would the 'Team Organizer' do to solve your troll problem, you think?”

“Mmm—Twilight has a lot of talent, I reckon. She's dispensed with an Ursa Major, a hydra, and a hooffull of parasprites. But where she shines in craftiness, she loses out a tad bit in courage. Not to pop her balloon or nothin', but if that Canterlotlian unicorn saw them beady-eyed trolls in the dark, she'd run straight back home to Spike.”

Harmony squinted the orange mare's way. “I'm from Canterlot. Aren't I brave?”

“Nah, yer just freakishly convenient.” Applejack smirked.

Harmony giggled, her laughter joined by the earth pony's.

Silence once more calmly permeated the hilltop as the two basked under the shade of a passing cloud. The sun's rays burst through the wispy beds like golden harpstrings. It was the second setting sun in so few hours, and Harmony's breath left her in no less swiftness as she drank it all in.

Briefly parting the curtains of Entropan numbness, she closed her eyes and rode an invisible green slide down past twenty-five years of nightmares, so that she sailed beyond it and landed on the same springy hilltop, only with tiny orange hooves, a flowing pink mane, and happy violet eyes that drank in the same memories that had suddenly melted into reality before the time traveling pegasus. The surreality of it all gave her a runner's high, as if she was galloping at forty kilometers an hour inside the glass shell of her projected soul self. Any second, she felt as if that glass would break—and she would be back in the land of ashen emptiness. Upon opening her amber eyes, the same warm world blossomed gracefully around her, so that the last pony was divinely tempted to curl it all up like a blanket and sleep there forever...

But this world—this past was not hers. It belonged to the orange pony resting beside her, the same pony who was presently murmuring: “I reckon my folks would be ashamed of me.”

Harmony jolted, her mental hooves a scant centimeter away from having touched the ground. She flashed Applejack a bizarre look. “What gives you that infernal idea?”

The farm mare had taken her hat off and was absentmindedly bending the brim of it in a spinning circle as she solemnly gazed beyond the blades of grass beneath her. “It's one thang to be strong—and I've always committed myself to that. But I also know that the Apple family has had an age-old tradition of being dependable, of being honest. Heck...” She glanced apologetically at Harmony. “...I was even fused to the Element of Honesty. Did y'all know that?”

Harmony opened her mouth to answer—blinked forth an image of a scoffing foal seated before a campfire—and eventually uttered, “I don't get out of Canterlot much, Miss Applejack. Maybe you could fill me in?”

“Hmmm—It's actually a very long and boring story for those who weren't involved. I reckon I only recite it to my friends and their lil' siblings because it means so much to them.” Applejack took a deep breath and gazed off towards the goldening horizon. “But let's just say that my honesty was once put to the test, not just as a piece of my character, but as a piece of something so amazingly magical that it shaped my very own destiny, a destiny that would unite me with the best friends anypony could ever have in the whole wide world.”

She produced a strong, happy breath—and yet it faded as she dusted the hat off and planted it once more atop her blonde mane.

“Well...” Applejack muttered, “I sure as heck haven't been all that honest lately, what with me tryin' to drive you off my farm the very moment you showed up to help Macky and me and the rest of us. I think my problem is that I get so wrapped up in the duty I have to Ma and Pa's legacy that I sometimes betray the gritty things about myself that makes me so valued among my friends. Bein' truthful is a major part of that, and when I hide the truth, I just crumble in on myself. Trolls are horrible things, but they're hardly an excuse for me to lose the one thing that makes me truly strong.”

“Your commitment?” Harmony asked.

Applejack looked back. “My character.”

The pegasus smirked. “Oh, Miss Applejack, I don't think you'll ever have to fear losing that.”

“Everypony stands to lose somethin', Miss Harmony. It's the facts of life. At least when I'm honest, all I have to lose is all I have to give. Truth works in a circle like that, ya reckon?”

The time traveler held her breath. A blistering opaque divide stood between her and this earth pony, an obstruction that she had fabricated to make this entire day possible. Twelve hours into the exercise, and Harmony was nowhere closer to piecing together a solution to the Apple Family's troll problem. It made simply sitting there an atrocious sin, and listening to Applejack's confessions a triply festering wound. Harmony summoned the strength to speak from the one pit in her soul that could still shine: the part of her that respected, admired, and even loved this blonde shade of the past sitting before her.

“If there's any 'truth' that's obvious to me right now, Applejack,” Harmony nudged her and smiled. “It's that your parents would be proud of you, in spite of any glaring errors you think your character may have.” She motioned towards the distant sight of Macintosh strongly drawing a wooden cart full of apples down a path and into the red barn. “You've looked after your siblings with loving tenderness—Your brother is one of the finest specimens in all of Ponyville—”

“You would think that, copper-bottom!”

“Hehehe—I mean he's a strong and resourceful pony, an example to all other farmers and citizens who share this land with him. You've also got an adorable younger sister who's obviously well-mannered and well-to-do, which is another sign of your responsible care and attention. And then your grandmother—such a wonderful soul—she's healthy, happy, and certainly very proud to be living on a farm that you have shouldered for all these years.”

“Shoot, darlin'.” Applejack lowered the brim of her hat some. “Yer makin' me blush.”

“What I'm trying to say, Miss Applejack, is that you should be happy and proud. If not for your parents' sake, then for your own.” Harmony smiled and waved a hoof across the green expanse of the Acres. “You have a family. You have a home. You have...” Her lips trailed as she blinked at her own words floating off in the golden breeze. “...you have harmony.”

“Heheheh—” The farm mare raised her hat back up to blink. “I reckon we most definitely do have you in our company, sugarcube.”

“That's not what I meant—” The time traveler began, but felt her heart stop. Somewhere in the nightlit recesses of her mind, a homeless foal shivered in the loft of an abandoned barn, blanketed with warm tears. “...huh.”

“I just want my folks to look down from Gultophine's bosom and see that I've done the right thang with this here farm.” Applejack let loose a sigh and slid her hooves back and forth in lazy circles across the grass. “But, I suppose if I stress that wishin' a mighty bit too hard, I'll never enjoy this life, this home, this... harmony. That would be a mistake... an honest mistake.”

Harmony gulped a lump down her throat and glanced curiously the earth pony's way. “How...Erm—If you don't mind me asking—How did...uhm...” She winced at her own audacity. “I-I'm sorry—”

“Hmm? What?” Applejack blinked innocently at her. “Ya mean to ask how my folks died?”

Harmony bit her lip. “Look, seriously, forget about it. I didn't mean to pry—”

“No, it's quite alright. History is history, ain't it?” Applejack smiled softly. “I do my best only to sweat the future.”

“A wise precaution.”

“Ahem.” Applejack sat up straight, cracking the joints in her spine as she exhaled forth a story laced with years of repetition: “Ma and Pa weren't just yer average farmhoofs; they were important members of Ponyvillean society. Pa was the head planner of many local sharecroppers, and he also rounded up the Apple Family Reunions single-hoofedly every other year. And Ma...”

Applejack smiled proudly.

“Ma was 'Ponyville's Pride and Joy.' She didn't get that purdy title by pickin' daisies. No, she was an important member of the town's cabinet. Barely two years after marryin' into the Apple Family, she got elected to Head of Ponyville's Community Council. For nearly a decade and a half, she overlooked every Winter-Wrap-Up and Summer Sun Celebration, as well as leadin' fundraisers for many local charities.”

“Really?” Harmony beamed, her face awash in joyous revelation. “I had no idea.”

“Of course you didn't—she was a celebrity by Ponyvillean standards. She never did set hoof in Canterlot.”

“Er... R-right.” Harmony blushed. She gulped and remarked, “I saw the dates on their graves. They must have died around the same time.”

“Mmm...Yup.” Applejack somberly nodded. “It was a horrible accident. So many ponies in town were affected. Have ya ever heard of the Everclear Mine?”

Harmony's breath left her in a gasp, all the while the pegasus grimaced as if a knife had been sliced down the center of her invulnerable copper chest. Her eyes instantly rounded and she wiltingly murmured, “Y-your parents were in the Everclear mine collapse?” She swallowed something dry down her throat and gazed groundward. Her heartbeat was nearly bursting through her neck as she shuddered to say, “Oh Miss Applejack, I-I'm so sorry.”

“Oh, they weren't in the mine when it caved-in,” Applejack clarified, momentarily ignorant of her companion's sudden lapse in breath. “That tragedy was reserved for several dozens of unfortunate workers—as everypony who's lived around here knows. But my folks?” She hesitated briefly, before summoning a courageous smile of pride from deep within her orange-coated frame. “They were the first to arrive on scene the moment they caught word of the disaster. Ma drew the relief wagon while Pa tried to climb his way down into the ruined shaft in search of survivors. Together, they managed to get at least eight workers out before more help came. Of course, nopony quite realized that a huge underground node of infernite had been pierced in the depths of the Everclear Mine. Nearly every worker pulled from the site died within a week from polluted lungs.”

Applejack took a deep breath.

“Includin' Ma and Pa—Gultophine rest their souls. Nopony could ever say they weren't the dependable types, down to the bitter end. It's inspirin', really, even if it is dang tragic. Later, they built a memorial at the site of the collapsed mine, and Ma and Pa are the first listed among the names of brave but ill-fated rescue workers. The Apple Family visits it at every reunion, and our hearts have always gone out to everypony involved in the tragedy.”

Harmony was hearing Applejack's account, and yet her mind was in another world, a very cold and lonely world that permeated her memories long before any single fleck of ash dotted the Wastes of Equestria.

Applejack took one glance at her and raised a concerned eyebrow. “Harmony? You didn't... You didn't know anypony who was taken by the Everclear Mine, did you?”

Harmony cleared her throat and bravely stammered, “In a manner of speaking, y-yes. Yes I did.” She inhaled sharply and smiled the best she could the farm mare's way. “But, like you said, Applejack. It's only worth sweating the future, yes?”

Applejack smiled and stole a new friend's phrase: “A wise precaution.”

Harmony nodded. “Now I understand everything,” she said after taking a somber breath. “Dependability, courage, and strength—It runs in your blood, doesn't it? Somehow I wouldn't doubt that if a supply of infernite exploded underneath the very foundation of your barn, you too would be on the scene to help anypony out. I know this may seem like a stretch, Miss Applejack, but I believe you can extend that same quality to the fervor with which you've tackled these trolls.”

“Or attempted to,” Applejack remarked. “Ma and Pa were courageous and selfless, but they never went in over their heads. Nopony knew about the infernite. But these here trolls...” she sighed, “I should have gotten the hint that they weren't ordinary varmints from the first day I layed eyes on them scary leather flanks of theirs. Oh Celestia, what have I gotten my family into?” She collapsed to the ground in a groaning heap.

“Hey...” Harmony rested a hoof on her shoulder. “Don't fret. Neither of us may have an answer, but focus on the apple bucking at hoof, and I'm certain that a solution will come to us.”

“Ya'll Canterlotlians must have faith that can move mountains.”

“When we're inspired, you bet!” Harmony smirked. She rose to her knees and offered the earth pony a hoof. “You said that your character of honesty fitted the destiny you have with your friends, right? Well, I think the qualities of your life fall into a similar cadence. You've got family, you've got a home...” She smiled bravely. “...and you've got yourself some harmony—What's the worst that could happen?”

Applejack gently grasped onto Harmony's limb and lurched up onto all fours. “I reckon you plan to show me?”

“If it's nearly as much as you've shown me, I would be happy to oblige,” Harmony said, then motioned with her mane towards the red-tainted fields under golden sunset. “C'mon. If we work together, I'm sure we could knock out a few more orchards.”

Applejack trotted enthusiastically after her. “Think y'all might do me a favor and knock my exhausted flank out in the meantime?”

“Nah. I might damage your hat.”

“Pffft.”

Barely half an hour later, Harmony was out of breath. It was not her own exhaustion that spurred forth this lapse in energy, but rather the infectious weariness wafting off of Applejack and Big Macintosh had overwhelmed her. She sat, slumped against a tree, watching and waiting as the two earth ponies set up another line of baskets beneath two rows of trees. In a matter of minutes, the game of orchard pinball would resume. Harmony expected it to be a numb and frivolous exercise, like the entirety of that day had become. Still, even if she worked with the heated frenzy of the Harmony's boiling steam, the apple bucking would not go fast enough, and the howling night would not come slow its approach enough.

The time traveler shut her amber eyes, and as soon as she did the gray ash returned. The twilight of the future had followed her back in time, limping, reminding her with every blink that she was just as much a creature of misery as the beasts that had so haunted the Apple Family's pristine home. There was no fitting word to describe the irony of this bitter sandwich, of two groups of adversaries converging upon a single point in finite history that didn't deserve either one of them. For the briefest of moments, Harmony wondered if Princess Entropa had planned this, had plotted and designed it from her lonely cosmic cloud of exile. Perhaps this was revenge for the pegasus having so brazenly stolen her coat, for believing—even for a green-flaming millisecond—that she actually earned the chance to gallop back and forth along the streams of reverse-time.

But if the last pony in all of Equestria didn't earn this, if she didn't deserve the chance to transcend—however briefly—the chronological barriers that had imprisoned her forever under the cascading twilight coffin of isolation, then who did?

Harmony tiredly opened her eyes. Once she had done so, one image stood in the foreground of the glistening Acres. Fatefully, it was none other than—

“You don't look half as exhausted as you should be, child,” Granny Smith uttered. “I've seen you makin' yer fancy hoofwork across them trees. It's by far the most amazin' thang I've ever seen.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Harmony said with a gently prodding smile. “You've lived a long life, Ms. Smith. I hardly deserved to be flattered that much.”

“But y'all deserve it, nonetheless,” the lime-coated mare murmured. On wobbling legs, she strolled around the tree to which the time traveler was slumped. “If we had yer lickety-split flyin' talents two days ago—or even yesterday for that matter—we may actually have had a legitimate reason to contract the apple delivery so dag-blamed early.”

“It's easy to mourn the lengths of time we've failed to do proper things with,” Harmony philosophized out loud. “But all that will do is waste more time. I like to deal with the situation in front of me as it comes into fruition. Equestrian history was built by ageless ponies doing the exact same thing.”

“You wear 'time' like a second skin, don't ya, Miss Harmony?”

Harmony's copper nostrils flared. “You have no idea,” she groaned.

“Yer right. I reckon I don't.” Ms. Smith pivoted her gray head to gaze down at the filly. “Tell me, if you would, Miss Harmony: do you enjoy Stallionivarius because his strings speak to yer soul, or is it because they speak to yer heartbeat?”

“Where I come from, Ms. Smith, a heartbeat is something I force myself to imagine.”

“Think you'll ever tell my family just where you do come from, darlin'?”

“I...” Harmony's face wretched like a filly who had been stabbed in the leg. The shattered image of Granny Smith's green carving knife appeared in a bodiless cloud, easing her spirit ever so slightly. “I hope that I'll never have to.”

“I reckon that's just up to us to discover,” Ms. Smith remarked. The utterance was just as dry to hear as it was to produce. “Hmmmph.” The elder smirked slightly. “How goddess-like, to leave the likes of us to our own devices.”

“Ms. Smith...” Harmony viciously sighed, shaking her copper head. “I am not a—”

“Of course not.” Granny Smith squatted down with a breath besides Harmony, eyeing Applejack and Big Macintosh from afar. “But my family's future is cradled in yer hooves no less fragile-like, hmm?” Her gray eyes were half as piercing as they were warm. She said, “If time has afforded you any less wounds than it has thoughtlessly deposited on my lap, then heaven help us if you're any less respectful of the gifts you have to wield.”

“Ms. Smith, even the greatest of gifts only goes so far,” Harmony said. Once more, her mind's eye was assaulted by the gnashing teeth of a sea of pale leather. She clenched her eyes shut and ran a hoof over her face. “And so deep,” she added in a shudder.

“It makes me wonder, Miss Harmony.” Granny Smith's voice was like a gray cloudbed that hovered majestically over a jutting mountain. “Just to what depths have you gone? What dark and winding chasms have you navigated to be here, and to be here so solemnly—that it makes an old lady such as myself amazed to hear it in yer voice?” She gulped. “You can't be this young mare sittin' before me. You just can't. Yer somethin' different, somethin' grander, somethin' darker—my family doesn't have the gumption to comprehend it, and I suddenly think that all of the scholars of Canterlot thrown in a grand heap together certainly couldn't wrap their noggins around it either.”

“What are you trying to say, Ms. Smith?” Harmony finally surrendered with a wilted breath.

“What I'm sayin', Miss Harmony, is that I forgive you.”

Harmony blinked her eyes open at that. She gazed at the lime-coated elder. “You... f-forgive me?”

“AJ, my granddaughter, is an angel. And most of that comes to her 'cuz of her natural well of honesty. Honest creatures know how to take hold of this world's glorious light and shine it for all the gatherin' ponies to see it and marvel. But you—yer a different kind of a creature. You can see this world for its darkness, and you can see a whole lot deeper into them shadows than even my eyes can venture, and I've seen my fair share of darkness in this life. Miss Harmony, I can't pretend to know what horrible shadows are haunting this farm, but deep in my heart I am glad—thankful and blessed—that you're here to do yer dangest to stifle it from us. That's an amazin' strength—a separate strength, the likes of which even Applejack could respect, though I'm startin' to reckon she won't ever have the grace to—or myeslf for that matter.”

“Ms. Smith, please believe me.” Harmony stood up as the farm siblings trotted towards her from a distance. The baskets were ready, the trees were ready, the ever dying afternoon was ready. She only wished that she was ready. “It is never, ever about grace.” Harmony gulped. “It has always and shall always be about desperation.”

“I reckon even a goddess wouldn't know about that.”

“They don't have to know about it. We do.”

Another hour and a half of frenzied apple rattling, and the swathing band of harvested trees ended clockwise at the crest of the dipping western acres. The three courageous farm ponies strained and struggled to the bitter end, only stopping their relentless pursuit of the hanging apples the very moment that they could no longer see the fruit, for the Sun had sunk below the crest of the amber horizon.

A sleepy darkness was falling over every contour of the orchards; bright green leaves dulled to gray foliage as Harmony finished her last sideways dance across a line of swaying wooden trunks, with Applejack breathlessly sprinting beneath her to provide a line of sight.

Granny Smith had wandered out of the farmhouse, shuffling westward on brittle bones in order to light several lanterns flanking the dirt path leading to the barn. The final harvest wagon was being filled to the brim with baskets upon baskets of juicy bounty. Big Macintosh took a swig of water from a nearby trough, tightened his muscles for one last daylit haul, and pulled the large wagon across the farm towards a woodshed where he had earlier crafted a complex locking mechanism to thwart trollish fingers overnight.

The trolls...

Even as Harmony fluttered wordlessly towards the wilting grass underhoof, she grimaced at the darkening sky, at the cooling breeze, at the spreading shadows from the forest wall beyond the fence, but most of all she shuddered at the grand void in her projected brain where she had long hoped a solution to the Apple Family's plight would present itself, a solution that she had fought for, bucked for, and outright lied for.

The last pony had struggled long and hard with trolls over the years. She had brushed elbows with the demons of the mist, had learned how to discern their cries from the generic howls of the wasteland, had earned several scars—on her flank and on her spirit—for having underestimated the violent and riotous abominations that infected the bosom of future Equestria.

For outlasting trolls beyond the Cataclysm, Harmony's solution was—as a matter of fact—the utter lack of a solution. The only way to deal with the creatures was to avoid them, which is why she ultimately took to airship. The monstrosities had utterly robbed her of any semblance of a native land, long after horrific circumstance had utterly blasted that same earth under her hooves to ashes. Trolls were undeniably stupid creatures, and yet they could thrive in lifeless oblivion. They would ultimately inherit the future.

Before Harmony's curved eyes stretched the finest sample of land she had ever seen—in either lifetime, both joyous and joyless. There was no other spot in Equestria that matched the lushness and purile beauty of Sweet Apple Acres. It was the finest example of the juxtaposition of natural beauty and earth pony spirit.

While the rest of Equestria died under flame and ash, it would take a veritable sinkhole to wipe out the breath of life forever imprinted on that part of the world. To see it all fall so mercilessly under the chaotic teeth of tomorrow's monsters was a travesty. Fighting for the rainbow symbol or scavenging a ruined city for magic flame were the only excuses Harmony ever had to go to blows with these creatures, and on every occasion she had only survived by galloping cowardly away from the fiends.

But here, in the fertile crescent of Princess Celestia's homeland, upon the gracious land sweated, bled, and died for by generations upon generations of Applejack's family, where would Harmony find the excuse to run?

“There's so many of them,” the copper-coated pegasus murmured.

“What was that, sugarcube?” Applejack trotted around the shadowed edge of the wagon as Macintosh pulled it away. She panted from a day's worth of galloping after the flying apple-bucker and straightened her hat while gazing at her curiously. “You finally got an idea in that fancy noggin of yers?”

Harmony wanted to tell Applejack that it was impossible. She wanted to embrace a pony whom she trusted, sobbing to her all of her pain, agony, and sorrows of having to deal with those creatures, of having to shudder at their bounding steps when she was trying to signal kindred spirits with an artificial rainbow, of having been stabbed and skewered to a bloody mess in the center of a demolished Ponyville. In the depths of her hardened soul, Harmony could not deny that her only salvation ever against the drooling menaces was none other than a miraculously rampaging dragon out of nowhere. But this was not the Wasteland; this was the past, Sweet Apple Acres, and it was the end of the evening and the prelude to a sea of leathery bodies weaving their way out of the woodwork. And Scootaloo was not the last pony; she was 'Miss Harmony,' and Applejack was waiting for an answer.

“To be honest, Miss Applejack, I think we've done all that we can possibly do,” she murmured, gazing aside with glazed amber eyes. “We've collected as many apples as we can. I think the next step is to seal up the woodsheds, batten down the hatches, and keep a guard on what your family has harvested up until now. So long as everypony's eyes are in the same place, the bounty just may survive the night.”

“And what of the west and north fields?” Applejack gulped.

Harmony exhaled coldly. “That will have to be tomorrow's concern...”

Applejack rubbed her chin with a muddied hoof. She paced a bit, smirked, and glanced up with a glint of hope in her green eyes. “Them creatures' weakness is the Sun, ain't it? Y'all reckon that lightin' a whole heap of torches might drive them off all scaredy-cat-like?”

Harmony's vision twitched. She remembered a lonely pink-haired filly in the moon craters of post-Cataclysm Equestria. The last pony had made the same assumption as Applejack. After lighting over fifty torches, she had created a burning perimeter around her shelter while starting work on her first zeppelin. The long and short of it: she never finished that airship. She barely made it back to her hole in the ground with her skin intact.

“No, Miss Applejack. Torches only serve as toys to trolls. The next moment you know, they'll have your entire homestead burned to the ground in a blink.”

“Shoot. Yer sure about that?”

“Trust me.”

“Well...” Applejack took a deep breath and snapped a few cricks in her neck. Her lips hardened into a rocky frown. “Macintosh and I never rightly expected them traps of ours to work. In fact, we knew it would come down to fistihooves at some point or another.”

“Meaning?”

“We've already been plannin' to come to blows with them varmints,” Applejack said with a tired smile. “I reckon tonight may be the night we just try eliminatin' the dang creatures.”

Harmony's eyes narrowed on the farmfilly. “Define 'eliminating.'”

“I'm sorry...?”

“What do you and your brother plan to do with the trolls when you have them in your sights?”

“Well, y'know—We'd thrash 'em mighty fierce!”

“Just that? You'd 'thrash' them?”

“Erm...”

“Would that be it? You would smack them upside the head and expect them to walk away? You'd expect all of them to walk away because they just got a bunch of bruises?”

“Well, uh, no, I guess we would... you know...” Applejack shifted where she stood on all fours. “...we'd have to put'em all out to pasture. Literally.”

“Miss Applejack, have you ever killed something before?”

“K-killed... something?”

Harmony somberly nodded.

“Well, shucks—Sweet Apple Acres has had a long history of dealin' with all sorts of pesky annoyances: snakes, fruit flies, worms, possums, even a lone wolf here or there. As a matter of fact, some of my earliest memories are of diggin' up these bothersome moles from the ground with my Pa. Now there was a pony who knew how to work decently with indecent thangs.”

“That's not the same, Miss Applejack.”

“It ain't?” She blinked nervously.

Harmony paced around the orange mare, icily staring her down. “Would you be willing to kill something, Miss Applejack? And I don't mean just anything—but thinking, breathing, crafty things—Things that know your fears and weaknesses, just as they have fears and weaknesses of their own. I'm talking about things that, to eliminate them, you have to stare down the eye-twitch of their souls and witness as every waking breath of hate and desire is sucked from their memories, because you are taking it all from them against their will. It takes more than a sharpened pitchfork or a heavy shovel to kill something that has sentience, Miss Applejack, because no matter how much you flatten a monster into pulp, you cannot deny—even in the most hidden part of your Epona-granted heart—that even that very monster had a home, had a mother, and that it was birthed into this world by the same breath of nature that gave ponies their song and dance.”

Applejack bit her lip and gazed defeatedly into the shadowed soil of the land. “N-no. No, I reckon I-I couldn't do that, nor Macky for that m-matter...”

Harmony smiled painfully. “No pony should ever feel like they could. We are creatures of life, Miss Applejack. We thrive on peace, on friendship, on all the things that make this world good and magical. The last major war of ponydom was one thousand years ago. And there's a reason for that—It's taken Equestria that long to recover from the senseless wounds carved out of our civilization when the Lunar Republic took up arms against its brothers and sisters.” She gulped hard and stared towards the last scant lines of golden light gleaming over the western horizon. “It would be a dark day indeed when ponies could kill without remorse. Something... something earth-changing would have to happen...” Harmony's breath lingered in a bitter murmur. Her nostrils smelled a tinge of copper, and were normal once again.

“Then if we can't wait them out, and we can't throttle 'em for good..” Applejack dusted her hat off and sighed. “Then just what in the hay do we do?!”

Harmony silently prayed—Not so much for an answer to Applejack's question, but instead for a reason—any reason—to not have to answer her right then and there. The supernatural result was a pattering of foalish hooves, and then a chirping voice that lit up the otherwise darkening air.

“Wow! You got all them apples bucked in one afternoon? That's so amazin'!”

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack hissed. “What have I been tellin' you all month about comin' out of the house on yer lonesome—Especially after dark?!”

“But I'm not alone!” The crimson-maned filly shook her snout. A girlishly bright hairbow adorned her head, brightening the scene like a newborn comet as her giggling voice carried on. “You and Miss Harmony are here with me!” She winked at the visiting laborer and exclaimed: “I saw all them fancy tricks you were performin' in the fields, Miss Harmony! Bouncin' around between trees like the livin' spooks: that was so cool!!”

“Apple Bloom...” Applejack grumbled, rubbing her own face with a weary hoof. “We're a tad bit busy here, sugarcube—”

“Granny Smith says that you like her kind of music! I always thought everypony but her was far too young to enjoy all them wailin' strings.” Apple Bloom made a wretching face, then smirked, her bright amber eyes matching the pupils of the stranger whom she was staring at with amazement. “Y'all ever heard of DJ P0N3?”

Harmony fidgeted, making a great show of not noticing Apple Bloom's existence. She shivered slightly.

“Miss Harmony?” The tiny filly raised an eyebrow. “Are you feelin' okay?”

“Come on, darlin'.” Applejack half-trotted over and nudged the foal with her snout. “Back into the house. Git!”

“But Sis! I was just askin' her about music—”

“Don't you 'But Sis' me! It's high time for supper, bath, and bed! There's still a lot of apple buckin' to be done tomorrow, so Macky and I gotta hit the hay early. And when we sleep early, that means you sleep earlier!”

“Awww—But, AJ—!”

Harmony cleared her voice. The two siblings froze and glanced over as the pegasus bravely, bravely pivoted her face to look young Apple Bloom in the eye. She gave a nervous smile and said, “Apple Bloom, you're never too young to appreciate a good symphony when you hear it. Your Granny not only has good tastes, but she's got good memories to go along with them. She only wants to share that kind of stuff with you and your brother and sister because it's like sharing a part of her as well.”

“But it's all so boring and stiff-like!” Apple Bloom wretched. “Gimme a fast beat and something cool to dance to, ya reckon?”

“You'd be surprised how 'boring and stiff' music could be a pleasant thing to dance to as well.” Harmony grinned. “Especially if it reminds of you good times”—she gulped slightly but overcame it with a wink—“and good friends.”

“Wow—Yer purdy deep, Miss Harmony.” Apple Bloom blinked, then grinned girlishly. “Is that how you got yer cutie mark?”

“M-my cutie mark?” Harmony blinked at the tiny crusader in a brief bout of amnesia.

“Don't mind her.” Applejack sighed and nudged her little sister again. “She's in that call of the cutie phase. I bet even Canterlotlian pegasi can relate.”

“Don't I know it.” Harmony smiled and trotted over before lowering her snout before the blinking foal. “If you must know, Apple Bloom...” Her mind hovered over the hoofsteps of Ms. Cheerilee's ghostly words as she uttered, “This mark of mine means that I am a Servant in the Royal Court of Canterlot. I perform communicative and ambassadorial tasks for Princess Celestia. Sometimes I even act as her direct messenger, flying across the lengths of Equestria, maintaining peace and order among all ponydom.”

“Wowwwwwww...” The filly cooed. She produced a dreamy grin—near drooling—and she asked, “Just what is that dark loopy shape in the middle of the black crest?”

“It's an infinity symbol.” Harmony breathed, blinked dumbly, and ultimately muttered, “It stands for... uh... infinity?”

“How'd you earn that? By talkin' around in circles?”

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack hissed again. “In the house! That's quite enough!”

“But maybe if I started talkin' up a storm of fancy thangs, then I could get a cutie mark as amazin' as hers!”

“Believe me, sugarcube. If that was the case, you'd be covered from hoof to mane in tons of them black loopty-loops by now. Now get along, little doggy!”

“But I only meant to be neighborly!”

“Don't you have school to rest for tomorrow, kid?” Harmony smirked.

“Pffft—As if! It's a Saturday!”

“Oh.” Harmony blinked. The last pony narrowed her eyes and accidentally murmured aloud: “What comes before 'Saturday' again...?”

“Heeheehee! Silly Miss Harmony! Friday! Everypony knows that!”

“Apple Bloom—”

“I'm a'gettin'! I'm a'gettin'! Don't get yer hat in a twirl, sis!” The foal scampered off, giggling.

Applejack shook her blonde head and trotted back towards the pegasus. “Don't mind her. What—with her two bubbly 'crusader' friends and all—she's a regular hoof-ful.”

“She's awfully sweet, though,” Harmony said in a melancholic breath that she tried to hide. “I already see in her the same friendliness as her grandmother.”

“And the same stubbornness.” Applejack rolled her eyes. “But who am I to say? Heheheh...”

“Heehee—Gotcha.” Harmony breathed, then with a furrowing of her brow she uttered: “By the way, who's DJ P0N3?”

“Beats me; one of them record scratchin' music banger-uppers that all the foals have gone plum loco for these days. Don't care much for the tunes myself. Only popular song these days I've come close to fancyin' is Buck to December by Trotter Swiftly.”

“Yeah, okay, sure.”

Applejack inhaled the grand darkening evening around them as she watched the distant form of Big Macintosh loading the crates full of apples into a woodshed before barricading it up.

“Heavens to Betsy,” she groaned. “I've about galloped myself to the bone with all of the day's apple buckin'. Macky may not look it, but he's bound to collapse any moment too. And yet—though I know we're both tuckered out like hungry snakes in a mice stampede—it'd be a sure-fire miracle if we get a single wink of sleep between the two of us. Every night, it's the same dang thing. Even if them trolls didn't want our blood, they whoop up something fierce. I'm surprised downtown Ponyville hasn't heard all the hollerin' and racket these last few weeks. There's no sense in hidin' it, Miss Harmony. I'm severely lackin' any hope of the rest of them apples survivin' by the time we try buckin' 'em loose tomorrow.”

“Don't give up, Miss Applejack,” Harmony said, gazing at the darkening treetops to the west and north. “I'll keep an eye out.”

“I beg yer pardon?”

“It's the least I can do until we meet again in the morning,” the time traveler said. “Somepony has to stand guard.” Harmony dizzily teetered as she thought of so many pale bodies in the shadowed clusters of endless apple orchards. It would be a long, long night indeed. “I can't even begin to fathom the shame of leaving your family here on your lonesome.”

“You ain't goin' back to Ponyville or nothin'?”

“Ponyville?” Harmony made a face. “What do you mean...?”

“I figured y'all was stayin' in a hotel or something while you paid us a visit on behalf of the Court.”

“Oh—Pfft.” Harmony smirked. “I never went to a hotel—” She caught herself in the middle of that, winced, then reiterated: “That is, I'm fine, Miss Applejack. I came here to Sweet Apple Acres to help you, and I'm not leaving until the jobs are done—Both of them: the apples and the trolls.”

Applejack stared at her long and hard. Slowly, a sweet smile crept over her orange features. “My sweet suntanned flank! I won't let you go floatin' around all night like some headless horse! Come on, copper-bottom!” She tugged at the pegasus' tail hairs.

Harmony gave her a double-glance. “Excuse me?”

“Excuse yerself. Yer stayin' indoors.”

“Indoors where?”

“In the Apple Family Household, ya strawhead!”

Harmony's heart skipped a beat. The green world spun loops beneath her dangling hooves. Instinctually, she barked: “Oh no, AJ—er—Miss Applejack. I can't. Besides, somepony's gotta keep an eye out on the forest for when the trolls come out—”

“Fat lick of good that'll do when you fall out of the sky in a dead slumber from overworkin' yerself! You may have a talent at airborne apple buckin'—but every filly has her limits. I'd never live right with myself if I left you out here in the cold to fend off them varmints on your lonesome. Yer gettin' a proper meal and a bed to sleep in—”

“Miss Applejack, I'm fine—”

“Yer the one thing that's standing in the way between tomorrow and my family's farm goin' up in flames!” Applejack snapped back. Then, she blushed slightly, and added “Metaphorically speakin', of course.” She cleared her throat and gazed at the pegasus in earnest. “I spent the better part of yesterday tryin' to shoo you away, not knowin' a gift horse when I looked her in the sweet face. And yet, you stuck it out with us, Miss Harmony. You saved Macky's life. You saved my life. My Ma and Pa would be rollin' in their graves if I didn't pay you back with the best thang we've always had to give: sweet tastin' apples and a place to lay yer head. Now are you our guest or ain't ya?!”

Harmony stared breathlessly at her. In a hazed blink—under the phantom scents of crackling embers and melted marshmallows—she saw a sisterly face gazing at her over an upside down hat bouncing with three juicy apples. In an age long dead, the simplest of gifts had helped the foal last another shivering week on her own, spent liquidly in the warmth of delightful dreams, of having someponies to call a family, of having someplace to call a home, of the simple harmony of the fleeting thought, as her moments were always fleeting, as this moment right here was fleeting.

The last pony bravely cut it off at the head. She may not have been strong enough, but she certainly wasn't stupid. “I would be honored to be your guest, Miss Applejack.” She smiled savoringly, as if she knew she could never smile again.

“Alrighty then!” Applejack smirked and proudly nudged the stumbling pegasus towards the farmhouse. “And if y'all don't mind me sayin' so, sugarcube, the first order of business is givin' you a bath!”

Harmony blinked crookedly. “Uhm... O-kaaay...”

Chapter Fifteen: A Place That Isn't Empty

Harmony immediately regretted every sin she had ever committed the very moment the pitcher of ice cold water came cascading over her backside. She produced a shriek from deep within, her face contorting like she was giving birth to an iceberg. She clutched her shivering self in the sloshing waves of the ivory bathtub surrounding her. Applejack paced across the second story bathroom of her house and placed the empty pitcher besides a gently flickering lantern.

“Now, don't go makin' faces like a frog left out in a snowstorm!” Applejack chuckled under her breath. “You ain't gonna suffer none. Just relax and let the cold waters drag the heat of the day clear off ya! Nothin' finishes a long sore afternoon of apple buckin' like a traditional Apple Family dip in the tub! Cleans yer pores right out! Bet you were wonderin' how come I've worked in the Sun all these here years and yet I don't look like a raisin-coated mule!”

“A-a-actually I-I-I was wondering if bl-bl-blood freezes at the s-s-same temperature as w-w-water,” Harmony hissed through clattering teeth.

“Pfft—Go soak yer head—” Applejack blinked at her own words. “Uh... Eh, y'all know what I mean.” She winked and motioned with an orange hoof. “Soap's over yonder. And next to it we got some of the finest shampoo from Aloe and Lotus' Day Spa in downtown Ponyville. Normally I don't subscribe to none of them froo-froo mane conditioners, but it was donated by Rarity—now there's a mare who knows how to come out of a day's work lookin' as sparkly as Princess Celestia's own lookin' glass!”

“You have some f-f-f-f-f-fancy fr-fr-fr-friends.”

“Eh, some of them are, I reckon. You see the bright bottle with a lavender cap on top of the shelf? That there's a bubble bath mixture. Have at it if ya like. I can never get myself to use the stuff.”

“Then wh-wh-wh-why do you have it?”

“Pinkie Pie gave it to me, Epona love her.” Applejack smiled. “She's a nice pony, but for some reason she thinks all ponies like to get wet as much as she does.”

Harmony's shivering brow furrowed. “Uhm...”

“Anyways, once yer done soakin', come join us downstairs.”

“Th-th-thanks, Miss Applejack.” Harmony shivered to produce a smile. “S-sincerely... Y-y-you are t-t-too kind.”

“Call me 'AJ'.” The farm mare smirked and backtrotted out of the bathroom door. “Just be sure to dry yer hooves after yer done. And if you smell somethin' a wee bit spicy, that's just Granny Smith makin' her one-of-a-kind daffodil alfredo! She only fixes it up once in a blue moon—on account of havin' a special guest and all.” She smiled.

“That... uhm...” Harmony blushed to the core of her projected self's being. “That's r-really sweet.”

“No it ain't!” Applejack blinked. “It's spicy—” She caught herself. “Oh, heeheehee—Ahem. Right. Enjoy!” She closed the door behind her, the mare's hoofsteps creaking straight through the wooden foundations of the old farmhouse.

The copper-coated pegasus sloshed back in the tub, her shivers waning to a stillness under the gentle lull of the amber lanternlight. She brushed a few slick black strands from her forehead and gazed at her own hoof up close. Harmony knew that she was merely occupying the projection of her soul self. Those were not her limbs dripping with moisture and those were not her senses shivering under the frantic thrill of the cold liquid. And yet, she couldn't remember feeling more at ease, more royally pampered, more in tune with herself than she did at that moment—and it was nothing more than a humble bath.

Harmony knew that in her lonely days before her lonelier days, she would have reveled in experiencing something half as wholesome as this. In all the twilight years of navigating the Wastelands, she would never have foreseen a moment when she would feel this... clean. It only took her a twenty-five-year ride on the back of reverse-time to experience it. The surreality of the moment should have been suffocating, but with each centimeter that she allowed her soaking self to descend into the waters, she suddenly couldn't care.

The last pony closed her eyes, her body floating in a weightless pool of lucid cold. Like always when her eyelids were shut, she saw the gray ash and snow stretching on into the horizon of her bitter consciousness. But as her Entropan body settled warmly into the waters, the freezing mists faded away, and there bubbled to her mind's surface the wispy vistas of Cloudsdale, its blue beds and ivory buildings glistening under the gold bands of a lively Sun. Hundreds upon hundreds of pegasi floated gaily in the electric air, their eyes as bright as their souls, and they all parted ways as Harmony floated through them, gently hovering to a stop before a wide bed of fog. There was laughter, a deep chant of daily joy, and out from the blue-on-blue there soared a figure into crisp clarity, her mane and tail shimmering with every shade of the rainbow as she gazed down at the young foal and gave a devil-may-care grin. But just as Rainbow Dash turned to fly away—a spicy smell filled the air, like a great valley of trees burning far below. Thick iron bars obscured the flight of the prismatic pegasus, and then the great ashen explosion roared through the sky on burning moonrocks that slammed into Harmony's face with the force of millions of screaming ponies.

There was a loud splash. The mare was clasping hard to the side of the tub, hyperventilating. The flickering light around her wasn't Equestria in flames—but the gentle dance of a lantern in the corner. The spicy smell in the air wasn't ash, but a delicious meal waiting for her and the Apple Family downstairs. She was in the past, and the past was the here and now—but it all seemed so fake to her once again.

In the fading trails of a reborn epiphany, Harmony reminded herself that the only real things in this world were those that left fossils behind.

It didn't mean that she couldn't enjoy the moment—like the fleeting phantom that she was—soaked from head to tail in an exiled Goddess' skin. A mute curse floated towards the ceiling, seeking the forehead of a three hundred year old Spike. Then there was the softest of smiles. With gentleness and grace that she only knew from reading books, Harmony reached for the soap and conditioner and bathed like a princess.

Harmony couldn't take her eyes off the portraits. There were dozens of them—black on white silhouettes of rural ponies, framed in dark ovals that swarmed gently past her one generation at a time as she sauntered slowly, pensively down the creaking stairs of the Apple Family residence.

She emerged upon a warm toasty world. A fireplace crackled lazily at the far end of a den furnished with plush love seats and afghans. As a blurred Apple Bloom scampered across the living room—giggling in a fit over one thing or another—Harmony glanced around the corner to see a brightly-lit dining room, flanked by a kitchen where Granny Smith was currently growling at Apple Bloom to settle down. The old mare navigated her lime, wrinkled self around an eating table before placing down a steamy plate full of straw and daffodils, sprinkled deliciously with peppery oats.

Harmony heard a barking nose. The last pony briefly jolted, reaching back for a nonexistent copper rifle. She relaxed when she saw Winona scampering up and running circles around her, a gleeful Apple Bloom hot on the collie's fluffy tail. The two went cantering off towards another section of the house as Harmony's attention was drawn towards a wide portrait lining a distant hearth.

Within the wooden frame the happy image of six ponies stood in a familial pose. Granny Smith was seated in the center, flanked by a red coated stallion with sharp green eyes and a mare of silken orange complexion. The mare was cradling an infant with a light bush of red hair, while two adorable foals—one crimson and the other orange—hugged the mother's legs and faced the invisible portraitist.

The time traveler stood there, numbly suspended in the facade of “Harmony.” Like the airship of the same name, she dangled loosely, a shameful puppet suspended into the deep well of the past via green-flaming marionette strings. This was a warm and toasty world that sang with a chorus that should have been forever lost after the Cataclysm, and yet there the last pony was, dragging her hooves a bare sneeze above the rock hard surface of it all, struggling to drag anchor but never quite touching down to do just that. She didn't deserve to be there, not with her invulnerable skin and her scavenger's wit and her nefarious lies. She couldn't possibly have been righteous enough to be as blessed as she was. She wasn't respectful enough, she wasn't... strong enough.

The cloud cleared just as thickly as it had coalesced. The pegasus barely registered a porch door opening and slamming shut. A hulking red form clopped on tired limbs as a sisterly shadow called in from the adjacent hallway:

“Macky, didja finish barricadin' the kitchen door? That's where they're likely to go bangin' them bony heads of theirs first!”

“Eeeyup.” Macintosh strolled past Harmony. He politely nodded his head—then jolted with a double-take at her mane. Blinking, he suppressed a snickering smirk and swaggered his way into the dining room.

Harmony blushed slightly, her face awash in copper confusion. Just in time, Applejack pattered up, tossing her hat onto a nearby rack.

“Whew-Wee! I swear, sometimes I feel like Epona invented 'work' first and 'ponies' second to make an excuse for the former—” She took one glance at Harmony. “Oh, you're done, Copper-Bottom—” She too jolted. “Whoah Nelly! Eheheh—Ya do know, sugarcube, that we've got a mirror in the bathroom, don'tcha?”

“I-I don't read you, Miss Appleja—er—AJ,” Harmony's eyes narrowed. “I almost passed out in the tub. Did the trolls beat me with an ugly stick before I came down here or something?”

“Nothin' of the sort.” Applejack pointed with an amused expression. “Didn't yer Momma ever teach ya how to brush yer mane proper?”

“H-huh?” Harmony stupidly blinked and ran a hoof over her neck, only to feel a certifiable mountain of fuzzy tangles spreading upwards towards the ceiling. “Holy cow! Eheh—Oh yeah, th-that's right. I've got a mane. Heh...”

“There's a brush over yonder on the table. Be my guest.”

“Hmmm?” Harmony only barely registered Applejack's offering. “Oh—Uhm—To be perfectly frank, I've never... uh... Eheh.... How do I put this...?” She bit her lip. The only time the last pony had ever toyed with her hair after the Cataclysm was when she weaved the shaved pink strands into various rags, bindings, and insulators for use on board the Harmony. There was a time, in her Ponyvillean childhood, when she once experimented with a rainbow assortment of dye... which ended with relatively hilarious results, not that she had anypony to share the embarrassment with.

“Pfft!” Applejack rolled her green eyes. “What's this world comin' to? I bet yer Canterlotlian citizens would just die without one of them servants waitin' on yer manes night and day! C'mere—” She gently tugged on the pegasus' shoulder and planted her on a plush stool in the center of the den. Seating herself on the edge of a couch, the earth pony snatched the brush from the table and proceeded to dive into Harmony's forest of amber-streaked black threads. “Now sit tight. With the way y'all left it, this might smart a bit.”

“This might what?—Gaaughh!” Harmony winced, one eye tightly shut as several tangles were yanked clear, tugging at their roots. She felt like a hundred thousand nooses were pulling at every inch of her neck. “Snkkt—Y-you mistaking my skull for a tree you forgot to buck, AJ?”

“Quit yer whinin', Harmony,” the farm mare murmured, squinting at her work as she straightened the curls out into long onyx threads. “I'm only doin' this cuz you got some really fine hair, if I do say so myself. It's an utter shame to see it all in shambles like this. The only other pegasus pony I've seen with a 'do this long is my good friend Fluttershy. It perplexes me why she never flies. She practically trips on her bangs everytime she so much as breaks into a canter—Tilt yer head down.”

Harmony obeyed, her bobbing vision scanning the plush rugs of the den under the flickering fireplace. “You seem to have a close knit group of friends,” the pegasus casually said. “So far I've heard about Twilight Sparkle, Lady Rarity, and now Fluttershy?”

“Oh, we're a tight bunch—Us gals.” Applejack smirked as she threaded the amber streaks together and then shifted her concentration on Harmony's ends. “Anypony who knows a thang or two about our run-in with Nightmare Moon will say it's all on account of the Elements of Harmony—heh. Now there's a smatterin' of irony for ya. But I like to think that it was a great deal more heartfelt than that. I was always well acquainted with Pinkie Pie and the Cake family over at Sugarcube Corner before fate flung the whole lot of us together. And everypony in Ponyville knew about Fluttershy—well, relatively speakin'. The pegasus has always lived in a lonely cottage outside of town. She never really showed her face much until she became part of our little circle of friends—the 'Mane Six' as some gabberin' townsfolk like to call our little pow-wow.”

“'Mane Six',” Harmony chuckled—wincing a bit as another tangle bit the dust. “That's original.”

“Nah. Not really,” Applejack droned. “But still, there's somethin' about my friends and I that is just so...” She paused for a moment and chuckled. “Oh shucks, I do sound like a braggin' fool, don't I?”

“No, it's alright.” Harmony gulped, suddenly feeling her heartbeat. “Do go on.”

“Well...” Applejack spoke as she resumed brushing from behind. “We all found out one day that we had a special connection. As a matter of fact, we were destined to all find each other at some point or another—On account that when we were all little foals, one single event echoed across the whole of Equestria. In some manner or another, it was responsible for all of us gettin' our cutie marks at precisely the same time. Now what are the odds of that happenin'?”

Harmony tried to steady her breath. A warm sensation blossomed deep inside her gut as she sat upon the precipice of a legendary story that the pegasus knew all too well. Over several lonesome years spent in an ashen sky, the last pony often did all she could to bury the bitterly ironic implications of the memory. But she wasn't sitting there in the past and having her hair brushed for her own benefit. She tilted her ears back towards Applejack as she dutifully asked: “What was it? What caused all of your cutie marks?”

“You ever heard of a Sonic Rainboom?”

“Educate me.”

“Yer a pegasus and you don't know about the—?”

“What's in a name?” Harmony retorted. She tried not to sound short; she was only slightly successful. “It's all in the experience, isn't it?”

“Darn tootin'. This Sonic Rainboom was what resulted in all of us gettin' our cutie marks. And on top of that, we learned that it was caused by none other than one of us gals in the first place!”

“Who?” Harmony secretly smiled. “Fluttershy?”

“Snkkkt—Hahaha—Heavens, no! But a certain blue pegasus by the name of Rainbow Dash. You better memorize that name, cuz I swear it's gonna be a legend someday.”

“Yes,” Harmony murmured, her hooves kneading the rug beneath her. “I-I'm sure it will be...”

“Y'know, in a lot of ways—You kind of remind me of her.”

Harmony's eyes twitched. She hadn't expected to hear that. Ever. She bit her lip and nearly whimpered, “R-really...?”

“In less than two days, I've considered you both a pest and a blessing. No two words better describe Rainbow Dash in a heartbeat.” Applejack gave a drawlish chuckle, and she playfully nudged the pegasus' shoulder. “I'm joshin', of course. Yer sweet as chocolate rain in my book, Harmony, which is the least I can say about Rainbow Dash. That tomcolt can be a regular thorn in the hoof from time to time, but I love her all the same.”

“I...” Harmony exhaled, smiled warmly into the shadows, and said, “I'm sure she loves us too.” A blink, and she winced slightly at how that came out.

“Heh—If you say so, copper-bottom. Maybe once we get this Apple Harvest taken care of, I could introduce you to the gals. I like celebratin' with my friends after a long week of apple buckin'. Yer free to come with!”

“I-I'll think about it,” Harmony said. Gazing forward, she fidgeted slightly—fought to scale the opportunity of the moment—and eventually seized it. “Hey, AJ?”

“Yes, Harmony?”

“What...” She cleared her throat. “Wh-What would it take, d-do you think, for a pony to seek audience with Princess Celestia?”

“You mean the Princess Celestia?” Harmony could positively feel the weight of Applejack's dumb blink from behind. “Yer a servant of the Court of Canterlot and yer askin' me about meetin' up with the Princess?”

Harmony winced at that—all of that. She should have seen it coming from twenty-five years of reverse-time away. Still, she painted her tongue silver and persisted. “I know how much you dislike bureaucracy, Miss Applejack. It's only natural to hate the process of red tape. Even a pony of my stature and service has to go through several layers of offices before I can so much as submit a letter to Her Highness.”

“Like when you plan on reportin' on this Sweet Apple Acres?”

“Yes—No.” Harmony tugged briefly on the end of her hairs and sat up straight. “Ahem—This isn't about my inspection of the farm. Not this.”

“Then what is it about, Harmony?”

“It's... It's...” Harmony bit her lip. A hundred million dying faces flicked in and out of a blink. She calmed herself and managed, “It's a personal matter. That's all. I-I know it's rather foolhardy for a pony—anypony—to think that she can easily make contact with the Princess, somehow circumnavigating the waiting list of so many other concerned citizens who write to her on a daily basis. But... B-but in my service to Her Highness—in all of my travels—I have... how can I say this... I've uncovered some findings about the lands of Equestria that I think need a close review, and there're no offices in my Court that can properly filter—uhm—what I have to report on.”

“I see. And you call that a 'personal matter?'”

“I... Er...” Harmony inhaled. Then, she gave a brief smile. “What's more personal than the safety and future of Equestria? You may hold a great deal of faith in this land, Miss Applejack. And that's all well and fine for you. You're an earth pony. You live here. But me? I don't live entirely in Canterlot—Not like you think.”

“Just where do you live, Harmony?”

Harmony lingered. She closed her eyes, returning briefly to the ashes. “I live in the skies, AJ. It's not just a part of my pegasus nature. It's all about what I do, what I believe in, and who I am.” She reopened her amber orbs, and the rich warm flicker of the den seemed muted suddenly. It brought a chill up her invulnerable spine. “Someday—maybe eons from now—the skies will be all that's left of Equestria. Those who have spent so many years traveling—those like me—can see things that other ponies can't, all ponies except Her Highness. Princess Celestia sees all.” She gulped, then murmured “Or at least I certainly hope she does...”

“I can't pretend to know the texture of yer words as much as yer tryin' to paint them to me. But you've been awfully polite to my words. With the way the days have unfolded, I see every reason to respect yers all the same.” There was a gentle clapping sound of the brush being placed onto a table top. Two hooves rested on Harmony's shoulders. “There ya go. It ain't no prima donna hogwash—but I reckon you look mighty elegant.”

Harmony shuffled, standing up from her stool. She trotted across the room and glanced into the reflective surface of a grandfather clock. The reflection sported a gorgeous black mane blossoming from her scalp, with the one amber streak swimming steadily down the centerpiece of the thickly forested threads.

“It looks... pretty.” The pegasus blushed slightly.

An orange reflection sauntered up next to her, smirking. “Yes, you do.” Applejack patted her shoulder as the two's complexion hovered numbly against the rotating hands of time. “Don't sell yerself short, girl. All them wisecracks I made yesterday about you bein' dainty and all: they're true in a way. But it's a darlin' truth. I'm sure you'd drive the stallions back at Canterlot into a faintin' spell if you ever took the moment to come down from them skies you love.”

Harmony exhaled, her breath incidentally fogging the clockface briefly as her eyes fell down the sloping length of the hour hand. “I'm not sure if I can ever afford to come down...”

“Good thang we stumbled into each other.” Applejack winked. “I reckon it gave you a chance to get better acquainted with the Earth. I'm sure the Earth was missin' you mighty fierce too.”

“Y-yeah. Maybe so...”

Applejack rubbed her own chin with a hoof. “Y'know, tain't that much of a stretch to get in contact with the Princess, now that I think about it.”

Harmony flashed a hyper glance Applejack's way. “T'ain't it?”

“Well, on account of my friend Twilight,” the orange mare mused. “She's always writin' letters on friendship and Ponyvillean life to Celestia. She's her magical apprentice, you see.”

Harmony shifted where she stood. “You don't say...?”

“At first I was a bit miffed that every little thang I did or said around Twilight could very well have made it onto the pages of a letter that her lil' dragon friend sent to Her Highness. But then I came to trust Twilight Sparkle for whom she really is: a gentle, endearing, and good-mannered pony. And—heck!—I'm all about tellin' the truth, most of the time at least. So I figured—'What the hay's the big deal?' And it's never bothered me since.” Applejack smiled proudly. “I have no doubt yer helpin' my family out could make it to the Princess' attention, thanks to Twilight—assumin' we leave out the whole issue with the trolls of Discord and all.” She finished with a nervous chuckle.

“And th-then the Princess would want to sp-speak with me?” Harmony stammered, her wings briefly fluttering.

“Pfft—One hoof before the other, sugarcube. But it's certainly a start, isn't it?”

“Where in tarnation is everyone?—AJ! Miss Harmony!” Granny Smith wobbled out from the brightly lit kitchen and gawked at the two ponies. “There you are. Elektra Alive, ladies! Food's-a-gettin' cold! Bring yer flanks in here and take a bite before them nasty critters stop hidin' in the forest!” She hobbled back under the gathering shadows of Big Macintosh and Apple Bloom at the table.

Harmony winced slightly. “Where are my m-manners? I'm not used to a regular eating schedule. I didn't mean to hold up supper, honest.”

“Don't worry yer sweet head about it.” Applejack winked and motioned with her snout as she trotted over to join her family. “How about you put that mouth of yers into munchin' instead of mopin'?” she said with a chuckle.

The last pony nervously trotted after her, dipping her head humbly into the warm aura wafting off of the dinner table. Granny Smith was already serving heaps of the steamy daffodil alfredo onto each of the five plates while Big Mac, Apple Bloom, and Applejack were shuffling padded stools into place and taking their seats.

Harmony was so mesmerized by the scents of the well-cooked meal that she took little notice of the seat she was shuffling up towards. She heard someone's throat clearing. Glancing up, she saw Macintosh gazing deadpan at her, shaking his head, and waving a hoof disapprovingly. With a blink, Harmony took a second look at the spot that she was about to sit in. Its place at the table was dusty, plain, with the only thing adorning it being a vase full of well preserved orange blossoms. The spot directly next to the seat had a pair of antique stallion's horseshoes criss-crossing in memory.

Harmony blushed and winced apologetically Macintosh's way, watching as the crimson stallion gladly motioned her towards a guest stool on the other side of the table, which she quickly took—shuffling up until she was suddenly at chest level within the conjoined breath of the family and with no means of escape.

She had felt this cramped and caged before. The Harmony's cabin left little room for anypony to shuffle around. Inside her airship, Harmony was either piloting, runecrafting, reading journals, or lying in the hammock. There was nothing necessarily uncomfortable about the claustrophobic lifestyle; she was the only living thing who would ever need to use the cabin. But this—this dinner table full of breaths and smells—this was like being cornered by vicious harpies from all sides, only they wanted to bless her rather than eviscerate her. The last pony was not accustomed to being the recipient of anything besides what her own cold shoulder could carry for her throughout the years. It was positively suffocating.

She also wasn't accustomed to traditional eating habits. With forlorn eyes, Harmony watched as the family exchanged smiles and polite phrases of gratitude before offensively dipping the entire weight of their snouts directly into the spiced plates of straw and flowers. Scrumptious oats and delicious white petals dribbled off their delighted maws as they treated their table like one large horse trough.

If Harmony had lost all of her faint memories from foalhood, she might even have been disgusted. She realized that she was the source of her own confusion. For decades, her diet consisted entirely of mushroom stew and meat broth, and very early into her zeppelin lifestyle the pegasus had crafted for herself metal braces attached with eating utensils so that she could fish her meals out of a collapsible container that could be discarded in a heartbeat for when she needed to jump into her cockpit and steer clear of a sudden obstacle or air pirate attack. Harmony had been alone for so long, she had forgotten what it meant to eat like a pony. Strangely enough, it was the first incongruity that didn't make her feel shameful.

She cleared her throat, wrenched her eyes off of the ungainly eating habits of her hosts, and gazed at the food on the plate before her. She knew the daffodil alfredo had to be delicious; her senses told her that it smelled delicious, but there was no convincing the supposed “gut” of her projected soul self that she needed to be hungry for it. Her need to eat was the same as her need to sleep, and it was all related to the unnatural stamina that aided her Entropan body so well in her endless apple bucking that day. In fact, the only reason she took a bath was because Applejack insisted.

She didn't want to wait until the four blessed ponies in front of her insisted that she join in the meal. So, leaning her snout down awkwardly, she opened her lips like a giant copper crane and snapped a rattling bite of the heap of flowers and straw.

The soonest that the daffodil petals entered her mouth—they melted around the crunching contours of the flower stalks until a grand cornucopia of home-brewed tastes gathered into a frothing ball against her tongue and exploded endorphins directly into her brain. Her eyes almost rolled back in her head. This wasn't quite like the apple she had bitten into the day before; there were no bitter sweet emotions attached to this.

This was quite simply an onslaught of pleasure, something she hadn't gotten from food in a while. She remembered suddenly what it meant to consume something simply for the sake of the experience and not for the sake of survival. It was a joyously awkward shimmer that danced up and down her spine, like having waltzed in on a muffin buffet at Sugarcube Corner. She pondered a little too heavily on this, so that she was blind to her avid devouring until she blinked her eyes up with a mouthful to see four amused faces staring at her.

“My my, they certainly starve you in the Royal Court of Canterlot, don't they?” Granny Smith snickered, bearing a knowing wink that only Harmony could see.

“Don't go pickin' on her, Granny.” Applejack smiled between munches. “She done deserved a good scarfin'. Besides—Who can resist yer wonderful alfredo?”

“Yeah! Can Miss Harmony visit us some more?” Apple Bloom stifled a belch and beamed. “I wouldn't mind chowin' down on this every week!”

“Oh Sugarcube. What would make this a special occasion if we did that, then?”

“We should let ponies visit us more often, AJ! When's all yer apple buckin' gonna be finished, huh? I feel like we've been a bunch of lonely rock farmers, what with all this work and no play!”

“The soonest we get this here harvest done, I reckon we're in for a heapin' load of celebration. I mean it; this year's been a real doozy.”

“You can say that again, child.”

“Eeeyup.”

“Why—If I had a bit for every basket of apples I've filled this year alone, I'd fancy myself being nearly as rich as Rarity.”

“That reminds me, AJ. Where has that most resplendent pony been lately? It seems like Rarity is a no-show everytime I go to visit the Ponyvillean Market.”

“Oh, she's just bein' her normal fabric fussin' self, Granny,” Applejack remarked. “Last thang I heard, she had hired a chauffer named 'Anastasia' or some nonsense to drag her back and forth between here and Trottingham. Beats me what's made Rarity so distant lately. No doubt she's workin' on the latest task for that fabulous fashion critic from Canterlot, Hoity Toity.”

“Now AJ—if yer don't know a pony's name, it ain't polite to go on fillin' the blank, now is it?”

“No, Granny. I mean that is his name. He's 'Hoity Toity.'”

“A name like that in the Canterlotlian elite? Preposterous! Next thing y'know, Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Ponies will be passin' out doctorates to colts named 'Mister Whooves!'”

“Er... Ahem... So, Harmony.” Applejack took another bite of alfredo and smiled down the family table. “Tell us a little bit about the sorts of things that a Royal Servant of Canterlot gets to see in her travels, why don't ya?”

“Oh, uhm...” Harmony fidgeted, swallowing down another scrumptious lump of oats and smiling nervously. “It's not necessarily good dinner conversation.” She glanced briefly at a wrinkled, lime-coated face across the table. A quiet grayness hovered above the otherwise warm hovel.

“Are you kiddin'?” Apple Bloom nearly bounced out of her stool, her hairbow twitching atop a grinning head. “I've never met a pegasus working for the Princess before! I bet you see all kinds of cool and amazin' things in yer line of work!”

“Where I go isn't nearly as important as what I do,” Harmony said. After clearing her throat, she half-murmured aside: “Or whom I do it for.”

“Do you ever see any sea serpents?”

“Uhh...” Harmony blinked. “I beg your pardon, kid?”

“Sweetie Belle says that there are tons of sea serpents out beyond the mountains bordering the Equestrian Valley! She says they're called 'leviathans,' on account that they're so big that they can't fit their big ol' selves into normal lakes and rivers!”

Harmony didn't bother stifling a knowing smirk. “This 'Sweetie Belle' sounds like a walking dictionary.”

“Nah, she just tries really hard to impress other ponies. I think it's because she's tryin' to look as classy as her sister, Rarity. She's not nearly as confident about thangs as my other friend—”

Harmony's heart briefly dropped when Applejack interrupted her little sister: “That's quite enough jabberin' about yer Crusaders, Apple Bloom. Y'all can talk about that another day.”

“Awww—But Sis! The whole point of being a Cutie Mark Crusader is wantin' to go out into the world and do everythang to get a cutie mark! I bet Miss Harmony here has done just that!”

Before Applejack could interject again, the copper pegasus spoke. “It's true,” Harmony said. “I've been to many places. And it sounds like you've got a noble thing going with these 'crusader' friends of your, Apple Bloom. But I don't think you should be so obsessed with the outside world, kid. Especially when you've got so much that's awesome right here.”

“Whatcha mean, Miss Harmony?” Apple Bloom blinked widely at her. Applejack raised an eyebrow. Granny Smith and a mute Macitonsh gazed over half-munched alfredo.

Under the spotlight of so many warm pairs of eyes, Harmony crossed her hooves atop the table and breathed soundly.

“I've seen many things in my flight,” she said, plucking the words from the gray fields of her mind with caution. “I've seen deep granite chasms etched into the earth from millennia ago, when things that were done to this world were performed by the whim of a Goddess with absolute permanence in mind. I've flown under the shadows of mountains too high for any Canterlotlian chronicler to measure. They are natural monstrosities so large that to simply comprehend them reminds a pony of just how tiny a speck she is in the mere twinkle of Epona's eyes. I have seen... I have seen wastelands, Apple Bloom—wastelands that stretch on for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers, where the only sign of life that could possibly exist is the indestructible spirit of ponydom. The world is a huge place, and when it's stripped bare of all of the pretty things that make it recognizable, it becomes clear really quick that the only hoofprint you can ever hope to make is the sort of mark you can etch upon the souls of each other, of the ones that you love, and the ones that you would forever... forever miss if they were to fly off along the wild winds of what lies beyond the mountains and never ever return. The world is huge, and it is amazing—But, personally, I have found so much of it to be...to be empty.”

Harmony's lips lingered. She gazed up with a brief fear. The warmth in the eyes of the living ponies had faded slightly. As they regarded her, their faces seemed a little... paler, as if cornered by trolls. She knew exactly how to change that.

With a painful smile, the pegasus finished, “But here—No, there is no emptiness here. You can dream and wonder about the outside world all you want, Apple Bloom. But let me save you the trouble when I say that there's nothing better than a home. You can go on a thousand exoduses and cover a million miles—by land or by air—but having a home is all that matters. And this home, Apple Bloom, this gorgeous and beautiful home where your family lives: it is a good home. And I am willing to bet that if you too were to see the many sights of Equestria and beyond, only here would you feel complete. Anywhere else would just be empty.” She glanced up at a sisterly orange mare. “Where else would the Earth so generously give back for you simply being you?”

Applejack smiled sweetly. From across the table, an old mare bore a grin that was half as enthusiastic, but twice as understanding.

“Well, I hope I get to see some leviathans someday!”

“Apple Bloom! Heavens to Betsy!” Granny Smith rolled her eyes and then smiled at the guest. “Would you like seconds, dear?”

Harmony blushed under the gaze of the elder. “I would love some, Ms. Smith.”

“I rightly share Apple Bloom's melancholy over the vittles,” Applejack mused while the lime-colored pony scooped Harmony another heap of straw and daffodils. “Tomorrow night, we're likely back to me cookin' the same old boring meals like I do every week. It's nothin' for you to fancy, Harmony. I don't quite have Granny's gift of spicin' here. But I reckon my meals are decently healthy!”

“And borin'!” Apple Bloom made a wretching face.

“Oh hush!” Applejack briefly frowned, folding her hooves in a pout. “So what's wrong with a little bit of spinach and celery here and there?”

“'A pony does not live on apples alone,'” Harmony mused while shifting through the contents of her plate. “I'm sure I stole that from somewhere, but I'm too tired to quote it,” she lied again.

“It's only fittin' that we each get a wink of shuteye before the night calls on our bodies twice as hard as this day has.”

“Maybe I could play us some Stallionivarius,” Granny Smith said in a gentle breath; only Harmony could detect the mournful tone to it. “That should ease us gentle-like into the dark.”

“Nah, Granny. That's sweet of you, but we don't want to get too much sleep. You-know-what could come prancin' about the orchards at any second.”

“We expectin' visitors, AJ?” Apple Bloom spoke up above a thinning stack of alfredo.

Harmony spoke suddenly above the warm flicker of the room before any of the older ponies could betray their honest qualities. “That reminds me, Miss Applejack, what exactly is your taste in music?”

“Hmmmph... I reckon I haven't thought too much of it. Twilight and Rarity are always gabbin' on and on about some record or another. I suppose it's just the unicorn way to appreciate a fine symphony, what with them tunin' forks they got stickin' out of their heads. What about yerself, Miss Harmony? What flavor caters to y'all?”

“Strings. Sometimes violins—But mostly the cello.” Harmony smirked. She briefly glanced at Ms. Smith as she spoke. “It's so beautiful. It's a little mournful, and yet jubilant in its own rights.”

“Ya don't say? Come to think of it, I like me some expert twangin' of the dulcimer myself.”

“Imagine that!”

“And Big Macintosh here fancies himself a lyre when he pays the village a visit from time to time, ain't that right, Macky?”

“Heh heh heh...” The stallion blushed deeply in between munches. “Eeeyup.”

The Apple sisters giggled gaily, their young and old chuckles forming a cohesive hum in the center of the kitchen. Macintosh munched silently into the warm breath of the moment. Granny Smith hovered upon the precipice of the scene.

Harmony—the last pony, with her stab wounds stifled in the past and her loneliness stored in the future—sat and drank it all in, expecting at any breath and at any jolt for the chaotic legions of horror to bring the entire house crashing down on its innocent hearts. She let the length of the occasion linger as long as the trolls cared to, as long as the Cataclysm dared to, as long as Princess Entropa herself willed to, until she rediscovered the courage to admit that she still wasn't strong enough to be seated, and she hovered above the dinner table just as helplessly as she had first stumbled upon it, a nomadic foal looking for a home.

Chapter Sixteen: A Gift in the Darkness

An hour later, most of the lights in the house had been put out—save for the blaze in the fireplace, which was still crackling and sparking with a heated sigh over the soft shapes of embroidered furniture. Nestled in the sofa upon Granny Smith's lap, washed up and socked-up and ready for bed, Apple Bloom blinked and smiled as the lime-coated elder embraced her with a book in her hooves, rattling off a bedtime story to the dancing shadows of the room.

“'But the baby yellow birdie didn't mind none when the other songbirds tried to make fun of him. 'I'll get my own tree!' he said. 'Then I can sing big and strong just like the others!' So he flew and he flew and he flew and he flew, but all of the large trees were all filled with birdies already. He knew it was impolite to hop into another family's nest, besides it wouldn't help his singin' none to share the branches with other birdies. He needed to practice on his own! Finally—one cool and crisp mornin'—the baby yellow birdie found a tinnnnnnny sprout of an apple tree just over the hill yonder where the risin' Sun first appeared. She was such a teeny tiny thing that none of the other songbirds wanted to nest in her—but for the little yellow birdie, she was just right. 'Finally, I have a tree and she's just the size that I can learn to sing in!' So he made his nest and practiced every mornin', but his singin' wasn't gettin' any prettier. He wanted nothin' else but to sing big and strong—But it wasn't comin' out right! Finally, one mornin', he left the tiny sprout of a tree, but not without saying, 'Don't fret, Miss Apple Tree! I know just the thing that will make you grow. All of the other birdies live in big trees because they have families! Maybe if I had a family of my own, then you would become big too!'”

From the bottom of the farmhouse's stairs, Harmony listened in on the tale. She sat on the bottom step, covered in shadows, hear ears pricking foalishly to take in Granny Smith's recital. From the toasty look across Apple Bloom's firelit features, the pegasus could tell that she was well familiar with this bedtime story. It was Harmony's first.

As Granny Smith continued her gentle tale, the time traveler glanced aside to see Big Macintosh propped up on a stool before the screened porch door. With hard green eyes, he stared out into the darkness shrouding the orchards, watching for any sign of the nightmarish creatures that were lurking beyond. He had a spade balanced across his forelegs, and if he was teetering on the brink of exhaustion, he heroically didn't show any sign of it.

There was a shuffling of hooves; Applejack sauntered down from the top of the stairs and sat down next to Harmony with a groaning sigh. “Any sign of them varmints?”

Harmony slowly shook her head. “No. By the way, I thought it was Macintosh's turn to keep watch first. Shouldn't you be asleep?” Her voice was stealthily hushed beyond the ranges of Apple Bloom's hearing.

Applejack's was too. “I would say the same about you, but looks like I'm not the only restless one.” Nevertheless, she yawned and leaned against the nearby wall with bloodshot green eyes. “Here's my family, havin' a gentle moment, and yet there are such horribly nasty creatures just beyond the fences.”

“And what a nice moment it is,” Harmony murmured towards the cozy fireplace and the old and young bodies curled before it. “What I wouldn't give for a whole lifetime of moments like this...”

Applejack turned towards her, and a soft voice came out of her that soothed the pegasus ears. “All of those thangs that yer were goin' on about at the dinner table, about you seein' so many sights in the world and it all bein' so incredibly empty...” She leaned her head to the side. “Is that how you feel about life in general, Harmony?”

Harmony tried to reassure her with a smile. The result was akin to handling balloons with rusted gauntlets. “Life is never empty, AJ. It's the stuff that life tries to fill.”

“I reckon yer one of them 'trough-is-half-empty' kind of ponies.”

“Not really. I like to drink out of a canteen.”

“Pfft—Cop out!”

“Heheheh.” Harmony giggled lightly. Then, with a returning sigh, she hugged her forelegs to herself and lowered her head, gazing at the firelight and the unraveling bedtime story beyond.

“The years went by, but the yellow birdie didn't notice,” Granny Smith went on as Apple Bloom yawned and curled tighter against her. “Because he was so enamored with the family he made. He had no idea that he would be so happy to have a wife and two little chickies. He found he practiced his singin' simply by treatin' his kids to some lullabies. He forgot all about little Miss Apple Tree back home, because his whole life had become one big beautiful song, and his family had become the chorus. And without even knowin' it, he had become big and strong, just the kind of daddy that his chickies needed. It was a total surprise to him when one day they moved back to the west side of the orchards, and there the yellow birdie found himself stumbling on an enormous apple tree that was just the right size for his family! But he was scared at first, because every other bird who tried to live inside her branches was thrown out—as if the tree had come alive and refused to be nested in! 'That tree! She ain't no good!' the other songbirds said. 'She doesn't like no birds no-how!' But the yellow birdie wasn't scared. He needed a tree for his family, and she was just the right size. 'Please let me build a nest in you, Miss Apple Tree!' He begged with folded wings. 'I swear that I'm big and strong and my family needs the room!.'”

Harmony's wings absent-mindedly flexed and unflexed. A pit formed in her stomach as she thought about all of the skies she had flown in during her life; and none of them were golden. A dismal hum broke the tranquility of the room, so that she finally forced herself to glance aside and murmur Applejack's way:

“Hey, AJ.”

“Mmm—Yes, Harmony?” Applejack leaned away from the precipice of drowsiness.

“Have you—That is...” the pegasus fidgeted, fumbled, then proceeded, “as an earth pony, have you noticed anything strange about the land?”

“You mean other than nasty little trolls poppin' out of it and wantin' to kill all of us?”

“Ahem. Yes, besides that.” Harmony bit her lip, but continued uttering, “Have you felt... I don't know... any tremors or strange earthquakes or... or just about anything that would seem really out of place in the land of Equestria?”

“Can't say that I have. This here is pretty solid land. Only tremors we get is when cattle stampede from time to time. I had to save Ponyville all by myself from such a mess one time. Well, heheh, Winona helped, but that's besides the point.”

“You haven't noticed any bizarre things in the sky? Any... er... odd moon phases or other strange phenomena happening for no reason?”

Applejack squinted sideways at the pegasus. “Does this have anythang to do with that report you've been dyin' to share with the Princess?”

Harmony instantly blushed, glancing away. “Guess nothing gets past you, AJ.”

“Guilty.” She smirked. “Sugarcube, my family and I are very grateful for all the things you've done for us over the last day and a half. It was because of your foresight that Mac and I didn't get chomped to bits by trolls. And it was because of yer smarts that we've gotten so much apple buckin' done at a record rate. But I'm beginning to think that yer awful worrisome about a lot of things.”

“I-I guess it is in my nature.” Harmony smiled nervously. A gulp. “But—There are strange things ahoof in Equestria. I really, really must get in contact with the Princess somehow.”

“Like what kind of strange things?”

“I-I really don't want to cloud your head with it, Applejack.” Harmony smiled plastically. “Let's just say that there are... th-there are worse things in this world than trolls.”

“Whew—If you say so.” Applejack ran a hoof through some night-tosseled threads and shrugged. “Cuz I can't imagine anything worse than creatures who just wanna hate on a humble family of farm ponies. It's almost as if they want to bring out the worst in us. Those traps that Macky and I had made?—Plus them farm tools we were fixin' to smack against them varmints' heads?” A chill ran down the mare's spine as she shamefully glanced into the shadows. “I shudder to think how downright dirty we were plannin' on gettin'. You were right with what you said at sundown, Miss Harmony. Ponies are creatures of life. We should know nothin' about bouncin' back the misery of monsters. I almost reckon that the 'Act of Accord' is something Canterlot made to protect us from a shade of ourselves we're never meant to wake up to.”

“R-Right.” Harmony gulped. “All my Court has ever w-wanted to do,” she shuddered as she lied yet again, “is protect you.”

She fought down the shivers as Applejack did the opposite alongside her. The orange mare had drifted off into a stone-still slumber. Harmony felt suddenly alone. At any second, the trolls could come smashing in through the windows, and every last shred of goodness in that farmhouse would be torn asunder. With foalish fright, Harmony distracted herself with the glistening hum of Granny Smith's settling story.

“And the moment he built a nest inside her branches, the leaves started shakin' something fierce. At first the yellow birdie thought he was gonna be thrown out like all the others. But then he realized that there was somethin' musical to the way them leaves were rustlin'. And sure enough, he started singin' to the beat, and what came out of him was the most beautiful song that there ever was sung in all of them orchards. To his joy, he realized that she was the same apple tree that he had tried to build a nest in so many years ago, before he flew away to find himself such a happy family. She had waited for him all that time, so that she was big enough for the whole family and all of their happy songs. And that's when the yellow birdie thought to himself, 'Hmm, my favorite little tree isn't such a little tree anymore.' So she sang her song, big and strong, and they all lived in that great big tree happily ever after. The end.”

Granny Smith very, very quietly folded the book shut, for the little foal nestled in her lap had fallen into a soft slumber, her tiny form rising and falling with gentle breaths. The elder smiled and lovingly nuzzled the child's crimson mane as the firelight dwindled into shadows across their warm embrace. The old mare spoke liquidly, but when she did her words were aimed at a different child altogether: “It's almost as if you've never been read a bedtime story before. Why does that not surprise me?”

Harmony jolted. She glanced at the briefly slumbering Applejack beside her, then at the distant sentry in the form of Macintosh. On soft legs, she padded over towards the fireplace and murmured back through an air of conjoined silence. “It was a nice story, even if a tad bit idyllic.”

“It has to be idyllic, Miss Harmony.” Granny Smith smiled, softly stroking the mane hair of the slumbering Apple Bloom. “It's meant for a foal. No Equestrian bedtime story ever rings with the true, true dread of this world's shadows. There are many dark truths that a young pony must discover for herself. To do anything but plant seeds of hope would be a crime. You've done well to inspire Applejack and Macintosh the way you have. I rightly don't think any of us are prepared for the horrors that are about to stalk us this dark, dark night. The hope that you've brought is the best bedtime story this farm could ask for.”

“I didn't come here to bring hope, Ms. Smith,” Harmony muttered with a bitter face.

A pair of gray eyes lurched their way over Apple Bloom. “You reckon you've finally figured out what it is you're here to provide?”

“In a matter of minutes, all of us will know,” Harmony murmured, her eyes twitching on the end of green flames flickering. “Or none of us will know.”

“Miss Harmony,” the old mare spoke in a liquid haze that mirrored the fireplace before her tired eyes. “I've gone over in my head the things that you have told me, the things that you have shown me. You are built out of unfathomably strong stuff, but even you had to know that our stayin' here would be somethin' dangerous, suicidal even.” She gazed across the silent shadows towards Macintosh, towards the useless spade stretched across his limbs as he sat and stared into the billowing depths of the night. “We had an entire day at our disposal. Even without the help of Princess Celestia, we could have easily relocated ourselves to Ponyville, to safety from the creatures that must now be surroundin' us even as we speak. Whatever it is that strengthens you, Miss Harmony, it's left us vulnerable. We're slim for the trolls' pickin's now, and for what?”

“Are you trying to tell me that you've lost faith in your 'gift,' Ms. Smith?”

“Not so much as I've gained a new thing to want more than the gift itself,” she murmured. “I want a reason—an explanation—for why it's taken a gift, instead of plan happenstance, for all of us to be teeterin' on the brink of both death and exhaustion. What is at stake here, Miss Harmony? I'm startin' to think that it's more than just the Apple Family. What yer battlin' here is more than trolls, and whatever it is—you've dragged it here from the same emptiness that your lonely sky-wanderin' has evidently bestowed you. What are you tryin' to prove with this lonely crusade you've pigeon-holed yourself in—or all of us in for that matter? Do you wish to find some invisible strength that's somehow been lost to you?”

“You want to know what strengthens me, Miss Smith?” Harmony suddenly flared—something that almost tasted of anger. She burned amber spotlights into the mare's graying mane. “Look around you. See your family, bask in their warmth, cherish it. You'll find you've always had the strength that's eluded me forever. It's a strength that those trolls out there have never known, even though they think they can rip it all asunder in a single charge. I'm sorry I can't satisfy you in one crazed speech, Ms Smith. I apologize for not being able to dissuade your fears. But what you are—in smiles and in frowns, in bedtime stories and in dinner conversation—is enough to help me do the task that lies before me. Someway, somehow—I promise—I will not compromise your family's safety. I won't... I won't...”

“I never once recall sayin' that I had fears for you to dissuade, child.” Granny Smith glanced at her sideways. “Only sympathy. Only sympathy, darlin'. If yer so bent on savin' this here family—and this here land—you've got to learn to come out of the skies that have been burnin' empty around you. You've got to come down and touch the ground, ya reckon?”

Harmony numbly hung off the edges of those words, like a scooter-clinging foal staring down at a farmhouse from a lone hilltop as all the lights in the world went out. Even if she would have said something before the haunting noises kicked in, it would have been something hollow, something empty, as she suddenly saw the legacy of her whole scavenging life.

The howling noises came from the southeast. In frightening swiftness, they curved around and galloped in warbling throngs along the west end of the Orchards. Halfway into the frosted night of waiting, the terror had finally descended. Winona's barks lit the room. Macintosh leaned lurchingly forward, his ears pricking as he gazed with sudden nervousness into the heart of darkness. Another warbling chant, and the two granddaughters in the den shot up as separate halves of the same gasping soul.

“M-Macky?!” Applejack blinked the last blissful threads of slumber away as she numbly trotted across the shuddering shadows. “Is it them? Is it really them?”

“Eeeyup,” the stallion shakingly managed. The metal of his spade clamored against his hooves as a pulsing heartbeat ricocheted across the room.

“Oh heavens.” Applejack stifled a whimper under the crashing waves of the yelping madness beyond. “Oh Epona, protect us...”

“Wh-what's the matter?” Apple Bloom trembled, nakedly awake in the wrinkled forelimbs of her grandmother. “Is it them? Is it them creatures?”

“Be still, Apple Bloom, darlin',” Granny Smith murmured with iron resolve. In a blink, she snuffed out the fireplace, casting the house into doubly thick shadows as the window panes rattled with the banshee screams from beyond. “Listen to what yer sister tells ya, ya hear?”

“Oh Granny,” Apple Bloom whimpered as her yellow face deflated under a cascade of fresh tears. “I'm scared... They sound absolutely horrible! I-I'm so scared...”

“I know, dear. Stay with us, darlin'. Stay close—AJ.”

“Y-yes, Granny?”

“Are all of the other doors to the house locked?”

“I... I-I think so. Big Mac?”

“Eeeyup.”

“Th-Then all I reckon that's left t-to do is barricade the p-porch and wait them out—”

“AJ, listen to them. There're four times as many as last time, darlin'. I don't think the doors can hold.”

“W-we could... Uhm... We could h-hold out in the kitchen. If we move all of the furniture into the circle—”

“AJ...”

“And if w-we just... j-just try to keep low and all quiet-like—”

“AJ, you've been strong for this family for so long.” Granny Smith spoke lovingly under the deathly screams collapsing in on that place like a cyclone. Everypony's ears rang between the punctuations of her gentle voice. Winona's barking dwindled to a whimpering dirge. “But this is somethin' that yer honest tenacity wasn't built for. It really should be another pony makin' the next decision.”

Applejack gulped. Clinging tremblingly to a likewise shuddering brother, she gazed across the room and bore into Harmony with vulnerable green eyes that no amount of bleeding in the Wasteland had prepared the time traveler for. “Miss Harmony... Please, sp-speak to us. What sh-should we do, sugarcube?” The floorboards shook. The portraits dangled and danced along the walls. The air reverberated with the demonic chants of several invisible shadows shuffling closer, closer, closer. “T-tell me how I can save m-my family, please.”

Harmony was standing at the far end of their gaze, and yet she wasn't there. She was floating on brown wings twenty-five years later, navigating a gigantic sinkhole that had consumed the lengths of the family's entire legacy. She was walking around to the far side of a miraculously preserved house. She rounded a corner. She saw bodies.

She saw bodies.

“The storm cellar,” the last pony murmured, inviting the gray ghost back into her numb lungs under the crumbling awakening to what she had to do next, to what the rest of them had to not do. “The storm cellar is... is your last bet.”

“The cellar?” Applejack gulped. Another wail of bloodlusting throats. Another jolt. Apple Bloom was sobbing now. “But Miss Harmony—”

“These creatures are not of this world—Not of this time,” Harmony snarled. “I cannot emphasize enough how much the Court of Canterlot rebukes them. But unlike the Court, I'm not about to let this family suffer for their incidental presence here. You are all ponies of the earth, Miss Applejack. So give yourselves to the earth. Let us go into the cellar. Let us go into the depths of your land. The trolls will want to follow us, but we won't let them. They don't deserve it; they've never worked for it. They can only envy it. It's the one thing they cannot fight for, but we can. Let's move now, Miss Applejack—before they kill us for our hesitance. And they will kill us, AJ. They will.”

Apple Bloom hiccuped, her face nuzzled into Granny Smith's embrace. The elder mare was staring at her two older grandchildren more than she was paying attention to the pegasus. As the world throttled to a maddening cacophony of hate around them, it would take the simplest of sputtering voices to open the door to a new chapter of desperation.

“V-very well, Miss Harmony.” Applejack found the strength to say. “You've done us all right so far.”

“Now do yourselves some more right.” Harmony firmly stared in her direction and motioned towards the blunt weapon in Macintosh's trembling grasp. “Give me the shovel.”

Applejack led the charge. The caravan was a floundering caterpillar of stumbling hooves; the whole family lurched and tripped over starlit grass, the entire earth shuddering beneath them from the waves upon waves of lurching leather feet closing in from all shadowed sides. The pale doors to the storm cellar lingered just beyond several stacks of impregnable hay, like an impromptu fortress built over weeks of desperate sweat and anxiety.

“What's yer pl-plan?” Applejack asked, gulping. “We keep Granny Smith and Apple Bloom inside while the rest of us form a defensive circle?”

“Something like that, sure,” Harmony murmured, her eyes pressed to the black orchards echoing horrifically beyond.

“Yer words have stuck to me like icicles, Miss Harmony,” the orange mare briefly whimpered as Macintosh jumped ahead of the pack and fumbled with the cellar's doorhandles. “I never saw myself as the type to spill blood, to kill for the sake of stayin' alive. And I secretly hoped I never would.” She gulped and gazed at the “clerk” with trembling lips. “Please tell me it'll have been worth it—That it'll have been worth savin' this farm and its reputation for.”

“I can't pretend to tell you anything, AJ,” Harmony somberly said. She glanced over at a tear-stained Apple Bloom perched atop the wobbling Smith. The child's crimson mane floundered and flew as she twisted her panicked face every which way to ascertain the locations of the incoming nightmares. “I never wanted the ruination of your farm. But I didn't want this blood bath all the same. Whatever happens—you and Big Macintosh must do what I say. Do you understand?”

“Y-yes, I d-do, Harmony.” Applejack surrendered to the gray shadows wafting off of her, jumping as another siren of sadistic screams warbled their way. “I-I trust you, sugarcube. Oh Goddess help me, I trust you.”

Harmony said nothing.

With a gust of dead grass, the cellar doors finally yanked open. After a shuddering breath, Macintosh whistled shrilly towards the rest of his family. He gently held Granny Smith's hoof as she limped down the dark, dark steps after a briskly jogging Apple Bloom. A whimpering Winona scampered into the safe crevice of darkness as the little foal stopped halfway down the stairs and hissed desperately for the elder to follow her, to hold her—so she could hold her back under those rising tremors that only intensified once they had billowed down into the claustrophobic chamber of the earth.

“Applejack!” Granny Smith called up from beneath the deafening bedlam. “It's darker than sin down here! Do you remember where the lanterns are hangin'?”

“Oh blast it all!” Applejack sneered under a panicked breath. “Miss Harmony, this will only take a second.” She literally flew down the steps and into the cold blackness below. “Wait up, Granny! I'll light it in a jiffy!”

The time traveler's answer to this was a spastic lurch, upon the end of which the rusted spade in her grip inexplicably fell down the shadowed cellar steps after her. “Whoops—Friggin' A. Hey, Mister Macintosh—would you be a gentlecolt and fetch that for me?”

The red stallion glanced nervously at Harmony, at the shuddering shadows hellishly blanketing the horizon, then down the cold cellar steps. With a polite nod of his blonde mane, he trotted down, bent low, and picked the handle of the spade up in strong teeth. The slamming noise that emanated above and behind him stabbed his green eyes wide, just in time for him to stare stupidly into the sudden glow of the cellar's orange light.

Applejack stood, frozen, her forelimbs having just lit the dangling lanterns beside Granny Smith and Apple Bloom. “M-Macky?” she stammered, blinking icily. “What gives? Where is...” She gasped, her orange face exploding as she suddenly darted up the steps. “Miss Harmony!”

Macintosh breathlessly spun as Applejack soared up past him, slamming her hooves, her snout, the full muscled brunt of her neck into the solid wooden door suddenly burying the hapless quartet of the Apple Family.

“Nnngh! Miss Harmony, no! Ya can't do this on yer lonesome, darlin'! Ya just can't! You'll die! For the love of Elektra, let me and Macintosh out!”

She pounded and pounded until her limbs stung with the same ferocity as her lungs. In a paralyzing shudder, she glanced her brother's way and motioned with her blonde head. Macintosh nodded back. Dropping the shovel with a loud clatter, the heavy stallion charged thunderously up the steps and slammed the full brunt of his muscular red body into the flimsy wooden door.

To everypony's horrified gasps, it still didn't budge. Macintosh tried again and again, but soon he stopped—gazing along with his sister as the starlit cracks in the cellar lid's frame were blocked with massive objects from beyond.

With a breathless grunt, Harmony finished tossing the last of several heavy haystacks onto the body of the sealed door. Her Entropan body allowed her to construct a blockade that no normal pony—much less four of them—could ever hope to dislodge. Under the cresendo of the bleeding night, she backtrotted and shouted towards the frame:

“Stay in there, Miss Applejack! This is not your war! This bloodshed is not meant for you! It never has been!”

“Let us help you!” A muffled voice drawled desperately from the womb of the earth. “They'll rip you apart, Harmony! You can't do it on yer own!”

“It's not a matter of what I can or can't do!” Harmony shouted back. The rumbling world shook, so that she danced numbly a half-meter above the ground, unworthy of coming down. “It's a matter of what I must! Stay with your family, stay with—”

The rumbling suddenly stopped. A gray vapor cooled the throbbing void of the night, cascading around her with the haunting grace of Wasteland snow. Harmony spun about, and she froze.

Leather bodies, dozens upon dozens of leather bodies: over a hundred trolls stood in a stone-still crescent moon of deadly glares all around the cellar's entrance, bearing splintery weapons and flickering red torches, gazing and drooling at the chronologically displaced meat suddenly plopped down in the ravenous midst of them. The monsters stared—all of the monsters stared into her amber eyes, reflecting a kaleidoscope of so many years of running and fleeing from these bloodmongering seeds of chaos.

For once in an ashen eternity, the last pony stayed put.

“Applejack...” Apple Bloom whimpered and sauntered up to her sister, tugging on her legs. “Wh-what's Miss Harmony doing? Is she going to be alright?”

Macintosh shuddered, his face stuck in a permanent wretch. Winona cowered in the corner, her canine eyes shrunken as her tail swished-swished in sad arcs across the dusty floor. Granny Smith fell into a shroud of silence, her gray eyes locked onto a shadowed truth beyond the tremblings heads of her inferiors.

“Is M-Miss Harmony going to be okay?” Apple Bloom repeated with a helpless sniffle.

“I... I-I don't know,” Applejack spoke. Trotting back from the dark cellar door and the horrible sounds suddenly sirening from beyond, she fell down to her knees and scooped the sobbing foal into her forelimbs. For the first time in her young adult life, she couldn't tell if she was being honest or not. “I just d-don't know.”

Chapter Seventeen: And the Earth Gives Back

“Do you know who I am?”

It was an honest question, even if from a dishonest pony. There, staring into the mouths of gleeful death—mouths that lusted after her and drooled for her—Harmony remembered that the only honest sound in the whole history of existence was a scream.

She didn't yell; she murmured before the bent wall of wooden blades, torches, teeth, and pale beady eyes, eyes, eyes. If they feared her, they would hear her. If they didn't fear her, they would soon. She knew what they didn't know, cherished what they didn't know, and preached what they didn't know. She was a copper torpedo that had been slipped beneath the blankets of reverse-time to suddenly and splashedly explode this moment of Entropan clarity before the quivering limbs of them. For the first time in eons, the last pony hadn't run from those cretins, and so it was with a ghastly breath that she finally came to realize just how incredibly stupid those harbingers of chaos were.

They were weapons of the past; she was a wound of the future; and her twenty-five years of ash-tempered weight suddenly and numbingly outscored their millennia of stone imprisoned slumber. So, it was an honest question, and as she crackled under the sound of it, she found herself repeating it—or else it repeated itself. Either way, the divine interrogation rumbled righteously through the torchlit air, harnessed by her calm features as she slowly trotted towards the abominations, her thick legs guarding the barricaded cellar door and the quivering family hidden beneath—and her anchor.

“Do you know who I am?”

They shook and quivered with spring tight muscles of leathery hatred. At any moment's spit, they would be upon her—thrashing and impaling her, or so they thought. They leaned on this festering crutch, and Harmony brazenly kicked it out from beneath them with the ever patient hum of her cold voice.

“I am the end of ponies. I have no name, for I don't need one. You may not know my face, but you will. Someday you will chase me and you will hunt me and you will hate me as much as I hate you now. You will stab me, you will make me bleed, and maybe—one fateful stormfront—you will finally kill me. But this is not that day. This is now, this is beautiful, and you are ruining it.”

Her eyes glistened like amber firebrands. A tremor ran up her spine and billowed a threatening mange through her copper coat as the next few words came out in an ashen hiss.

“This land is not your land, this earth is not your earth, and I am not going to let you have this family's home. But you can have me. You can have a whole lot of me. But I promise you that you're not going to like the taste. After so many years of outrunning you little turds, the only home I have is in pain.”

Before a phalanx of blinking pale eyes, the last pony's reflection melted in the center of them. Her wings stretched limply as she slunk down to her haunches and raised both hooves outward as if she was in free fall. With the rattling breath of an extinct species, she effortlessly beckoned the army of trolls gathered before her.

“So come at me; let's go home together.”

For the first time, they wrenched their eyes off her. They exchanged briefly confused faces. Dull and brutish minds had surfaced suddenly to the bloodthirsty shells that flimsily covered them.

“Come at me,” she repeated, her tongue like a dagger.

That did it. The fangs returned to the starlit air. With torches flailing and claws glistening, the trolls marched, bounded, and throttled as one surging missile of muscle towards her petite form.

Her frown was a titanium shield. “Come at m—” The first fist flew diagonally across her face. The second pounded mercilessly into her shoulder. The third yanked her black mane like it was a flag and flung her helpless snout into a blistered, bone-hard knee. Two clawed swipes ricocheted off her belly. A pair of legs thundered into her lungs. A torch slammed hotly into her face, followed by the full splintering length of an oaken club—and then three whole bodies of leather plowed straight into her, so that she bounded and tumbled and slammed weightedly into a collapsing crate of oats across the yard.

At the end of the pummeling, the gang of leathery creatures whooped and howled victoriously, kicking cold dirt in a circle upon her lifeless corpse. Several monsters beat the quivering earth with their clubs—and their companions as well—as a drunken array of grins filled the festering aura between their clamoring, torchlit bodies. In a solid train of leather, they then lurched hungrily towards the hay-stack covered sight of the cellar door.

It was with an icy grimness that all one hundred of them lurched to a halt, their scrappy ears pricked by a shuffling sound behind them. The torchlight pivoted as their blinking faces did, gazing in stupid breathlessness while the earth suddenly stirred from underneath them.

Harmony was hobbling back onto her limbs, gaining the feeling back into her extremities with each throbbing second. She was dizzy, she was groaning, she was disheveled—she was alive, and there wasn't a single scrape or bruise on the entirety of her copper body.

The last pony shuddered, her copper eyes returning to the flickering twitch of reality. Just as she expected, not a single solitary blow from the trolls had broken her Entropan skin. But what she did not expect—what she hadn't planned to happen, what she was suddenly and joyously reveling in—were the waves of pain surging through her projected soul self.

The trolls didn't give her another solitary second to quietly contemplate this. At the instant that she stood up on four hooves, they were on her again. Sharp blades of splintery wood flew. What should have hewn her shoulder in half merely sent her stumbling to her belly. Three rows of trolls pounced on her back, digging their serrated fangs into her flank—only to feel their teeth jutting bloodily back into their quivering mouths.

There was a fountain of yelps, and two more rows of trolls rushed in to replace the first wave. They kicked and stabbed and pelted the ragdolling pegasus with every poisoned inch of muscle granted them by a heartless chaotician forever lost to stone. When the brutal melee pounded and lashed the last pony into its third maniacal minute, the tallest of the gang marched firmly into the violent circle, raised a torch up high into the farm's air, and shoved it deep into her twitching gut. The blaze that ensued was blinding, and several stupid bystanders shrieked as their own limbs caught ablaze from the ringleader's audacity. They rolled and howled in the dirt while the rest of the creatures stood in a circle of filth, chanting mumbled curses into the blaze between them.

Then something happened that could make even a demon gasp. A shadow stood up from within the tongues of flame. The trolls stumbled back—mesmerized—as the copper pegasus effortlessly stepped out of the dancing plasma. She flickered cold wings, trailing briefly with green plumes. Harmony breathed and breathed and breathed again. She swallowed deeply, and she waited until the green haze flickered back to nothingness. When she opened her eyes, she was still there, she was still suspended in the past, and she was still hurting.

She hurt. After two days of hovering above the gorgeous garden of Equestrian yesteryear—juggling the shameful indulgences of a land far too fresh and green to ever belong to her—the last pony had unraveled the numb blanket of Entropan glory covering her body, and she opened herself once more to pain. The clamoring army in front of her could just as well have been a sea of rusted weathervanes, an ocean of green cutting knives. They bounced off her all the same—only now she could feel the ice cold kiss of deadly claws that were raking against her immutable flesh.

She allowed herself to feel it. She needed to feel the pain, because it reminded her of all those gray years when only her fear saved her from death, but not from the wounds. She remembered all of those weak moments of the bleeding and the sobbing when the best she ever could do was run from the things that hated her. She recalled a stormfront—a billowing strobe of lights that danced beneath her hooves as she stood upon the ceiling of the world and screamed all of her hatred into that eternal twilight.

For the first time since she arrived there, the last pony felt pain, and she remembered... she remembered what it meant to feel angry. And the smirk that it summoned back to her copper lips was something that could shatter diamonds.

“Princess Entropa,” she murmured in the deadly silence of the exultation. Her wings retracted—both physically and spiritually—so that she lowered her hooves righteously to that living, loving earth. “Princess Entropa, bless you, I am finally strong enough.”

The trolls doubled around her, tripled. Their anger was endless, their stupidity and pride reinforced like iron spokes.

In a timeless grin, the smoldering pegasus breathed all of them in before breathing out, “You want blood?” Her face solidified in a divine snarl as she rocketed towards the leathery mass of them. “I shall give you blood!”

The trolls exploded. They exploded, billowing outwards in a spray of flailing bodies as the pony flew mercilessly through them, raining the pristine farmland with a shower of screaming shadows. In a single breath, they pounced on her once more, carving invisible lines into a body that refused them, but sang with their pain and their hatred all the same.

Harmony's screams were like Octavia's strings, echoing torturously with the thousands upon thousands of dead equine souls whom she had never had the grace to meet—until now. She sang back into their leathery skulls with the iron-hoofed rage of twenty-five Goddess-forsaken years, and the eight lonely winters of foalhood before that had so painfully prepped her for this—for this dance, for this righteous earthquake against the mound of chaotic weaponry that the apathetic slings of fate had flung at the Apple Family, not knowing that it would instead be taunting her.

All of that pain, she shoved back into the trolls' drooling maws, breaking jaws and shattering bone to make a new music that gave meaning to the hapless murmur of the quivering night. Harmony had become a creature of destruction herself. She was worse than the trolls, she was a troll. She was the time-forgotten and cataclysmically crowned queen of trolls, a heretic from the future come down to earth to corral the sins of the past into the gray misery of tomorrow, where a new magic would be born unto horror and darkness. There, beyond the ashen curtains of fate, she and she alone would wield control over the veil of twilight, and spring the warming curse of light back onto the damnable peons of chaos forevermore.

Somewhere in the hellish melee, a line of leathery muscle flung her—barreling—through a splintery wall of the Apple family's barn. She stumbled briefly in a fountain of red splinters, her body bobbing up and down through a baptismal pool of agony. Her Entropan nerve endings sputtered green flame and retracted with a phantom laughter.

“Hah hah hah—You call that 'barn-storming?'” She chuckled and she spit into the advancing waves of hatred. “Give me a reason to be impressed.”

Her wings flung her forward at the end of her words, soaring her across the acreage of her anchor to Honesty. She didn't realize she had hit anything until a splash of living leather cascaded around her and slammed her into the crumbling face of an abandoned brown silo that lurched overhead. She screamed out loud—something that hung off of the collarbone of masochistic hilarity—and she wore their clamping jaws like earrings as she spiraled, flung her hooves across a sea of bleeding faces, and rammed her spotless copper snout into another throng of fools. Immutable.

“Nnnnghh—Hahahaha! So... nnngh... so one day—” She uppercutted a wave of monsters and plowed through another floundering mass of screeching victims. “—you got up off your mangy butts, grabbed a bunch of sticks and decided to become the legions of chaos! Pffft! Give me a break!” She bucked two trolls into a crashing wagon behind her and laughed as the crumbling splinters snuffed out the last of the torch blazes, flinging the heated bloodbath into the cold shroud of night where only her eyes burned brightly. Immutable. “You couldn't even scare a foal into hiding,” she lied and divulged truth all the same. She was everything and nothing but heartache. The pony let them hear the agonized breath of it at the end of her cackling. “Discord was only kidding when he enlisted you. How pathetic; to be the biggest joke in the history of the world.” She laughed at them. She laughed at them.

The dark world melted twice over. They came at her full force. They rebounded, redoubled—then rebounded and redoubled again at the crest of each of her blood-curdling taunts, curdling with their blood. But they did not care; they did not think. They piled on her and piled on her again and recircled and restrategized and re-charged every single time that she flung them back onto their sorry hindquarters. So long as they bled—and she didn't—the trolls did not let up, though at any stuttering moment she could very well have righteously snuffed the entirety of them out.

No, she would not kill them. They did not deserve death. That kind of peace would be reserved solely for ponies. She knew this, and with every screaming blow, she preserved this. She was the end of ponies; death stopped at her. In a cyclone of screams and breaking bones, the only thing she gave them room for was hope, something that they had never been gracious enough to allow her, and whether they knew it or not... they would suffer for that transgression, a transgression of the future.

Screaming like the Harmony's boiler into the madness of the night, the last pony would not grant them any penance.

The Apple family shuddered and quaked under the endless tumult of the screaming world above—all but one of them.

Granny Smith clung to a metal rack beneath a teetering lantern. She gazed quietly with gray eyes into the roof of the cellar, her face calmly locked to the sightless soul fighting for the safety of all four ponies. There was a righteousness to those banshee screams, something that glued together the cracks between her wrinkles, something that she had somehow been waiting for all of these last few lingering years of fitful decay.

In a calm breath, the elder gazed at the rest of her family. Macintosh was pacing endlessly across the far end of the cellar, nearly tripping over a murmuring Winona as his crimson muscles twitched and bulged at the end of each punctuated thud from above. With pent up masculine anger, he randomly kicked at a wall or a teetering barrel, shooting iron daggers at the terminally shut cellar door located at the stairs above them. His teeth were grinding as his heart palpiated through his fine coat, and neither of those anxious habits could bring this holocaustal situation to a righteous halt.

Apple Bloom was a quivering mess. In various fitful bits of shivers, she nearly trembled herself into exhausted unconsciousness. Every time, either the loud noises from the shaking earth above or the pounding heartbeat of her older sister would wake her once again to the naked misery of that endless wait. She clung all the more to the orange limbs enshrouding her, her pained amber eyes locked onto the flakes of dust and ash falling forlornly from the shuddering ceiling of the cellar.

And Applejack—she murmured and murmured endlessly. Breathless prayers lit the cold lengths of the lantern-lit room. From a billion miles away, her orange lips kissed the white headstones that had long reflected her blanching face, that had beckoned her on the flimsy tails of bitter memories to be strong. Sitting there, her flesh and blood but a cramped horse-trot away, she could do nothing but wait... and be helpless. She could have been stripped of all her skin and muscle, and still she wouldn't feel half as vulnerable as she did then—huddled around herself and Apple Bloom like twin fetuses awash in the womb of the earth, and she couldn't tell if that would come to her aid either.

Then, several agonized minutes into the madness—or several breathless hours—the noise and bedlam finally, finally came to a stop. The silence was like an avalanche: it numbed the claustrophobic subterranean room as much as it blessed it with tranquility.

Apple Bloom was the first to stir, lifting her reddened face from a sister's damped forelimb to gaze bitterly at the cellar door. Big Macintosh's pacing game to a scraping stop, his lips agape in mute wonderment. Granny Smith said nothing; she was still waiting, though this time her gaze was on her older granddaughter and not on a certain visitor from Canterlot.

Setting Apple Bloom down, Applejack breathlessly sauntered up to the base of the cellar steps. She spoke with all the words of the frightened family, in that she said absolutely nothing. Strolling up the flight of stone hoof-holds, she squinted at the creases between the solid doorframe. She could barely make it out, but there was a faint golden glow from beyond the wooden boards. At first she thought it was torchlight, except that the glow suddenly quadrupled after a large object noisily slid out of the way from blocking the fissures in the door. Then, there was nothing: no movement, no noise, nothing but the glow.

Applejack gulped. She glanced back over her shoulder. The farm mare looked at Apple Bloom's frightened face, at Macintosh's confused expression, then at Granny Smith's calm gray eyes. There was a nodding of a wrinkled head, and that was just the excuse Applejack needed to do what came next.

With a slight grunting breath, the farm mare effortlessly pushed the cellar doors open. She was instantly blinded by a familiarly warming sight. As her green eyes focused, she stepped out into glistening sunlight. Several things came into focus, several twisted, ugly, white things. She gasped in a rediscovered horror to be standing in the center of a sea of stone bodies—murderous bug-eyed trolls frozen forever in a helpless flight from the Celestial orb rising over the far reaches of the eastern green orchards. As the seconds peeled into a flustered minute, Applejack realized that the stones weren't moving, and so long as there was a sun in the sky—they never would.

She stepped out, blinking dazedly, her heart pulsing sharply with each dart of her eyes as Big Macintosh, Granny Smith, and a trembling Apple Bloom nervously rose to the earth's surface behind her. Winona scampered out and trotted breathlessly across the violent swirls in the earth beneath the granite objects.

Every troll statue was covered in bruises, in cuts, in burns, even one or two of them with granite parts spilling out of their flesh. But all of them had their eyes open. All of them were in one piece. All of them were alive up until the moment of fateful freezing. But there was no sign of—

“Miss Harmony?!” Apple Bloom was the first to call out—a mewling sound.

Applejack spun and hissed at her. “Sugarcube! Can it! There could still be—” She froze from witnessing a copper shadow seated in her peripheral. With a gasp, she spun about and saw the messenger from Canterlot. She ran up on numb legs, her hooves kicking up splinters of shattered weapons and burnt ashes. “Miss Harmony... Miss Harmony, are you—... D-did they... Y-you...” Her voice came to a stop as her legs did. She stood suddenly upon the edge of disbelief.

Harmony took a deep breath, squatting meditatively with a slight flicker of her black tail as she gazed deeply into the welcoming kiss of the Eastern sunrise. “This is beautiful too. I only forgot because I chose to. Pleasure is a lot like pain, really. They're both words—but when you turn them into screams, they suddenly become powerful.” She shuddered, and something on the edges of her cheeks curved, like a copper smile. “Oh dear Celestia—I wish I would never have to fly from this either.”

“You... You...” Applejack stumbled. She reached a hoof out, but was too afraid to touch the pegasus' shoulder, as if the world might implode if she did. “You t-took them all on? And yet y-you didn't k-kill them?”

“I thought of it.” There was something like a chuckle. Harmony sighed, basking. “But then I realized that if I started weeding out their numbers, they would split up—and many of them would run back into the woods.” She exhaled sharply. “Nnnngh—No. I couldn't give them that satisfaction. So, I ticked them off. And, like all trolls, they're either all in or all out. I made sure it was the former, all the way to dawn. Celestia's glorious light did all the real work.” Another soft smile. “Just like it was supposed to all along.”

“You...” Applejack ran a hoof over her blonde mane as her features melted with a sensation that had been lost to her since the day she last buried somepony she loved. “Th-there's not even a sc-scratch on you. Good heavens, H-Harmony, h-how could that b-be...?”

“Persistence, Miss Applejack.” Harmony finally turned around. She bore a placid expression, like white stone reflecting white stone. “It's something that trolls are good at—so much so that they are blind to when a pony happens to use it against them. And now look at them.” She gazed boredly at the dozens upon dozens of stone shapes littering the otherwise immaculate farmland around her. “They're as useful as they'll ever be. It's a fitting end for creatures who have never given to the earth.” She finished with a sparkling grin, soft on the edges. “Don't you think?”

“Oh darlin'...” Applejack finally collapsed. She draped herself over Harmony's shoulders like a shroud and shook fresh tears into her, the mare's first tears in years of stubborn strength and fight, all dammed up for a moment of glorious relief, a moment like this... a warm moment. “I thought I had lost y'all. Oh thank Gultophine, I-I th-thought I h-h-had lost y'all...”

Harmony calmly raised a hoof to the mare's face. “Shhhh... Miss Applejack...” She smiled. Two days of telling lies melted under the weight of this divinely honest exhale, weathering a pain for once that was not her own. “A wise pony once told me that there was no use in crying. There is still much work that needs to be done. That's what I'm here for... and that's what you're here for. Now that the night is over, what do you say?”

Applejack sniffled. She looked bravely into the pegasus' face, and after several shuddering breaths she shouldered her emotions and bravely uttered: “Y... Y-Y... Y-Yeeeeha...” A crackling grimace of a grin, a lasting pair of tears: she cuddled her face briefly against the curve of Harmony's hoof for the final few breaths of healing that she so desperately needed.

Harmony took the fleeting moment to glance past Applejack's shoulder. She spotted Apple Bloom giggling under tears of her own. She saw a confused but elated Macintosh sporting a lopsided smirk. She even spotted a barking Winona and her stupid grin. And then she saw Granny Smith, and Granny Smith saw her. The two mares—lives separated by eons—joined their curved lips into one nebulous smile, so that the merit of the moment shined on the elder pony just as it shined on the last pony in turn.

“So then, you are a gift.” The uttered breath was as quiet as a prayer.

Harmony didn't even need to hear it from that distance. On iron-wrought legs, she stood up and hoisted Applejack along with her into the orange-blossoming sunrise.

“It's a wonder to be alive.”

Chapter Eighteen: A Heart Unburied

“Here's... nnngh... the l-last one, Macky!” Applejack hissed as she and the time traveler jointly hoisted a final stone troll into a giant wooden crate piled to the brim with the ghastly white figures. “Don't leave a single crack in the lid!”

“Eeeyup.” The red stallion nodded. He slid a wooden top over the grand box. Drawing from a few nails stuck between his lips, the muscular stallion proceeded to hammer shut the crown of the lid, shrouding the horrid contents inside into perpetual darkness. As he did so, Apple Bloom and Granny Smith marched up—towing a thick black tarp in their mouths. When the box was finally sealed, the two ponies hoisted the dark canvas over the container, blocking all possible light in identical fashion to four previous crates that lingered beside the red barn behind them.

Applejack rubbed a mat of sweat from her brow and stood back from the assembly line of boxed trolls. She fanned herself with her hat in the dim morning light and breathily managed, “What do ya reckon we do with 'em now? The soonest some idiot even thinks of takin' em out of these here boxes is the soonest chance they get to be exposed to twilight again. Nopony deserves the nightmare we've all just been through.”

“There's only one thing to do,” Harmony said. In a gentle sway, she strolled down the line of blanketed boxes, brushing them with a copper hoof. “We politely gain the attention of Ponyville's police, we tell them exactly what we've got here, and we send these frozen trolls on their merry way to Canterlot.”

Apple Bloom and Macintosh shared a violent gasp. Granny Smith merely squinted thoughtfully. Applejack—naturally—was a frazzled, spitting mess.

“Are y'all out of yer mind?! Celestia will take one look at them things and she'll slam the 'Act of Accord' mumbo jumbo on top of us!”

“Miss Applejack—”

“We'll be ruined! We'll have our land ripped out from under us! We'll—”

“AJ.” Harmony smiled sweetly at the silenced farm filly. “The 'Act of Accord' only holds merit over the harboring of living weapons of chaos. As you well know, these things are hardly in any condition to do anypony harm. They are just as helplessly lifeless as you first found them when you dug your well. My superiors at the Royal Court of Canterlot will be overjoyed to learn that you discovered several specimens and stopped them from becoming a threat to future civilizations.”

Applejack's face hung between a frown and a smirk. “They only got all stiff and harmless because you gave 'em a lickin' they'll never forget.”

“Then, if it pleases you, tell the Canterlotlian guard all about that when they come to transport these to the Chaos Dungeons,” Harmony said. In a warm and blossoming breath, the time traveler fought the joyful tears to say: “And then, mayhaps, Princess Celestia would... w-would care to have audience with the one clerk responsible for giving such a 'lickin'.” Her smile was porcelain in the suddenly silken simplicity of the moment.

Applejack smiled back. “Yes, Miss Harmony. Yes, I reckon she would want that.”

“When do we get the guards to come here and truck all these nasty critters away?” Apple Bloom suddenly spoke up.

“When else?” Harmony trotted over and ruffled the foal's fountain of red hair. “The same time as when your clients come to cart away all your apples!”

“All... our apples...?” Applejack murmured, blinking, as if the weight of the day was joyously finding its way back into her eye sockets.

Harmony spun and grinned at her. “And we will have apples to deliver by that time... won't we?”

Applejack gazed at her whole family, until one face—a gray face—was the first to nod encouragingly back. Straightening the cowgirl hat on her blonde head, the filly smirked the pegasus' way. “So, Harmony, expert on trolls...” Applejack winked. “Think you have enough of that there gumption in you to be an expert on apple buckin' once more?”

Harmony grinned wide. “So long as I have my galloping marker on the ground.”

“Ya sure do!” Applejack motioned authoritatively with her snout. “Macky, grab a wagon! Granny, Apple Bloom—get some baskets! We're gonna need the whole family on this one!”

The morning was electric.

Under buzzing cicadas and melodic birdsong, five ponies threaded the apple orchards with agile precision akin to a steam engine. Big Macintosh pulled a large wooden cart full of empty baskets. On pattering hooves, Apple Bloom moved the light containers off the wagon and onto the grass where she and Granny Smith gently laid them underneath the branches of multiple fruit trees. Then, once all of the baskets were lined up, Applejack spotted them and gave Harmony a whistle.

The copper pegasus extended her wings, galloped, and took to the air. With a sharp inhale, she twisted sideways and bounced from tree trunk to tree trunk as Applejack ran beneath her, calling out whenever she missed a few apples in one or two of the targets. Even when Harmony did have to make a return flight, the entire process was lightning quick. Before the noonday sun rose, a good half of the western orchards had already been shaken free of fruit.

The whole procedure was a rapid exercise—but no single pony bore an unnatural brunt of legwork. Applejack, of course, sweated a great deal from having to guide the pegasus in mid gallop, but she had plenty of time to rest in between apple bucking. The process of loading and unloading baskets between rows of trees consumed enough moments for breathing, and when it was time for another row of fruit to be shaken, Applejack was clearly as energized and unstoppable as her helpful pegasus companion.

Harmony reveled in the process. The weight of two days' pretense and anguish flew off her like leathery bodies rolling against her wings. With the rising of the sun came a rising of her spirit, as if for a brief and undeniable moment in time she belonged somewhere. A foalish sensation fluttered in her heart, and she felt for a brief moment as if she had just launched the Harmony on its maiden voyage all over again.

With every blink and every gasp of her twisted flight against the rows upon rows of trees, it was easy to forget that there was a horrible future awaiting everything that was. It was easy to forget that she was a citizen of twilight, and not of the glorious rays of the Sun glinting off her copper feathers. It was easy to forget that though the immutable hooves of time consoled her, strengthened her, told her during the trollish melee that the Apple Family would not perish while all of their bodies were inside the cellar—including Macintosh's—they still would someday meet their end in that forsaken ditch all the same. And yet, simultaneously, the last pony realized that as much as she could not salvage the future, she could very easily salvage this... and savor it.

This day, this moment, this heated breath amongst ponies in the gentle green sway of leaves and grass: it wasn't just a memory that festered in an unsavory corner of Harmony's lonesome mind. It wasn't some fabrication, a dream that the last pony had concocted for herself in an effort to lend credence to the lighting of a rainbow signal after every other stormfront.

This moment was dynamic; this moment was new. This was a moment filled with sweat and hope and joy, and for once the last pony could find an excuse to live in it—as the earth ponies did so naturally. For the first and only episode in the history of time, the fossils of the past and a ghost of the future were sharing an event, and there was no need for shame, not even a whiff of it. Between apple bucking, when her hooves touched the ground—Harmony squirmed in the delightful thick of it.

As the farming family got more and more acquainted with the unorthodox apple bucking process, they decided to try something more ambitious. With Harmony's approval, they doubled the number of baskets and fashioned a runway of apple tree three times as long as what the pegasus had been ricocheting her hooves against previously.

Applejack took a deep breath and got an extra running start. When Harmony took off this time, she mentally counted an entire three minutes before landing back on the ground—upon which her projected self teetered in monumental dizziness. Applejack was quick to catch her, and in a shared glance both mares giggled ridiculously. Gazing back at her hoofwork, Harmony was mesmerized to find a previous half-an-hour's work done in a single stride. After they gathered the apple baskets, they returned with even greater vigor, and soon Harmony would be sky-bucking longer and longer distances, spilling the air with the cascade of glistening apples.

The noonday Sun burned like a hot rock skipping across a green lake. For a brief respite, Granny Smith wheeled out a cart of glasses filled with apple juice. Applejack and Macintosh were relieved to have something to quench their thirsts. Apple Bloom sipped happily in between childish ramblings about one crusade or another. Harmony... was positively intoxicated with her first sampling of fruit drink in a quarter of a century. It took several chuckling sets of hooves to wrench her away from the table so as to start the next row of apple bucking.

The five ponies' harvest stampeded clockwise into the hilly northern section of the Acres. Harmony bounced so hard against the wobbling apple trees that she almost feared hurdling herself into a tunnel of green flames without warning. She kept her ears and eyes on Applejack. The orange mare was her center, the fulcrum upon which her entire day hinged. And every time she looked at her—even in a blurred glance from branch level—the orange pony was always smiling, always supportive, always faithful... and strong.

Harmony started to understand why the Apple Family never crumbled immediately after the tragic loss of Apple Shine and Orange Blossom. The freckle-faced farm mare—the one outstanding middle child that could—was the very epitome of earth ponydom. She lived in complete service to the world, and to those who lived on the face of Elektra's hoofcarving. It no longer bothered Harmony that Applejack had been so viciously spiteful to her when she first landed upside down in one of the apple trees two days' prior. A self-righteous pony could easily be forgiven, so long as her heart had been hardened by pure sincerity rather than bitter pride.

When the hundreds of rows of orchards whittled down to dozens of rows of orchards, Applejack insisted that Harmony “take a breather.” The three divided the work as they proceeded to buck the trees in a more conventional style. As an afternoon sun began its melting slide towards the western horizon, Granny Smith wheeled something else out. But instead of glasses of apple juice, the lime-coated elder provided a record player. With a liberal cranking, the sounds of Stallionivarius warbled through the air, slathering a cushion of melodic softness onto an already cooling day. Harmony beamed, feeling her projected self become more energized—if that was even possible. Applejack for once found herself humming to her grandmother's “old-fashioned” tunes, using it as cadence for every tree she shot her rear hooves into. Macintosh shoved aside the large baskets being filled by the minute, smirking amusedly as a giggling Apple Bloom stood on his backside and attempted an awkward dance to the darting strings coming from the record.

The Sun drifted further West, and the five roaming ponies dwindled to three. The blue sky turned into a copper haze, matching the dirt-flecked coat of the time traveler as she soared her way down one last row of trees, kicking them methodically and watching as the last of several apples fell. By then, even her projection's “invulnerable” lungs were panting. The joys and jolts of the long hard work day had pulled at all the corners of her mind, so that every time she closed her eyes she was seeing blurring orchards instead of blinding ash. For what it was worth, she counted that as her greatest blessing yet, her greatest gift.

She promised herself to thank the earth once the heavenly hours had long run out.

“Nnngh!” Harmony breathlessly rammed her rear hooves up into the millionth green apple tree. Several familiar thuds kissed the air as the baskets beneath her filled up. She took a long, meditative breath, and backtrotted to take a look at her work. Her flank bumped into a large wooden object. Without thinking, the pegasus instinctually spun and kicked the “bark” behind her. A dull, hollow noise rang into the air, and Harmony blinked to see the crumpled side of an abandoned silo wobbling torturously behind her, its structure already dented by several trollish shapes that had been flung into it the morning prior.

“Watch it, copper-bottom!” Applejack chirped as she and Macintosh trotted up over a hill in the crimson sunset. Shuffling down to the barnside, they balanced a large basket full of bright apples between them. “No sense in yer kickin' an old building that's done nothing to you!”

Harmony gave exhausted, cock-eyed glances between Applejack and the ten meter tall silo. “Does this dang thing even serve a purpose?”

“Aside from bein' the oldest structure still standin' on the farm?” Applejack shrugged, then motioned towards the precariously leaning silo. “I reckon most outsiders think it should have been razed long ago. And they might be a bit right about that—But that silo's been around for a lot longer than the whole lot of us combined. Livin' on a farm has its fair share of sentiment; it gallops hoof-in-hoof with tradition. But, ever since yer righteous troll thrashin' gave it a new cutie mark—eheheh—I reckon we just might put the thing out of its misery, but not today.”

“Do all earth ponies hold value in old things?” Harmony asked, smirking.

“So long as they have character, darn tootin'!” Applejack winked. She nudged her brother, and the two of them coordinatedly lowered the large basket of red fruit. “Say, Harmony, why don't ya have a look-see beyond that hill over yonder?”

“What? Do we finally get to buck the last of the orchards?”

“Did I or did I not tell ya to take a gander?”

Harmony gulped. She pattered lightly up the hill and glanced over the huge expanse of Sweet Apple Acres stretching beyond the crest of the northernmost rise. Her amber eyes twitched to see an entire field full of green leaves, brown bark... and not a single red flash of fruity skin to be had. A hot breath filled her lungs, and she exhaled all her doubt into the scarlet bands of the bowing Sun.

“Well, I guess that means I can stop being a living pinball.”

“It means you can stop, period! We all can stop!” Applejack leaned against the basket of apples, smirking. “We did it, Harmony. Another crazy year, another crazy harvest, and another crazy last-second miracle. I swear by all that is holy, I am not going to let next year's Apple Buck Season go to the dogs again!”

“Miss Applejack.” Harmony looked at her, smiling. But after a few blinks, something cold and deathly pulled the edges of her lips down. “I-I'm sure you won't have to... to w-worry about Apple Buck Season next year...”

“No reason to be lookin' all glum, girl!” Applejack exclaimed. “If you wanna show up for the next harvest—I seriously doubt that any of us would turn down yer assistance.” She cleared her throat. “And that is by no means a proposal, ya hear?”

“R-right...” Harmony gulped. Chasing away the melancholy breath, she glanced at the baskets. Her eyes narrowed. “Say—What's going on with the fruit you've got there?”

Applejack and Macintosh exchanged amused glances. “Oh, this? We done finished the harvest in time for the delivery, haven't we? We here Apple Family ponies have a tradition which we save the last basket of bucked apples for.”

“And that is—?” Harmony shrieked girlishly as two hoof-fulls of fruit were suddenly bulleted her way like a swarm of sweet tasting comets.

“Apple fight!” Applejack laughed and giggled mischievously as she and her brother flung a cornucopia of apples, filling the air with a red blur that surged in Harmony's direction. The pegasus gasped, shielded herself with copper wings while chuckling profusely. With a daring glint in her eyes, the time traveler pivoted her body and reverse-kicked a few of the collapsed apples back, forcing Macintosh and the orange mare to duck low and hide behind the basket from the expertly aimed bucks. After two long minutes of flung apples, the air sang with fruity sweetness, corralled by the panting breaths of laughing ponies.

“Pfftt!” Harmony raspberried through a face splashed with applebits. “So much for the 'test of preservation!'”

“Oh, that hogwash?” Applejack wiped a few laughing tears from her face and finally rose up from hiding behind the basket. “Darlin', I only conjured that so-called preservation rule just to see if I could rid my farm of one persistent bureaucrat—” An apple slammed the orange mare directly in the face, splattering fruit mush and seedlings all across her snout.

“Hah!” Harmony shouted at the end of her throw. “Who's 'chicken' now, sassafras?!”

Macintosh laughed heartily at his messied sister and trotted away to catch his breath. Shaking her face to fling off the top layer of apple bits, the farm mare smirked sloppily at the pegasus and sighed in gentle defeat.

“Yes, yes. I reckon you got me. Ya happy now?”

“Heeheehee—Oh, Miss Applejack.” Harmony wandered over and extended a wing of bristled feathers. “Here, allow me.” She gently scraped the mush clean from the orange mare's freckled face.

“I done told you—Call me 'AJ,'” the hatted pony replied, gazing at her companion with sudden clarity. “Yer a blessin' from heaven above, y'know that, right?”

“Hmmmmm...” Harmony smirked lightly as she then brushed her wing clean on the grass. “Depends on how you define 'heaven.' I'm just doing my job—for the Court and all.”

“Now who's shovelin' around hogwash?”

Harmony blinked awkwardly at Applejack. “H-huh?”

The farm pony was staring at the pegasus with gentle yet firm eyes, eyes that dragged Harmony's soul in like a haunting black hollow from a gray future. “There's no more need in pretendin', sugarcube. I know why yer really here. I know why y'all have been stickin' to my stubborn hide like a frog to a lily pad.”

“Uhm...” Harmony bit her lip nervously, feeling a rise in trembles. “Y-you do?”

“Mmmhmmm.” Applejack gently nodded. Her gaze was piercing, but a loving glint cascaded across her emerald pupils. “This was never about doin' some investigation for the Princess, was it? Nopony ever does as much as you have—with such inspirin' selflessness—out of duty. No royal messenger in her right mind would buck apples, tackle trolls, and forego implementin' some infernally old 'Act of Accord' just for our humble selves. Yer kind of generosity can only come from the heart, especially when there's so much more important things yer kind can be doin', I reckon.”

Harmony gulped and glanced towards the floor. “You're r-right about one thing, AJ. There... is so much more stuff I can be doing. There's always a bigger picture—and it's not necessarily a bright one. But when I-I came here, and I saw you and your brother about to crumble to bits over your stressed selves, and I envisioned this beautiful farm stumbling into one gigantic hole or another—be it with trolls or with a missed harvest date—I just couldn't let all of that awful stuff happen. Even if I flew off somewhere far far away where there's nothing colorful or lively to match the warmth of this place, I know that I could never rip the gorgeous green land you've got here from my eyelids. I was compelled, AJ. But I don't think that's something that comes from the heart.”

“Sure it is, Sugarcube.” Applejack trotted over and nudged her face to look into hers. She smiled sweetly. “You're obviously a very brave pegasus. I know it may not be my place, but I reckon you have seen none too many pretty things in yer life. A lot of ponies pass by Sweet Apple Acres, and I'm quick to take a decent survey of them. Some of them ponies—their coats are laced with happy memories, others with a lifetime of trials, and even others with a dark shade of ignorance. You, darlin'? I see a lot of sadness cloudin' you. Ain't nothin' to be ashamed of. We all take to our own kinds of moods—like blankets that you switch with the season. I only hope that you take a deep look at the world around you and realize that maybe it's high time yer season changed as well—into somethin' brighter perhaps? Because yer heart is most certainly one of the brightest I've seen in years.”

“That's just it, AJ,” Harmony murmured, gulping a lump down her throat and gazing past her. “Where I come from... the season never changes. It's a lot easier to say that there are no seasons at all. There's only... me.”

“You say that as if it's an empty prison, Harmony. I only wish you would take a gander at yerself and realize that you have so much to be proud for... and happy, even.” Applejack grinned. “Yer bright, yer resourceful, you don't take horse hockey from no-pony—especially me—and you can buck trees like there's no tomorrow.” She gave a chuckling breath, then a wink. “Why, if I had all of yer qualities—even if the only season I had to look forward to was colored with the shades of myself—well, I reckon I'd feel right at home.”

Harmony sharply inhaled. As her eyes cascaded over the horizon, she cursed herself a thousand times over. She cursed herself because she had every impulse right then and there to tell Applejack the truth: that Equestria was ending and there was nothing anypony could do about it. She cursed herself because with one simple breath she could very easily explain that the only season left to the world would be one covered in endless ash and twilight. She cursed herself... because suddenly all of those horrible things didn't scale in importance to what she was about to say.

She cursed Spike too, fought the tears, and smiled Applejack's way, saying, “Thank you, Applejack, from the bottom of my heart; for it's taken you to show me that it's still there.”

“My pleasure, sugarcube.” Applejack nodded with a smile. She then read further into Harmony's moist eyes and added, “And I promise—on my family's honor—that I'll do what I can to get Princess Celestia's attention for you with all that's happened here. If the heap of frozen trolls don't do it, then perhaps Twilight Sparkle can make herself useful for more than just makin' sweet love to books.”

“Oh, AJ, that is most appreciated—” Harmony began, but her ears pricked at the sound of a happily giggling voice cresting up the southside of the hill.

“Applejack! Miss Harmony!” Apple Bloom pattered up into view, her crimson sprout of hair matching the burning horizon as she trucked a saddlebag full of records and beamed. “Look at what Granny Smith found in the attic! It's a bunch of songs that Rarity lent us months ago! Somethin' about a cello player that Miss Harmony fancies!”

“Octavia?” Harmony grinned wide. “This day just keeps getting better and better already!”

“Apple Bloom, darlin', watch where yer trottin'—” Applejack called out.

“Watch where I what-now?” Apple Bloom spoke too soon, for her hoof had caught in a hole in the earth. The little foal fell sideways, colliding noisily into the broad face of the dented wooden silo. As she collapsed flat on her chest with a grunt, the tiny vibrations from her plummet was just enough to add insult to Harmony's injuries from the morning previous. With a groan of somber fate, the entirety of the rustic silo wobbled, teetered, and fell directly over Apple Bloom. “Aaahh—!”

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack shouted, her eyes wide as emerald saucers.

Something scarlet billowed underneath Harmony's projected amber eyes. Not even the coldest winds of the dying world could snuff out her snarling voice. “No.” In a copper blur, she soared on bright wings and rocketed towards the falling building. Blades of grass and flakes of apple skin lifted into the air as she converged on the hapless foal.

A thunderous crash vapored outward from the scene. Applejack flinched against the blast wave, blinking in horror to discern the outcome of the debacle. As the dust and earthen bits settled, an equine form was lying on its side next to the collapsed silo. After half-a-second of stirring... Apple Bloom rose up to her tiny legs, reeling dizzily. “Nnnngh... Wh-what happened?”

In a galloping roar, the older sister skidded over to the tiny filly's side. “Darlin'! Are you okay? Oh praise Epona! Let me hold you!” Applejack squatted down and nuzzled the foal dear to her. “Apple Bloom, sugarcube—Watch where yer canterin' next time! I almost lost you, girl!”

“My saddlebag!” Apple Bloom dazedly glanced at the fallen baggage that was still rattling to an ill-fated stop. “All of Rarity's records are probably shattered now! I don't get it! What happened? Where's—” The foal glanced aside, and her amber eyes exploded. “—Miss Harmony!”

Applejack looked down. She gasped.

The heavy weight of the fallen building had formed a veritable crater in the soft earth. Where a brave pegasus had flown herself to shove Apple Bloom heroically out of the way... there was now only gnarled splinters and rusted metal.

“Oh Dear Celestia alive!” Applejack cried and shoved at the hulking body of the collapsed silo. As her every muscle strained and heaved, the wooden monstrosity refused to budge. “No no no no!” She tilted her snout towards the rows of orchards and shouted: “Macky! Macky, for the love of Elektra, get yer flank over here and help me!”

The red stallion was already galloping towards them, spurred on by the desperate shouts of his distressed sister. With wide eyes, he regarded the visiting pegasus' horrific fate.

“We can't waste any time! We gotta get this mess off of her! Grab some rope! Hurry!”

Apple Bloom was a sobbing mess, the reality of the situation cascading from her eyes in silver tears. “Oh sis—I'm so sorry! I'm so, so very sorry! This is all my fault—”

“None of that, y'hear?!” Applejack snarled, forcefully shoving against the wooden rubble from all angles while Macintosh galloped towards the barn. Winona's distant barks formed a maddening chorus to the bleeding moment. “You did nothin' wrong, Apple Bloom! But t'ain't the issue right now! Run yer hooves into town and fetch Nurse Red Heart! Tell her it's an emergency, and while yer at it we could use all the extra ponies we can get!”

“R-right away, sis!” Apple Bloom scampered off on pale yellow hooves, panting breathlessly.

“Oh dear Epona, give me strength!” Applejack hissed as she put her entire back into pushing the length of the hulking silo. It barely budged. There was nothing but dead silence from beneath its gigantic weight. She bit her lips in the strain until blood flowed.

Then Macintosh returned. With mute coordination, the two siblings fixed the rope around the largest chunk of debris sticking out the top of the collapsed pile and harnessed it to the wooden yoke on Macintosh's back. With a combined effort, they pulled and tugged and hoisted with all of their combined might.

Finally, under the bleeding red kiss of the sunset, they cracked open the hollow ribcage of the smashed structure, tossing it aside so that it joined Octavia's records with a somber series of muffled thuds. Macintosh tossed his yoke off and galloped up onto the edge of the silo, peering directly into the cylindrical mess. Applejack likewise hopped breathlessly beside him.

Both ponies gasped—frozen in mid lurch.

There was nopony in the hollow of the collapsed silo, not even the outline of one. The smashed ground beneath the building was completely and utterly blank.

“Wh-what in tarnation...?” Applejack quietly murmured. She gulped into this sudden abyss of confusion. “M-Miss Harmony...? Macky, where did she go...?”

From behind the barn, Granny Smith—roused by the sudden noise and excitement of that blistering situation—hobbled over on lime-coated limbs. She blinked dazedly at the collapsed silo, at the utter void left in the wake of their copper-coated visitor.

As the evening gave in to tears of confusion, Ms. Smith stood quietly on the sidelines, at peace with the lonely hum of the moment. The many warm shades of a lifetime full of gifts and losses flickered across her gray eyes, but for some reason she no longer dwelled on the darker colors. The sun bled earthward in a copper aura, like a spirit that could bend knives backwards and chase trolls into the future.

She smiled.

A mane of short violet stubble fluttered in purple manalight. Muscles stirred liquidly under a brown coat as a pair of scarlet eyes fluttered moistly open. Her snout resting on the stone floor, Scootaloo gazed shakily upwards, blinking.

Spike was lying on his mountain of gemstones, gazing calmly down at her. He produced a fuming breath as his emerald eyeslits twinkled at the sight of pegasus. “Welcome back to the future, child. The green flame has ended.”

The last pony gulped, shuddered: “It's so cold...”

“I know, old friend.” He reached a scaled hand out and stroked the back of her shaved mane. “I know.”

Her limbs achingly shuffled against the stone floor of the cavernous laboratory. She wobbled and struggled to sit up, her face wretching at the gray staleness around her. “I was th-there for over two days. We bucked apples. I ate daffodil alfredo. There were trolls.”

Spike raised an eyecrest curiously. “Trolls?”

“G-Granny Smith—She loves Stallionivarius. She tells a beautiful bedtime story. And Apple Bloom—” Scootaloo's scarlet eyes widened. With a gasp, she jumped up onto all fours and nearly collapsed into a stone table. “Apple Bloom! She's... She's...”

“Calm down, Scootaloo—You've just been through your first lengthy trip. Take a deep breath.”

Scootaloo conceded, but not on Spike's behalf. She gazed shakily into the bright green effigy of the past that was dissipating before her once-violet eyes. Her brown ears flickered and she said in a stronger tone, “She's alive. I-I saved her. Apple Bloom's alive. And then the silo... This large silo fell on me, Spike. But... I-I don't get it.” She looked at her ordinary brown self with her ordinary hooves and the worn metal shoes nailed into them. “I could do so many amazing things in my Entropan body, could take so much punishment. I could kick trees off their roots. I could fly loops around the orchards without breaking a sweat! I swam through trolls like a fish skims a lake's surface.” She spun and gazed confusedly up at the dragon. “I-I thought I was invulnerable! Why am I here?!?”

“Nopony is invulnerable, Scootaloo. Especially one who is so bravely projected into the past by the mere sails of her soul essence. With enough calamity and duress, your Entropan body will surely buckle—and the result is identical to leaving the range of your anchorage. You're inevitably drawn back to the present.”

“Then that's what happened...” Scootaloo gulped. “The silo slammed into me, crushing me with no outlet of escape, and I was sent back here.” She gritted her teeth, hissed, and jolted. “Spike! You gotta send me back! I-I had about two or three days left to that green flame, didn't I? There's still so much to do! I only barely scratched the surface of accomplishing our task! Applejack was only starting to suggest we get Twilight to contact Princess Celestia for me and—... Spike?”

The dragon was slowly shaking his head. “No, Scootaloo. I cannot send you back. Not right now. Not after I've concentrated so much of the green flame on Applejack—”

“—you've lost your magical cohesion, and you must bind me to another pony instead,” Scootaloo finished somberly for him. She gazed into the floor and sighed. “Will I ever be able to go back to Applejack again?”

“On another occasion?” Spike nodded his scaled head. “Absolutely—if it permits.”

“You mean if there's hope for me coming closer to finding an answer to the Cataclysm, which there isn't.” Scootaloo trotted lonesomely towards the rows upon rows of clockfaces. “Not with Applejack, there isn't.”

“You are certain of that?”

“I did nothing, Spike!” The last pony spun and frowned bitterly. “I didn't see a single eclipse, didn't smell one burning cinder, didn't feel any tremors—I found nothing to point me in any direction that might paint a picture of what killed Celestia and Luna and all of the ponies in turn! Two days of bucking apples, mooching off the Apple Family's bathtub and kitchen and I didn't learn diddly squat! Don't you see? I've wasted your green flame! And for what?! Nnngh... I swear... You should have just left me to the danged trolls in Ponyville's town square.”

“I see.” Spike nodded regally. He coughed slightly, and the violet pendant around his neck spun as the dragon slowly marched on iron haunches around the pony. “So, you mean to suggest that in all of that time spent in the past on Applejack's humble farm, you accomplished nothing whatsoever?”

“Well, I—!” Scootaloo started, blinked, and then sank down onto folded hooves. Her nostrils flared one last time as she gave up the fight, then softly murmured, “I saved them from suffering a tragic Apple Buck Season. I discovered a way to help them get rid of ancient trolls that had been resurrected on their land. I got Granny Smith to share her music, so that she began happily trotting around without her walker in a renewed spirit. I... saved Apple Bloom from being crushed to an adorable pulp. I got licked by a dog. Heh—I think I even got Big Macintosh to laugh a few times.” The brown pegasus blushed slightly at the last recollection.

“That certainly doesn't seem like nothing.” His iron jaws curved.

“Spike, in less than four months from then, the whole Apple Family will be dead,” she spat.

“And those are three months that, thanks to you, they shall now experience alive—and if I may dare say so, they shall do it happily.” Spike stood up on his lower legs and gestured his sharp arms wide. “Death surrounds us for endless fathoms, Scootaloo. That can never be changed about the Wasteland, even if you and I succeed in bringing the Sun and Moon back.” He pointed with a clawed finger. “But in a time of life—in an era of peace that only you, the last pony, can visit—you have gone out of your element and maintained equilibrium. I remember seeing Applejack in the last days of Equestria. I remember how stressed she was, keeping to herself over an Apple Buck Season during which her friends rarely saw her. But then I also remember—in the blink of a single weekend—Applejack returning to Ponyville with a smile. And now, thanks to you, Scootaloo, I know why that is the case. I can't tell you how immensely happy it makes me to know that she and her family were capable of smiling—Up until the end of all smiles.”

“She...” Scootaloo stammered, her eyes growing concave. “A-after I was done helping her with the apple bucking, Applejack told me she knew I wasn't working for the Royal Court of Canterlot. She told me I did everything from the heart.”

Spike reached down and gently tilted the pegasus' chin up. “When you're projected into the past, Scootaloo, you are merely an extension of your soul self. All things considered, you are all heart.”

Scootaloo bit her lip. She choked to say: “That's hardly s-something invulnerable, Sp-Spike.”

“But it's something special.” He smiled back down at her. “And I'm glad Applejack was capable of showing you that.”

“B-but I'm not going back into the past for myself,” Scootaloo murmured, then planted her hooves emphatically around Spike's clawed hand. “Am I, Spike?”

He stood back up, nostrils fuming in emerald thought. “You may have given Applejack and her family smiles, Scootaloo. But we have the one thing in our quest for the Cataclysmic truth that none of our pony friends will ever receive more of—and that's time. I suspect that soon, in your journeys, you will find the answers we both seek. That is...if you are willing to continue your journeys?”

Scootaloo exhaled long and hard, gazing at the far end of the laboratory. “Your green flame isn't the only thing that needs to maintain cohesion, Spike.”

“Perfectly understood. I will only send you when you're ready, child.” He smiled with an emerald wink.

Scootaloo barely registered it. She was shuffling over towards a lab table, atop which a very familiar skull rested. The scarlet in her eyes grayed a little as she navigated the hollow in the bony center—no longer afraid of the vacuum within. “Spike, tell me something.”

“Anything, old friend.” He stood behind her.

She raised a hoof towards the dusty skull, eyeing several scars where the three hundred year old dragon had flaked off necessary samples. “Have you collected enough of Applejack's ashes for any future occasion of binding me to her?”

“Absolutely. More than enough, as a matter of fact. We no longer have any use for her brittle remains—I suspect. Why, Scootaloo? What are you thinking of?”

“A gift, Spike.” She smiled gently, brushing her hoof across where Applejack's soft freckles would have been. “I'm thinking of a g-gift.”

Below the shadow of the moored Harmony, a barren plot of Sweet Apple Acres miraculously remained unswallowed by the Cataclysmic sinkhole that lingered just beyond the ash-laden trees. A bent rusted arch flanked a plateau of gray soil that was bespeckled with white stones, stained by acid rain and soot over the past twenty-five years.

Towards the front of this arrangement of rocks, just beyond a glistening pair that marked the previous generation, the last pony finished piling the last bit of dirt atop four fresh graves, atop of which she had erected brilliant obelisks of moonrock—the type of stone that could never stain.

With a sagging breath, Scootaloo stabbed a self-crafted spade into the ground and slumped down to her curled legs; she was a sweaty and dirty mess, and she reveled in the pain of it. She hoisted a hoof up and peeled a pair of amber goggles off her forehead, so that she stared naked down at the four mounds of earth covering the skeletal remains she had gracefully carried—one after another from the ruins of the storm cellar—into their respected resting places.

A few flakes of ash fell to her fluttering ears. She ignored them, engrossing herself in the reflective sheen of her scarlet eyes against the four moonrocks—like four equine spirits staring up at her from the earth. She managed a gentle smile, and then she shut her eyes and lowered her snout until she was a few centimeters away from kissing the ground.

She spoke into the shattered bosom of the world, “I know it has been forever since anypony returned to you. But, I suppose it's better late than never—because I've never met any ponies that deserved to be put to rest anymore then these four right here. And though I don't expect you to give me anything, I hope that you give them peace. For they have given so generously and lovingly to you, up until the end of time—All of them.” She shuddered as she tilted her face up and gazed at the stones upon stones upon stones. And though she almost forced herself to, she couldn't cry. She was too intensely serene, too strong. “And it is a good thing, a beautiful thing—this land. Because now it is anything but empty. A home forevermore. Perfect h-harmony.”

Scootaloo's brown face forged a painful smile, reminding herself—like a ghostly pair of green eyes once did—that she had a heart to produce it with. Shutting her lids, she raised her hoof to her lips, kissed it, and pressed it to Applejack's moonrock tombstone before getting up, flexing her wings, and returning to her airship.

Hours later, in the growling mists of the snowy Wasteland skies, Scootaloo sat calmly at her workbench along the Harmony's port side. A flickering lantern illuminated a disc spinning on the record player, but it was not Octavia's name that spun around the spindle, but rather a lone disc that Scootaloo was able to scrounge from the den room of the Apple Family's dilapidated farmhouse. And like so many other miracles that graced the pegasus' soul in so many projected days, Stallionivarius still played perfectly.

Several metal instruments graced the cramped cabin's air, instruments which Scootaloo hadn't used since she was a little foal. Before getting to work on her latest tinkering, she squinted through goggled eyes at the waves of ash billowing outside the cockpit windows. The last pony was a shivering waif of a body, with a shaved mane and gangly brown limbs that resembled a pathetic insect rattling inside a rusted iron jar. But as cramped and claustrophobic as the womb of the Harmony always was—it suddenly seemed different to her, a little less cold, and a little less... empty.

“Maybe I can't fix all of dead Equestria overnight,” she murmured to an orange farm mare who wasn't there, and yet was. She breathed gently to herself amidst the rocking of the cabin. “But small things... I've always been able to tinker small things. One thing at a time, I guess.”

That said, she delightfully returned her attention to a tiny banged-up scooter resting on the workbench before her. She replaced parts, polished parts, and restored parts—anything and everything that was directly in front of her, all the while relishing in the warm moment.

She maybe even smiled.

- ACT THREE: CIRCLE OF KINDNESS - Chapter Nineteen: Everlast

Scootaloo grew deaf from the sound of her own endless panting. The nine-year-old foal floundered across the hollow of a fresh cave burrowed in the torn womb of Equestria. Piles of freshly scavenged junk were thrown into a rattling heap in the corner. There was no order about it, no semblance of a proper pattern—merely speed and desperation as the girl raced against time, practically tripping on her hooves with the last-second scramble. Under flickering torchlight, Scootaloo dragged in the last of a myriad of things that she had scavenged from the crashed royal zeppelin upon the outskirts of fallen Cloudsdale.

From beyond the open grave of the rock cleft, the gray world billowed and roared. There was a rumbling thunder—building—like white noise riding upon the mangy necks of unseen nightmares, marching closer and closer towards where the tiny filly was presently struggling to seal herself from the ravenous Wasteland outside. With a grunting breath, she pulled at one of half-a-dozen black barricades, the shells of the charred and singed arcane vaults. With a final scraping noise, she successfully dragged closed the solid wall of black metal, beyond which a canvas tarp covered in white snow and soot hopefully... hopefully camouflaged the entrance to her pathetic little hovel.

Hyperventilating, the last little pony scooted towards the rear of the cave and away from the rising waves of noise. She shivered; she sputtered. Her bright orange coat was bruised and splotched over with dust and dried blood. Her bright pink locks hung in frayed tatters over pulsing violet eyes as she remained locked in a death-gaze upon the rattling rows of arcane vaults acting as her only barrier to the abominations beyond.

Their clawsteps grew louder; the air melted with their rancid breaths. Every now and then, the perpetual roar of chaos was permeated by a random shriek, whoop, or holler from their bloodthirsty maws.

In a muted yelp, Scootaloo scrambled and clasped onto her torch. She stuck its burning end into a puddle of melted snow, plunging the frigid cave into dead darkness. The pegasus did it to hide herself; she wasn't prepared for the horrific sensations to follow.

With all light extinguished from within, a dim gray haze filtered in from outside, and dozens upon dozens of very real shadows swam across her, paralyzing her. They were the shadows of dreadful things, horrible things, leather skinned and pale-eyed ravenous things that passed like thunderclouds before the bands of twilight that twinkled in through the cracks of the arcane vaults. These creatures blanketed the Wasteland, and the last pony was all alone... all alone in the sea of their hunger.

Scootaloo whimpered. Curling into a fetal position, she breathed past the scent of her own fluids and shuddered to find a melodious voice—a voice she once knew—a gentle and loving voice that caressed her like silk, long ago, when nightmares were things that could be hugged away, as she struggled right then and there to embrace the gentle warm breath that used to lull her. She couldn't find those dulcet tones, but she found somepony else's, and hers was close enough, soft enough, loving enough.

The stammering breath that tried to emulate it squeaked like a dying songbird from deep within Scootaloo, choking on sobs and fears as she shivered into the core of her own self.

“Hush now, quiet n-now, it's time to lay your sl-sleepy head. H-Hush now, quiet now, it's time to go to bed...”

Scootaloo's voice rang dully off the cold cavern walls. It struggled to drown out the rising cacophony of the Wasteland horrors shuffling closer from all around the sparsely hidden burrow. It failed, but she whimpered and half-sang anyways.

“Drift, drift off to sleep. Leave the exciting day b-behind you. Drift, drift off t-to sleep. Let the golden dreams find y-you...”

Twenty-five years later, in a deep, winding ravine of the western Wastes, a petrified forest of giant mushroom stalks lingered in the shadow of the high earthen walls surrounding them. A blanket of white snow lined the soft, pillowy ground at the base of these pale structures. The world hung in perpetual silence, at least until a heavy group of shadows shuffled and scraped down the narrow trench.

One after another, accompanied by fumes of green breath and heavy panting noises, several sets of gnarled wooden limbs scuffled across the dusty floor. Paws of living lumber creaked and groaned, leaving claw marks in swishing pattterns across the otherwise immaculate snow. There was a yelping noise, sharp and laced with growls. The wooden paws quickened, stomping over the landscape, making the spongy mushrooms sway from the weight of their carniverous charge.

Soon, all was silent once again, save for the distant shriek of an unlucky creature meeting its bloody end at the claws of these wooden attackers. After several seconds, a piece of the earthen floor moved.

Dust and ash slid away from a tiny patch of ground, no greater than one meter squared. Lifting her masked muzzle, the last pony poked her face out from beneath thick burlap cloak that had covered her in hiding. Gazing ahead, Scootaloo focused on a green aura of light that lingered exactly where the wooden monstrosities had rushed off to.

Cracking her joints from an interminable period of waiting, Scootaloo unfurled the rest of the cloak and hopped out of the ditch she had dug and camouflaged in the earth. She was heavily armored, with thick layers of brown leather covering her body and wings. Reaching into the ditch, she pulled loose a copper rifle and murmured quietly into its magazine of runes. She covered the weapon with her cloak before the moonrocks could glow, and already she was breaking into a stealthy gallop, trailing the effluent glow left by the creatures.

The ravine entombing the last pony was steep, labyrinthine, and doubly-dark beneath the cloudy sky of twilight above. However, all the last pony needed to do was follow her nose; the stench of her targets was unbearable. She sniffed the air liberally with each trot. The more nauseated she felt, the closer she knew she was to her prey.

To label herself as a “carnivore” in this case would have been overestimating things slightly. However, Scootaloo trusted in her skills far more than her hubris. She made each step with utmost caution, careful not to make a noise as she planted her leathered self against a wall and slid icily towards a break in the ravine that led to where the green aura was the brightest.

Already, even before peering around the corner of the earthen partition, she could tell that her targets would be in front of her. What she didn't expect was the sheer number of them. The moment Scootaloo saw six shapes, she jerked back behind the granite corner, hissing a silent curse beneath her breath. Inhaling deeply, she slowly peered around once more until six sources of green light reflected off her goggles. Her brow furrowed as she took a survey of the scene.

The timberwolves were twice as large as she had imagined, but at the time, it hardly mattered. The last thing on their minds was the presence of horse meat. All six of them were snarling, groveling, fighting over the same chunk of flesh. It was a good kill: the ragged remnants of a grizzly bear, or so Scootaloo judged. Its organs were still pumping blood out onto the alabaster dust of the canyon floor while the six elemental canines ripped the bear's body to pieces.

There was a time, Scootaloo imagined, when grizzly bears were the most frightening creatures in the wilderness. The Cataclysm changed all of that. The food chain had become simpler, and yet grander: a needlessly epic thing ever since the explosion that rocked the world also sundered the gates to Tartarus and let loose all sorts of huge and unquestionably vicious horrors upon the world.

But while the landscape was cursed with the monsters of Equestria's past, there was also a bizarre blessing that came with it, and in a world without magical ponies, “bizarre” equated to “lucrative.”

Scootaloo reached a hoof up and adjusted her goggles. She squinted through the lenses, studying the emerald glow in the eyes of the living wolves of wood. Their breaths channeled enchanted gases into the air as they dug into their crimson-soaked meal. One of them howled to the moonless sky, and through his gaping maw Scootaloo could see a twinge of flickering brown energy.

Her nostrils flared. The creatures were almost done devouring; they wouldn't stay still for long. Scootaloo had set everything up just right, all it took now was to pull the trigger.

In a manner of speaking, she did just that. Whipping the cloak off her gun and exposing the runes' glow to the air, she stood up on her hindquarters, leaned her spine against an outcropping of rock, and aimed directly at the furthestmost wolf of the group. She chose the target because its legs were the thickest, which told her that it was likely the fastest runner of the pack.

After all, what she would do next could only stand to get the creatures' attention.

“H'rhnum!”

The sound of the manabullet whistling through the air drowned out her own shout. The glowing projectile screamed past the other five timberwolves and sailed straight into the neck of their sibling. The monster's green eyes spun—along with the rest of its severed skull—until it smashed into a wall behind it and shattered to kindling. After half-a-second of stunned silence, its body fell along with it and shattered to twigs and bark. A cloud of brown ash lifted, sparkled, and settled in place.

In a flash, all five of the remaining abominations spun and snarled at the shooter.

Scootaloo was already galloping down the far end of the ravine; she didn't need to observe the aftermath of her assault. As five sets of clawed limbs charged after her, she could feel the hairs of her coat rising from the magic in the air. She knew that her victim was reassembling in the distance, twice as angry as its five pack mates.

Scootaloo breathed evenly, veering left and right as she navigated every twist and turn of the winding ravine. She had practiced running this trench for days in advance; she knew exactly how to preserve her breaths and for how long. All she had to focus on was keeping a constant pace, gazing straight ahead, and ignoring the rancid breaths of the growling predators thundering closer and closer to her haunches.

Her ears flicked from the swishing sounds of the gigantic mushrooms blurring past either side of her. Scootaloo could feel her thick armor heating up from the sweat and adrenaline of the moment. The smell of the wooden canines' jaws dragged bile up her throat, but then something happened that she did not expect. She heard a seventh set of pattering claws, and it was directly above her.

Scootaloo's scarlet eyes twitched as she gazed up through her goggles. A shadow crossed over her as a large shape jumped down from the barren landscape above the ravine. In the next second, she saw a grand twimberwolf with a mange of red leaves occupying the entire width of the trench ahead.

The last pony hissed at herself. The pack had an alpha canine positioned above the ravine. Undoubtedly it was there to monitor the entire hunt; Scootaloo was an idiot to have not taken this into account.

In the milliseconds that followed, all that mattered was preserving herself. Already, the monster was lunging at her with thick, thorny teeth. Scootaloo juked to the right, spun on her rear limbs, and jumped to the left in time to avoid the massive jaws of the beast. With expert agility, the last pony jumped sideways, kicked all four legs off the wall of the ravine, and dove past the gnarled tail of the giant timberwolf.

She wasn't quick enough—however—to avoid a massive kick from the creature's rear paw. The sound of ripping leather filled the air, and the ravine spun before Scootaloo. She landed on her back, tumbled, and bounced back up to her hooves—dizzy, for she had literally spun three times from the blow.

Her body was too numb to register anything but panic. Spurred on by the rabid thunder of the alpha wolf's paws joining the pursuing pack, Scootaloo ran the last curved length of the path ahead of her. She blurred—panting—around a blind spot, a blind spot which she had specifically chosen as the end of her run. Threading through a narrow slit of mushroom-lined walls, she approached the looming body of the Harmony, which was tightly moored by a single rope fastened to a metal peg in the earth.

No less than two seconds after Scootaloo had broken into the clearing, the seven timberwolves spilled out of the ravine's exit. They were greeted by the image of the floating zeppelin, but that didn't stop their charge. What did grind them to a halt, however, was what came next. Skidding to a stop, Scootaloo spun around, raised her bracelet of unicorn horns to her mask, and shouted, “M'rhymyrr!”

Mounted on the bow of the Harmony was an enormous speaker, and fastened to it was a solid ring of runestones. In answer to Scootaloo's runic command, the moon rocks strobed with a pulse of light, powering up the speaker so that an agonizingly loud siren discharged a wave of pure sound across the ashen landscape.

Immediately, the timberwolves' one weakness kicked in, and they shuffled backwards from the unrelenting sonic punishment. Their eyes flickered painfully with green confusion as their panic caused them to bunch up together in a tangled mess of wooden limbs and tails. Soon, they were so tightly packed within the exit of the ravine that they couldn't move any further.

Scootaloo raised her goggles and took a deep breath. She wasn't gazing at the awkwardly imprisoned pack of canines so much as she was staring at the cluster of explosive chemicals clinging to the granite slabs on either side of them. Swiveling the bracelet of glowing horns around her forelimb, she spoke once more unto the unicorn fossils. “W'rhynnym.”

The moonrock caps to the explosives lit like burning fuses, and each strategically placed vial went off in a rapid flash of flame. Scootaloo shielded herself from the spray of rock and wooden bits that flew her way. She gazed into the clearing smoke, squinting, waiting.

As the ash settled, all seven timberwolves were gone, replaced instead by a pile of seemingly innocuous twigs and branches. Then, as she watched—breathing steadily—she saw clouds of brown energy coalescing into a faint, twinkling aura.

This was it. Scootaloo didn't have much time.

Scampering, she slid forward and squatted in the middle of the monsters' wooden effluence. She reached into her armor and pulled out the first of many glass, mooncapped bottles. She set them out on the floor beneath the brown cloud of unearthly smoke and murmured repeatedly: “W'lyrmym... W'lyrmym... W'lyrmym...”

One by one, the caps on the jars flickered with hot-blue light, and they each absorbed a piece of the brown gas. The twinkling material condensed once it was drawn inside the multiple containers. Soon, each jar was strobing with a separate flame of pulsating, brown light.

Scootaloo gritted her teeth. Even though the job was being done, it wasn't happening quickly enough. Once again, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rising up. The sticks and twigs around her shook and rattled. One by one, the branches levitated up as the brown energy was slowly replaced by the haunting, green aura.

“Come on... Come one...”

More and more branches coalesced all around her. To her left, a forelimb was solidifying. Behind her, a jaw was coming together, tooth by tooth.

“Come on... I friggin' built you to work better than this...”

Shadows tripled around her as the vague shapes of large canines came to life. Then, there was an amber flash of light as the first of several bottles finished collecting the brown flame.

“Yes!” Scootaloo hissed, immediately swiping the first bottle and shoving it beneath her armor. “Next! We can do better than that! Work!”

A second bottle shook, rattled, and flashed brown. She swiped it, just as a gaggle of drooling and hissing noises came to life all around her. Scootaloo was now lingering in a forest of thorny bodies rediscovering how to stand.

“Please... just two more! This won't give me enough strips...”

A third jar flickered to light. Scootaloo picked it up, and as she did so she saw the lunging reflection of a drooling wolf right behind her. With a gasp, she ducked to the right, rolled to a stop, and glanced up.

The stumbling timberwolf was still shaking the cobwebs out of its reformed skull. It stared angrily at Scootaloo while the eyes of one of its siblings flickered to life beside it.

Scootaloo gnashed her teeth. She felt the rancid breath of a creature behind her. She looked up at the Harmony, only to have her head nearly bitten off. She ducked just in time to duck the paw-swipe of a third reborn Timberwolf.

Sliding to a stop, Scootaloo pocketed her latest glowing jar and pulled out her copper rifle in its place. Lying prone, she shouted: “H'rhnum!”

The bullet flew, ricocheted off the stone floor, and shredded through two of the timberwolf's limbs. The half-dismembered canine fell in a slump, shattering one of the absorbing bottles and sending the other one rolling across the floor. As it did so, the last surviving container finished its task, flickering with a bright flash of brown light.

Scootaloo gasped at this, but couldn't hear herself from the whines and growls all around her. All of the timberwolves had revived. What was more, they were lucid. She glanced every which way, seeing nothing but wooden bodies converging on her with a flurry of fangs and claws.

“Nnngh!” Stupidly, Scootaloo dove into the heart of the splintery maelstrom. Through sheer speed, she avoided each lacerating limb. Jumping, ducking, and dodging her way through the legs of the monsters, she propelled herself towards the bottle, snatched it up in her teeth, and leapt straight for the rope tethering the Harmony to the earth. This last jump threaded her straight through one... two... three snapping jaws. Coming out the other end miraculously unscathed, Scootaloo dangled off the rope as she spat the bright jar into the crook of one hoof and shouted into the bracelet of horns adorning the other. “M'rhlym!”

On board the Harmony, a purple light shimmered, and the entire zeppelin lifted straight up towards the billowing gray clouds. It was a timely thing too; the timberwolves made several more leaping attempts to bite Scootaloo's body in half, only to fall meters short of her tail as she lifted higher and higher above the growling pack, and eventually the whole twisting ravine stretched out below.

With much struggle, Scootaloo climbed the dangling rope and pulled herself onto the metal platform before the catseye aperture of the lower gondola. She slumped against the bulkheads, panting and panting. Soon, those labored breaths turned into freakish chuckles as she slipped her armor clear off and freed her brown wings. Next came off her goggles and cap. Short bangs of violet hair billowed in the snowy wind as she gazed proudly at her four bottles brimming with victorious brown light, and her chuckles doubled.

Bearing a bitter smirk, she let her scarlet eyes fall to the discarded armor lying on the windy platform beside her. With a gulp, she saw something that melted her smile away.

The armor had been sliced clean through. Three deep slashes had gouged their way into the armor, deep enough for the last pony to see the metal of the bulkhead lying on the other side of the otherwise impermeable layers. It was obviously the damage dealt by the alpha timberwolf that had struck Scootaloo deep in the mushroom-laden trench. She just simply hadn't understood the extent of the damage until she examined it right there and then.

Sensing a rapid increase in her heart rate, Scootaloo reached a hoof back and felt along her spine, upper wings, and lower flank. To her numb astonishment, there were no cuts to her skin, not even a bruise. The armor had taken the full brunt of the wolf's wrath, but barely.

With a cold shudder, Scootaloo leaned back against the body of the rising zeppelin and hung the four flimsy bottles of flame to her chest. They did not warm her.

“Well, call me a pony's uncle!” Pitt exclaimed with a yellow-stained grin. “And here I thought you had retired early!”

“Hmmm...” Scootaloo's nostrils flared as she leaned over the bar of the hazy M.O.D.D. She slid the last of the four bottles across the counter and into the babboon's hairy grasp. “And what makes you say that?” she muttered.

“This is the first time you've delivered me any sort of product in stormfronts, Miss Prancealot!” Pitt said, holding one container up to his eye and squinting at it closely. “Or traded with any creature, come to think of it.”

“I'm surprised you take your eyes off your brothers long enough to tell,” she droned.

“Well, you got me there. I can't get the stink off them either. Meh.” He slapped the jars back down onto the counter and folded his arms, smirking. “This is some good crud. And I don't say that because they're—y'know—the color of crud.”

“Uh huh...”

“I say that because Brown Flame is good for cleaning the soot out of our steam engines. So, as you can see, this is good crud to... get rid of bad crud with.”

“Right...”

“And... uhm.. sometimes on Saturdays, I like to put on a pink tutu and pretend I'm the Monkey Princess of Cinnamon Swirls Land.”

“Mmmmhmmm...” Scootaloo was gazing off towards the far end of the bar where a goblin, a dirigible dog, and a komodo dragon were glaring back at her.

Raising a dirty eyebrow, Pitt leaned forward. “Seriously, Harmony, are we even in the same room right now?”

“Huh?” Scootaloo glanced over at Pitt with a dazed expression. She snapped out of it long enough to frown. “Don't call me 'Harmony.' Only other ponies get to call me that.”

“Uhm... Sorry for the bleak headline, sweet-cheeks, but what other ponies?”

Scootaloo opened her mouth, faltered, and sighed. She ran a hoof over her forehead, as if diving deep into a continuous migraine.

Pitt's bulbous nose sniffed. He leaned back, rubbed his chin in thought, but ultimately shrugged. “Ah well. How's about ten and a half bars of silver for each?”

“My spirit may not be here, Pitt, but my brain sure as heck is,” Scootaloo muttered. “Those jars are worth two hundred strips each and you know it.”

“I've hit rough times, horse lady,” he said, polishing a mug with a rag that was browner than the glowing containers between them. “The kitchen has caught fire twice. I've got ogres badgering me something fierce. Willis has undoubtedly busted another kidney. So, long story short, I'm not exactly lathering myself in silver lately. Be easy on me, will ya?”

“Pitt, you're a walking pile of harpy excrement and a dirty rotten liar...”

“Fine! Twenty bars per container!” Pitt groaned. “Willis' kidneys are made of steel. That's why he gets generator duty and not any of my other sissy brothers who might make the bicycle rust.” He rubbed his balding skull with a sheepish smirk. “How is that I can never lie to you?”

Scootaloo gave him a bored glanced. “Because you're more acquainted with my personal charm than all the living carcasses that flock here for a sip of your vomit brew.”

Just then, a racoon with a metal leg jumped up, perched on Scootaloo's back, and began slamming his frail paws repeatedly into the base of her skull. “Nnnngh! Glue stick! You are spirit ill with the pony pony pony ghosts!” He clamped his jaws onto her leather cap, drooling. “Grrrrr—Back to burning uterus of mother life love! Hckkkt! Glue stick!”

Scootaloo sighed. She reached over to where her copper rifle was leaning against the bar counter. Giving it a little twirl, the last pony viciously smacked it against the racoon's cranium.

“Ooof!” The mangy little critter flew over the tables until he landed in the antlers of a mounted deer skull. Several drunken patrons cheered and tossed the ring-tailed bum strips of silver, which the slobbering creature struggled to pick up as it drooled for a much needed drink.

“I rest my case,” Scootaloo muttered as she leaned the rifle back down.

“Among other things.” Pitt winked before whistling across the counter. A lemur crawled up dutifully, wearing an apron. “Take these jars to the back for the next stormfront's cleaning session. Tell Terry to have eight hundred strips delivered to Miss Sunshine here.”

The scrawny thing nodded to its older sibling, grabbed the containers, and scampered off.

“And while you're at it, get a haircut!” Pitt shouted. He smirked aside at the last pony as he returned to a stack of unwashed mugs. “Meh. Lemurs. All they're good for is gaining weight and depression.”

“Pitt...” Scootaloo muttered. Her eyes had been locked on the grimy bar counter this entire time. In the wooden surface, she imagined gnarled claws reaching out for her, slicing her skin apart. For the first time in twenty-four years, she heard those marching feet. The lonesome shivers of a little orange foal had caught up with her. “Can I ask you something?”

“If you wanted those silver bars done in ribbons, Harmony, you should have asked before you played Ogre football with one of my well-paying customers.” He chuckled while rearranging drinking glasses. “I don't care how much he smells.”

She glanced up, her scarlet eyes soft. “Why am I still alive?”

Pitt froze. He glanced back at her over a could shoulder.

She rolled her eyes, sighed, and pressed a hoof to her cheek. “Nevermind,” she muttered.

Pitt sniffed, his eyes thin. “Well, it's not so much a stupid question as it is a weird one.” He shrugged, then poured a drink before sliding it towards a patron who was sitting at a comfortable distance from the lone equine. “I mean... 'why' are you alive? Beats the heck out of me. A more reasonable question is 'how.'”

“Heh...” Scootaloo gulped, gazing once more into the counter. “I wouldn't mind that being answered too.”

“Did you have a nasty scrape recently or something?” Pitt asked. “Not that I'm concerned—mind you. Heh, you're the only moron in the whole Wasteland with heavy enough coconuts to rip apart timberwolves for brown flame. I don't even wanna think about how you do it...”

“Not easily,” she said. After swallowing, she hoarsely uttered, “They should have killed me. An alpha dog from the pack took a swipe at me. If it wasn't for my armor, I would have been cleaved in two.”

“I'd say that sounds like a case of monkey luck, though—by the gods—that doesn't exactly apply to you.” He finished slapping a sandwich together and smirked. “Heh... Unless you started flinging your manure around every time you got pissed off.” He sneezed, wiped his nose, and held the plate up on a tray. “Egg salad sandwich for table five!”

“That's just it, Pitt,” the last pony murmured, leaning aside as a marmoset waiter rushed over to grab and deliver the order. “It's not just on this one occasion, but my whole life I've had these insane scrapes that... I've survived somehow. I've fought hydras, phoenixes, and trolls tooth-and-nail, and yet I'm still alive. Why?”

“You've got plenty of horseshoes to spit on. Why you asking me?”

Ignoring him, she went on. “Look at all these freaks.” She pointed over her shoulder. “See how they all stare at me?”

“Who wouldn't? You've got the most curvaceous rump in the Wasteland.”

“Pitt...”

“Aside from Chimpanzettes. Hoo baby...” His nostrils flared as a red flush overcame his torso. “Boy, do I miss them. It's a shame what happened to that zeppelin full of mail-order brides. That was the sexiest hydrogen explosion ever.”

Scootaloo slammed her hoof onto the counter and leaned forward. “Pitt, there's nothing these patrons want any more than to kill me in cold blood!”

“Pfft. Tell me something I don't know.”

Her face stretched in confusion. “Then how come they haven't done it already?”

“Didn't a racoon just fly by recently?”

“Pitt, I'm serious. I look around lately, and I realize that...” Scootaloo bit her lip, glancing across the hazy, lanternlit establishment. “I realize that everybody here avoids coming into contact with me. It's as if they're afraid of me... as if I'm one of the many monsters of this Wasteland.” She took a deep breath, her eyes thin and jaded. “I used to be afraid of those monsters; I didn't think I would become one.”

He gave her a prolonged, cockeyed glance. His mouth lingered as if he was on the edge of saying something.

Scootaloo saw it. “What?”

“Uhhh... Eh heh heh...” Pitt stroked his hairy chin. “I wouldn't exactly say that you're a monster, though you're certainly freaking me out with all of this chatter.”

“Chatter?”

“Normally you just sit in stone silence as you wait for payment. Then you grab the silver and you're gone.”

“I... I've had a lot on my mind as of late...”

“Yeah, no crap. What, is it a new business deal?”

Scootaloo chewed on her lip, gazing aside. The lanterns lining the walls flickered liked red apples and dimmed in her eyesight. “You could call it something like that...”

“Uh huh...” Pitt nodded. Casually, he leaned over the bar and said, “They're afraid of you, Harmony, that's for sure. But it ain't about you being a monster or whatcrap. Heck, a lot of these melon fudges fear you 'cuz of something else.”

She simply stared at him.

After a few seconds, he rewarded her by saying, “They know that you're the last pony, the only 'glue stick' there ever is or ever will be. And yet someway, somehow, after so many years of everything with a brain or balls wishing that you would just just roll over and die, you've done the exact opposite. You've beaten the odds. And that's really frightening... cuz nobody can answer the question you asked me, girl. And, quite frankly, I don't think anyone wants to.”

“What if it's fate, Pitt?” Scootaloo asked. “What if my being alive is something that was meant to be? That... th-that something immutable has designed me to be here... in this place and time... as I am now?”

“I think somepony's getting high on her own supply.” He stifled a chuckle. “You're supposed to deliver the brown crud, not snort it.”

“I used to think that everything was all incident and happenstance,” Scootaloo said. “But what if there's a plan to everything, and it's our place to look back and see how all the pieces fit together in spite of ourselves?” She shivered. “You start to realize that everything that was ever fragile or precious could just as well have been ironclad.”

“Hmmm... Sounds like a good way of excusing all the crap in history.”

Scootaloo sighed, then mumbled, “It's not my place to excuse the past. I've been doing that all my life. Now, I have a job to make light of it, and shine it into the future.”

Pitt was presently occupied with the act of digging a tiny finger into his ear. “I'm sorry, could you repeat that nonsense again?” he asked, leaning towards her.

Just then, the lemur returned with four metal trays full of rattling, silver strips.

“Hey! Will you look at that!” Pitt chuckled with a bright smile as he slapped the containers with hairy palms. “Nothing like the rich sound of clattering money to end an awkward conversation.”

“I can take a hint, Pitt,” Scootaloo grumbled, proceeding to slip the strips one bar at a time into her leather-reinforced saddlebag. “Even if it's a smelly, heavy-fisted one.”

“Well, I always knew you could take some heavy-fisting, at least until now.” He smirked her way. “Though I enjoyed our delicate little chat, for what it was worth. We should do this more often.”

“Eat a bag of troll cheese.”

“Then again...”

“So long, Pitt,” Scootaloo muttered as she shouldered the money, the rifle, and her sighs. “Thanks for the business... and stuff...”

“Hey! Pleasure to shake hooves again! I mean it!” He called out as she trotted away from the bar. “And next time you feel skittish about risking your neck for bottled flame, think about Gilda, why don'tcha?! With her Golden Gang around, you've got your flank covered in this Wasteland, ya lucky sap!”

“Gilda does not look after me!” Scootaloo growled. As she opened the swinging doors and marched out into the ashen wind, she exhaled heavily. “Only one soul ever has...”

A thunderous stormfront billowed below the Harmony. The dirigible floated high in the twilight altitude, away from the regularly scheduled lightning and chaos. With the cockpit controls set on autopilot, the gondola swayed gently and comfortably in the wind.

Scootaloo sat alone at her workbench, meticulously patching up the gashes that the timberwolf had left in her armor. Centimeter by centimeter, she sewed a stretch of cougar leather into the thick material that had been cleaved.

After an hour of work, she sat straight up on her stool, removed the tool-brace from her hoof, and shook her aching forelimb. Wincing slightly, she allowed her eyes to drift across the interior of her boiler-lit abode.

Her scarlet eyes lingered on a sliver of glinting metal. Glancing down, she stared at the scooter that had been scavenged from the treehouse outside Sweet Apple Acres. For the last two weeks, she had gone about repairing the item, piece by piece, so that it looked and shone as good as new.

She hesitated at first, but with the creaking of weathered limbs, she stood up, trotted over, and lifted the object in her grasp. It was a tiny thing, dwarfed by her adult body. She was afraid that standing on it might crunch the brittle metal in half, but it didn't matter. It existed; it was within her grasp. After two decades of being apart, she and her beloved mode of transportation had been reunited.

It was almost as if it had always meant to be, as if her scooter was lost in the first place just so that she could find it now, now that so many things were shattered and broken, and now that so few of them were being pieced together by the bands of green flame.

Scootaloo sighed. She saw a reflection of herself in the metallic surface of the scooter. A mat of violet hair had formed on her head over time. She had plenty of opportunities for shaving her mane since meeting Spike, but for some reason—she hadn't. Now she was witnessing an even brighter phantom staring back at her from the scooter's shiny surface, still haunted by the coat that had molded into a dull brown to match the wasted landscape, as well as the eyes that had lost all of their violet vibrance in so many years since the Cataclysm had sapped Equestria of magic.

Scootaloo's legs twitched. She dared not pivot the scooter or else she might be reminded of exactly how blank the lengths of her brown coat were. In a surrending breath, she leaned forward, closed her scarlet eyes, and nuzzled the handles to the scooter like a mother might embrace her foal.

In that very instant, she was elsewhere, shivering, trotting under candle light. There was a warm place, a happy place, and it receded from her. Before it vanished, however, she got a good look at a golden body lying on a green cushion. Then—in the flicker of a fireplace—a bright shape floated down a set of stairs—

Scootaloo's eyes flew open with a gasp. The scooter rattled in her grasp. She looked down to see the handles dripping with cold sweat.

Quickly—though carefully—Scootaloo layed the scooter down onto the floor, leaning it against the bulkheads beneath her workbench. Shuffling, she trotted towards her hammock, preparing to retire for the duration of the stormfront. At one point, however, she paused. Gnawing pensively on her lip, Scootaloo glanced at the record player on the starboard side, then at the rune-locked cabinets adjacent to the boiler behind her.

Scootaloo had over four dozen vinyl records in her possession: all scavenged from the furthest corners of dead ponydom. However, there were two or three of them that had barely felt the kiss of lanternlight.

Right now, Scootaloo was kneeling at the rear of the gondola, reaching for the deepest recesses of her starboard side cabinet. She felt below the rows of books, beneath the immaculately kept journals of Luna and Celestia. Dust filled the air as she finally slid a pastel-colored record cover out from hiding. The faded image depicted prancing fillies and giggling colts atop a cloud, in the center of which a mare cradled what may have once been a newborn foal, at least before mold and decay had tarnished the infantile illustration forever.

Stretching her brown wings out for balance, Scootaloo trotted across the cabin, careful not to drop and shatter the antique record. She slid the glossy object out, gave it a single unemotional glance, then placed it onto the center spindle of her player. After cranking the device and placing the needle down, the iron-wrought cabin resonated with the gentlest of melodies.

A soothing lullaby filled the womb of the Harmony. Scootaloo's ears instantly drooped. She gnashed her teeth and reached her hoof over to stop the record. She paused in the gesture, however, and stood in place, breathing in and out slowly as the soft instrumental continued its raindrop echoes. She closed her eyes. The record had no lyrics, but Scootaloo heard singing nonetheless.

After a minute, Scootaloo finally trotted over to the hammock. She wrapped a dangling brown blanket around herself, and still she shivered. The music persisted, soft and heavenly, and yet it resonated with more haunting chords than a flock of shrieking harpies.

Scootaloo listened to the lullabye, and she curled into a fetal position as she did so, shivering like a little foal. As the stormfront rumbled outside, sleep would not find her. However, tears did.

Chapter Twenty: Everclear

“You've grown, Scootaloo.”

The last pony blinked from where she sat on an emerald patch of garden grass. Garbed in a saddlebag with a pair of goggles dangling from her neck, Scootaloo broke free from the cloud of yesterday's shivers. Her eyes refocused on a tall purple shape looming above her. “I beg your pardon, Spike?”

“Your mane, child,” the dragon stated with an iron smirk. Fuming, he stretched his limbs high and brightened the manatorches around Princess Celestia's shimmering looking-glass before falling back on all fours and marching towards a nearby pair of fruit trees. “You've grown it out some, if I'm not mistaken.”

“Oh... Oh that.” She blushed slightly as she raised a foreleg and felt—with slight awkwardness—the thin rug of bristly pink threads fanning out from the seam of her upper spine. “I guess I have, haven't I? Not out of habit, mind you.” She cleared her throat and gazed across the former Ponyville Skating Rink with a melancholic exhale, her scarlet eyes once more returning to distant thoughts. “I suppose you could say that I have been... well...” She thought of timberwolves, of Pitt, of gray ash and misery—everything that wasn't to be found at Sweet Apple Acres. “I have been distracted lately, Spike.”

“Understatement suits you like a Galloping Gala dress, old friend,” the elderly dragon murmured as the violet pendant dangled shimmeringly beneath his nodding snout. He reached into a nearby wooden crate and produced a pair of metal sheers large enough to fit his claws. He began pruning the leaves of an orange tree while murmuring, “You know, I could be of assistance in that area, if you so desire. The same talent I have for manipulating reverse-time affords me the ability to cast a chronotonic acceleration spell that could multiply the speed of your hair-growth by tenfold. You'd turn into a diva overnight, if you so wished.”

“There are many things I plan to be before the end of time, Spike.” Scootaloo exhaled with a caustic smile. “Dying, dead, and dust. But I most certainly will never become a diva.”

“Don't say I never tried to broaden your horizons.”

“Out of curiosity, Spike, is that 'chronotonic acceleration spell' the same thing you used on me when we first reunited?”

“I assume you're referring to the speed with which I sealed the wound that the trolls had dealt you?”

“Yeah, y'know, that little gem of a trick.”

“Affirmative.” Spike clipped a few more offensive leaves off and twisted a branch to get a good look at a luscious piece of citrus or two. The hanging garden glistened around the dragon in Celestia's siphoned glow. “All it did was essentially trick your body into thinking that time was passing faster than normal. Your natural healing processes performed in seconds what it would normally accomplish in weeks.”

“That's... uh... That's pretty amazing, Spike.” Scootaloo gently smiled.

“Only when it's used in moderation, child.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean that if you use the spell too much, you'll age the body past its own self-recognition, reducing yourself to a veritable invalid.” Spike paused to cough with a spread of green fumes. He waved the smoke away with a scaled hand and glanced over his purple shoulder to squint at her. “That's an amusing thing about the legacy of magic, you see. Every healing spell comes at a price. It is entirely possible to mend a living creature so much that it dies. It's almost like overfeeding, I suppose. You nourish something with reverse-time too much, and it falls victim to it. Ahem...” He smirked ever so slightly. “The rocks and shoals of Equestria may shimmer with ash for a million years, yet still any philosopher can make sensible analogies utilizing the concept of goldfish.”

“You've been reading old scrolls for far too long, Spike,” was all a chuckling Scootaloo had to say on that.

“Scoff if you must, Scootaloo. But, suffice it to say, a simple dash of time-differentiation here and there isn't too terribly dangerous. Why, there was a time in my youth when I would gladly have utilized the spell to my own advantage.”

“What? You wanted to grow wings early?” Scootaloo remarked with a smirk.

“A mustache actually.”

“A—Snkkt—A what, Spike?” Her scarlet eyes bugged noticeably.

“Oh yes. I had wished to be a true charmer with the ladies—well—'lady,' singular, I do suppose.” He smiled gently as he fished through the branches and felt each subsequent orange with gentle, giant fingers. “You have told me that your past is filled with memories and regret, Scootaloo. I think it would help you for once to look back and see the simple things, and how blessedly therapeutic it was to abide by the nonsensical whims thereof.”

The pegasus glanced aside and muttered, “There's hardly anything sensible about cold fear.”

“Heh!” The dragon suddenly cackled, his violent pendant dangling. “We need to do something about that!”

Scootaloo sighed. “Don't push it, Spike. Let me come to terms with stuff on my own—”

“No, I mean this succulent morsel!” Spike tugged at the orange until it was plucked cleanly from its branch. “It is far too plump to remain hanging here much longer! Hmmm... Why is this so familiar?—Ah-Ha!” He grinned, raised the piece of citrus to his snout, and breathed a plume of green flames over it. The orange disappeared in a puff, leaving just a few specks of ash which the dragon leisurely flicked off the ends of his claws. “I had a sweet tooth yesterday morning. It's nice to have that taken care of. Heh-heh-heh.”

“Y'know, Spike...” Scootaloo stood up and trotted gently over by his side. “I've been wondering.”

“Hmm?”

“All of those timeless months in Ponyville that you spent doting on Rarity—what with the mustache and the gemstones and the lavenders and all—Did you ever once switch gears?”

“Switch gears? Scootaloo, I do hope you know that you're talking to an elder!”

“Heeheehee—No, Spike.” She gently smiled. “I mean, did you ever hit on any whelpling girls?”

“You mean to ask if I ever went about courting young ladies of draconian nature?” Spike glanced down at her and strolled over towards a bush of roses which he promptly watered with the aid of a rusted pitcher. “In truth, Scootaloo, I never did reach that age before the Cataclysm hit. I was a young hatchling, in every sense of the term. My feelings for Rarity were sweet, but naturally misguided. I shall always remember her fondly, regardless. It's the nonsensical things of youth that are the most memorable. Are you willing to guess why?”

“Because they're stupid?”

“Because they're simple,” he said with a winking eyecrest. “I'm hoping that you may find such simplicity in your ventures, or that such simplicity may find you. Now there's a reunion that would be utterly replete with healing.” He chuckled to himself.

“Yeah, well.” Scootaloo cleared her throat as her voice remarried a somberness to the emerald air of the terrarium. “It's been two weeks, Spike. I guess you know why I've come back.”

“You're done fetching various flames for silver? I would have hoped you'd given up your night job, so to speak, old friend.”

“Erm... Spike, I think it's time we talked about my next 'venture'...”

“Oh! Yes!” He immediately stopped watering the flower garden and swiveled his hulking scales around to regard her. “You brought what I requested, I do hope?”

“That I did.” She nodded and squatted briefly on her haunches. Reaching back, she yanked a pouch to her saddlebag open and produced a glass jar with a runed cap. “Ta daaaa... Is it everything you ever dreamed of?”

“Child, my dreams are filled with the faces of friends. I reserve shapes and mechanisms to the wheels of imagination.” He took the glass container in a gentle palm and held it up to his emerald eyeslits. “Hmmm... Yes, Late Second Age Lunar Republican Runecrafting. It's amazing the extent to which you have perfected such an art. You should be proud—if not for your ingenuity, then at least for your audacity.”

“Righto.” She nodded. “It's easy to be a heretic when there's no burnable wood left in the world, timberwolves aside. I suppose the only living things left in Equestria that protest the sacrilegious enchantment of moonrocks are the cockroaches that scatter every time I brightly ignite an alchemy trough.” She then pointed a hoof towards the contours of the runed jar in Spike's grasp. “The lid houses a spatial distortion spell. I can compress all sorts of thermal essences into a confined space through magical suppression via vocal command. That's how I've been able to safely contain all sorts of highly volatile substances like red flame, orange flame, and—most recently—brown flame.”

“And now, with my help, the great Scavenger of the Wastes can carry in her hoof green flame. Ahem. Shall I?” He glanced at her brightly while unscrewing the runed cap from the jar.

She gulped and stepped back with a few shaking limbs. “Be my guest, casanova. It's your ballgame; I just came for the peanuts.”

“How poetically trite.” Spike smirked at her, then turned to narrow his gaze on the jar. His neck crests warbled and his upper torso billowed with steam as the elder dragon summoned a huge breath from deep within his burning glands. He gave a deep bass roar, and nearby blades of grass danced from the rising heat vapors as he aimed his razor-tooth maw straight into the body of the tiny glass jar. A surging cyclone of emerald flames frothed its way over the container's lid before spilling dramatically into the tiny glass space under Spike's manipulative exhale. After several seconds, his vomit of flame lurched in a dry heave, and he swiftly slapped the cap over the steaming glass jar.

On cue, Scootaloo galloped up. Spike lowered the buckling glass just in time for the last pony to bravely tilt her lips towards the bubbling container and—sweating profusely—firmly growl: “W'nyhhm.”

The rune lit up in a flash of purple. The green jar briefly shook and wobbled loudly as if ten thousand whirlpools were buckling deep inside of it, and then the jar rattled to a stop and rested quietly in Spike's grasp, awash in a perpetual emerald glow.

“And there you have it.” The dragon beamed within the penumbra of Celestial rays. “Time in a bottle.”

“Heh, fancy schmancy,” Scootaloo droned. Her scarlet eyes twinkled green like a kaleidoscope as she took the jar from the dragon's grasp and turned it over a few times in her hooves. “Green Flame under glass. Do you have any idea how much silver this could get me in the Wastelands?”

“Scootaloo...”

“Just thinking aloud, Spike.” She half-heartedly chuckled, her face awash in the beautiful emerald haze as the pegasus gazed beyond the soup of reverse-time. “There's no silver that's worth buying this, that's worth purchasing the past, that can deliver the Sun and Moon to one's doorstep within a blink.” She gulped, her lips suddenly dry. “All it costs is ashes, one dead friend at a time.”

“Not even an entire world of ashes can purchase one life, Scootaloo. Remember, you are a visitor of the past, not its creditor.”

“Still... heh.” Scootaloo snickered as she twirled the green jar recklessly atop the edge of a hoof. “Feels like highway robbery, one way or another.”

Two of Spike's claws suddenly clamped over the jar, stopping it in mid-spin. He lowered his snout and gazed intently into her blinking scarlets. “The only robbery I foresee, child, is laying waste to the one commodity we have to work with here besides our sanity.” He picked the jar up and waited for Scootaloo to dutifully present an open pouch of her saddlebag before he deposited it safely inside. “Please do take extra care of the green flame. It takes far more than mere philosophy to conjure it. It will be a good few days before I can produce another breath for you.”

Scootaloo whistled shrilly as she tied the pouch and tightened it. “It's that potent, huh? I had no idea.”

“Well, now you do, old friend.” Spike shuffled down the far side of the terrarium with a sudden lethargy. The elder dragon spoke over his scaled shoulder as he examined several flower beds blossoming across the edges of the royal light. “Whomever you choose to anchor yourself to next, I advise you do so only after careful meditation. The concentration of my green flame, coupled by the potential release of your disenchanted rune seal, will send you back in time faster and with far greater efficiency than ever a raw exhalation could hope to achieve. You won't even need an alchemic circle for the reverse-time to take effect, so long as you aim the expulsion of flames at yourself once you're junctioned.”

“I'll... still need the remains of your...” She gulped. “Of our friends to send myself back, won't I?”

“Absolutely, only now you will not have to expend the time and resources needed to pilot your marvelous aircraft back and forth across such great distances,” Spike said with a tired smile.

“I get it. So, basically, now I've got the advantage of drive-thru time travel?”

Spike sighed into a row of dandelions. “Is it not enough that we're three centuries apart; you have to confound my mind even further with such verbal delinquency?”

“Face it, Spike.” Scootaloo smiled gently. “You were bored up until I showed up, weren't you?”

“I'm the only living thing you'll ever know who has managed to entertain himself by watching a pot boil backwards,” he mused, then pointed a finger towards her saddlebags. “You still have the baby dragon teeth that I gave you?”

“Of course, Spike.” She patted the bulge in her side pocket for emphasis.

“Then you have everything you need to truly make this venture entirely yours—as it has been from the beginning.” He tiredly blinked his emerald eyeslits and stifled a yawn tempered by the ages piled inside of his scaled frame. “Now, if you would dearly pardon me, old friend. Expelling that much green flame has taken a great deal of energy from me. I would do well to retire upon a bed of soft, pliable quartz.”

“Spike,” Scootaloo started, but faltered slightly as she bit at the corner of her lip. “Erm, I know that you are headed to bed and all, but...”

“There shall always be a bed for dragons, even beyond death, for we shall never outlast the earth.” He smiled tranquilly her way. “Please, for the time being, do tell me what is on your mind, child.”

“You were... You were in Canterlot when the Cataclysm hit, weren't you? I mean, that's the kind of the idea I've gotten from everything you've ever shared with me.”

“Affirmative. It was upon the Mount of Canterlot that I awoke to a dead world, and it was within the Bowels of Canterlot where I carefully studied on how to perform an autopsy on it.”

“So many years in caves—both in forward time and in reverse time—and all you ever had as company was scientific formulae... and boiling pots.” Scootaloo nervously finished with a chuckle, then fell into a melancholic gaze as the vials of chemicals lining the nearby lab tables reflected her face like a foalish scooter once had. “I really don't think that's a loneliness that I can come close to fathoming, Spike. Even in all of my gray, gray years.”

“Mmm... 'Loneliness,' such a common affliction, in spite of its ironic isolation.” The dragon bestowed her a cold smile. With a slight cough, the fumes of his breath lifted, dissipated, and then Spike uttered strongly, “Everything that lives is alone, and yet, we are all not. Even in a dull world where all ponies have died, there is an encompassing, Scootaloo. I do not consider this optimistic naivete on my part. I really do wish you could sense it like I can. Perhaps what it takes is age, for the slouching centuries to calm a vibrating world around you to a hum so that you can feel the finer mystical points beyond the opaque surfaces of what surrounds us. We are all driven to death, and yet we are all empowered to surpass it. Somewhere in the midst of that, there exists a connection, a purpose. Whatever the truth is, it is wordless—yes—but far from perpetually 'lonely.' How could it be? Hmm?”

“I don't know, Spike.” Scootaloo softly exhaled, gazing at the dark shadows beyond the green lengths of the garden. “I've spent twenty-five years gazing at death from beyond the portholes of my ship. I see it for what it is, an enemy—and yet a sibling. But our friends, Spike...” She gazed up with a hollow expression. “Applejack, Apple Bloom, Macintosh, Granny Smith, even Winona—none of them could see death coming. And I didn't do a single thing to help them see it. I frankly can't believe I'll ever make any of our friends see death. Do you really, really think that gives me a connection to them?”

“Your connection is far deeper and more intimate than a mystical encompassing, dear friend.” Scootaloo tiredly smiled. “In the company of your fellow ponies, I can only envision harmony.”

Scootaloo chuckled dryly at that word.

Spike raised an emerald eyecrest. “Have I struck a funny bone, old friend?”

“Maybe we both have, Spike.” Scootaloo's chortles fell into a rising sigh as she gazed up at the shimmering looking glass above them. “Life really is one giant slap on the knee.”

“Which is precisely what I will need in order to wake up several hours from now.” He yawned once more. “I really must be venturing to sleep, as you also have a venture of your own to make.”

“One of these days, Spike, we should take a venture together.” She smirked. “We could fire up the Harmony and go cruising the Northern Heights for dragon chicks. We'd find you someone to really boil a pot with.” She winked playfully.

“Hmmm, an impossible expenditure, I assure you,” he spoke in a dull monotone. “As I have searched the Wastelands of Equestria for ponies, I have likewise endeavored to find like blood. But alas, as you are the end of ponies, I can only conclude that I am the last of dragons.”

The last pony suddenly blanched at that, her lips parting.

He stretched his purple joints nonchalantly and snapped a few cricks in his long neck. “Some of the friendly faces I see in my dreams are fictitious. It's not too terrible a reality to comprehend—for someone as old as me. Be relieved that I will never again have a reason to sport a ridiculous mustache.” He briefly chuckled, but suddenly blinked as his sleepy form was encumbered by a warm quartet of limbs wrapped about his lower thigh.

Scootaloo was suddenly and unashamedly nuzzling him, her clenched eyes christened with moisture.

The dragon smiled and gently lowered a claw to stroke her bristled pink neck. “Have we warmly embraced enough in the space of three weeks, old friend?”

“No,” she murmured, rubbing her wet cheek against his knee as she gazed up with sparkling scarlets. “All those times, you were hugging me. I just felt like hugging you for once, Spike.”

“And a fine gesture it is, child.” He nudged her skull with the edge of his chin's green crests, patted her, and strolled off. “I shall carry it with me to slumber, as I do all treasures that grace my life. Safe travels, old friend.”

She watched, standing in the deep shadows of his voice, as Spike strolled alone through the side of the terrarium and out into the cold, gray graveyard of Ponyville. Every ticking second in his absence suddenly felt like another layer of her skin being peeled off. There was suddenly one thing that could cover those wounds: the flesh of an exiled Goddess.

Opening the nearest bag in her saddle, the last pony pulled out several dangling dragon teeth on an array of multi-colored strings. With a deep breath, Scootaloo gently, cautiously hoofed through one artifact after another, her senses boiling at different pitches with each calcified shard she came into contact with. Her brain spun in every cardinal direction as her soul endeavored to focus on the location of every obscured corpse lingering beyond a gentle touch.

Then her heart stopped. Dangling suddenly in front of her was a blue string, upon which a cold tooth unassumingly hung, but her heart was suddenly being throttled towards the tiny white object at seven hundred kilometers per hour. The blood in her veins boiled and her organs shifted as if she was being flung across the globe under the howl of comet-hot friction. Then, before her sparkling vision, a wide horizon of rainbow patterns streaked around one thousand and eighty degrees before reaching for her with the serrated tooth of a lightning bolt—

Ears popped in a cold hiss. Scootaloo wrenched her brown skull from the tooth's throbbing gaze. She was panting profusely, her heart palpitating like a pathetic little foal with her hooves scratching against the walls of an arcane vault. She winced, winced, then relaxed as the earth recollected under her legs, and she realized her wings had been flapping involuntarily. Retracting the brown feathers to herself, she gulped hard and flung the blue-stringed tooth towards the back of her dangling collection.

A murmur escaped the last pony's lips as she sought the next tooth—any tooth—so long as it wasn't that last one. To her surprise, it was almost as if the next tooth was reaching for her. Upon a yellow string, it shimmered invitingly. She shuddered as a silken touch encircled her soul with song, so that she was being lifted like a shivering bird through the feather-soft kiss of leaves, past the coarse veil of gray confusion, and into the velvety womb of gentle words, melodic and cherishing, dancing her tired limbs into a cushion of slumber.

“Oh goddess...” Scootaloo almost sobbed. “I have to find her next.”

Twenty-five years of going deaf, and still her voice still gave a lulling melody.

Rows upon rows of dead trees surged below like dark gray seafoam as the last pony piloted the Harmony ever westward beyond the lengths of Ponyville. Scootaloo craned her goggled face, blinking down. She was balanced on the very edge of the cockpit seat which she had tilted forward to allow her a view of the dead foliage wafting beneath the curved windows of the airship. With one hoof on a lever and another clinging to a chainlink handle, she scanned the decaying horizon, observing as the gray ashen tree trunks bled into an obsidian abyss that formed the apocalyptic husk of what was once the Everfree Forest.

In place of green tree canopies and misty knolls there spread a cancerous, ink-black, neverending quagmire of gnarled thorns—humongous twisting vines of iron thick onyx wood. The sharp, pointed barbs that protruded from these unnatural brambles were like giant glistening daggers of indestructible slade, hewn from the blackest heart of a ravaged earth. In an age where all that was green was dead, far darker and malevolent things grew from the festering pits of the earth, released from the sundered bowels of Tartarus, sucking the juice and blood from all that dared to mimic the throbbing warmth of yesteryear.

In two and a half short decades, the gorgeous Everfree Forest had been completely replaced with a wooden labyrinth spawned by the trailing energies of chaos wafting up from evacuated Tartarus, and anything that lurked within the pitch black shadow of that hellish maze could only be an abomination that fed on smaller horrors, for this was the new wilderness of the poisoned world: The Everbriar.

And the tooth was leading her straight there.

Scootaloo exhaled sharply. Goggled eyes glanced up at the tiny white bone hanging on its yellow string where she had suspended it from a copper bulkhead. With the barest of breaths, the Harmony's pilot could feel a gentle pull to her soul essence, like silken threads brushing her, coaxing her, urging her to fly deeper, deeper, deeper into the black heart of that nightmarish basin of brambles. When the last pony concentrated hard, she grew increasingly aware—and more and more despondent—of just how entrenched into the mire of that obsidian sea her anchor truly was. It horrified her as much as it confused her. The flicker of the bobbing cabin's lanternlights was of a sudden yet brief comfort to her beating heart.

“Meh. Enjoying your sleep, Spike?” the filly momentarily grumbled.

The horizon turned blacker and blacker as the Everbriar consumed everything from east to west beyond the cockpit, and yet she knew that she was just hitting upon the bare crest of Equestria's oceanic tumor. The hardened survivor's heart faltered, not so much with trepidation as with the sheer weight of the plunge that she was about to take. In truth, she looked for an excuse—any excuse—to delay her fateful dive for the briefest of moments.

However, it was for a far more somber reason that she urged herself to decelerate the Harmony. She had spotted something upon the edge of the Wasteland's blackest-of-black skins. It was a patch of stony soil just like many other millions of barren splotches across Equestria. For some pathetic reason, this patch and this patch alone stood out, occupying a singed spot within the twitching retinae of the last pony's aged eyes, so that she even memorized it from the air.

The entire cabin of the Harmony surged as Scootaloo compelled herself to pull at the braking levers, coasting the zeppelin to a complete stop. She took a deep breath and reached a hoof up to the handle that would send the craft into descent, but she merely gripped the thing and hung her suddenly flimsy weight from it. A nervous pit had formed in her stomach, and she bit her lip as she gazed at the dangling white tooth and the black expanse refocusing beyond its flimsy white shape.

Once again, she felt gentle feather-touches of silken softness pulling her lovingly towards the black abyss of that thorn-brambled hell lingering beyond the cockpit windows. With a surrendering sigh, she reminded herself that the same placid heart that animated that silken touch also possessed a voice that lulled her tired mind towards the familiar patch of land just edging the brink of madness below.

Scootaloo reasoned with herself that this was not a delay, but a precursor, a necessary prelude to a purgatorial plunge, as this one spot in Equestria had always served every lonely moment in her young life ever.

With one final breath—not so much for strength as for relief—the last pony gave in. She put her weight into the chainlink handle's grip. The Harmony descended rapidly towards the tiny barren patch among patches, and she found a sufficiently strong tree among its dead brothers and sisters to moor the aircraft to before trotting swiftly out, unarmored.

She left the tooth behind.

Her metal-laced hooves plodded across dead stone. All the grass had been evaporated. Any remaining soil had been vulcanized to obsidian glass. She trotted forward, her shadow but a black facsimile of herself in the lingering twilight. Out there, on the dead edge of the black sea of thorns, the world was quiet enough for her to hear the flakes of ash kissing the ground.

Metal horseshoes scraped bits of gravel off of the earth's exposed bosom as Scootaloo strolled forward, retracted her brown wings, and stood still before a sudden array of effigies. There were headstones, over sixty of them, sick white things stained with the green mildew of goddess-forsaken time.

Beyond this neatly arranged phalanx of rocks there rested the entrance to something. It was a crumpled, ugly, fluke of a hole, with several offensively heavy boulders having half-heartedly filled its gaping mouth. Criss-crossing rock-clustered entrance was a splintery web of wooden planks, nailed into place by ghostly equine hooves three decades ago. The flimsy barricade had shuddered, bowed, and crumbled over time, barely managing to hold tight the bouldery plug they once so bravely guarded for countless years.

But Scootaloo's gaze wasn't fixed on the haphazard hole in the wall of granite. She wasn't even remotely interested in the five dozen white rocks lingering before her. Instead, she shuffled lethargically—knowingly—straight towards a tall gray obelisk standing in front of her. The thing was twice her height, a dull ghost of its once pointed glory. After decades of pelting snow and acidic blight, the thing had melted into a lump of porous rock, but something still shimmered halfway up the front face of it.

The last pony raised her goggles. He nostrils flared as she diligently raised a hoof towards the front of the obelisk and wiped a layer of dust off, revealing several words chiseled in the Celestial Tongue.

“The Everclear Seventy.”

The words engraved in the monolith glistened in the noonday sun.

“In Memory of the Hard-Working Souls Who Lost Their Lives to Tragedy Deep in the Heart of the Everclear Mine.”

As the words bled in and out of focus, young Scootaloo's orange face drooped in the polish of the reflective granite. Two violet eyes blinked painfully, like lost twins. It hurt her gaze—pinpricks burning—and she suddenly shuddered to wrench her gaze away from the monolith, staring breathlessly as she leaned half of her body atop the body of her scooter. The eight-year-old filly blinked as she took in the many, many white rocks lingering between soft blades of grass and fluttering flower petals.

The memorial stretched gracefully across the meadow with the headstones forming neat little rows, wide enough for two visiting earth ponies to trot side by side in silent reverence. It was twice as quiet that day; Scootaloo was utterly alone. Otherwise, she would never have shown up there to begin with.

The filly pulled her helmet off and freed a tossed mane of pink hair that billowed in the soothing, warm wind. She fought the sun with cold shoulders, gazing with shuddering sickness as her eyes traveled bravely across the distant walls of the granite mound beyond the memorial ... towards where the deathly mouth of the abandoned mine lingered. Several fresh wreathes of lilies crowned the wooden barricaded entrance, like garlands sacrificed before the gagged mouth of a giant serpent. Scootaloo's foalish eyes blinked, and the site was once more an ordinarily barricaded mine shaft, innocent and barren of all the souls that had ever been consumed within.

The filly bit her lip. She knew what was coming next. She planned for it, sickly dreamed of it during lonely nights spent under tear-stained stars. Pensively, she clutched her helmet to her chest—tighter and tighter to the point of breaking—as she bravely forced her violet eyes back towards the glossy black body of the obelisk, traveling down a chiseled sea of names, names, names.

Most of the titles were of earth ponies—nearly all of them as a matter of fact. This was subtly conveyed with chiseled white illustrations of trees that flanked the corresponding titles. However, there were a few names accompanied by the shapes of starlit horns, and even fewer names—no more than five—accompanied with ivory white wings. And at the very bottom of this last list, centered with starking peculiarity, were two names joined in stone as they had been joined in life:

The second name in particular, Scootaloo's vision haloed about. Something that had been stowed away in the dusty corners of her eyes bled hotly with every hungry second spent pouring over it. She raised a shaking hoof towards the white winged engraving, and her ears pricked to hear her melodic voice, like something that the foal hoped had been following her over the kissing leaves of every nightly howl, a dream that she could never let go of.

What she heard instead wasn't nearly as lulling, but upon a silken breath of feminine grace and endearment it very delicately resembled it. Still, the tiniest of contrasts cut her brain like a knife upon the precipice of its utterance, under a peripheral fluttering of pegasus wings: “Oh! Hello, Scootaloo.”

The foal immediately jerked back from the obelisk. She cleared her throat, straightened the orange face in the granite reflection, and gazed with dried eyes towards the yellow shade having suddenly touched down behind her.

“Ahem. Fluttershy, hey there. Uhm...” Bearing a brave smirk, Scootaloo spun about and casually leaned on her scooter. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“I was about to ask the same of you,” returned a melodic voice along the gossamer threads of the warm spring breeze. A pink-maned pegasus with soft blue eyes stood with a pair of wicker baskets saddled over her flanks. Several white flowers danced on either side of her as she sauntered up on pale yellow hooves and proceeded to lay the lilies one at a time across the rows of white stones. “Somepony said that I might find you here.”

The orange foal blinked awkwardly. “Really?” A frigid cloud fell over the suddenly naked air of that place, and her teeth chattered. “I'm not in trouble or anything, am I?”

“Heeheehee... Good heavens, no.” Fluttershy giggled. It was a flighty sound, as if smiles could sing. “Hmmm... Quite the opposite, actually.”

Scootaloo squinted quizzically at her suddenly joyous acquaintance. “What's gotten you in such a cheerful mood today?” She sported a helpless smirk, however briefly.

“Ohhhh...” Fluttershy paused in the midst of laying flowers down and smiled towards the sun. The noonday breeze played with her hair like the teasing hands of a doting mother. “I just had the most cheerful thought, of circles within circles. Kindness is like a dance, and everypony is sharing the floor with each other... mmmm... whether they know it or not.” The yellow pegasus blushed slightly. With a warm breath, and she gazed sweetly the foal's way. “It is a joy to see you, dear Scootaloo. It always is.”

Scootaloo's cheeks flamed from within. In an uncomfortable shiver, she fluttered her wings and shrunk within herself, murmuring aside: “You've been sniffing those flowers a bit too much, ya think, Fluttershy?”

“Heeheehee... Perhaps.” Fluttershy took a deep breath. Steeling herself, she shuffled further in her task of flower-depositing and murmured in a more somber voice, “Do you know what this place is?”

“Beats the heck out of me.” Scootaloo offensively rubbed the inside of her front forelimb and scrunched a tomcoltish face towards the obelisk, the headstones, and the abandoned mine shaft beyond. “Looks like a bunch of ordinary rocks. Seems like a really silly idea to put all of this out here where somepony could trip over them.”

Fluttershy gasped at that last utterance. “Oh, it is far more than just a bunch of rocks, Scootaloo! This is a memorial erected in dedication to ponies who died in a horrible tragedy that happened at this very site less than a decade ago.”

“Ya don't say?” Scootaloo smirked slightly. There was a deep twitch to her lips, but she hid it professionally. “Seems like an awfully peaceful place for something so bad to have happened.”

“It's only peaceful because the citizens of Ponyville have done everything they can to keep the grounds nice and organized,” Fluttershy said between breaths as she laid flower after flower down before the white stones with clenched teeth. “Many ponies around here have lost loved ones to the mine collapse, or else they knew friends who lost family to it. It's common for them to come and pay their respects. So it's only fair for the grounds to be maintained in good order, in respect of those who died, if nothing else.”

“Is that... uhhh... what you're doing, Fluttershy?” Scootaloo blinked her pink eyes as she watched the yellow pegasus stroll past in her dutiful flower-laying. “Are you paying respects?”

“Mmm... In a manner of speaking, yes.” The mare stood up, bearing a delicate smile. “I... erm... I'm chief groundskeeper of the Everclear Memorial,” she added in a humble breath.

It took Scootaloo several seconds before she realized that she had gasped at that. “You are? Since when?”

“Since I volunteered years ago.” Fluttershy paused briefly in her service, standing in the sea of white stones as Celestia's sun rained down golden light on the living and the dead alike. “Do you remember my story about how I got my cutie mark?”

“Nnnngh, yes.” Scootaloo briefly rubbed her temple with an exhausted hoof. “I'm pretty sure I can still hear you reciting your song whenever I duck my head underwater.”

The adult pegasus' skin turned rosy as she hid behind a lock of pink hair and murmured forth her memories. “Well, the night after I landed on earth and discovered my talent with animals, I slept beneath the monolith here. The memorial had just been constructed and I didn't know any better. When morning came, a family of farm ponies had come to pay their respects. At first they were angry at me for using the sacred site as a bed. But when I explained what had happened and how I got there, they quickly forgave me and let me stay at their house until my mom and dad could come down from Cloudsdale to get me. That's how I first met Applejack and her family—when I stayed at their farm for the first time.”

“Heh.” Scootaloo smirked with bizarre pride. “Guess you had a thing or two to learn about finding a place out in the open to sleep.”

Fluttershy innocently responded, “Actually, I felt horrible. My first day on the ground of this lovely world, and I thought I had ruined a very special place to earth ponies! So, the first moment I could, I volunteered to return here and assist with the groundskeeping. As years went by, the Ponyville Department of Wildlife Affairs realized I was good at tending to animals as well, and I was soon generously given a place on the edge of the Everfree Forest to move into.”

“Oh, so is that how you got your cottage?”

“Mmm, yes. I felt so lucky and blessed. Since then, I haven't missed an opportunity to pay regular respects to this memorial,” she said, suddenly wilting into a sighing somberness as she gazed sadly at the stones upon stones. “Such a wonderful land, and yet such a horrible tragedy. My heart goes out to every one of the souls these monuments are dedicated to.”

“Why?” Scootaloo squinted. “Sounds like you didn't know a single one of 'em, Fluttershy.”

“Does it matter?” She blinked steadily at the foal. “All life is precious, both breathing and not breathing. In a way, the world's been sharing the same single breath since the beginning of time. Who would we be without those ponies who have set the foundation of things before us?”

“I...” The little orange pegasus squirmed atop her scooter. When Fluttershy wasn't looking, she stole a bitter glance towards the bottom of the monolith's granite face, at the last two names flanked with white white wings. “I can't pretend to be that deep, Fluttershy.”

“It doesn't have to be a matter of pretending, Scootaloo.” Fluttershy smiled at her, laid down a few more flowers, and chirped into the lively wind, “If you're calm enough, patient enough, and polite enough, the world makes everything clear to you. Life has always been built on nice things, even in spite of the occasional ugliness. If that wasn't true, how could something so beautiful as this place—as this moment—exist where there was once so much pain?”

Scootaloo gulped and replied with a swiftness that startled even her own foalish mind. “And what of sadness, Fluttershy?”

“Sadness has a niceness to it too,” the adult pegasus said as she padded softly towards the front of the monument and lowered herself on folded hooves. “Insomuch that it reminds us that there are precious things left in this world for us to hold onto—so long as we're able—and that they're worth every second of cherishing.”

“Pfftt!” Scootaloo couldn't help but launch a pathetic raspberry at that. Her childish face smirked. “But Fluttershy—!”

“Shhh, Scootaloo. Please, if you don't mind,” the mare ever so softly chided.

Scootaloo silenced herself as if she had been stabbed with a red hot poker. She watched curiously as the Ponyvillean animal tamer shut her eyes, craned her skull towards her yellow reflection in the granite, and murmured a ritualistic prayer along the warm threads of the noonday wind. It was a natural chant, as if the mumbled words had been etched into Fluttershy's vocal cords, waiting for this very naked moment of release.

But they were sacred words, and—try as she might—Scootaloo could barely hear the phrases that were uttered. She suddenly realized that she was never meant to hear them. The white rocks rang with the echoes of Fluttershy's intimate tongue, the only discernible utterance being the holy name of “Gultophine” every other breath or so.

Eventually, the sacred moment had passed. “Thank you, Scootaloo,” Fluttershy dripped forth as she stood back up, her baskets empty. “I'm very sorry if I put a damper in your afternoon. It's just that this place is very special to so many ponies. I think it's encouraging to see you get so much exercise on that scooter of yours, but you should be careful where you ride that thing. I would hate to see you make the same mistake I did when I was your age.”

“Hey.” Scootaloo shrugged with a smirk. “That's what I've got older ponies like you for, eh Fluttershy?”

She chuckled softly beneath sealed lips and drifted towards the foal. “You're all alone this afternoon?”

“Huh?”

“Oh! Mmm... I... I didn't mean anything nosy by that. It's just that I'm not used to seeing you without the company of your two delightful friends, Scootaloo.”

“Meh. Apple Bloom's been stuck on the farm for one thing or another,” Scootaloo said, then rolled her eyes as she added, “And Sweetie Belle is swimming in a huge freakin' pile of homeschool lessons, as always. Seriously, I hope Rarity someday lets her sister live a little before the day she dies.”

“That's no way to talk!” Fluttershy gasped with a look of pale horror on her face, as if a plague had suddenly swept over the landscape at that last utterance. She leaned forward with earnest blue eyes glimmering. “Rarity is only caring for Sweetie Belle's future! You know very well that your filly friend is constantly traveling back and forth between Ponyville and her grandparents' place in Trottingham, and she's lucky to get as many lessons done in between trips if she wants to have something that even remotely matches Ms. Cheerilee's curriculum!”

“Alright—Alright! I get it! Yeesh!” Scootaloo rolled her eyes and smirked. “I thought you were the expert on animals, not schooling!”

“Oh... uhm... I'm sorry. I... I didn't mean to be outstepping my boundaries.” Fluttershy wilted slightly and brushed one foreleg with a nervous hoof. “I really do care for the whole three of you, and I know that Sweetie Belle is constantly busy for a reason. I just hope that you don't make the horrible mistake of blaming her for getting the necessary lessons that she's constantly dealing with. Erm... Not that I wish to insinuate that you're shallow or anything, Scootaloo, I... uhm... oh dear...”

“Heheheh—Fluttershy, it's okay.” Scootaloo leaned from her scooter and rested a hoof gently on one of the pegasus' front legs. The mare's coat felt velvety soft to the touch. “I'm not angry at either of my friends. I bought Apple Bloom a postcard from Sugarcube Corner, and I briefly visited Sweetie Belle just to bug her. I know it's only natural that the Crusaders can't hang out all the time. I guess I was just... meh, I dunno... friggin' bored, I guess.”

“What are your parents up to?” Fluttershy asked.

“My p-parents?” Scootaloo bravely breathed. For a brief moment, her eyes bobbed over the sea of stones. “They're gone...”

She blinked, then jerked a glance up at Fluttershy.

“On vacation.” Scootaloo smiled. “Would you believe it? The one day in the year that there's a Wonderbolt Performance in Fillydelphia and they leave me behind to house-sit! Like I really need to be watering the frickin' plants while they're off watching Spitfire and Soarin' do loopty loops. It's on account of the 'Fillydelphian Cider' that they said I couldn't come. What a load of horse... well, y'know. Like I'd ever drink the stuff! Worst thing I ever poured down my throat was a bottle of prune juice, and that was on a dare from Apple Bloom. I swear, I dunno how Granny Smith stomachs that crap.”

“It's a good quaff for the digestive system.” Fluttershy smiled.

“Er—Huh?”

“Prune juice. It helps ponies and other living things when they need to... to... erm...” She blushed suddenly like a beet.

“Ohhhhh—I gotcha.” Scootaloo winked. “When they gotta literally make a 'load of horse y'know.'”

“Eeep!” Fluttershy winced. “Scootaloo, I never made jokes like that at your age!”

“Something tells me you'll never make jokes like that when you're one hundred.” Scootaloo smirked and placed the helmet back on her head. “Well, it's been awfully nice shooting the breeze with you, Fluttershy. But I best be off. I've got a few errands to run before I check on mom's ferns and see if they've croaked yet.”

“Oh really? I—erm... that is... Hmmm.” Fluttershy brightened, dulled, then kicked limply at the dirt.

Scootaloo blinked at her with violet curiosity. “Something the matter?”

“Oh, no.” The yellow pegasus snickered softly. “There is nothing wrong. I was just momentarily thinking—erm—since you were out and about, and I was also doing a few random tasks, if you might want to join me, Scootaloo, in feeding some of the little animals around the nearby pond? That is, of course, if you were maybe looking forward to... uhm... some company.”

Scootaloo giggled. “No offense, Fluttershy. You may be all about taking care of cute fluffy creatures, but sitting around by a lake and feeding ducks isn't exactly my idea of an... exciting... afternoon...” The orange foal's voice limped off in a similar fashion to her fading smile. She found herself blinking helplessly at the sight before her.

Fluttershy—ever patient, ever kind—was doing her tranquil best to smile. But at the crest of Scootaloo's muttered excuse, there was a wilting to the adult pegasus' limbs, blossoming outward from two blue eyes that fluttered earthward painfully, like lost twins. The young pegasus instantly recognized that abysmal expression of loneliness: pinpricks burning.

Like an exploding thundercloud, Scootaloo's lungs shifted and she megaphoned through a bright smile, “You know what? I love ducks! They're like daredevil seagulls who dive underwater and don't afraid of anything!”

“Huh?”

The foal shrugged and re-gripped her scooter's handles. “My afternoon's clear. I'm sure Mom's silly ferns can live for another few hours without me. So are we going to the pond or do I have to race ya?”

“Oh, that's wonderful!” Fluttershy jerked up straight, nearly giggling. Her yellow coat shone suddenly with a golden sheen that matched her silken voice. “Erm... But I'm afraid I've never been all that good at racing other ponies, so I doubt it would be a worthy challenge.”

“I was just teasing. Jeez!” Scootaloo rolled her violet eyes and tightened her helmet. “Show me the way, Fluttershy. The last time I went to a pond I thought I could earn a cutie mark for alligator wrestling. Needless to say, I never went back.”

“It's due east,” Fluttershy said, softly taking wing with a breath and a smile. She gazed down as she kept a low altitude so as not to leave earshot of the scooter-gliding foal. “While we're at it, maybe you'll let me teach you how to tell the difference between local water fowl?”

“Heeeeeey,” Scootaloo cooed with a sway of her shoulders as her tiny wings throttled her forward over the grassy fields. “Who am I to turn down the Stare Master?”

“Heeheehee.”

After several redundant hours of circling, the last pony had come to a decision. She moored the Harmony—employing both hydraulic claws and four sets of chains—to the granite face of a steep mountain looming several hundred feet above the edge of the black Everbriar. This was not an easy task. It took several sweating attempts at steambolting the clamps to the rockface and over fifty minutes of fiddling with the chains to make sure the airship was perfectly anchored, but it had to be done. To position the Harmony at sea level within reach of the giant black thorns of the Everbriar was tantamount to reckless suicide, as any unforeseen monstrosity could very easily shred Scootaloo's pride and joy to copper ribbons.

“At least I'll remember where I parked,” she murmured to herself with a nonsensical smile.

Her voice was brief comfort to her in the ghostly twilight winds of high altitude. From high above, she stared forlornly into the black-against-black sea of thorns looming below her. Squatting on the edge of the hangar deck's aperture entrance, her lower hooves dangling, she sipped long and hard from a canteen of water and shuddered forth a wilted sigh. On either of her shivering flanks were piled tall stacks of equipment, three times the size of a normal sojourn's payload.

This was not a simple trip into the hollow mausoleum of Canterlot. Nor was this a venture into the abandoned hovels of Ponyvillean buildings. This was a neck-deep plunge into ravaged Mother Nature, a landscape dictated by wilderness run amok with the fleeting limbs of chaos and unrest, a dark and gnarled world dragged up to the surface of the earth by a sundering apocalypse in the bitter absence of Celestial Light. Sunken in the depths of those tangled obsidian vines were things that did not sleep, born of Tartarus unto a dead world, forever outracing the perpetual gray twilight in their sheer audacity to exist.

And as Scootaloo once again produced the dragon tooth, dangling it before her dull scarlets from its yellow string, she felt the soft tendrils of her melodic voice drawing her down, down, down towards the obsidian pits below.

“How in Celestia's name did she friggin' end up there when it all ended?” she drunkenly slurred, or at least she wished she was drunk. It might have more fittingly excused the stupidity she was about to exercise. With a lasting groan, Scootaloo stood up straight, hoisting her thrice-thick bundle of gear onto heaving shoulders. “H'jnor. W'nyhhm.”

The catseye aperture sliced shut behind her, glowing with purple runes of protection, all of which she promptly abandoned in a steep dive as she flung herself like a brown comet towards the thorn-pierced womb of Everbriar below. The Harmony hung behind, like a copper moon, longing for its fragile winged satellite. Scootaloo pondered—as she always briefly did on these excursions—that it could very well be the last time she saw her “home”. To not contemplate that would have been unhealthy.

The last pony faced forward for the rest of the trip.

Chapter Twenty-One: Everbriar

Scootaloo decided to approach the Everbriar from its eastern border, trotting carefully at sea-level. Flying directly down through the ceiling of the thorny forest was hardly a novel idea, considering the many shadowed things with jaws that might be lurking just beneath the brambles. Trucking her equipment over lurching shoulders, Scootaloo navigated clusters of dead tree husks, petrified piles of scorched foliage, and segmented rows of sedimentary deposits. All that was robbed of life morphed into all that was devoid of it. The perpetual grayness gave way to a deep, earthen black-on-black that blinded Scootaloo in every haphazard blink.

The twilight haze from above bled through the miasma of thicker and thicker clustering thorns, illuminating the last silent hill of doughy snow before a slanted sea of solid granite stretched into the depths of infinitude. Scootaloo sauntered down a dried-up river bed, dipping into the raked flesh of the earth where the Cataclysm's blast waves had pulverized all dust away from the rocky bone of the world.

A roof of pale white roots formed a cylindrical tunnel that dug into the darkness. The last pony skittered like a lone insect down this natural half-pipe, until she suddenly realized they weren't natural roots at all, but instead she was actually navigating the discarded ribcage of a large serpentine corpse. At the crooked neck joint, she exited, glancing back to see where the long spine ended at a reptilian skull adorned with twin tufts of flaking facial hair—one half bright-orange and the other half a grayish purple.

“Heh. Guess Sweetie Belle was right after all, Apple Bloom,” the last pony briefly murmured to the air, and then steeled herself into silence, for that was the last time she could afford herself the luxury of speech. Just beyond the giant skeleton were the true shadows of Everfree, as well as the nightmarish plunge yet to come. Only scavengers who desperately wished to die would dare make a sound from henceforth.

Scootaloo sat down on her haunches and rummaged through her things. She produced a thick coat of leather armor, varnished solid black to match the darkest shadows imaginable. The armor was of such tanklike thickness that it would cover her wings entirely. It was a necessary precaution for the upcoming sojourn, as she had no reason to fly blindly through the looming abyss before her. Adorning this, she proceeded to sheathe her copper rifle and magazines, both of which had been camouflaged with black tarps to cover the glow of the runestone ammo. She equipped a black leather mask, accompanied by an oral mouthpiece custom-built to diffuse the noise of her breathing while also filtering invisible streams of dust from the bitterly cold air.

Aptly shrouded for the shadows ahead, Scootaloo then rummaged through the far side of her saddlebag. She afforded herself one last look at light—an emerald light—as she glanced at the runed jar of green flame resting in a safely padded pocket on her flank. Spike's breath lingered anxiously within, bubbling and frothing in anticipation for the first enchanted murmur of a dutiful time traveler. Scootaloo resealed the bag tightly, affording no escape of green light from its hidden housing. Indeed, there could be no light afforded for this descent, not even her usual yoke of lanterns.

Verily, she rummaged through another pocket and produced a pair of goggles that she hadn't used in a long time. The frames of the eyepiece were wide, clear, and contained a thin hollow between both lenses. The copper frames of each eyepiece were studded in four cardinal positions with tiny runestones. With practiced precision, the last pony reached into her saddle, retrieved a tiny leather pouch, opened it, and poured two liberal spurts of powdery white moondust into the twin hollows of the goggles. Once the lenses were aptly filled with lunar sediment, the scavenger snapped the copper frame shut and brought the crafted article to her lips.

“Y'lynwyn.”

There was a stifled purple haze. Scootaloo's bracelet of unicorn horns had also been covered with a thick leather band of black, obscuring their magical strobe. There was a very brief flash of vanilla light emanating from the twin hollows of the goggles, and the eyepiece vibrated with lunar enchantment as the last pony raised the thing to her brown skull and slid the article over her scarlet eyes.

Her vision fluctuated as she was suddenly assaulted with squirming trails of black-lines-on-white-snow. It had been several months to a year since she last used the moonvision spell; she could forgive herself for needing a few minutes to readjust. Every contour and shape of the Everbriar danced and billowed before her like obsidian hash marks against ivory bone. A dancing static of white miasma surged beyond the magical foreground, and as Scootaloo turned her gaze left and right she could make out black highlights that discerned obstructions from the rest of the lifeless world. It was all thanks to the runed refraction of energy bending through the enchanted powder that fluctuated between the runed lenses.

Finally, Scootaloo was ready. She felt the tiny, stabbing weight of a dragon tooth resting between the double layers of leather armor and her brown coat. A velvety soft kiss was tugging her forward into the deepening maw. With an iron breath, the flightless pegasus marched like a silent tank, piercing the blind world through binocular moonvision. The great Briar stretched before her like jagged black barbs against an all-white world, and with careful precision she descended into the sundered belly of the planet, hopping down one giant onyx vine after another.

Scootaloo could see, and yet she couldn't see.

It was of little consequence; the Everfree Briar was not a jungle destined for mortal eyes. There were things—strange, skittering, mindless shapes of things—that lingered and throbbed there, basking in the deadblink of infinite shadows, parting in a mute swath on either side of the last pony's advancing hoofsteps. Scootaloo saw them as mere black scrapes against the white froth of her billowing moonvision. All she heard was the sound of her own breath being filtered from the air and deep into her own ears and her ears alone. In such a claustrophobic bubble, she shuffled zombily forward, downward, trespassing deeper into the thorn-infested womb of Equestria one shuddering heartbeat after another.

The trip was frighteningly vertical, with the weighted pegasus having to bound down one gnarled slope of a thick black vine, and then another, and then yet another. She was at a total loss to stretch forth her wings, or even her wits for that matter. The last pony kept a desperate mental note of every hop, every shuffle, every side-step that took her down the depths of that harrowing hollow in the ground, for she would have to eventually double-back with four times as much effort after getting what she came for.

What she came for: it spoke to her with gentle silken stabs of the yellow-strung dragon's tooth planted firmly against her bosom. With each brave drop she took, leaping down one thick stalk of thorns after another, Scootaloo felt the soft velvety tug all the stronger, like a quiet song lulling her through this nightmare. It had a wilting voice, soft and melodic against the cacophony of the last pony's hissing breaths that were constantly thundering through the leather mask.

One last descent, and the ground evened out, marking the bottom basin of where all the soil that had ever existed in Everfree once lingered before the Cataclysm evaporated it all. All that rooted there now were hellish stalks of iron-thick thorns, forming a forest of sword-sharp barbs that danced like coarse black swirls in the moonvision of Scootaloo's hobbling sojourn. Through this sea of white static, the last pony marched her leathered flanks bravely, glancing left and right to map out the pitch-black hazards that lie before her. Carefully, she navigated bowed brambles that threatened to decapitate her with low-hanging, errant thorns. She marked out finite fissures in the stone floor, hopping over them while briefly retching into her mask from the barest scents of sulfur and brimstone billowing up from the bleeding heart of Tartarus.

Beyond the hollow of her claustrophobic breaths, the silence was murderous, so that the great emptiness of that forsaken Briar coalesced into one endless, imaginary scream that dared the last pony to rip her mask off and submit to the utterly black sarcophagus that she had witlessly buried herself in. With a brave breath, Scootaloo once more felt the feather-light stabs of the dragon tooth tugging her forward. As the dream of a melodic voice ever lingered, she carried herself forward in an icy trot, and bravely challenged the inky depths of Everfree.

A solid hour into the grave voyage, and the black shadows in front of Scootaloo doubled, tripled, quadrupled. At first, it was merely a thickening of thorns, forming an acidic labyrinth of porous dips, twists, turns, and tunnels, all of which the last pony agilely traversed with barely a sweat. But then the shadows came alive, animated by something far paler and colder than life, and they moved even when she stood still. Under a chilling air of caution, Scootaloo slid towards the perimeter and scuffled her body silently against the wooden surface of several vines.

Her canter bled down to an oozing limp, barely advancing more than ten centimeters per minute as she cautiously eyed the skittering shadows through her goggles' moonvision, and those shadows were many. There were thin shapes, hollow shapes, breathless and bloodless shapes that rolled like paper leaves against the white blemish of the obscured Briar before suddenly producing hundreds of squirming fingers and shooting off into the penumbra of madness at the speed of light. Coiling intestinal shadows that resembled seas of snakes solidified into solid hulks too gargantuan to possibly be that soundless, and yet they lingered just beyond Scootaloo's masked snout, writhing upon forests of twitching spindle-legs, barreling about with the cold cadence of cobwebs against rust.

Another hour, and Scootaloo had to completely halt her advance. The last pony sat, hunched against a fork of crumbling vines, watching as a quivering puddle of black splotches limped and thrashed before her like dead fish atop a concrete surface. The reason she waited was because a thick cluster of hairy black filaments was presently circling the wounded creature, pattering on clawed toes as it narrowed its orbit and converged upon the center of her static moonvision. It thrusted itself upon the thrashing splotches with dagger-black mandibles, tearing the quivering shape to obsidian ribbons with a frigid silence that permeated the very fabric of nightmares.

Scootaloo stared at this scene for so long and with such concentration that the thing's exoskeleton nearly came into focus beyond the limits of moonvision, revealing ever so briefly a twitching mass of hundreds upon hundreds of souless black eyes, framed by curling feelers. The ash-less air grew thick with copper humidity, and soon the shadows faded into the white haze of the moonvision, but Scootaloo didn't move. She knew that the creature was still there, just as it knew that she was there. The last pony could feel it pulsing in an opposing rhythm to her claustrophobic breaths.

Scootaloo was barely halfway towards her goal; she couldn't let this deathly moment drive her into doing something fleeting, stupid, or impulsive. With coolness that could freeze fire to ice, she stealthily reached back to her saddlebag and pulled her tarp-covered rifle free. There was a slight shuffling from beyond; the black shapes resurfaced and were just as quickly reburied in the white moonvision. She pretended to be as indifferent to them as the nameless things were to her. Extending the brass barrel of the gun, she held the thing outward like a fifth limb, her lips close enough to make love to the concealed magazine of runestones as she waited, daring to outlast the darkness.

Her heart was beating heavily. Scootaloo ever so briefly remembered a foalish shade of herself that had cowered in the corner of a cave, weeping fractured lullabies under the marching cadence of Wasteland trolls. Here, bordering the skittering claws of many faceless abominations of Tartarus, an adult Scootaloo barely winced. The world was a lot less scary on the thicker end of a long life tempered by murder. She clung to her rifle and her rifle clung to her: brass twins suspended in a darkness framed with gnarled thorns.

She would wait them out. All she had to do was wait them out. Survival in the Wastelands only meant outlasting the patience of all things that drooled, until Death itself forgot how to salivate. She felt her heartbeat again; the dragon tooth was reassuring her, a suddenly soft companion, a devoted witness to this sightless spectacle.

In the darkest abyss of the universe, Scootaloo closed her eyes to the moonvision and relaxed, for once again the melodic song came to her upon gossamer strands of gentleness. She was pulled in two directions at once, several fathoms forward and two and a half decades back. As the many-eyed husks shuffled away into the sea of thorns beyond, the last pony took the time to split in half, her mind levitating briefly upon the witless gap that her memories allowed her to bask in.

“Are they... uhm...” The orange filly nervously sweated in the warm, spring air. “Are th-they gonna bite me?”

Fluttershy lightly giggled as she squatted down at a pond's rippling edge besides Scootaloo and nudged the tiny pegasus forward. “Do not worry. Even if they did, it would merely feel like a love pinch.”

“Y-yeah, okay.” The foal bit her lip and stretched both hooves out, cupping a sprinkling of bread crumbs. “Just warn me before they 'love pinch' my eyes out.”

A pair of pink-feathered cranes tip-toed through the water's edge, regarding Scootaloo with sideways, beady eyes. A tilting of their necks, a flutter of feathers, and the two birds stretched their beaks and lightly tap-tap-tapped the inner edges of the foal's forelimbs, snatching up the tender morsels of bread before shaking the food down their elongated esophaguses and fluttering off into the depths of the crystal blue lake.

“See?” Fluttershy smiled proudly and gathered more edibles from where her wicker basket was lying beside a line of fronds and cattails. “With enough patience and tenderness, you can wait any creature out. The soul of a pony is such that our calmness can outlast the impulsive instinct of nature. It's very beautiful, in a way. It's as if we were built solely for being the caretakers of all walks of life.”

“Is that so?” Scootaloo jolted slightly as a duck waddled up from out of nowhere and selfishly pecked the last of the crumbs from her grasp. It flew away over the waters like a skipping stone, sending ripples across a placid lake that was utterly blanketed with a mesmerizing bustle of activity, from swans to otters to tortoises to dragonflies. “I gotta admit, Fluttershy. You're like a friggin' magnet to all of these critters. You don't suppose you feed them too much, do you?”

“Mmm... Well...” The pony's yellow cheeks blushed slightly as she busied herself with treating a surfacing turtle to a leaf of crisp green lettuce. “I admit that I sometimes do give a little too generously to the local animals. But I cannot help it. They're so peaceful to look at, and the more of them that are around the more the air just has this... I can't explain it. It's like there's suddenly a delightful hum to the world. I've noticed this since the first day I landed on solid ground. There's a separate peace in the company of wildlife, something that you could never find in Cloudsdale, or in downtown Ponyville for that matter.”

“Yeah. Besides, the day I have a bird walk up and eat stuff out of my hooves at Sugarcube Corner is the day Mrs. and Mr. Cake call for the exterminator.” Scootaloo reached for more bread crumbs and blinked suddenly at a pair of squirrels crawling over bravely from a nearby tree trunk flanking the pond. With a smirk, she tossed the bits onto the ground before them and watched as they drew closer with shifty black eyes before desperately snatching the crumbs and scampering off with a victorious wave of their bushy tails. “Y'know, according to Sweetie Belle, there are some rodents on the far edges of Equestria who can actually talk. You ever heard of that?”

“Oh, the world is a vast and strange place, Scootaloo. There are many wonders to behold. And... er... Y-Yes, what to you and I may appear to be a normal member of wild fauna could very well have a distant cousin with enough intelligence to rival ponydom. Any animal is capable of amazing thinking skills. I bet it would surprise even you. Take, for example, Princess Celestia's prize pet, Philomena. On the surface, a phoenix appears as simple-minded as any partridge or songbird. But it is in fact a very noble and smart creature. It understands our language very well; ponies are just not advanced enough to understand the likes of its beautiful, fiery melodies.” The yellow pegasus ended her speech with a breathy chuckle.

“Phoenix... Phoenix... Phoenix...” Scootaloo thought aloud, her orange face scrunching under a wind-kissed mane of pink. “Remind me, is that the really scary thing with a chicken's head that”—she gulped—“turns innocent ponies to st-stone?”

“Oh, no, Scootaloo.” Fluttershy gently shook her head as she patted the munching turtle and turned to face the foal. “That's a cockatrice. They're not nearly as intelligent as phoenixes, and they're far more irascible.”

“Far more irasci—Huh?”

“Meaning that they get angry a lot more easily.” Fluttershy explained with a bashful smile. “Phoenixes may look scary, with their flaming wings and all, but they're very peaceful creatures, if not a teeeeny bit mischievous.” She produced another giggle, flanked with an embarrassed blush that Scootaloo could barely comprehend. “Still, it's not a good idea to... erm... anger a Phoenix.”

“Heh, I'll be sure never to do that,” Scootaloo said.

There was a sudden crackle in the air, like the peaceful earth was being split in two. The animals thinned in half, a good chunk of them flocking on flustered feathers towards the sky. Fluttershy too was spooked, briefly yelping with a girlish octave before calming down and murmuring towards the local wildlife: “It's okay! It's okay! No need to be frightened!” She nevertheless gulped and braved a more solid breath. “It's just thunder! The storm's still far away, my pretties!”

Scootaloo eyed the horizon, spotting the dark clouds in question as they thickened more and more meatily over the western edge of the Equestrian Valley. “Seriously—Today of all days? I thought the weather fliers had already scheduled a storm last week!”

“Winter Wrap-Up is long gone,” Fluttershy said as she tossed more crumbs onto the pond's surface for a gaggle of geese that had courageously returned to the sound of her solacing voice. “Now that summer's almost upon us, there's a very busy quota to fill if we're to buffer the coming heat. I'm not... erm... exactly an expert on climate control. Rainbow Dash tried explaining it to me one time. She mentioned that if storms aren't made early enough, then the moisture could build up into a cyclone by mid-July, and nopony wants that sort of a dreadful thing...”

“Heh—I wouldn't mind a little bit of excitement like that!”

Fluttershy gulped. “Scootaloo, have you ever been in a cyclone?”

“Not yet.” The orange filly yawned, eyeing the darkening horizon.

“Well, I have, and it's anything but a pleasurable experience! Equestria can be a scary place when weather goes unchecked.”

“But then you've got hurricane parties!”

“Erm... Hurricane parties?” Fluttershy's blue eyes blinked obtusely.

“Yeah!” Scootaloo beamed. “Apple Bloom told me all about them! Three years ago, this really nasty cyclone struck Ponyville—because Winter Wrap Up was finished late that spring or some crap, what-the-heck-ever—but the Apple Family made a whole thing with it, and when they waited the storm out in their cellar they played music and had caramel apples and told scary stories and stuff.”

“That sounds most delightful.” Fluttershy smiled bashfully. “But, Scootaloo, you hardly need a terrible storm to enjoy tranquil moments.”

“Why not?” Scootaloo hunched down over folded hooves and smirked devilishly at her reflection in the rippling water. “The world can be a really stiff and boring place sometimes. Fluttershy, have you ever wondered just how—I dunno—relaxing it'd be if things just shut down for once?”

“Shut down?”

“Y'know—Ponies going to their daily jobs, the same newspaper delivering the same boring stories, the delivery pegasi flying the same mundane routes; if all of that just stopped—like all of the sudden—well, I think that could be a very fun day. With nothing to do, you'd have everything to do. You feel me?”

“It almost sounds like you want the world to end, Scootaloo.”

“Pfft! Don't be silly, Fluttershy.” She smirked once more. “So much of what goes on in Ponyville is so... so boring.”

“I dunno.” Fluttershy tossed a light pink mane over her fidgeting features and muttered: “I don't really go into town too much. Well.. erm... except for when Rarity invites me over for tea or something delightful like that.” She said this with the barest hint of a smile.

“You of all ponies should know where I'm coming from, Fluttershy, even if I can't exactly spell it out.” Scootaloo gestured with a hoof. “You hang out with animals all the time. Animals don't have the same curse of boredom that ponies do, right? I mean, they just come and go as they please, eating out of your hoof when you let them, or stealing out of your basket when you don't.” That said, she winked pointedly over Fluttershy's shoulder.

“Hmmm?” The yellow pegasus did a double-take at her belongings and gasped breathlessly at a pair of squirrels who were presently dipping their greedy paws directly into her bag of bread crumbs. “Oh no no no no! Don't be rude—Please!” She made a start to close the bag; the rodents shrieked at her with a chorus of shrill barks and scampered angrily towards a distant oak tree. “Ohhhh—That's the third time those two have done that this week!”

Scootaloo blinked. “You memorize every squirrel?”

“Only the mean ones,” Fluttershy murmured, staring with sudden mastery towards the tree branches and forcing the two bushy-tailed scavengers to flee. “Rest assured... uhm... it's a short list. Eh heh heh... Hmm...”

“Maybe you and Sweetie Belle could fetch their distant cousins to talk some sense into them.”

“Then I would be out of a job, would I not?” Fluttershy braved a wink.

“Heaven forbid!” Scootaloo chuckled. Resting her snout against her forelimbs in a sudden sigh, she gazed up at the blistering noonday sky in question. Against the solidifying wall of dark distant thunderclouds there hovered a wispy pair of beds that contrasted sharply, like two pale rocks against a dull earth. White granite names flickered across Scootaloo's violet eyes and were gone in a decaying shadow, like yesterday's scent. She eventually murmured, “Fluttershy?”

“Mmm?” Fluttershy cooed, glancing over from where she was tying her bag of crumbs shut. “Yes, Scootaloo?”

“I... I was just curious,” Scootaloo muttered as she dug a hoof lethargically into the moist edge of the pond, kneading the horizon between the dry earth and the anchorless firmaments. “I know that you're the head groundskeeper and all, but... did you know anypony, specifically, who died in... uhm... who died in the Everclear Mine?”

Fluttershy immediately shook a somber head. “No, Scootaloo. Though I have met and talked with many ponies who have dealt with that tragedy: Caramel, Carrot Top, Pinkie Pie—”

There was a painful twitch to her orange ears; Scootaloo sat up with a sharp jolt. “Pinkie Pie lost somepony she knew to Everclear?!”

Fluttershy bit her lip pensively. “Erm... N-not exactly. But her hometown of Dredgemane has dealt with an ongoing tragedy that's rather similar. The same horrible substance that poisoned so many Ponyvillean miners—infernite—has been known to pollute the rock quarries and the farms where Pinkie's family is from. Even to this day, many orphaned foals struggle to survive, battling lung disease on account of the infernite that was horribly given to them by their parents before they too passed.”

“That...” Scootaloo gulped a lump down her throat, feeling guilty for reasons she struggled to explain to her own quivering mind. “That sounds awful, Fluttershy.”

“Yes. It is. Terribly awful.” Fluttershy nodded somberly. “Lately, Zecora has been making several trips to Dredgemane to see if Zebraharan medicine might produce a remedy. But many ponies believe that it's too late, even if most of those polluted mines have since been cleaned up. There's just so much damage. And Pinkie's mother...” The yellow pegasus found her blue eyes staring past the trailing edges of her last utterance. She wilted instantly.

Scootaloo narrowed her eyes at her. “What about Pinkie Pie's mommy?”

Fluttershy cleared her throat and not so stealthily changed the subject. “But there's no sign of infernite left in Everclear. All of that was scooped out years ago by teams of Canterlotlian unicorns specialized in the field of metallurgy.” She smiled placidly. “So, there's no chance of any groundskeeper you know getting infected anytime soon.” She winked at the end of that... as if it was necessary.

“I'm not worried about that, Fluttershy, I guess I'm just...” Scootaloo tongued the inside of her mouth, exhaled through thin lips, and gazed once more at the forlorn thunderclouds. “I'm just wondering what made ponies want to work in a deep dark place that was so dangerous to begin with.”

“Some did it for bits,” Fluttershy straightforwardly explained, nuzzling a train of ducklings as they passed by the pegasus and plopped into the rippling surface of the pond, skimming after their mother. “Others did it because they knew the work was dangerous, but they were skilled enough to prevent other less expert ponies from putting themselves into harm's way.”

“Do you suppose that... that...” Scootaloo shrugged, cleared her throat, and gazed decidedly away from Fluttershy. “...that some of them did it for their families?”

“Oh, most definitely.” Fluttershy smiled, her voice like a melodic song. “Ponies do not live on bits alone; they work to provide for the ones they love. You know that, Scootaloo.”

“But if ponies worked in the mines for the sake of their families, isn't that kind of selfish?”

“I don't think I understand, Scootaloo.”

“So many ponies at Everclear died because the stuff that they were working with was dangerous.” The foal stared with iron violets aimed the yellow pegasus' way. “And they knew it was dangerous. I'm not trying to be... uhm... insulting to the Monument I stumbled upon today, Fluttershy, but can't you see how a lot of those ponies—and their families—were kind of asking for what happened to them?”

“Life asks for much from all of us, Scootaloo,” Fluttershy responded with a swiftness that surprised the blinking foal. “But we ponies answer the call of our marks bravely, because to back away from what we're talented in would be an even greater insult to what we mean to our families... Erm...” She deflated with a suddenly rosy breath, but it was hardly a warm one. She glanced away with a pale sigh. “At least... uhm... that's what I have always believed: that our talents are all about honoring our... uhm... honoring our families. You're welcome to make your own judgments of course, Scootaloo...”

Scootaloo raised an eyebrow at Fluttershy's sudden digression. She glanced suddenly at the pegasus' flank. The three pink butterflies that made up the filly's cutie mark were as beautiful and striking as always, but they paled suddenly in an inexplicable shade. They appeared lonelier somehow; the yellow-coated spaces between them stretched towards infinity.

The foal wrenched her eyes back towards Fluttershy while braving a smile. “What you do here, Fluttershy—taking care of the animals and the cottage and the Memorial and all—is it something that you do because it means a lot to your family as well?”

Scootaloo's smile was not so easily reflected in Fluttershy's face, at least not immediately. The adult pegasus limply replied, “Uhm... I don't exactly see my family much, Scootaloo, but I do visit them from time to time in Cloudsdale, when the schedule permits.” After a deep and tranquil breath, Fluttershy basked in the moist air as the sound of fur and feathers flapped breezily around the two of them. “On any given day, the animals are my family. What I do honors them. I think that's the way it should be for all ponies; in some way or another we are all working to impress Mother Nature.”

“Heh... I can't say I've made her happy,” Scootaloo groaned. “I track dirt across Mother Nature all the time with my scooter.”

“Oh, do not feel bad for something so trivial.” Fluttershy gracefully nuzzled Scootaloo's pink mane. “You should be happy... and proud, Scootaloo, that you have loving parents who entrust you with such a respectable degree of freedom.”

Scootaloo wanted to smile, inhaling the warmth of Fluttershy's gentle contact, but for the life of her, she couldn't, not on the crest of those last few words. Still, a melodic tone in the yellow pegasus' voice lifted a dead weight from the orange foal's stomach, so that she levitated off the precipice of sadness, enriched by a hope that lingered beyond a curtain of memories that was once just as soothing as the filly's silken voice.

When the next roll of thunder hit, it was Scootaloo's turn to gasp. Before she knew it, she was being pelted with hard wet daggers of rain from a suddenly overcast sky.

“Oh dear!” Fluttershy gasped. She hopped up onto frail limbs and gazed with twitching blue eyes towards the horizon. “I wasn't paying attention! The storm is happening already!” She squeaked through clenched teeth and flashed Scootaloo a sad gaze as the animals beyond them thinned out and flocked away towards dry cover. “I'm so, so terribly sorry, Scootaloo. How irresponsible of me! I should have been paying attention to the weather, but instead I was... I was...”

“Fluttershy, it's fine.” Scootaloo stood up straight, stretching her limbs lazily in spite of the thickening rain that was starting to suffocate them both. “I'm not a frickin' infant anymore!” She kicked her scooter up with an expert hoof and gripped its extended handles. “I know my way home. I won't get too drenched.” She put on a poker face. “I promise.”

“Perish the thought!” Fluttershy practically hissed, leering over Scootaloo with a sympathetic gaze. “The last thing I want to do while your parents are away is cause you to get a cold or—” She gasped. “Even worse! Pneumonia! You must wait out the storm with me! My cottage is just over the hillside.”

“Uhhhh... Eh heh heh.” Scootaloo sweated profusely under the cover of wet precipitation. She shuddered, her limbs instinctually melting, becoming ten thousand times weaker than Fluttershy's, or so she felt. “Fluttershy, I'm fine. If I get a little wet behind the ears, it's no big deal. There's no need to—”

“I do not only have a duty to the animals and the land, but to all living things.” Fluttershy picked up her wicker basket, saddled it over her flank, and gazed kindly at the foal as her melodic voice hummed: “As far as I am concerned, Scootaloo, you are my family too. Please let me give you shelter. Let me honor you and your parents.”

Scootaloo's eyes went concave, for she saw in Fluttershy's blue pupils a reflection that suddenly matched the yellow pegasus' expression, that of a sudden wilting, a mirrored tunnel of burning pinpricks, two lost twins to the pitifully soiled moment. It wasn't even the stare, and still Scootaloo knew she couldn't say “no,” especially when every concealed and starving centimeter of her shivering soul had begged for years to say “yes” to this golden invitation. For a gorgeously paradoxical moment, it was honor—and not strength—that urged her forward.

“But...” Scootaloo nevertheless murmured in a sudden wave of apprehension, her memories vexed with torn crusader capes and cockatrices. “You do remember the last time I stayed at your place, right?”

“That depends.” Fluttershy smiled with a bold hoofhold of the situation. “Do you?”

Scootaloo bit her lip. “Right. I promise not to break any blue tables this time.”

“Do you, now?” Fluttershy stifled a knowing giggle.

The orange foal raised a confused eyebrow at that.

“Okay, then.” Fluttershy's voice magically hummed with a bottled jolt of subtle exultation, as if she was an Alicorn daughter discovering her sibling for the first time ever. “Follow me; I know the way home.”

“Sure thing, Fluttershy.” Scootaloo followed the pink swish of the mare's tail on a glistening scooter as the rain chased them hungrily. “I'm sure you do...”

The last pony stumbled, lost in darkness, following the silk kisses of the dragon tooth as she navigated the white moonvision forward. In the deepest depths of the Everbriar, a solid web of thorned vines blanketed the white static ahead of her like a sheet of black foil. Here, the skittering shadows of unlife dissipated, so that she proceeded forward in a confident breath, crouching and threading her way through a thin cleft of barbed stalks.

She pierced a spacious vacuum on the other side, startled to experience a sudden break in the brambles. Her moonvision paled into snowy blankness, and for a space in time she shuffled herself on three hooves, one forelimb outstretched to feel for any sudden obstruction as she blindly limped forward. She felt the leathered layers of armor shifting on her shoulders as she lurched to the sound of her masked breaths. The air felt colder than cold, numbing her with the drip-drop of condensation off her holstered rifle's brass barrel.

The blindness of this furthest venture naturally worried her, and were it not for the increasingly fervent pulses of her dragon tooth, Scootaloo wouldn't have been risking this sojourn. Something about this open space in the Briar felt unnatural, as if it had been carved out of the thick forest of barbed vines by something with greater audacity than the meager black shapes that had skittered out of the range of her moonvision upon first arriving there. Still, the last pony knew that she had no intention of lingering in that remote hovel. As soon as she acquired what she had descended for, Scootaloo intended to gallop back the loathsome way which she came. The phantom image of the Harmony's toastily lit cabin suddenly throbbed with a heavenly intensity in the back of the lone scavenger's mind.

The dragon tooth was positively burning now, like a paradoxical string of silk-soft firecrackers licking up and down her sternum. Her heart fluttered faster and faster as she trudged along her velvety path, and suddenly a great black wave of matter was lurching before her upon the horizon of her goggles' moonvision. With a mute gasp, she glanced up through the bubble of claustrophobic breathing to finally grace the image of her target.

And that's when everything went utterly black, a black so damnably dark and pitiful that even death itself had to have been brighter. It was with a low, grumbling curse that the last pony realized the enchantment had dwindled from the runes in her goggles. Her moonvision had run out.

As horrible a situation as this was, Scootaloo had very easily planned for it. She wouldn't be alive after so many years of Wasteland trips if it wasn't for such veteran foresight.

With a calming breath, she knelt down onto the cold stone earth and reached blind hooves back to her saddlebag. She produced the leather pouch of moondust from its pocket and gently laid it on firm ground ahead of her. She then removed her leather breathing mask, shuddering as a wave of exhaled vapor wafted up to her nostrils in the frigid air. With steady hooves, she slid her goggles off, or so she mentally told herself; her naked eyes couldn't tell if she was unmasking or not. With expert practice, Scootaloo refilled the goggles with moondust, like a surgeon operating on an infant in the dark. All the while, the tooth against her chest pulsed and pulsed, liquidly tugging her soul towards an inexplicable wall lingering—unseen—ahead of her. Scootaloo knew that her target was just within a ghostly lunge, and all she needed was to find a way to see what was directly in front of her.

Finally, she finished refilling the goggles. Snapping the frames shut, she raised the article to her unmasked face, squeezed them firmly against her sockets, and daringly uttered her first vocalization since diving into the ravenous depths of that abysmal place.

“Y'lynwyn.”

The dead world exploded in white moonvision. Immediately, in the snow-billowing midst of it, there stretched a black stalk of jagged streaks, framed with what looked like angel wings. A mute shriek immediately escaped Scootaloo as the tooth pressed to her chest melted in a silken slosh of pain and comfort all at once, for stretched before her against a wall of granite—like a hollow crucifix—was the skeleton of a pegasus, strung up and suspended by hundreds upon hundreds of wire-thin thorns that wrapped in and about the spaces of the long dead pony's rib cage and vertebrae. Fluttershy's skull was tilted to the side, devoid of all of its pink threads, and the flaky wisps of feathery impressions haloed her as a pair of anorexic wings sharply flanked her propped remains. She resembled a soft butterfly preserved against a wall of impenetrable slade.

She wasn't alone either. Scootaloo gaped to see several other skeletons plastered to the solid black wall alongside Fluttershy: the brittle bodies of deers, songbirds, snakes, owls, and several other scrumptious things that used to fill the green depths of the Everfree Forest. Whatever strung these skeletons up wasn't a graceful creature. The wall was cracked and impacted in several places by frustrated craters, crunched in the shape of gigantic pawprints.

But what mesmerized Scootaloo the most was the skeletonous form that was positioned closest to Fluttershy's corpse. It was mounted on the wall remarkably near to the deceased pegasus, an act that seemed far too deliberate to be accidental.

There was no single word to describe the creature. A large skull with a slender snout—twice the size of Fluttershy's—dangled precariously from a cluster of thorns that had snapped halfway loose over the decaying decades. A pair of goat horns stretched out from the cranium of this teetering beast. Two large, cloven hooves extended from thick forelimbs, but directly below the torso the creature's body transformed into a severely segmented spine that ended in a vertical fin. Whatever this mammalian skeleton was, it had the lower half of a marine animal, more appropriately a gigantic river fish. What was more: surrounding the dangling body of this battered specimen was a charred imprint in the rock, and it looked decidedly like mana burns.

“What in blazes...?” Scootaloo bravely, stupidly muttered aloud in the frigid tomb of the Everbriar. She gulped and gazed sickly at the bizarre chimaera that stretched before her. “What was she doing when the Cataclysm hit? And with this freak of all things?”

Scootaloo hummed curiously to herself, but in truth she was delaying what came next. With a resettling melancholy, she gazed back up at the crucified shape of her former friend. She trotted up towards the blackness before her moonvision and stood up on her hind-quarters, bracing herself with forelimbs that clasped the hard granite on either side of Fluttershy's pinned figure.

“I can only hope it was peaceful.” She pretended to be talking to herself. “Just like your life was.”

She gulped. A part of her—something colored with the faint shades of Spike—believed that this moment needed a prolonged pause. However, she was still the same scavenger who unceremoniously fished Applejack's skull out of a run-down storm cellar; she attempted to take what she needed here with no less brevity. Twisting her left horseshoe counter-clockwise, Scootaloo extended a curved blade from the copper material and aimed it at the ancient thorns anchoring Fluttershy's cold spine to the wall.

“I'll find a place for you—just like Applejack. I promise—”

She was answered midway through her utterance by a sudden field of white, utterly blanketing her goggles' enchanted vision. All discernible shadows faded into the ivory miasma with a flash. Grunting, Scootaloo fumed to think that the enchantment of her runes had died out again. But this was somehow different; everything hadn't faded to black. The moonvision was simply betraying her, refusing to display the spatial distortions that she knew were obviously there with every lingering touch her hoof and blade made to Fluttershy's hapless skeleton.

In a desperate grumble, Scootaloo once more throated, “Y'lynwyn.” Nothing happened. “Y'lynwyn.” Again, nothing: the same pale malaise encompassed the entirety of her monochromatic vision. It was then that Scootaloo gave into baser instincts... and slid her goggles up from her eyes entirely.

The pain that burned into her scarlet optics was excruciating. For a moment there, she believed that she had literally been stabbed in the face by some randomly flying creature of the underworld. Scootaloo could only wish she was that lucky. The wheels turned in the last pony's head, and soon the black world bled into nightmarish focus. For the first time in several solid hours of exploring the Briar via moonvision, Scootaloo was being exposed to actual light. She briefly speculated that her saddlebag had fallen open and the jar of Spike's green flame had dripped out to overwhelm her enchanted goggles. But, as the pain in her eyes settled, Scootaloo finally managed to identify the color of the strange alien glow.

It wasn't green; it was blue.

This, in addition to a low bass rumble that suddenly vibrated the very foundation of that stony hovel, and Scootaloo was forced to turn icily around. From beyond the wall of porous brambles, the last pony was perplexed to be staring at starlight. She blinked... blinked again, but there indeed still lingered a blazing carpet of twinkling blue cosmos—only it wasn't a carpet; it was a coat.

It was fur, and out from this magically glowing flank of flesh there extended titanic claws over four meters in serrated length. Scootaloo's wincing scarlets followed the billowing limb up, up, up, up—until she found herself staring at a mammoth titan of a creature, shimmering blue from feral head to tail with living constellations, looming beyond the web of thick brambles that allowed the last pony enough space to see a thick, muscular skull with glistening twin fangs and a bristled blue forehead crowned with an eight-pointed sapphire star.

Scootaloo gulped, standing suddenly in the center of a starlit den, fully understanding exactly what it was that had mounted the stone wall with so many trophies of its prey... and cratering paw prints.

“Yeah, okay. I'm dead.”

In an ear-splitting roar, casting a thorned kaleidoscope of blue-and-black bands across the stony floor, the towering Ursa Major raised a muscular paw and smashed through the iron thick wall of brambles before charging the tiny pony on all fours. The basement of the world shook under a hail of razor sharp wooden scythes. The flightless pegasus gasped and stumbled across the rumbling rock floor, struggling to avoid the deadly projectiles—until she floundered helplessly into the path of the Ursa's stomping forelimbs. With a ravenous growl, the gigantic, starlit bear slammed both paws down at the ill-fated pony.

Grunting, Scootaloo barely flipped out of the way. The sheer impact of the gigantic beast's weight knocked her five meters through the air so that she landed through a dusty pile of bones and dried fecal matter in the corner of the lair. Coughing in a haze of filthy blue dust, she looked up in time to see a forest of glinting claws once more flinging her way. In a brave gasp, Scootaloo breathlessly leaped forward, bounded off the Ursa's hairy wrist, and dove past its monumental lunge. The blacker-than-black world rumbled once more as the beast's claws raked the dry earth. The creature lurched to keep up with the tiny equine shadow as Scootaloo galloped suicidally between its legs and then dodged a heavy swish of the monster's cedar-thick tail.

Scootaloo dove, tumbled, and slid until she collapsed into a crumpled heap against the wall beneath Fluttershy's skeleton. Panting, her goggles bent and cracked, she flashed a look at her old companion's remains, at the Ursa Major turning menacingly around, then back up at the angelic spread once more. “OhcrudOhcrudOhcrud—So sorry about this!” She leaped high, clasped all four hooves over Fluttershy's neck, and tugged at it with all her weight. “Nnnnnnnngh!”

The Ursa Major roared. Red-on-yellow eyes brimmed with hate, and the celestial beast charged thunderously.

“Hckkkt—Scrkkk!” Scootaloo hissed through sweat and pain as she pulled and pulled. The dead pegasus' spine started to bend and crack.

A cataclysmic thunder: the gigantic bear's serrated paw flew down at full force.

With a cry, Scootaloo jerked her torso back. “Ungh!” Fluttershy's skull gave way with a snap. Scootaloo fell to the lair's floor just in time; the Ursa Major's fist instantly pulverized Fluttershy's headless corpse to dust. The wall cracked with a thousand rivulets, shaking loose several dozen sets of pinned skeletons that rained down on Scootaloo's panting figure as she hooked the pegasus' skull under a sweating forelimb and limpingly scampered on three hooves towards the shuddering wall of thorns stretched wide ahead of her.

The roaring Ursa swiveled about and stomped after the last pony's pink tail hairs. A chorus of deathly percussions exploded nearer and nearer. Scootaloo was practically limping; she needed all four limbs. With a grunt, she flung Fluttershy's skull up and through a random space in the briars before galloping at full speed, leaping, and sliding herself under a tiny sliver of split thorns. The serrated wooden teeth knicked her brown coat as she stood up on the other side—

The briars exploded behind her. Scootaloo yelled, blinded in the cyclonic toss as she flew with a rain of wooden splinters and thorny shrapnel. A throbbing century later, she slammed into a stone outcropping and slid down to the dust-littered floor. Wincing, she tearfully flashed a panicked gaze upwards, helplessly looking for a sign of where Fluttershy's tossed skull landed amidst the blinding sea of briar bits and shards.

Her breath vapors lit up with a bright blue horror. Scootaloo gasped, glanced up, and pounced out of the way of a lunging paw. Another swing, then another: each furious throw of the Ursa's limbs formed huge craters in the dead womb of Everbriar beneath her. The titanic bear howled in frustration and dumbly belly-flopped, as if the whole bulk of its weight would be enough to finally squash the elusive equine.

Through sheer luck, the flightless pegasus slid beyond the crook of the glowing beast's upper armpit. The monster's collapsing weight flung her yet again across the black subterranean expanse, only this time she tumbled into something that knocked into her forehead with a silky kiss of powdery dust.

“Unnngh—” Scootaloo blinked—then gasped with psychotic euphoria. “Yes!” She grasped the miraculous skull of her old friend in two hooves and kissed its pale surface. “I love you!”

The crooked shadows of the deep place shifted as the Ursa lurched, slowly hoisting its hulking weight upwards. Scootaloo's twitching eyes spotted a direct path towards an ascending bridge of criss-crossing vines... and freedom, but there was one gigantic, dumb, blue thing in the way. Something snapped inside the frazzled survivor's synapses, and with dilated pupils she stood up, grinded her hooves, and clamped her teeth over the jawbone of Fluttershy's skull, holding it. “Nnnnnnngh—Aaaaaaughhh!” With a suicidal roar into the muffling bone, Scootaloo blitzed the rear-end of the lumbering titan.

The Ursa Major flinched in shock as it felt the desperate pegasus'shooves scamper up its tailbone, over its rump, across its spine, and finally kicking off the starry crown of its forehead with a gallant leap. Scootaloo propelled her body through the air and towards the bridge of thorns. She landed with a victorious, echoing clop and charged up the length of twisting vines.

No sooner had the last pony begun this precarious gallop than the Ursa Major was murderously pursuing with a rampage of flinging paws, reducing the iron-wrought length of the vines at Scootaloo's tail to sundered twigs. Scootaloo panted and hissed into her toothed grip of Fluttershy's skull, horrified and elated at the same time to have the blue aura lighting her desperate sprint the entire time.

The bloodthirsty Ursa Major illuminated the bowels of the Everbriar with sapphiric menace as it angrily chased the hapless equine. Scootaloo's adrenalized mind briefly scoffed at the death-blink of the situation; she was hardly anything that could fill the Ursa Major's stomach... nor was Fluttershy's meager flesh, so many years ago—when the lone cosmic bear had to have been no more than a mere cub. Why was this monster hiding in the darkest, most abandoned spot in all of Equestria? Why was it so angry?

Another thunderous impact shook Scootaloo out of her twenty-kilometer-per-hour pondering. With a muffled shriek, she flew forward upon the sheer propulsion of her thorny bridge having exploded from underneath her. She soared in the direction of the Ursa's last flung fist, until she suddenly slammed into a hanging fork of thorns that squeezed her dangling body in place from above.

Scootaloo gasped as she found herself helplessly spitting Fluttershy's skull out from her jaws. She watched as the remains of her friend coldly rattled to a stop across a plateau of slade-black stone beneath her. The last pony's limbs weightlessly flailed from where she dangled, helplessly pinned in between the two hanging thorns compressed into either side of her thick armor.

“Come on—Come on!!”

She tried spreading her wings to shake herself free from the saddlebag encompassing her, but her gear was tied too tightly about her brown-coated form. Suddenly, the ceiling of the Briar shook as the blue haze intensified brighter... brighter... brighter. Scootaloo panted, blinked, then in a sudden epiphany, she exhaled every bit of breath out from her lungs.

Her body deflated; her ribs shrank. She slid victoriously down from the squeezing thorns—and then the Ursa's jaws were upon her. The world turned hotly dark, and all four of Scootaloo's hooves splashed into a spongy puddle. She didn't even need to look; the last pony bounded forward, breathlessly leaping off of the Ursa Major's tongue a bare millisecond before the beast's teeth clamped down.

The concussive blast of the snapping jaws flung the pegasus forward like a missile. She ricocheted over the rocky plateau like a skipping stone across an obsidian lake. Her saddlebag tore open and her bruised face winced before a flash of emerald light. Gasping, she spotted the fragile glass jar of Spike's green flame rolling free towards the edge of the cliff. With a grunting lunge, she flung her body forward and clamped two front hooves over the runed container before it could plunge into the deep blackness below—

The Ursa's blue face surged immediately into view. With a spitting roar, the giant bear gave the stone cliff a massive uppercut. The plateau sundered in two, with the shattered floor beneath the pegasus upending so that she slid back, back, back towards a pitted hollow of gnarled thorns below. She tumbled and cascaded in reverse, gasping at the sight of a brittle white skull sliding several meters parallel to her and towards a deep and inescapable crevice.

With a hissing breath, Scootaloo kicked against a crumbling chunk of earth, cartwheeled over towards the skeleton in mid-slide, and juggled it along with the green glowing jar in two hooves as she reached the end of her glide, tumbled upside down, and ragdolled across a space of rocky floor.

“Mmmf!!”

The thorny roof to the claustrophobic hollow shook and shuddered above with each blue step of the menace beyond the encompassing vines. Scootaloo hugged the skull and jar to herself, flashing a panting glance every which way for an exit from her current prison of serrated barbs. The only way out was the exact way she rockily slid in, and suddenly occupying that deathly exit was the gaping maw of a murderously giant bear. Scootaloo had nowhere to go, nowhere to run, nowhere to flee... but backwards. Her scarlet eyes blinked at the only avenue of freedom available to her. She gulped, glancing forlornly at the precious skull that shook in her hooves with each thunderous paw-step.

The Ursa Major roared and lunged its cosmic neck through the crumbling frame of the hollow's opening. Starry arteries under its translucent skin twinkled with bloodthirsty constellations as it snapped its jaws further and further towards the cornered pegasus, closing the gasping centimeters with each toothed snarl.

Scootaloo's spine was pressed straight back into a wooden wall. With a brave growl summoned from deep within, the last pony shut her eyes, gripped the skull tight in two hooves, and viciously slammed it over her forehead. Fluttershy's bones dissolved to dust, blanketing the scavenger from snout to torso in white snow. Bathed in the reagent, Scootaloo juggled the jar up past the slicing swish-a-swish of the Ursa's drooling fangs, and she screamed into the runed cap as she simultaneously shouted down the bear's echoing throat:

“Y'hnyrr!”

The jar unsealed. The cap flew off like a bullet. Spike's emerald breath wafted over her in a wave of chronometric heat.

The Ursa Major's jaws flew shut over her.

Scootaloo shrieked—only to have the ashes of Fluttershy tightly lasso around her bruised and twitching figure. With a metaphysical tug, she was pulled backwards on gossamer strings, her hooves kicking away from the Ursa Major's chin as the creature's snarling face flew away at a million kilometers per second. The last pony's vision was overtaken by the billowing emerald tunnel she was being forcibly ferried down. Her eyes teared and flamed from scarlet to amber. Her pink stubble billowed blackly outward like a kite's tail as she twirled on the length of Fluttershy's ashes, her body spiraling down the dancing corridor between Ages. Instinctually, she flung her copper wings out and dragged friction through the suddenly blossoming air before landing in a smoking heap on a soft mound of grass besides a babbling brook... and a soft pegasus' familiar, tranquil cottage.

Silence.

Then there was a gasping voice, that of a startled foal just a few meters away from the soft crater Harmony had made.

Wincing, the time traveler tilted her head up from her smoking crater in the grassy yard. Harmony squinted weakly towards the sight of a petite, gray-coated unicorn blinking wide-eyed at her from across a tiny teaset replete with glistening pitchers, saucers, teacups, and various stuffed animals seated around a pink table.

Several seconds of silence fluttered between Harmony and the blonde, blinking foal, until the last pony hissed a dry chuckle, her smiling lips simmering with a few last trails of green smoke. “Mind if I h-have a s-sip, please...?”

The mark-less foal nod-nod-nodded, gulping and wordlessly passing a full pitcher of mint tea across the petite table in a pair of shaking hooves.

Harmony lurched over, embraced the utensil in a shuddering grasp, and drank for all of her life's worth. The tangy quaff that rolled down her throat was electrifying, and it shook away the horrific shadows of the Briar's bruises as Harmony squinted at the cottage in a glistening noonday Sun before exhaling with a mighty: “Hoboyyyyyy.” The last pony slapped the pitcher down onto the table, heaved for a few breathless seconds, and finally... finally stood up on all four hooves.

“Did you just fall from the sky, Miss—?” The foalish unicorn murmured in a strangely intelligent tone; she had to have been no older than four, maybe five winters, though she sounded practically twelve.

“'Harmony',” the time traveler obligatorily uttered. “And—Yeah, sure. I fell from the sky, kid.” She flexed her copper wings and muttered dizzily, “Where is she?”

“My name is 'Dinky'.” The filly matter-of-factly nodded her tiny stub of a gray horn. “I'm going to be a scientist when I grow up.”

“Uh huh. That's cute. Where is she?” Harmony resumed scanning the horizon with frustrated amber eyes.

“Are you looking for my baby-sitter?”

“I...” Harmony paused. The scent of pondwater flew phantom paths through her nostrils, giving her the sensation of kicking a scooter through an afternoon downpour. She glanced down at the foal as if she was regarding the kid's existence for the first time ever. “Yes. Where is your babysitter, Dinky?”

The unicorn child twirled about and pointed a petite hoof towards the cottage. “She's in there, talking to a stiff, mean, unhappy lady who just flew in from the Cloudsdale Animal Commission. I don't think you want to bother them.”

“Yeah, well, we'll see about that.”

“Did you know that the average pony eats about four live spiders in a lifetime of sleep?”

“Wow. That's amazing. Look, I gotta go... uhm... talk to your babysitter.” Harmony stumbled dazedly towards the front yard of the beautifully flowered cottage, traversing a babbling brook. She flippantly called back over her shoulder. “And I'm telling your mommy, by the way.”

“What for?” The foal calmly blinked.

“You really shouldn't be talking to strangers, kid.”

The gray foal shook her horned head. “I'm not scared.”

“You should be. It's a dangerous world.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I exist.” Harmony swallowed a brave lump down her throat as she made her way over a tiny bridge and slowly approached the golden doorstep of another long dead friend.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Evershy

It was a red robin that made Scootaloo pause in mid-trot. Upon scarlet wings, it shot away from her in a tail-burst of fright. The time traveler froze a bare meter from the door to Fluttershy's cottage, glancing about with a sudden blink as several more squirming things viciously fled her peripheral vision. These, however, were not the horrific, indiscernible shadows of a moonvisioned Briar, but very warm, very colorful, very frightened animals spurred on by a four-hooved stranger steeled in her mastery of fear. Several sets of beady eyes—mammalian, avarian, amphibian—peered out from an array of sun-glistening hiding spots all along the worn stone path leading up to the cottage door.

Scootaloo stood, suddenly aware of the warm, breathing heaven that took a thorn-brambled hell to get to. With a bloodrush of guilt and awkwardness, she remembered that she was an invulnerable shell, an alien projection of her soul self in the skin of an exiled Alicorn. Though she came from a twilight Wasteland that knew no sleep, it didn't excuse thrusting the otherwordly shadows of the future upon the emerald glen that quivered under her every impatient hoofstep.

Twitching amber eyes remembered a sea of frightened foals, Cheerilee's wincing face, the pale blinks of the entire Apple Family from across a dinner table. They were all fated to die, and Harmony knew this because she was fated to see their happiness right before their annihilation. By sheer miracle had she arrived at this calm, glistening haven hidden within the forgotten history of the world.

How many times was she allowed to get away with such ventures? Would the Ursa Major be waiting for her when she returned from investigating Fluttershy's portion of the past? Or would a pack of timberwolves finally do her in, or a group of vengeful dirigible dogs, or blood-thirsty trolls?

If this was Entropa's doing or simply pure happenstance, Harmony was at a loss to guess. She could only act—act and discover, and do so in the spirit of the same pleasantries that adorned that Age like Hearth's Warming tinsels. So, once more an avatar of time, the spirit of Scootaloo moved that copper body forward. Harmony smiled at the animals on either side of her and, with a swish of her amber-streaked mane, sashayed the rest of the way towards the cottage door, limping and leaning desperately towards the one melodic voice that lulled her there through the shimmering dragon's tooth in the first place.

The front door alarmed the adult pegasus with its tiny size. The cottage seemed an impossible dwarf to her decaying memories. Piercing such trembling realizations, Harmony raised a hoof and knocked three polite times against the entrance's red wooden finish. There was no response, no silken voice, no smiling face or glistening blue eyes, none of the soft colors that had rarely flickered through the last pony's gray-glossed dreams.

Harmony sighed; she knocked again. Still, there was no response. Tiny fluffy animals stirred out of hiding behind her. A small nose-twitching thing furriedly bounced bravely past the strange equine's leg. Harmony glanced down, her brain taking three times as long as her stomach did to categorize the forgotten specimen: “chipmunk.” Somehow, the true name of the creature sounded a heck of a lot more ridiculous than “airship food.”

The pegasus knocked a third time. As she did so, she finally heard a voice, but it wasn't the melodic tone of her anchor, but rather a blunt and flavorless voice, a biting and chewing voice, a voice that was as related to “Fluttershy” as a cold chunk of moonstone was to a daisy. Harmony briefly remembered something that a gray, markless foal had said several million years ago when she first landed outside the cottage from the green flames of reverse-time. It was a breath of curiosity—not ignorance—that urged the pegasus forward. With squinting amber eyes, Harmony realized that the cottage door had been left slightly ajar. Shuffling over, she pressed a hoof against it...

...and gently pushed open the squeaking entrance to Fluttershy's warm and dry home. The orange filly shivered in a wet pile before the hearth. Young Scootaloo gave a deep, shuddering breath before leaning her scooter against the outside of the cottage. In a sudden air of politeness, she then pushed the door all the way and trotted aside to give the yellow pegasus room. Fluttershy hurried in, her mane reduced to a damp pink towel from the thick afternoon downpour. She set her empty basket down on the wooden green floorboards and stifled an inbound sneeze before smiling sweetly towards the dry depths of her antique dwelling.

“It's alright! You can come out! Mommy's home! And she brought a guest!”

On cue, several squirrels, songbirds, ferrets, and various whiskery members of winsome rodentia pitter-pattered out of an elaborate assortment of holes, wooden lattices, and pet doors all throughout the homely interior. With adorably programmed trust, they all scampered to Fluttershy's flank and took turns nuzzling up against her legs and wet tail.

The Ponyvillean animal tamer smiled and nuzzled them back, her tongue and lips clicking in some hidden code of fauna. Fluttershy was utterly soaked to the bone, but that didn't stop her from making a bee-line towards a large wooden cabinet from which she dutifully produced one bag of feed after another, treating each gathered animal to a pre-evening snack before letting them scamper off to their luxurious hiding spots.

All of this, an eight-year-old Scootaloo observed, blinking from the entrance to the cottage. Under the echo of rain drops, she shuffled inside, grinning wide. “Wow, Fluttershy. It's like you've got a whole friggin' army of furry things at your beck and call!”

“Oh no. I would never think of sending my precious little animals off to battle anypony!”

“Heheh—Come on, Fluttershy. It was a joke. I just think it's pretty awesome how they all trust you and stuff.”

“I only ever mean to give them shelter from the elements, such as what we're experiencing today.” Fluttershy gently motioned with a soaked head out a nearby window. A sudden thunder rattled the panes. She yelped, wide eyed and shivering, then sighed with relief. “Ahem.” A nervous, blushing smile. “Any affection they give me is merely a fringe benefit, you see.”

“Yeah, sure.” Scootaloo winked back. She took a deep breath, overcome by the soothing fragrance of the place.

True, there was the predominant odor of animal fur, the dusty fumes of dozens upon dozens of bags of bird seed, and even the offensive hint of rabbit droppings in the distant background. Through it all though, a sweet aroma permeated the dwelling, as if the fluid of Fluttershy's heart that had given her voice its melody and her eyes their twinkle had marked an immortal perfume upon the grainy skin of the place. The effluent shades of Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle clung to the memory of a giddy night once spent there, and it made the orange foal feel toasty inside. For a briefly blissful second, there was no such thing as empty barns, or tears for that matter.

“I will get a fire going shortly,” Fluttershy murmured. She lowered her head so that her front hooves had access to her damp mane. Squeezing puddles of rainwater out of the soggied threads, she shook her muzzle and looked up. “Then we can wait out the storm. If Rainbow Dash is leading the weather team, then it should hopefully not last all too long—” Fluttershy suddenly stopped in mid-sentence to bite her lip. She gazed pensively at the young guest's legs with an awkward shudder of distaste. “Oh... Erm... Oh dear...”

“Huh?” Scootaloo blinked crookedly at her. She looked down. Her hooves were utterly caked in dirt, and a fresh pile of mud had been tracked into the house, soiling the immaculate emerald finish of Fluttershy's wooden floor. “Awwwwww shoot.”

She winced, her breath hissing out through a clenched forest of teeth as she wobbled upon the offensive tripod that her soiled limbs had suddenly become. A palpitating throb boiled from deep beneath her orange coat, piercing her with guiltier and guiltier vibrations as she took into account every serrated centimeter of that pathetic situation. She should have known better than to have come there; she wasn't smart enough, strong enough to have anticipated such foolishness. In the rainsoaked joy of the moment, Scootaloo had squandered Fluttershy's extreme generosity. She knew it, but she would only collapse further if she showed that she knew it.

“You think... uh... there's a talent for cutie mark crusader mud wrestling?” Scootaloo produced a nervous giggle, and then immediately rolled her eyes at her pathetic self.

“I wouldn't know. Eheh... Uhm...” Fluttershy looked the foal's way with a frazzled yet reassuring smile. “Do not worry, Scootaloo. I'll take care of it—”

“Heck no!” There was a shrieking voice. It wasn't until after Scootaloo's eyes shrunk into pinpricks that she realized it was her own. “What I mean is... erm... Allow me!” She glanced every which way until she saw a bucket and mop lying in an abandoned corner. “It'll only be a moment!” She scampered splotchingly towards it like a monorail of mud. “I'll mop it clean in a jiffy!”

“No no—Please!” Fluttershy extended a hoof, hissing. The foal froze wide-eyed, balanced in mid-lunge on a single hoof as the adult pegasus hovered her way. “Just... Just don't trot another meter. Stay put. I'll clean it up.”

“But Fluttershy, it's my fault for giving your floor the diamond dog treatment!” Scootaloo said, wincing yet again. Her eyes quivered, as if this delightfully warm, heavenly dry, and impossibly dreamy place would be flung out from under her at any second, and she would be thrown back out into the rain and her lonely life beyond it. “I wanna clean it up! It's only the second time I've been to your house and already I'm making a stupid mess of things!”

“Scootaloo, dear, it's alright.” Fluttershy bore a soft smile that could melt the ice caps off of mountains. She eased Scootaloo down to her haunches with a gentle hoof before stepping behind the bucket-and-mop and nudging them over towards the mud-splotches. “Everypony makes mistakes. Besides, I know my way around my own floor.”

“But I made the mess. I should do it.” Scootaloo frowned.

In her peripheral vision, she observed a blank space in the living den's corner where an ill-fated blue table had once stood.

She gulped. “Besides, don't you have more animals to feed? I can't imagine where they all would have run off to in this storm!”

“Oh, uhm, well—Yes, I do have quite a few precious things to tend to,” Fluttershy absent-mindedly murmured aloud as she pumped a well of water into the bucket and added a liberal dash of soap. “The manger out back behind my cottage acts as a shelter for most of the animals too shy to come inside, but I'll get to them in a moment.”

“Fluttershy, why not get to them now?” Scootaloo glanced up at her between shameful examinations of her own muddied hooves. “There's no need to keep them waiting all because of me. I can do the mopping!”

“You're my guest, Scootaloo.” Fluttershy exhaled calmly, reaching onto a nearby shelf and clasping a clean rag which she tossed towards the foal. “I'm not bothered for having to clean up.” She smiled gently as she carried the sloshing bucket over to the mess. “It's worth it for such delightful company.”

The foal forced herself to briefly ignore the warmness of those last few words. “I don't just want to be delightful company; I wanna be polite!” She wiped the muck off her limbs with the rag before standing back up and stubbornly grasping the mop's handle from the yellow host with two hooves. “I promise—Pinkie Pie Swear—that I won't do anything but mop this little piece of floorboard here! I'm not gonna go on a crazy crusade that would tear your awesome cottage down to its foundation! Please, Fluttershy?”

“My, my.” The mare giggled under her breath. “You are most certainly adamant about this, Scootaloo. But haven't I already said that I can take care of it?”

“Fluttershy, I don't have a cutie mark,” Scootaloo woefully murmured. “But you do—So that means one pony in here knows what her talent is. Now, there are animals out back that need you. Isn't it right that you go take care of them?”

Fluttershy gazed prolongedly at the young foal. She glanced out the open door and towards the scooter that was glistening in rainwater, its metallic body reflecting the emptiness of the rumbling gray world outside. If there was something in the caretaker's vision that grasped a separate truth, Scootaloo couldn't tell, nor could she care. At that moment, all the filly desired was to undo a wrong... and clean up the past.

With a gentle smile, and a gleeful breath that sounded like the yellow pegasus who flew down unannounced at the Everclear Memorial, Fluttershy suddenly granted that chance. “Very well, Scootaloo. But promise me you won't try to fix or clean anything else.”

Scootaloo smirked and gave a campy salute with a stiff hoof. “Yes, Stare Master!” She started dousing the mop in the bucket before wiping concentric sudsy circles across the stained floorboards. “Maybe afterwards—with your permission—I could help you with the animals in the manger too! I've volunteered to help Apple Bloom at Sweet Apple Acres from time to time. I'm willing to bet that your livestock is a lot less likely to trip me into a feeding trough!”

“Hmmm...” Fluttershy trotted towards the front door, pausing to look back. “It amazes me that your parents didn't bother taking you to a Wonderbolts show. With a daughter as responsible as you, it would be a shame not to reward her!”

Scootaloo smirked devilishly, for she had already prepared a dashing rebuttal: “The best reward, Fluttershy, is being given such a rad place to take shelter!”

“Eheheh...” Fluttershy blushed slightly. “I didn't think I was capable of doing 'rad.'” She gulped and faced the outside world. “I will be out back. If you need help with something, feel free to wake up Angel. He always knows how and where to find me.” With a squeaking grin, the yellow pegasus bravely galloped back out into the rain.

Scootaloo blinked in mid-mop. “'Angel'?” She glanced every which way until her violet eyes finally found the snuggled patch of white fur in question. “Oh, right. You.”

An ivory bunny rabbit was curled up in a tiny bed beside the cottage's staircase. A twitch of its ears, and it flickered open one beady eye before frowning demonically the orange visitor's way.

“Don't worry, I don't bite.” Scootaloo winked. “But I have been known to peck.” She fitfully giggled.

As she mopped the last of the mud away—bringing a shine to the floor as she brought ease to her own conscience—the steady downpour outside lulled her mind to a warm hush, so that she briefly leaned against the wooden handle and sighed several lone weeks of anxiety out through her lips. The world was a wet and lonely place, and the filly's stomach was a constant hollow of pain and anguish. But none of that mattered, because she was there... and her youthful ears still rang with the hum of a melodic voice. A joyful aura filled the lengths of the cottage, including the empty space where a blue table once sat.

“I don't think I could ever live in a place like this,” the young, flightless filly mused. She mopped and mopped before smirking the slumbering bunny's way. “Or else I'd be coaxed into dreamland every waking minute, just like you!”

A malevolent pillow was thrown across the room, slamming brutally into Scootaloo's face.

“Ow! Sonuva—!”

When her amber eyes refocused, Harmony caught sight of an alarmingly claustrophobic front room, its labyrinth of pet walkways and wooden lattices forcing the copper pegasus to duck as she trotted her adult body nervously inside.

With a haunted breath, she glanced past her flank and saw a series of steps leading towards a seat of emerald cushions. There was nothing remotely striking about the sight, until an orange shadow suddenly descended within the blinking frame of it. Harmony had to look away, wincing for some reason. As her heartbeat returned to normal, she shuffled slowly forward, glancing every which way for the source of the grumbling voice that had permeated the otherwise angelic cottage.

Something smelled rotten. It wasn't so much the combined scents of all of the cottage's animal occupants that burrowed an inflammatory itch into the last pony's nose, but rather it was the stale musk wafting off of a bizarre, nameless, joyless elder pegasus suddenly clopping across the widths of the wooden house, her muzzle upturned haughtily as she dictated in a morose tone to a familiar yellow figure wilting pathetically in the corner from her sharp shadow.

“It's bad enough that there's been no check on the surplus population of localized rabbits, but now I find out that you've been altering the diet of local foxes? Surely you must realize that, as Ponyville's chief animal tamer, your job is to keep local carnivores from being unnecessarily domesticated!”

“Yes, Captain Redgale.”

“We also can't afford to have canines of the upper food chain lose their taste in meat! Otherwise the borders of the Everfree Forest will run rampant with rodents and marsupials! Need I remind you of that one horrible rabbit stampede that destroyed so many priceless gardens in Ponyville last year?!”

“No, Captain Redgale.”

“Shouldn't I?! Young lady, in barely five years of being given responsibility for the local wildlife, Ponyville has been attacked by an Ursa Minor, encumbered by the smoke of a hibernating dragon, haunted by a hydra from a local bog, and almost utterly demolished by a rampaging swarm of ungodly parasprites! All of these things could very easily have been avoided well in advance if somepony had been more attentive to her job—which, might I remind you, has been funded almost exclusively by my fellow cabinet members at the Cloudsdalian Animal Commission with enough bags of golden bits to break two-thirds of the First Canterlotlian Bank!”

“Yes, Captain Redgale.”

“And for the love of Nebula, Miss Fluttershy!” A sneering mare stopped pacing in circles long enough to glare at the filly in the corner. A pair of off-ruby wings matched a graying mane of scarlet as the blue-eyed Cloudsdalian elder regarded the humble pony like a fecal blemish on the green floorboards. “Do you have anything more to say than just 'Yes' or 'No?' You're the head animal tamer of Ponyville, for Celestia's sake! Shouldn't you be acting like it?”

“Yes, Captain Re—erm...I mean...That is an affirmative—That is... erm... mmmmmmm...” The nervous pegasus resorted to a pathetic whimper, cornered by the elder's looming ire.

“Nnngh...” The weathered Cloudsdalian facehoofed. “I cannot fathom how this same cowering creature before me was capable of allegedly pacifying a manticore on the evening of Nightmare Moon's return.” She stamped her hooves down and frowned at the girl, moreover out of exhaustion than frustration. “Miss Fluttershy, we have a crisis on our hooves. The Cloudsdalian Animal Commission has nopony else to turn to but you in this time of need. Please understand that it troubles me to have to remind you of all the mistakes that have been made at this post before laying out this new task ahead. I've had to literally fly through hoops of flame to defend your position here in Ponyville. Believe me, I want to give you this chance to prove your worth, but you have to show me that you have what it takes to find the missing creature spotted falling towards Everfree or else we'll have to resort to sending in a team of weather fliers instead!”

“I have searched all over the eastern stretches of Everfree that were detailed in the reconnaissance, Captain Redgale.” There was a ladylike toss of Fluttershy's pink mane, enshrouding her submissive features. “I've seen deer, possums, several lizards, a wayward flock of geese—even a rather perturbed peacock. But none of them fit the description of what was seen falling into the forest canopy. The largest animal I saw was a wayward emu.”

“We're talking about a Capricorn, Miss Fluttershy.” The aptly titled Captain Redgale snorted. “It's hard to miss.” She resumed pacing across the cottage, her aged hooves threatening to stomp holes through the tranquil interior. “The creature was sighted three days ago, and since then none of the regular Cloudsdalian flight patrols have seen it return to the heavens. It has to be in the forest still! So long as that cosmic creature is unaccounted for, it serves as a threat to all magically sensitive creatures who make a natural home in the Everfree Forest!”

“But Captain!” the young mare remarked, blue eyes blinking. “That is so utterly unlike a typical Capricorn! Zoological reports have never chronicled their kind as acting so selfishly harmful to the rest of the environment!”

“You think I don't know that, young lady?!” The off-ruby pegasus frowned. “This is why you must find it sooner than later! The sooner you retrieve this creature from Ponyville's backyard, the closer the Commission will come to finding a solution to this mystery! I do trust you are up to the challenge?”

“Oh, of course, Captain Redgale! But I regret to inform you that my search so far has been unfruitful—”

“Then search harder, child! I don't care if the reports claim the Capricorn as being in the eastern half of the forest! It could very easily have wandered deeper into the foliage! A creature that big can't simply vanish! Either search harder or I'll be forced to find another pegasus more competent!”

“Ahem.” Harmony cleared her throat in a timely fashion. She steadied the strangely adrenalized blood coursing through her veins and strolled bravely into the midst of the two. “A pegasus more competent than Ponyville's famous animal tamer?” she murmured with a plastic, programmed grin. “I highly doubt it!”

“Oh truly?” Redgale squinted her blue eyes Harmony's way. The elder's lips pursed with a dubious breath. “And you are...?”

It was with suddenly remarkable ease that the last pony introduced herself. “'Harmony.' Or 'Harmony' for short.” A flippant giggle. “And I hereby uphold the competence of the lady who owns this house, or else why would Princess Celestia have sent me her to observe her much lauded duties first-hoof?”

“Hmmmm...” Redgale regarded Harmony's cutie mark like she was examining a dam for leaking holes. “Canterlot Court, I see. Well, Celestia's elite stands to be corrected already on one account; Miss Fluttershy does not own this cottage. It's been lent to her over the years by the Ponyville Department of Wildlife Affairs, which—if I may remind Her Majesty's Court—gets funded directly through my association, the Cloudsdale Animal Commission.”

“I take it that this is an introduction, madame?” Harmony slyly smirked.

“Ahem.” The elder put on airs and stood up straight. “Captain Redgale of the Cloudsdale Animal Division, at your service.”

“Whew! Now there's a bit-ful! It's an honor to meet you.” Harmony extended a hoof.

The Captain muttered under her breath and begrudgingly stretched forth her own hoof to shake it—

“OH!” Harmony suddenly raised her hoof out of the Captain's reach and banged her own skull. “Where is my brain today?!” She chuckled throatily and smirked with eye-twinkling innocence. “Princess Celestia ordered that I provide a very important message. Ahem—There's been a report of a parasprite sighting in the forests bordering the western city limits of Trottingham. She needs somepony in high connections with Cloudsdale's animal control to get a close look right away.”

“A parasprite sighting?” A yellow pegasus un-wilted with tightly coiled wings. “How terrible!”

“Yes, yes, Miss Fluttershy.” The Captain silenced the filly with a wave and turned to face Harmony again, squinting. “If there was such a horrible development, I surely would have been warned of it well ahead of time.”

“And you are.” Harmony's iron brow furrowed. “I'm telling you.” She smirked once more towards the corners of the place and dusted her hoof off an opposite leg. “But if you're too busy here with your... authoritative redundancies, then I'm sure that I can write the Princess a cover story to explain why you weren't there to save Trottingham from pastel-colored horrors.” She produced a chirpish giggle. “We pegasi gotta look out after each other, eh? Ehh?” She leaned over and nudged the elder mare in the shoulder with a brutish wink.

Captain Redgale frowned and brushed her coat off as if it had just been littered with asbestos. “If you're suggesting we deceive the Royal Court—perish the thought! Unlike some ponies, a Captain such as myself knows how to balance her responsibilities.” She cleared her throat and marched proudly out of the den and towards the yawning cottage door. “Miss Fluttershy, I do hope you'll put more effort into performing your search than humoring this... most studious Canterlotlian clerk. Ahem. I'll come back to check on your progress in finding the Capricorn. As for now, I have a potentially ravenous swarm of infernal insects to hunt down.”

Harmony grinned steely at her. “Break a leg.”

Captain Redgale gave her a double-take, blinked, smiled nervously, then tossed away the sight of the invasive messenger with a twirl of her scarlet mane. Off-ruby wings stretched out majestically, and the Cloudsdalian officer took towards the skies beyond.

The last pony stared after her, bitterly swallowing a wad of spit down her cold throat. “Friggin' sky maid. What crawled up her plot and died?” With a shrug of her copper-coated shoulders, she spun—pleasantly smiling—towards the corner of the cottage. “I do apologize for showing up so unannounced, Miss Fluttershy. As I said, my name is Harmony, and I've come to—” She stopped in mid speech, blinking, for the corner was empty: no blue table and no pegasus. She twitched and turned about until she noticed the sight of the yellow pony trotting briskly towards a rack of food containers. “Uhm, Miss Fluttershy...”

“Mmmm-Yes. Miss Harmony, I presume?” the frazzled filly managed while yanking three different jars down from the shelf, juggling them, and opening the containers one after another before filling various empty dishes with the outpouring feed. “I must beg your forgiveness. That meeting with Captain Redgale took far too terribly long. Ohhhh...” Her golden face scrunched in pitiable stress. “Mmphh—I haven't had a chance to feed my precious animals in over three hours! Erm... I can tell from your cutie mark and pleasant manners that you've come from the Court of Canterlot, and I am most honored by your visit, but you must understand that I have obligations here to attend to...”

“Yes! Yes—!” Harmony beamed, scampering back and forth across the cramped cottage in a desperate attempt to keep up with the floundering caretaker. “That's exactly right! And—uhm—you tend to your duties so well, Miss Fluttershy. That's why Her Majesty, Princess Celestia, has sent me to—Whoah!”

The dainty Fluttershy nearly barreled Harmony over as she shoved a food dish over towards a throng of stomach-rumbling ferrets. “I do beg your pardon. Much thanks.” Her pink mane was a fuzzy mess as she fluttered over the animals and dropped several scoops of birdfeed into a pair of hanging parrot cages below the cottage's ceiling beams. Her voice came out in petite, porcelain murmurs. “Feedthebirds. Checkthepond. Cleanthetrays. Mmm... Rosemouse, Elizabeak, Nutkins—Ohhhh poor Nutkins! What will I ever do about your tummy ache?!”

“Ahem—The Princess has sent me to see how well you do your job and—”

“Angel! Angel—Ohhhh—Where are you?”

“—and also hopefully get you to answer a few desperate questions that the Court—”

“Oh there you are, Angel!” Fluttershy managed her first smile since the time traveler got there. She knelt down beside a familiar white ball of fur that was presently shoving a large carrot down its hungry throat. “Remember what I told you, Angel? Hmm? Slowly. Chew slowlyyyyyyy.”

“—questions that the Court has... Erm...” Harmony lost a drop of sweat as she jumped out of the way to make room for Fluttershy's next desperate canter towards a cluster of hungrily squeaking mice. The smell of cheese lit the rustic den. “...about the state of creatures in the forest and Equestrian livelihood in general—Ahem—Miss Fluttershy, could you use some help?” The copper pegasus bit her lip nervously.

“Help... Help? No. No, no help. I have to... Erm... What I mean is that I must do these things on my own. Especially with the task ahead of me and—”

“Yeah, about that.” Harmony nervously shifted and gave Fluttershy a sideways glance. “What's all of this hubub about a fallen Capricorn?”

“You mean you haven't heard?” Fluttershy looked breathlessly up from a ring of happily chewing rodents. “That isn't the purpose of your visit?”

“I thought I made it clear that I was dropping by on behalf of the Princess who merely wants to check up on you and learn about—”

“Wait—You arrived just now?!” Fluttershy absent-mindedly blinked. She tossed her pink mane back to smoothness and glanced at the open cottage door, the bright sunlight glistening outside. “And I didn't notice?!”

“You didn't?” Harmony twitched, then cleared her throat. “Right, you didn't! Maybe I got off on the wrong hoof. Let me introduce myself again. My name is—”

“Dinky!” Fluttershy breathlessly squeaked, her blue pupils shrinking in abject terror.

“No, not 'Dinky.' It's 'Harmony'—” A yellow blur surged past the last pony, forcing her black mane to billow. “Where are you going?”

“Dinky! Dinky! Oh dear Oh dear Oh dear—I'm such a bad, bad babysitter!” Fluttershy's hoofsteps pattered into faint obscurity beyond the walls and windows of the cottage.

“Uhhh...” Harmony worriedly gazed at the door and then flashed a glance over at a tiny little fuzzball. “Do you have any idea what's eating her?”

A half-eaten carrot flew violently into her skull.

“Ow! Sonuva—!”

“Dinky!” Fluttershy came to a grinding stop before the tiny teaset. Panting, she smiled with relief as she knelt next to the little gray foal. “Oh, thank heavens! I am so, so sorry to have neglected you! That meeting distracted me too, too much!”

“But I'm doing just fine, Miss Fluttershy.” The blonde unicorn smiled up at her beside her stuffed animal companions. “Did you know that a cardinal chirps thirty-three times before moving to another branch of a tree?”

“As a matter of fact, I did not know that!”

“I counted. I think it's testing the acoustics of the oak tree to make sure its voice is being carried furthest to a potential mate.” The child computed out loud with educated clarity. “One of the books mommy bought me said that cardinals can spend an entire hour chirping nonstop before giving up. But I think the authors didn't know what they were talking about. They don't watch things like I do.”

“Sometimes birdsong is just birdsong, Dinky.” Fluttershy bit her lip with pensiveness that humbled herself before the petite child. “But it certainly is pretty to listen to, yes?”

“If I was a female cardinal, I would be less interested in how melodiously a boy sang and more interested in whether or not his voice sounded healthy.”

“Erm... Yes, well, I suppose that would be the natural response.”

“But when an owl hoots in the middle of the night, it's strictly territorial. It's because owls are birds of prey and they're more concerned about gathering food than mating—”

“Dinky!” Fluttershy gasped, suddenly gawking at the sight of the empty pitcher in the center of the tiny table. “You drank all of the tea so quickly!”

“No I didn't! It was—”

“Are you dehydrated? Are you running a fever?” The yellow pegasus practically lunged across the teaset and felt the unicorn's horn with a forelimb. “Oh darling, you're positively baking!”

“I have a darker coat than yours, Miss Fluttershy. It absorbs most of the colors of the visible spectrum. Since I've been sitting in the sunlight all this time, it feels as if I'm hotter than I actually am—”

“I know!” Fluttershy nervously smiled. “I'll fill this up with water! Then you can come inside and enjoy the niiiiice coooool shaaaaade!”

“But it wasn't me, Miss Fluttershy!” Dinky blinked her yellow eyes. “It was the pony that fell from the sky!”

The yellow pegasus made an awkward face, unaware of the pony-shaped impression in the grass directly beneath her. “The pony that fell from what?”

“Harmony!” Dinky pointed over yellow wings.

“Pegasi will do that,” Harmony said, suddenly standing behind Fluttershy.

The caretaker shrieked, flopping embarrassingly onto the ground. With a deep rosy blush, she scrambled up on all fours and scooted away from the copper visitor. “Mmm... Uhm... Hello...”

“It's me, remember?” Harmony smiled placidly, though her amber eyes hardened. “From earlier? In the cottage? Ninety seconds ago?”

“Oh, uhm, yes.” Fluttershy wiltingly curtseyed. “Pleased to do business with a servant to Her Majesty.”

“Assuming we're doing business at all!” Harmony smirked. “I can see that you're obviously in the middle of a lot of things here—”

“Is that an infinity symbol on your flank?” Dinky asked over Fluttershy's shoulder.

Harmony's lips trailed numbly in the air. She blinked, then smiled icily at the tiny unicorn. “Err... Yes. Yes, it is.” She coughed and spoke once more to Fluttershy. “I don't mean to get in the way of things. I'm merely here to observe and ask questions so that the Court will understand how you do your job so well and—”

Dinky droned, “Why would a servant of the Royal Court have an infinity symbol?”

Harmony's eyes squinted at her. “Because that's how long I intend to live before I decide to foal any nosy little kids of my own.” She wrenched her gaze back towards Fluttershy. “And if you wouldn't mind telling me first off what this whole 'Capricorn' nonsense is—”

Again, a youthful murmur: “Because it doesn't make sense for a solar crest to be framing an infinity symbol.”

Harmony cast Dinky another icy grin. “Maybe we like tossing small creatures into the Sun.”

“That would take some massive limb strength.”

“Kid—Uhm, are you plugged into something?”

“Do you know how much energy it would take to launch a small dog or cat outside of the planet's atmosphere—much less to collide with Princess Celestia's rising Sun?”

“Uhhh—”

“Even if you empowered the entire catapult artillery of the Celestial Defense Corps, it would not be enough to hurdle a small mammal any further than several kilometers in a single toss, and that's assuming you could muster the mammoth force of several hundred weighted ballasts in a single burst of energy.”

“Look, I really don't think that it's—”

“Not to mention that it would take an astronomical effort to get any thrown object to exit the planet's gravity at the precise ninety degree angle required to maintain a full orbit at half the moon's length, much less to extend that revolution by such a length so as to collide forthwith with the burning corona of the Sun—”

“Right—I get it! You're from Space Equestria! That's cute, kid. Ahem.” Harmony limpingly turned to face Fluttershy once more. “Miss Fluttershy, all I wish is to have a few minutes of your attention—” She went bugeyed, for the pegasus was again gone. “Uhhh—What the heck?”

“Mmmm?” The animal caretaker's head rose from inside the windowframe to her cottage, several trots away. She was juggling a stack of dead fish in twin baskets as she panickedly managed, “I'm so sorry! I'm behind schedule! Do excuse me!” She disappeared, and the sound of the cottage's rear door squeaking open announced that she was rushing over towards the babbling brook in the back yard.

“Though I suppose it would be possible to use the Elements of Harmony to trans-locate small animals beyond the planet's orbit and avoid such a gravity-defying feat of long distance propulsion altogether, but that would have to involve a severe magical transgression worthy of the Princess' banishment to the moon.”

“Mmmmmm.” Harmony grit her teeth and mowed several clumps of grass with dragging hooves as she lurched away from the scene. “Keep at it, kid. You'll be a marshmallow in no time.”

Harmony secretly fumed. Fluttershy's wayward movements resembled a certain crusader whose foalish annoyance didn't become palpable to the last pony until that very thundering second. It was a miracle that she hadn't disappeared in a puff of green flame from the self-imploding irony of the moment. Trotting—more like stomping around the house—she rejoined Fluttershy just in time to see her tossing the piscean food into the waiting maws of several weasels crawling hungrily out of a waterside burrow.

“Miss Fluttershy—”

“I have to feed the ducklings and transport the frogs and check on the butterfly cocoons along the gardens and—”

“Miss Fluttershy.” Harmony flew down directly in front of the pegasus and planted a reassuring hoof on the filly's quivering shoulder. “Could you slow down for a second? What's the harm in just letting the formal introductions get out of the way?”

“Erm...” Fluttershy shifted nervously where she stood, half of her face hiding behind a pink lock of her mane. “How formal?”

She suddenly looked so frail and tiny. Harmony didn't realize it at first, but she wasn't used to staring at the yellow pegasus at eye-level. With Applejack, it was different; the farm mare was big and strong no matter what angle the last pony remembered staring at her from.

But Fluttershy—a silken-voiced caretaker from years of foalish wonderment—was suddenly a veritable, porcelain twig bending in a hurricane breeze; she always was. Harmony found her endearing in a different yet equal way to the mare she dreamily recalled.

“Oh, uhm...” Harmony realized Fluttershy was awaiting an answer. “We don't have to be formal at all! Princess Celestia has heard a lot from you, and so she's scheduled that I act as an observer and see for myself how you manage to—”

“Oh dear, is this because I insulted Princess Celestia when I took Philomena under my wing and attempted to nurse her back to health?”

“Huh? No! This has nothing to do with—”

“Mmmmm—Oh goodness.” Fluttershy bit her lip and sagged deaftedly towards the earth, dropping the basket of dead fish onto the grass beside the pond. Her eyes hung towards her hooves in a souless slump. “Is... Is this about the one time I drove a stampede of garden animals into the Grand Galloping Gala?”

“You drove a stampede into the Gala?!” Harmony balked, wide-eyed.

Fluttershy recoiled as if she had taken a bullet to the chest.

Harmony blinked, gulped, then cleared her voice. “Er...I mean yes! You drove a stampede into the Gala! Hahaha... Ahem. But Princess Celestia has forgiven you for that!” She glanced briefly aside. “Somehow...” She chewed on her lip for a moment, then bravely smiled towards the pegasus before murmuing, “But your noble actions in the name of... uhm... peaceful coexistence between fauna and ponydom have done wonders for Ponyville over the years.”

“I-I see...” Fluttershy squirmed where she sat and picked her basket back up, placing it on her backside. “I only wish the Cloudsdalian Commission shared the same enthusiasm as the Canterlotlian Court.”

“Yeah, well, ponies of a feather—y'know?” Harmony chuckled with her eyes shut. When she reopened her gaze, Fluttershy was gone. She flashed her skull every which way, stifled a deep groan, and quickly trotted after the distant figure towards the front of the cottage once more. “Miss Fluttershy, I swear, I was sent without the knowledge of 'Commander Spinsterwind' or whoever you were butting bridles with just a moment ago.”

“'Captain Redgale.'” Fluttershy corrected, and in a suddenly dry voice she murmured, “And it's not nice to call ponies names behind their flanks. I find it rather rude.”

Harmony's heart jumped, as if to be even remotely chided with the melodic voice of this pony meant being stabbed by invisible broken glass all over from mane to hoof. It felt somehow worse than a troll's stab wound to her leg or a phoenix's burn across her chest. She fought to maintain her adult composure. “I meant no disrespect, Miss Fluttershy, which is the least I could say about her. I'm merely a servant of the court, not an expert on psychology, but something is seriously barking up her tree. And when I say 'tree,' I mean the stick that she refuses to take out.”

“Eeep!” Fluttershy's cheeks burned rosily as she darted in through the back door of the cottage with the copper pegasus following. “Are all servants of Princess Celestia so... 'poetic?'”

“Only the awesome ones.” Harmony smirked. “Seriously, though, what's her deal?”

“Oh...” Fluttershy sighed long and hard, briefly pausing before returning the basket to a stack of several wicker containers just like it. She wandered across shelf after shelf of foodstuffs in a breathless canter. “She's my chief supervisor in Animal Caretaking and Taming. I've answered to her ever since I was a young filly volunteering in Ponyville.”

“If she's been around you that long, one would think she'd be a bit more supportive—Cuz she's seen you do a more than competent job. Otherwise, why would Ponyville still let you take care of the precious creatures around here?” Harmony smiled proudly. “Am I right?”

Fluttershy's upper body was flushed upon hearing that. She failed to hide it, instead busying herself in the rummaging at hoof. “You are... as kind as your name is pretty, Miss Harmony. But you must understand, Captain Redgale has a much... stricter method of appraisal.”

“Yeah, no crap.”

“Assuredly no fecal matter—Oh—That was another poetic expression, wasn't it?”

“Yeah, I'm full of it,” Harmony chuckled, then blinked at what she just said. “Of poetry. Er... Wh-what I meant was—”

Fluttershy went on, “She may appear harsh on the outer surface, but I've been working for her long enough to realize that she has very subtle ways of letting a pony know if she's doing her job right.” She paused to exhale, hard. “On some occasions, at least...”

Harmony glanced at her sideways.

Fluttershy cleared her throat and spoke over a hanging basket of feeding jars dangling from her neck. “Mmmff—Ahem. She came just now to inform me of a most deplorable situation.”

“Something about a Capricorn, right?”

“Mmmhmm. Are you familiar with Capricorns, Miss Harmony?”

Harmony opened her mouth to reply. She lingered in mid-gape, her mind floundering over several gray horizons, throngs upon throngs of dark clouds, scores of indiscernible dead creatures, too many fossils to have ever righteously accounted for the many varied things—both graceful and despicable—that once “lived” on the sun-kissed bosom of Equestria.

Fluttershy didn't wait for an uneducated answer “It's a celestial creature, living most of its adult years in the cosmos, much like Ursas and Scorpios. They hail from Equestria originally, though. Instead of blood, they have pure unfiltered mana filtering through their veins. They are brought into this world in a beam of pure magic channeled through a mother's horns. That energy then solidifies into the graceful creature we come to known as Capricorns, and then they migrate into the heavens, coming down every now and then only to regenerate their health via mana crystals or when it comes time for them to magically foal new young.”

“Yeah, okay. Now I kind of regret never seeing one.”

“Most living ponies aren't lucky enough to see a naturally appearing Capricorn.” Fluttershy knelt before a gathering cluster of squirrels at a windowsill. She fed them several bread crumbs from the basket and gently nuzzled a furred head or two before continuing. “But just recently, one was seen falling from the night sky and into the thick of the Everfree Forest. I'm the closest and most... qualified pony to immediately investigate. You see, in the last few years, I've been promoted to chief ranger of the Everfree Forest. With the help of Zecora, a shaman from the Northwestern Zebrahara, I've begun keeping a record of all the creatures that are discovered in the woods. Several scholars and taxonomists in Cloudsdale are expecting me to deliver a solid report every month, as well as to handle... uhm... unforeseen emergencies that happen along the forested border.”

“Like... this emergency.” Harmony nodded slowly. “That's what has gotten your beloved Captain's tail tied in a knot.”

“She's right to be so distraught.” Fluttershy sighed, staring forlornly past the circle of bushy tails swishing in front of her. “The Capricorns are an endangered species. If one was to die in the Everfree Forest, so close to Ponyville, and under my watch, well I... I-I...” She bit her lip and her eyes started to water uncontrollably.

Harmony blinked. “Uhhhh.... Uhm... Miss Fluttershy?”

The pegasus shook and shivered.

“Are you... Are you gonna cry?” Harmony's heart began beating harder and harder. “Oh crapola—You are, aren't you?”

“Is it n-not enough that... that such a beautiful and precious creature is going to d-die so needlessly that I-I also have to c-come this close to losing the gr-greatest j-job in all of Equestria??”

But before Fluttershy could so much as drop a tear, the time traveler was rushing up and planting both hooves on her shoulders.

“I'll help you!” Harmony panted, eyes twitching like a madpony. The future was in flames. The Wasteland beyond it was forever gray ash and snow. She was going to die, the end of ponies, and this was her one and only opportunity in the entire history of time to find a way to bring the Sun and Moon back. But she was not about to let Fluttershy cry. “I'll... uhh... I'll help you find this Coppertone!”

“Capricorn.”

“Whatever. I mean, how hard can it be?”

“Even if I did accept your kind generosity...” Fluttershy sniffed and trotted out of her grasp, sidling up to a reading seat's window and gazing forlornly out towards the lengths of the Everfree Forest stretching beyond a nearby chicken coup. “It wouldn't be right.”

Harmony raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

“You heard the Captain.” Fluttershy sighed. “I need to prove myself. If I accepted another pony's help, in any capacity, then it could look dis-favorably on my record. I am being tested here. That much is obvious.”

“Hey—Do you want this Capricorn thingy to live or not?”

“I...” Fluttershy fidgeted and kneaded the windowsill anxiously with yellow hooves. “Of course I do...”

“As a Royal Canterlotlian Clerk, it is my duty to make sure that all creatures in Equestria live long and prosper!” Harmony was processing the words through her mind a bare fraction of a second before bravely uttering them. “I'm here to observe the way you do your job, Miss Fluttershy—if you let me. I'm not here to tell you how it's done. If your—ahem—all-knowing Captain can't see that, then she can sure as heck take it up with the Princess!”

Fluttershy sniffled one last time. When she glanced back over her shoulder at this sudden, blessed stranger, it was with a soft smile that poured gold into the pores of Harmony's soul self. “I must admit. I do find your proposal to be... erm....”

“Awesome?” Harmony winked.

“Very kind.” Fluttershy grinned gently, her voice like a bedsheet falling through an afternoon's haze and spreading silkily across the lengths of the room. “Please do forgive my distractedness, Miss Harmony. I really didn't mean to be rude. It is not often that a stranger like you shows up so... punctually.” Her soft eyes narrowed earnestly on the strange pegasus. “I must ask, though—Have we met before?”

Harmony's heart froze. “Uhm... Huh?”

“Oh, I know it's awfully silly of me to ask. But I could swear that you're familiar somehow. It would be a shame not to remember somepony with such a gorgeous mane—Heehee—But, it's something else...”

“Oh, I don't get around Ponyville much. All I've known about you I've... uhm... I've read in Twilight Sparkle's letters and... and...” Harmony's gaze had fallen numbly towards the side. She fell into a zombified silence.

In the far corner of the adjacent kitchen, isolated and forgotten in the dusty shadows of the rustic cottage, was a bucket. Lying in this bucket was a mop, dried and unused for an unknowable time. The longer Harmony stared into the bristled white threads of the thing, the deeper she drowned, trapped in that ivory forest of filament, like a deep descent via moonvision.

A deep breath left the last pony, for she had just mopped that very same floor weeks ago, in that she had mopped it up twenty-five years ago. But this was twenty-five years ago. This was the past, and yet it wasn't the past. All of this was really just a projection, a billowing cloud of happenstance that was anchored to a dead ghost of a pegasus, and the only reality that was awaiting Harmony's beating Entropan heart was a dark dank hovel in the center of a dead world where there stalked a giant cosmic bear inside a gigantic thorny sarcophagus of stone, waiting for its scrumptious morsel to reappear any startling second on a vomit of green flames coughed up by a purple dragon that had lived three hundred years back and forth across the same twenty-five years.

The last pony did not expect so soon to be retracing her own paths, though they were taken with different hooves, legs that were hers and yet weren't hers. She suddenly felt very sick, very alone, and very naked. An infant breath inside of her whimpered for the gently swaying embrace of the Harmony's hammock. Before she could even comprehend the irony of that impulsive desire, a melodic voice drifted silkily across the room, so that she instinctually curled towards it, as if willing herself into unfoaling.

She gasped at having been embraced by a pair of yellow forelimbs, as soft and warm as she had ever remembered them. Incapable of sweating, her projected soul self trembled to glance into the pegasus bracing her. She gulped and muttered: “Fl-Fluttershy...?”

“Are you okay, Miss Harmony?” the mare worriedly breathed, weathering the visitor's sudden trembles.

The last pony very swiftly, very quickly smoothed her rough edges out and stood up straight, shaking her black mane back over her neck. “Ahem. Sorry. I've been... uhm... flying all day. I guess I didn't realize how tired I was.”

“Maybe you should lie down. I'll have Dinky fetch you some water while I fix a soothing broth—”

“N-no need, Miss Fluttershy.” The time traveler recited the reassurances of a foalish guest, blinked the dancing shadows of yesterday away from the all-too-familiar room, and spoke with greater ease. “Now, what were you asking me just before I had my dizzy spell?”

“Erm...” Fluttershy bore a slightly suspicious squint. “How could you know what Twilight Sparkle has written about me to the Princess?”

“Erm—Huh?”

“You said that you knew about me from Twilight's letters.”

“Oh, I did say that, didn't I?” Harmony grimaced. “I... It... Erm...” She brightened, then smiled hopefully. “Her Majesty tends to read her letters out loud! Yes! And, well, the palace walls of Canterlot are... uhm... they're kind of thin... I guess.” She cleared her throat as she navigated the pathetic dead end that she had trotted her tongue into. “Her... uhm... Her younger sister has the same problem. Especially with all the letters Princess Luna... gets... from...” A stupid blink. “...the Wonderbolts.” She bit her lip for a few prolonged seconds. “They write about flying n'stuff.”

“I... see...” Fluttershy swam through a confused breath of air directly in front of her.

“So!” Harmony leaned back with a bright expression and clapped her front hooves together. “When do we go hunting for Capricorns?”

“Not quite so soon, Miss Harmony.”

“Oh. Okay. Ahem—Why not?”

“If you are still generously willing to observe me in such a procedure, I'm afraid you have to wait until later this afternoon.”

“Lemme guess. You've got more animals to feed.”

“Well, in addition to that I have to babysit for Dinky until her mother gets here.”

“Why not just—I dunno—bring her with us?”

“—into the Everfree Forest?!” Fluttershy explosively gasped as if a stick of dynamite had been ignited in the base of her lungs. “Miss Harmony, have you ever ventured into that place?!”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Harmony said. Thorns, brambles, and squirming black shadows flickered across her aged mind. Then she took one stupid glance outside a nearby window and suddenly remembered that this was a green world. “Oh, wait. Nevermind, it's been a while. Eheheh—”

“You and I may be aptly capable of looking after ourselves,” Fluttershy murmured as she shuffled up towards a window, gazing forlornly out at the tiny unicorn and her teaset. “But I would rather be banished to the moon than put a little foal's life in danger!”

“Okay, what's with ponies of this time period and this rampant phobia about moon-banishing?”

“Miss Harmony...?” Fluttershy bilnked confusedly.

Harmony sighed and returned to the subject at hoof. “Would it please you to let me assist in your next search for the Capricorn this afternoon?”

“Oh, I would most definitely be blessed by anypony's assistance.” Fluttershy rosily nodded. “But I do not think it will be an easy feat.”

“Hey, we're pegasi.” Harmony trotted up and smirked. “Since when did we do anything easy?”

“I would say that is Captain Redgale's philosophy.”

“Then I already feel like cutting off my own tongue.”

“Oh heavens! Do not think of such a thing!” Fluttershy sputtered.

“Miss Fluttershy, it was a joke—!” Harmony blinked. Deja vu throttled her brain, an orange foal briefly balanced on her long copper legs like stilts, then flickered away in a rain-soaked gasp. Fluttershy suddenly looked like a tiny porcelain doll gazing up at her. The last pony had to fight the bleeding urge to cry. With a brave chuckle, she exhaled, then said, “In the meantime, how can I best observe you at your work?”

“Uhm... Hmmm...” Fluttershy breathed as she cast soft blue eyes towards the edge of the cottage. “I suppose you could assist me in the manger. I still have my regular rounds to go through.”

“Just how many animals do you have in this place, Miss Fluttershy?”

“Two hundred and thirty-three, not including the fish and insects.”

Harmony blinked. “Oh. Wow. I... uhm... didn't realize you actually kept count.”

“Oh, but of course!” Fluttershy smiled brightly for once. “I would absolutely hate myself if I lost track of any of my precious little friends. I keep a constant head count every morning just to be absolutely sure that none have gone missing or... or worse.”

“Do you name them all too?”

“Mmm, no.” Fluttershy ran a forelimb across her pink mane while glancing back out to check on Dinky. “Only a few whom I've come to adopt.”

Harmony smirked and motioned over her flank towards a certain white fuzzball. “Like Little Miss Sunshine over there?” A clattering food dish ricocheted off the back of her copper skull. “Ow! Dang your eyes!”

“Angel! Bad! Very naughty!”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Eversoft

“Well, why don't you just train her not to throw stuff at guests?” young Scootaloo mumbled while plucking a few pillow feathers from her violet mane.

“Oh, I try and I try and I try.” Fluttershy paused in filling a trough full of food. She trotted over and plucked the last traces of Angel's wrath out of the disheveled eight-year-old's hair. In the center of the hay-strewn manger, the two pegasi stood, surrounded by a halo of various tiny livestock. The thick afternoon rain pelted the wooden rooftop and cascaded in droves off several rusted gutters flanking the open enclosure. “Angel came from a neglectful home, you see. His previous owners were known to shout at their animals and utterly forget feeding time.”

“Sounds like you're just making excuses for the world's next treacherous dictator.” Scootaloo stuck a tongue out. “I think you need to tan her hide some, Fluttershy.”

“Tan her hide?!” Fluttershy blanched as if a plague had just filled the air.

“Yeah! Y'know; roll up an issue of Equestria Daily and give Angel's fanny a taste of the Nightly Roundup, if y'know what I mean.” She gave a proud and mischievous chuckle.

“Scootaloo, if that's how your parents deliver punishment, then I am not one to judge you.” Fluttershy tossed her pink mane and stepped back towards the trough, grabbing a bag and refilling it as a half-dozen pigs hoofed up to mince through the sudden bounty. “But I prefer to use positive reinforcement when fostering such animals as Angel. When he does something I approve of, I give him a carrot. When he does something inappropriate, I take him aside and explain heart-to-heart what he must do to improve himself.”

“Are we talking about a bunny rabbit or a mayoral candidate?” Scootaloo frowned. “Fluttershy, he's a walking disaster area! I know you're good with animals, but there are some things in this world that are smart enough to... to take advantage of somepony who's as nice and kind as you.” She bit her lip and shuffled a bit where she was leaning against a wooden crossbeam of the manger. “I hate to think of anything treating you wrong, Fluttershy.”

“Awwwww...” The yellow pegasus grinned softly while pouring a jar of milk into a saucer. Several domestic cats scampered in from the far corners of the rain-pelted manger and lapped at the fresh bounty, purring mutually. “I'm glad that you care about me so, Scootaloo. But you need not worry. I rightfully know that Angel is a hoof-ful. You see, I've dealt with far moodier creatures before. Take Rarity's... erm... remarkable specimen, Opalescence, for example. The first day I houseat the pet, she nearly tore my mane to shreds. But with enough patience and gentle persuasion, I was able to temper her mood into something much more agreeable.”

“And if all else failed, you gave her the stare, right?” Scootaloo grinned a crescent moon while widening her left eye with emphasis.

“Oh! No!” Fluttershy nearly tripped over the head of lettuce she was nudging towards a stable of bleating goats. “I would never use that on Opalescence! Or Angel for that matter!”

“But it's sooooo awesommme!” Scootaloo grinned, her voice chirping above the distant rumbles of thunder that shook the wet edges of the Everfree Forest. “Why don't you use it more often? It gets the job done, right?”

“I... I'm not very proud of the stare.” Fluttershy hid deflatedly behind a pink lock as she shuffled towards the far edge of the manger. “In all honesty, I wish I had never discovered it.”

“You use it on the chickens all the time.”

“Yes, but chickens are incredibly difficult to corral.”

“Tell me about it.” Scootaloo leaned up against a wooden pillar and gazed at the sheets of rain billowing down across the bent grass and glistening bushes of the landscape surrounding the quaint cottage. The world danced and shook through a refracted haze of moisture, baptising the scene with a cool mist that forced gasping breaths from the ponies' lungs. The orange foal ran a foreleg through her wet hair, then paused to blink at her hoof, remembering the mud that had briefly stained the offensive limb several minutes ago. A brief surge of guilt wafted through her, and her violet eyes flickered from a cottage atrium to a field of white stones to an abandoned barn under starlight. “Fluttershy?” the foal whimpered.

“Mmm? Yes, Scootaloo?”

“When you found your cutie mark...” Scootaloo swallowed hard. “Were you alone?”

“Alone?” Fluttershy glanced up from where she was pouring a bag of feed before a wide array of sheltered birdhouses. “Well, no, not quite. I was surrounded by all sorts of adorable animals. If it weren't for them, I would never have discovered my talent for speaking with them.”

“You can talk to all animals?”

Fluttershy chuckled breathily. “Most of them,” she said. “In reality, all animals are capable of understanding Celestial Tongue. I think it's on account of Gultophine's breath providing animation to all living things, regardless of species. If you just stop, stay calm, and reach out to any animal, even the most remarkable of connections can be made. You could talk to birds, to butterflies, to owls—You could even talk to manticores and Ursa Majors—”

“You could talk to an Ursa Major?!” Scootaloo balked.

“Hmmm...” Fluttershy blushed, biting her lip. “I wouldn't suggest trying it. That takes an advanced degree of zoological connection.”

“Like what you've got, right?” Scootaloo winked.

“I wouldn't go that far.”

“Still, your talent is so awesome, Fluttershy.” Scootaloo smiled. But slowly, the smile faded. “You should be proud. Really, you should.”

Fluttershy raised an eyebrow at that. She smiled and put down the last bag of seed before slowly trotting over and standing before the foal. “I'm sure you too will be proud to find your talent when your cutie mark comes to you.”

“I don't know.” Scootaloo shifted her lower hooves into the dirt and straw of the manger. “Can cutie marks come to you when you're alone?”

“Why do you think you'll be alone, Scootaloo?”

“Isn't everypony alone, when you really think about it?”

Fluttershy giggled curiously. “What gives you that idea? I told you that I discovered my talent when I was surrounded by such adorable animals, yes? I hardly call that lonely, Scootaloo.”

“But... But...” Scootaloo sighed, her eyes falling shut. A pause, and she gazed up sadly at the adult filly. “When was the last time you invited a pony over to visit you, Fluttershy?”

“Well, just yesterday, I finished conducting business with—”

“I mean a pony you know. One of your friends.”

The mare blinked at that. “Uhm... I... I suppose sometime two weeks ago I had Twilight Sparkle over for tea...”

“Two weeks?!” Scootaloo made a face. “Fluttershy, you hardly see anypony ever!”

“I... I see my friends...” Fluttershy stirred nervously all of the sudden, avoiding Scootaloo's solid gaze. “When I can, I meet up with them... from time to time...”

“Fluttershy, am I the only pony who notices this?” the foal murmured, swallowing a lump down her throat. “You're a very, very talented pony. Sure, Applejack is good at farming apples n'stuff, but that's something that runs in her family. Rarity is always makin' dresses and other frilly things, but she and Sweetie Belle live in a fancy boutique that has all that they need. Twilight Sparkle is really good at magic, but she's also seeing the Princess an awful lot—”

“Where are you... uhm... Where are you going with this, Scootaloo?”

“You are talented just because, Fluttershy. But... you're so alone.” Scootaloo chewed briefly on the corner of her lips. “Every time I see you, you're by yourself. And it makes me wonder... will I have to be alone in order to be really talented at what I get a cutie mark for?”

“Oh Scootaloo.” Fluttershy gave a painted smile and swiftly bent down to nuzzle her. “You worry too much—”

“I mean it, Fluttershy!” Scootaloo jerked away from her with a frown. She hated doing it: like ripping her flesh from a sheet of silk. “It's really bugging me lately! I... I...” She took a deep breath and shuddered against the echo of the surrounding rain. “I am beginning to think that I don't want to get a cutie mark. Ever.”

Fluttershy's blue eyes twitched at that. “You don't?” Another blink. “You don't?”

“I know, I know,” Scootaloo grumbled, frowning her foalish face towards the far reaches of the manger as she folded her upper hooves. “I, Scootaloo, Cutie Mark Crusader and lead singer at the Ponyville School Talent Show, don't know if I want one anymore.”

“That... That's certainly interesting.” Fluttershy squinted her eyes. She cleared her throat and murmured: “Have you... erm... have you shared this with the rest of your... with the rest of your—”

“Crusaders?” Scootaloo grunted. “No... No, Fluttershy. But... well...” She bit her lip, shuffled up, and paced across the straw of the manger. “I haven't... actually seen them all that much lately. And it's more than the fact that Apple Bloom's sick or at school, or that Sweetie Belle is always doing lessons with Rarity. The Crusaders just... just aren't what they used to be. Nopony but us three would be the wiser, and even then I don't think Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle see it as I do. We hardly ever hang out at the Sweet Apple Acres clubhouse anymore.”

“Well, I suppose some of that can be understandable—” Fluttershy started.

Scootaloo spun, suddenly exclaiming, “And it's not like we've given up hope on finding ourselves n'stuff! We still have fun when we get together! We still meet up at Sugarcube Corner and whatnot! But... But...”

“But what, Scootaloo?”

The foal sighed and slumped down on folded hooves once more. She dug her muzzle towards the earth, murmuring, “I don't think Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle realize this, but we're not going to find our cutie marks. Not together.”

“And what makes you say that?”

“Because...” Scootaloo shuddered. “A cutie mark is something special between a pony and her talent. That's just not something you can share. I think a pony has to—I dunno—be quiet and look at herself against the rest of the world and figure it all out from there. You can't do any of that in a group. The only time a pony realizes who she is—is when she's alone.”

“If that's true, Scootaloo, then why did you join the Cutie Mark Crusaders in the first place?”

“I...” The foal lingered. She gazed weakly out into the rain, wishing it could drench her, camouflage her for what was coming next. A stifled whimper broke through. “I-I don't like being alone, Fluttershy.” She wrenched her face away from the heavens—away from Fluttershy, as the gray world beyond the rain refracted twice over, encompassing her moist vision. “I really don't.” A dry gulp. “But... But now I'm realizing that... that I have to be alone, if I wanna find myself. I really do.” It took every ounce of blood ever pumped through her young system not to allow a sniffle to alight the drowning air of the manger.

There was a soft padding of hooves. A silken warmth huddled down besides the tiny foal as a voice of haunting, melodic tonality settled down onto her twitching ears. “Scootaloo, you are a very... very mature filly.”

The foal gasped. She braved a twinkling look up at the mare, her face caught between being hurt and proud at the same time. “I am?”

“Mmmmhmmm.” Fluttershy gently nodded. Her face was like a platinum halo in the wet center of Scootaloo's vision. She smiled. “I've always thought so. I've seen it every time I've witnessed the three of you together, under Rarity's care or my own.”

“But...” Scootaloo bit her lip, her mind reflecting a shattered blue table and a muddied floor. “I'm always doing practical jokes and breaking stuff. Oh Fluttershy, please don't just say things to make me feel better—”

“I only ever say that which I believe.” Fluttershy flung a pink strand of hair aside so she could look at the little foal more clearly. “The silly things you do—you do them to make the other Crusaders happy. Why is that, Scootaloo? I know why. It's because you're the ringleader of the group.”

The foal blinked. “I am?” she repeated in a cute chirp.

“Heeheehee...” Fluttershy shut her eyes briefly in a giggle. “Mmm... Yes. Don't look so surprised. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle may not admit it, but ever since the three of you met at Diamond Tiara's party at Sugarcube Corner, it's you who have been leading the pack. Everypony sees you with the wagon, carrying your two friends all across Ponyville and the Acres beyond. I'm quite convinced that there would be no Crusaders if there was no Scootaloo to give it energy and joy.”

“But... But the Crusaders' name was Apple Bloom's idea!”

“A name is a name, but substance is something else entirely.” Fluttershy gently laid a hoof over Scootaloo's front forelegs. “The other girls see the Crusaders as a means to an end. But I think you've always seen it as something else, something that it truly is. And that's another outlet for their needs, Scootaloo. Apple Bloom has always depended on Applejack and Sweetie Belle has always depended on Rarity. With the Crusaders, they've found somepony else that they can depend on, and have fun with at the same time. It's a delightful niche you've filled, if I may say so.”

“Fluttershy...” Scootaloo gulped anxiously. “Who do I depend on?”

“Isn't it obvious?”

Scootaloo wasn't ready for that response. She wilted slightly, as if expecting a great spotlight to burn her soul out from under her skin. To her relief, Fluttershy's smile was just as soft and innocent as ever. She sighed and slipped out from under the drenched weight of the moment while murmuring towards the corners of the manger, “I don't look forward to the day when Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle realize that the Crusaders will find what they've always wanted... by no longer being crusaders.”

“I agree that everypony must be alone with her talent to properly understand it,” Fluttershy said. “But that doesn't mean everypony must be alone completely.” She tilted her head softly aside and narrowed her blue eyes. “Talent is not all there is to being a pony, Scootaloo. There is joy, friendship, and magic too. But most of all”—she smiled angelically—“there is kindness, or at least that is what I'm convinced of. And you have a lot more of that than I bet you're willing to give credit to. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle are blessed to have you in their lives, and they will continue to be blessed, even if you must stop being crusaders.”

“When you found your cutie mark, you stopped being a Cloudsdalian citizen, right, Fluttershy?”

“Mmmm... In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Scootaloo's eyes curved. “Do you feel, blessed?”

Fluttershy lingered. She looked into Scootaloo's face, saw past it, and ultimately resorted to saying, “I'm not nearly as alone as you think I am, Scootaloo.”

“But Fluttershy, it looks like you always are!”

“I know what things look like,” the yellow pegasus murmured. She gazed aside into the shadows. “And I also know what it feels like.” A gentle smile slowly, slowly blossomed. “But... I would never change my life for an instant.” Her voice was like a melodic brook, rippling around the lengths of Scootaloo's ears. “I am so... so very happy. I truly am. That's the thing about ponies: every one of us is different, and we each use our talents to honor the ones we care about in our own ways. It's just like how you use your talents to honor the Crusaders; I use mine to honor all of my animal friends.”

Scootaloo squinted. “But earlier today at the pond, I thought you said that you believed honoring our talents was all about what it means to our families.”

Fluttershy opened her mouth to retort—but stopped short with a blinking expression. “Mmmm. Oh... I guess I did imply that, didn't I?” She gazed in a dizzy haze towards the manger floor. “Oh dear...”

The two pegasi sat in folded silence, surrounded by rain, lost to their suddenly mutual shadows. It was Scootaloo who broke the silence, shuffling over to nuzzle Fluttershy in such a warm way that it startled the adult mare.

“I'll visit you, Fluttershy,” Scootaloo murmured into her silken coat. “I'll make sure you're not so alone, even if you think you're not.” She gazed up with glistening, violet eyes. “That is... if you'll let me?”

A warmth lit Fluttershy's face that hadn't been there for days. She couldn't even begin to hide it. Instead, she smiled, and in a vulnerably quiet voice she nuzzled the foal back and whispered, “I would love that, Scootaloo. Truly, I would.”

“Hmmm...” Scootaloo basked in the golden warmth dripping from Fluttershy's vocal cords. And then she said, “Until this friggin' rain stops trying to flush us out, anyway.”

“Heeheehee... Indeed.”

Scootaloo smiled happily. There was a sound at the back of the manger. She turned around...

...and squinted quizzically at the little gray unicorn. “What the heck are you yapping on about this time, kid?” Harmony raised a curious eyebrow above her amber eyes.

“Ivory Nematoads,” Dinky chirped. She sat on a wooden beam flanking the manger, her lower legs dangling while Fluttershy and Harmony were busily pouring bags of feed into nearby troughs. “They're very sensitive to bright lights, which is why they always stay underground in moist piles of dirt. A lot of ponies think that quicksand happens incidentally throughout the lengths of the Everfree Forest, when, as a matter of fact, the loose earth is a result of gigantic amphibian creatures burrowing through so much groundsoil.”

“She is mostly accurate.” Fluttershy smiled gently while tossing seed towards a clucking cluster of chickens. “Albeit, some nematoads aren't so much sensitive to light as they are outright vulnerable to epidermal burns on account of their pale pigmentation.”

“As much as I love getting this biology lesson in stereo...” Harmony tossed her amber-streaked mane and shook more feed into a trough before nearly tripping over a stampede of swine. “Nnngh... Ahem... I came here to learn more about your job, Miss Fluttershy. I'm sure the live almanac dictation can wait for a spell.”

“But there have been eleven recorded run-ins with giant Ivory Nematoads in the past decade alone!” Dinky leaned her blonde-and-horned head to the side, kicking her lower legs as she educatedly murmured: “And two of those instances resulted in severe skin poisoning from direct contact with the creature's mucous glands—”

“Kid—Has anypony ever told you that ponydom invented books in order to keep long and boring factoids on paper?”

“On the contrary, Miss Harmony, I invite you to encourage young Miss Dinky. She's something of a prodigy in Ponyville.”

“Jee, I had no idea.”

“No doubt she would outscore every other foal in Ms. Cheerilee's class if she was enrolled there.”

Harmony squinted at Fluttershy's statement, then gazed over at the tiny unicorn, studying her at an angle. “You mean to say she's not at school?”

“I am homeschooled.” Dinky suddenly frowned, her petite horn waving like a distant dagger above furrowed eyebrows. “And Mother says it's not nice to talk about others in the third-pony. There are more living things in this world who can't see well than those who can't hear well.”

“Yeesh. No offense intended!” Harmony rolled her amber eyes before helping Fluttershy fill another trough above a cacophony of clucks and squeals. “I just meant to say that you seem old enough, not to mention smart enough to be attending classrooms already.”

“I'm tutored by lesson plans,” the blonde child matter-of-factly explained in a droning voice. “When I'm not being babysat by Fluttershy or studying at home, Mother takes me to the library. The Ponyville Education System has a literature program for young learning foals. I'm about two volumes ahead.”

“Your mom isn't working you too hard, is she?”

“No'm. I was just bored, so I read my way to the higher levels.” Dinky blinked then smiled. “Did you know that the distant town of Dredgemane has the highest known count of petrified elemental stones found in Equestria? For every hundred kilograms of rock excavated from Dredgemane quarries, there are approximately ten to fifteen separate nodes enchanted with magical essence. The only other known place to contain so much elemental concentration is the moon.”

“Heh...” Harmony smirked helplessly. “If this is what homeschool does to young fillies these days, no wonder Sweetie Belle is such a friggin' dictionary.”

Fluttershy glanced over. “Oh? You're familiar with Rarity's family?”

Harmony blinked. A red hue blistered beneath her copper cheeks as she expected the green world of the past to shatter right then and there. “I... erm... I suppose you could say that I've delivered a shipment or two to the Carousel Boutique, yes.”

“How recently?” Fluttershy stood up and stared Harmony in the face with sudden earnesty. “Do you know if Rarity is doing well?”

Harmony's eyes twitched. “I... uhhh... I haven't been issued a delivery order from Canterlot in a while. I can't say that I've seen them recently.” She cleared her throat and reflected amber sincerity back at the yellow pegasus. “Why? Is there something wrong with Ponyville's famed seamstress?”

“I... I wouldn't know.” Fluttershy deflated with a dull sigh and returned to feeding a pair of bleating goats. “I have not heard from her in a while. The last I was told, she was riding around Equestria in a chariot pulled by some quietly-spoken servant named 'Anastasia.' It's strange not to see Rarity on a weekly basis. For an entire year, we did absolutely everything together. She is... my very best friend.” A rosy blush formed, carried aloft by a happy thought, and then the caretaker's yellow coat paled once again. “But it is almost as if she suddenly does not exist.”

“You mean she's missing every time you venture into Ponyville?”

“Erm, not quite.” Fluttershy smiled sheepishly. “In actuality, it has always been Rarity who initiated our visitations. She just... uhm... she hasn't invited me to do anything in a long while...”

“Then why don't you go and visit her for a change, Miss Fluttershy?” The time traveler helplessly smiled. “I'm sure she'd be positively ecstatic to have her best friend pay her a visit.”

“Oh, no. I couldn't do that.”

“Pfft! Why not?”

“It would seem awfully intrusive.”

“Not when you're friends! Isn't that the whole point of being companions, Miss Fluttershy?”

“In a recent survey at the end of the Third Age,” Dinky stated, “It was calculated that the average Equestrian pony has approximately four separate and unrelated acquaintances, with the lower percentile falling into the affluent ranks of the upper Canterlotlian Elite.”

Harmony rolled her eyes, ignored the child, and further murmured towards Fluttershy, “Everypony lives a busy life. But it's not so bad to have a soul from outside drop in from time to time, even if it is intrusive. Without unexpectedly nice things like that, what would be the point in living to begin with?”

“Even if I wanted to,” Fluttershy spoke under a wilted breath, “I am far too exceedingly busy with the task Captain Redgale has laid before me, much less the regular tasks of the day.” She paused to steal a glance towards the tiny unicorn in the back of the manger. She smiled sweetly and looked at the copper pegasus. “Besides, some delightful things are worth being busy for.”

“I'll take your word for it,” Harmony muttered, pacing past the animal tamer's flank. “You gotta realize that I'm making this observation for a report to Princess Celestia. If there's anypony in Equestria who neverceasingly argues for friendship, Her Majesty's the one.”

“Have you met Princess Celestia, Miss Harmony?”

“I... erm...” Harmony blinked. Her gray mind flickered with the golden threads of thousands upon thousands of words, pages upon pages of gorgeous royal calligraphy under flickering lanternlight, and yet she never actually knew the divine voice with which to read all of them in.

“I must say that I have.” Fluttershy finished for her. “Yes, she is always a firm believer in friendship, but the day that she insists that labor be put aside for other necessities is the day I lock my doors, because it will mean that Nightmare Moon or something else horrible has returned to put a spell on our faithful ruler.”

“I think you've been barked at by this Captain Redgale a little too much.” Harmony looked at her with an amused smirk. “To your discredit, Miss Fluttershy, you sound horribly adorable when you try to be morose.”

“Oh dear, I truly do not know how to respond to that.” Fluttershy pensively shuffled away and reached for a glass jar of milk. She struggled with weak limbs to twist the cap loose. “Nnnngh... Hnnnghh... Ohhh—This bothersome jar!”

“Here, let me,” Harmony said. Her Entropan projection lurched over, took the jar from Fluttershy, and effortlessly opened it. The very moment the cap came off, she heard meowing noises, and she froze. Her heart was beat-beat-beating hard.

“Do you know what to do with that, Miss Harmony?”

“Yes.” The visitor's eyes blinked and a black mane hung in an amber-streaked slump. “I believe I do.” In a zombified lurch, Harmony walked across the manger and poured the white liquid into a tiny saucer. A haunting array of twitching tails announced a cluster of domestic cats that had formed a furry ring around the plate, mewling and lapping greedily. A ring of purs; and Harmony felt her chest about to burst. In a blink of green flame, she saw a misty haze crossing over the world. There was distant thunder, like a steady downpour of afternoon rain drenching the landscape in a refracted gloom that echoed the voice of a little orange foal, unsure of herself, until a silken warmth suddenly nuzzled her—

Harmony snapped out of it, eyes twitching wide.

Fluttershy bounced back, startled. Nevertheless, she gulped and murmured, “Miss Harmony, are you okay? It looked like you were blacking out again, just like you did in the kitchen earlier.”

“I... I...” Harmony took a shuddering breath. She tried smiling, but only grimaced. She glanced at the half-empty milk bottle, at her trembling hooves, then at Fluttershy.

Fluttershy gently nodded.

A cough, a nod, and Harmony took a swig of the milk. Gulping, she exhaled hard, and calmed her rattling knees to a molasses slouch. “Whew... Does a pony good, y'know?”

“Are you sure you're fit to be of assistance to me, Miss Harmony? I doubt Princess Celestia would be too harsh on you if you took some rest before accomplishing your mission. I know Captain Redgale only wants me at the best of my abilities.”

“Oh, Miss Fluttershy...” Harmony chuckled helplessly, planted the milk jar on a nearby wooden beam, and stood with a confident swagger. “I was born ready to be your faithful observer this week! And if I'm lying, may Princess Nebula strike me from the heavens!”

“D-D-D-D-Dinky, I'm here!” A voice stuttered from beyond the nether.

Harmony blinked skyward. “H-Huh—?” Her voice left her like a four-course meal hovering above a tablecloth that had been viciously yanked out from underneath. In a catastrophic blink, a gray winged body slammed into her, plowed her through two bails of hay, and sent her sprawling into several bags of spilled oats piled under a settling sneeze of manger dust. Harmony winced and struggled to get up, only there was an offensively heavy weight—a living weight—seated on top of her. Painfully, she craned her black mane to see who it was, but all she saw were bubbles, gray coat, and more bubbles.

“Huhhh...” A low, feminine voice rang across the wooden rafters of the place. “The manger feels a lot squishier than I remember!”

“Hello, Mother!” The upside-down image of Dinky beamed and squatted on the edge of her wooden beam. “We were just talking about Pale Nematoads and Friendship!”

“Oh really? Funny, those are t-t-t-t-two things that I know nothing about! C'mere, Muffin!”

“Heeee!” Dinky happily flew, and suddenly the weight atop Harmony doubled. The copper pegasus wheezed, her amber eyes bulging. “Did you have a good workday, mother?”

“I delivered enough letters to give Equestria a paper bath! At least I hope so; my bag is empty!”

“Snkkkt—Hello, anypony?” Harmony hissed and squirmed. “I seem to have been squashed by a skipping record made of lead. Care to lend a hoof?”

“Whoah! Muffin, listen! T-t-t-t-talking oats!”

“Uhm...” The upside down, silken face of Fluttershy entered into view. “Miss Hooves? If you don't mind, you're sitting on my guest. She's from the Royal Court of Canterlot, and she's not a chair.”

“Oh!” The body gasped and shifted atop Harmony. The bubbles disappeared and the time traveler could suddenly breathe again. “My bad! Sorry, Mister Squirrel!”

“'Squirrel?'” the time traveler flicked her black tail and sat up, frowning. Then a firmer frown. “'Mister?'”

“Mother, the Latter Third Age Zoological Report states that Tropical Island Capybaras are the largest known form of rodentia, and we're too far away from the sentient populace of St. Petersbrittle.”

“Hah! St. Petersbrittle! I have a sister there!”

“No, Mother. Aunt Ditzblinka lives in Marescow.”

“Oh right! Heheh... So she does.” A gray hoof rubbed the unicorn's blonde mane. “Have I mentioned that I love that horned br-br-br-br-brain of yours?”

“All the time, Mother. Heeheehee!” Dinky turned rosy in sudden, toasty jubilation.

Fluttershy shuffled over and helped a dizzy Harmony to her feet. “Miss Harmony, I believe you have just met a good friend of mine: Miss Hooves.”

“Yeah, uh, did she get that name from her first foalday or a puppy trampling competition?” Harmony shook her snout, tossed the invisible cobwebs out her ringing ears, and exhaled painfully. In a forced breath of politeness, she smiled calmly the stranger's way. “Whatever. It's a pleasure meeting a fellow friend of Fluttershyyyyyyy-Yaaak!” Harmony recoiled, hissing through her teeth.

Cradling Dinky and seated awkwardly on her haunches was a gray pegasus with a cockeyed grin. She wasn't looking at Harmony, but rather she was looking towards the roof of the manger... or she was looking at the floor of the manger... or she was looking at the sky and looking at the ground... or... or...

Harmony blinked wide. She tilted her head up and tried centering her reflection in the mare's eyes, only to experience her body suddenly swimming figure eights until she too fell back dizzily on her rump. “Uhmmm...”

“Don't worry, they won't g-g-g-g-go off.” The wall-eyed pegasus' smile was an ambient thing, swimming around the room in a wide beam to rise the hairs on the back of Harmony's Entropan neck. “Though they sometimes point me in the wrong flight pattern. I apologize again, Mister Squirrel.” She stuck her hoof out half a meter to Harmony's left.

Harmony squinted, bit her lip, and slowly, awkwardly stretched to the side to shake the misguided limb. “Well, nopony's hurt. Maybe next time you could give a proper warning before—”

“Oh! I just remembered, Dinky!” Miss Hooves suddenly gasped, yanking her hoof away so hard that Harmony pratfalled once more to the manger floor. The jubilant gray pegasus held Dinky out in front of her and chirped, “Miss Sparkle gave me another book that you will just love!”

“Did she?!”

“Mmmmhmm! Feast your horn!” The pegasus planted Dinky onto a bale of hay and rummaged through a leather mailbag hanging from her gray flank. She produced a thick leather-bound book and hung the thing upside-down. “Ta-daaaaa! My dear-dear Muffin, it's full of stars!”

“Oh Mother.” Dinky rolled her eyes with a smile. With blonde hair flailing, she spun until she was lying upside down with her head hanging off the bail of hay. From there, she effortlessly read the title with joyous little foal eyes. “Oooooh! 'A Young Unicorn's Guide for Astronomy!'”

“M-M-M-M-Miss Sparkle says that it's not a a children's book! She says it's made for older, smarter fillies! She says it's for the interm-m-m... for the interm-m-m-m-m... for the intermmmmmm—”

“'Intermediary Classes,' Mother.” Dinky smiled. “And it's just perfect! I've been wanting to know more about the heavenly bodies.”

“You're my little heavenly body, Muffin!” Derpy shut her wayward eyes and hid an ecstatic smile behind the upside-down book. “Hehehehe—Your Mommy made a funny!”

“You sure did! Heeheehee!” Dinky smiled, reverse-somersaulted off the bale of hay, and nuzzled her mother's thighs. “Thank you very much, Mother. I'll read it as soon as I can.”

Harmony once more stood up with the gently guiding hoof of Fluttershy. “For the love of Celestia, did I just wake up to the Concussion Convention?”

“Mmmm...” Fluttershy murmured, smiling softly at the two gray ponies, young and old. “You may call it what you wish. But I think it is precious.”

“You think a lot of things are precious, Miss Fluttershy,” Harmony grumbled as she stood evenly on four hooves once again. “Does half of them have to hurt my head so much?”

“Angel is the product of my own strengths and weaknesses,” Fluttershy spoke aside, then motioned towards the two ponies. “But, like you, I am only an observer to this.”

“Wait...” Harmony blinked. With amber eyes, she squinted at Dinky's horn, then at Miss Hooves' wings, then at Miss Hooves' solid forehead, then at Dinky's horn again. “Did Dinky just call her 'Mother'—like—a billion times just now?”

“Mmmmhmmm... Yes. Yes she did.”

Harmony's eyes went briefly in the direction opposite of the mailpony's. “I think something in my brain just broke.”

“Oh really? Do you need to see Nurse Red Heart?”

“Jokes, Miss Fluttershy. They exist, remember?”

“I want to thank you again for t-t-t-t-taking care of Dinky, Fluttershy.” The mailmare trotted over. The tiny foal was sitting on her back, already hoofing through the pages of the astronomy book and gazing with wide yellow eyes at the bounty of contents flowing into her bobbing cranium. “I wouldn't be able to make my routes if I always had to worry about her wher... her wh-wh-wh-wherea...”

“'Whereabouts,' Mother.”

“Yes. Those. Heeheehee...I wish all ponies were as kind as you.”

Fluttershy smiled. She stood placidly in the warm immediacy between the mare's wandering eyes. “Kindness goes around in a circle, Derpy. Your daughter is a joy to be around. I couldn't be happier taking care of anypony else.”

“Wait.” Harmony pointed with a shuddering hoof. “You mean this is Derpy?! This is Ponyville's mailpony?!”

“You've heard of me?” The mare smiled towards the floor and ceiling around Harmony.

The time traveler sweated. “I... uhm... I've heard of the several holes you made in Ms. Cheerilee's schoolhouse.”

“Oh... Uhm... Eheheh.” Derpy bowed her blonde head and dug a hoof shyly in the straw-laden floor of the manger. “Yes. I sure do feel awfully bad about that. If it pleases the Royal Court of Canterlot, I've done a g-g-g-good share of community service over the years to make up for it.”

Harmony chuckled dryly and was about to say something—when Fluttershy was suddenly standing in the obstructed path of the time traveler's scoffing voice. “And we're sure that Princess Celestia is most pleased with your efforts, Derpy.” The yellow pegasus cast a glance over her pink mane and emphatically caught Harmony's gaze as she continued, “Especially since you improved on the schoolbuilding's architecture in the long run.”

Harmony raised an eyebrow. She gazed past Fluttershy and stared once more at Derpy and Dinky, studying their identically gray coats and yellow pupils, colors that fused the young and old pony impossibly together while they were still so vastly different, like a certain mailpony's eyes, drawing an imperceivable wedge between the young horn and aged wings.

“All we can ever hope to do is learn and get smarter, isn't that right, Muffin?”

“According to this, Mother,” Dinky was already quoting from an article in the center of the book, “Ponymonium was the reason for the dark shadow that formed the Mare-in-the-Moon, on account of the corruptible art of runescaping that was used to forge the lunar fortress several hundred years ago!”

“Heeheehee...” Derpy's gray cheeks turned rozy as she looked at, past, and around Fluttershy. “She will be up all night if I let her.”

“We've talked about this, Miss Hooves.” Fluttershy smiled. “'Early to bed, early to rise--'”

“'—makes a mare healthy, wealthy, and wise'!” Derpy beamed. “How I d-d-d-do love me some Ben Flankless!”

“Flanklin, Mother.”

“Hehehe—There she goes again! Same time tomorrow, Fluttershy?”

“Absolutely, Miss Hooves.”

“You sure it's not a bother? You look like you have company...”

“It's something we'll be working on overnight.” Fluttershy smiled. “I'm never too busy to look after your darling daughter.”

Harmony blinked. With a stifled grunt, she made to protest—but Fluttershy's pink tail was in her way.

“Super!” Derpy turned and winked diagonally towards the foal. “Okay, muffin! We gotta g-g-g-g-go home. Say bye to Miss Fluttershy!”

“So long, Miss Fluttershy! Thanks for taking care of me today!”

“So long, Dinky.” Fluttershy trotted over and nuzzled the horned foal. “Be kind to the world and the world will be kind to you.”

“I promise!”

“Hop into the happy seat, Muffin!”

Instinctually, the foal leaped, slid into the leftmost pocket of Miss Hooves' mailbag, and produced a petite helmet from the other pouch. Fastening the headpiece to her skull, her tiny horn sticking out of an upper cleft, she zipped the lip of the bag tight around herself and tapped her mother's flank with a tiny hoof. “Ready for takeoff!”

“P-p-p-pilot to navigator!”

“Contact!”

“Up up and away—Whoah! Hello, there ceiling, ahem—There we go! Wooo!” Derpy soared away from the manger as the helmeted foal waved from behind.

“Heeheehee! So long!”

“So long, Miss Hooves!”

“Have a good evening Miss Fluttershy, Mister Squirrel!”

In the echoing ring of their absence, a thoroughly headachy Harmony stumbled up to the edge of the manger and gazed skyward. Her eyes narrowed on the distant gray shadow of the conjoined ponies soaring eastward... and towards the multicolored haze of Ponyville beyond.

“You think they'll make it home safely without crashing into other squirrels?”

“She's careful to avoid rodents when Dinky's riding with her.”

Harmony bit her lip. “Why does that not make me any less freaked out?”

“Our concerns aren't at the center of the issue.” Fluttershy shrugged and went about straightening the spilled bags of oats from the gray pegasus' entrance. “A mother's love is the best gauge for any pilot, I think.”

“Heh, if you say so.” The last pony smirked as the lonely dashboard of the Harmony briefly flickered before her. She turned around and motioned with her shoulder towards the horizon. “How old was Dinky when she was adopted?”

“Oh, she's not adopted.”

Harmony's eyes were concrete stones. Her eyelids slid pathetically over them once, twice. “She's not?”

“Mmm-mmm.” Fluttershy shook her head. “They're of flesh and blood.”

“But..” Harmony squinted once more eastward. “I thought it was impossible for a pegasus to... to foal a unicorn.”

“Improbable, perhaps.” Fluttershy stacked a last sack of oats, forming a neat tower in the corner of the repaired manger. “Life knows no impossibilities, especially when it means making such precious things as Dinky possible.”

“Oh, I see.” Harmony nonchalantly nodded. “So she's a half-wing.”

The Cataclysm happened all over again, or so the last pony thought. The world was exploding—in violent heat—until she realized that she was twitching down the frowning, burning, and decidedly sneering face of an angry Fluttershy. “How dare you?! Dinky Hooves is most certifiably more than the sum of such paltry, heartless words! You should be ashamed of yourself, a clerk of the Royal Court who resorts to incorrigible stigmas!”

Harmony felt the ghost leave her Entropan body. She could have pathetically crumbled in green flames at any second. The mare stumbled as she found her throbbing soul quivering under the stare of Fluttershy's righteous wrath. Every breathy hiss that fell upon her was a shower of hot coals, every glint of silken gold replaced with divinely searing brimstone.

“I-I-I'm sorry, Fl-Fluttershy!” The copper pegasus paled, foalishly stammering. She backed into a wooden beam and gulped before barely managing, “I-I didn't mean anything bad by it! Where I was raised, ” she briefly paused in the gray sludge of her own words but guiltily limped onward, “That's what we called foals who were born from—”

“That's what you insulted ponies with! And it does not excuse you if others around you say it too! It's still wrong! It's anything but kind!” Fluttershy fumed, her breath calming steadily but icily as she leaned back from Harmony, her pink mane settling in heated curls about her bristled muzzle. “Cruelty is a cancer that has infected ponydom for far too long, and the fact that it's reached the servants of Celestia's Royal Court depresses me to no end.” She fought sudden tears as she shook her soft head towards the manger's floor, murmuring: “Dinky is a treasure, a genius little foal filled from mane to hooves with joy and respect for all things living. Her mother is an angelic being who spreads happiness wherever she goes, and she loves her child with every breath that she has to give.” She looked at Harmony, this time with a sad grimace as opposed to a harsh frown. “Does the substance of the blood that went into that relationship mean more than the endearment that fills it?”

“I never meant to say that they weren't special, Fluttershy! I just meant...I-I just...” Scootaloo sighed from within the numb frame of Harmony. She hung her head in a sudden cloud, slumping her body against the wooden beam of the manger. “I meant nothing. And if they were both still around to hear what I said, it would hurt them... it would hurt them for no reason.” Her amber eyes briefly reopened. Beyond the straw and sawdust the last pony saw wasteland after wasteland of bodies—salvageable horns and lootable corpses, and none of them had the decency to hear the numb anger and sorrow of a despicable survivor. The future was full of ashes, but only one set of ears. They drooped then and there, in the warm past, before Fluttershy's blue-eyed gaze. “I wasn't thinking, I wasn't considerate. Please... Please forgive me.”

Fluttershy took a long, deep breath. She wandered over and nudged Harmony with sudden strength, urging the blinking pegasus back up to her feet. In a gentle voice that was slowly resembling the silken melody of the last pony's memories, the pegasus said, “The term 'half-wing' is a word used by the ignorant. But, evidently, that does not describe you, Miss Harmony. Your apology is accepted. I trust that you know why what you said was wrong.”

“I... I...” Harmony bit her lip, suddenly imprisoned in a foalish shadow before the looming figure of the caretaker before her. She hated—absolutely loathed being the target of Fluttershy's ire, which startlingly only included this one naked moment in her whole bleeding life. She was so desperate to make amends, that the lesson was suddenly lost to her, until an adrenalized pulse of the brain dredged it up from beneath the surface of her self-doubt. “I know that stigmas only alienate ponies, when instead they could be living natural lives, lives of loving and caring for one another.” A brief, knifing thought coarsed through her soul-self, of a lone survivor killing things, eating things, and robbing things that would forever blemish her with a heresy that dwarfed that conversation's topic. She selflessly ignored the guilt and instead said, “One shouldn't be letting superstition get in the way of accepting other ponies for who they are.”

“There's a reason why Dinky is homeschooled,” Fluttershy said, her body jolting with each word confessed aloud in her melancholy voice. “It's not that Ms. Cheerilee doesn't want her in the classroom. That teacher has fought for it endlessly, but everypony knows that the poor little foal would never hear the end of ridicule—be it from peers or parents or random passer-bys. She's far too young to make a brave crusade out of such a potential situation, so Derpy decided to put her through a tutoring program. Ms. Cheerilee, Twilight Sparkle, and various other members of the Ponyville Education Board have volunteered lesson plans—”

“And you've volunteered your time in babysitting the kid.” Harmony nodded. “I guess it makes sense. If there're so many other ponies giving the cold flank, leave it to the kindest caretaker in Equestria to have pity.”

“It's not pity.” Fluttershy shot another rebuking glare, then softened. “It's love. That's something that can't be tempered by sympathy, but only by commitment. It's sad: so many ponies in our day and age are too blinded by taboos to adore something precious that's right in front of them.”

“I guess so...” Harmony murmured. She felt slightly nauseous; the future suddenly seemed a little less gray. She chased that thought away with a wayward inquiry. “Does anypony... Does anypony know what happened to Dinky's father?”

Fluttershy was silent as a grave.

Harmony gulped her way past that. She tried another question: “What does Princess Celestia have to say about all this?”

“You are most welcome to write her, Miss Harmony. But do not hope for much.”

“No... ?”

“Her Majesty is a divine Goddess,” Fluttershy remarked with briefly sparkling eyes. “She can raise the Sun with power that rivals the long lost glory of the First Age. But it takes far more than a single Goddess to raise the clouds of ignorance from our world. That takes everypony—including you and me—everyday, thinking with our hearts and not with our fears.” She produced a somber breath, then shuffled past Harmony. “That needs a great deal more time than a morning sunrise to accomplish. Come, Miss Harmony. If we're to find the Capricorn, we cannot wait here making discussions that we already know the ends of.”

The last pony blinked after her, battling a lump in her throat. Her heart was beating hard, but no longer with guilt. After twenty-five inside-out years, Fluttershy's melodic voice still surprised her. The exploding end of the world felt like a whimper against the lulling tone of her truth. She couldn't have a steadier anchor than in those weak and dainty yellow wings fluttering before her, away from her, and towards the forest.

Like a good disciple, the last pony turned away from the frazzled mistakes of the past, and followed her.

The body of the Everfree Forest stretched before the two pegasi like a tattered courtyard of overgrown, calamitous life. Here, things grew in chaotic circles, and yet they formed a beautiful mosaic of green leaves, brown hues, copper vines, and red sand. The place rusted, not with decay, but with a regal age that scared the artistic marvels of Canterlot and Cloudsdale into shameful hiding.

“I forgot how wonderful it all smelled,” Harmony murmured, smiling softly as the grand emerald canopy formed a gentle shade over the broken path weeding its courageous way into the bosom of the earthen labyrinth. Squinting towards the towering branches on either side of them, the last pony half expected to see a glowing looking glass orbited by manatorches and an elder purple dragon standing tall and proud while he watered bush after bush of priceless flowers. There wasn't a single bramble or thorned vine to be seen in the forested mesh looming just a canter's distance away. “If I find Pitt's grandmother in all of this crud, I'm eating a horeshoe the soonest I get back.”

Harmony's mind flickered back to reality, a reality laced with a black abyss, a shattered pair of goggles, dozens of squirming shadows, and a very ticked-off Ursa Major. She gulped, fought the shivers of the situation away, and focused on the very warm moment throbbing about her.

“Okaaa-aaay.” She slapped her front hooves together and rubbed them. “First order of business, I prescribe, is that we thread our way into the heart of the forest, then travel in clockwise patterns, all the while heading northeast towards the last reported location of the Capricorn. And then, if we have as little luck as you've had lately, we'll take advantage of our double numbers and have one pony take to the air while the other one stays on the ground. By communicating with each other at different altitudes, we could get three times as much acreage visually scanned than we could otherwise. We'll find that star-creature in no time! What do you think of that plan, Miss Fluttershy?”

Dead silence. Utterly dead silence.

Harmony's heart skipped a beat. She suddenly imagined the warm world disappearing in a green plume of flame, followed by cosmic bear's devouring jaws. “M-Miss Fluttershy?!” She breathlessly panted, glancing all around. She froze suddenly, her gaze stuck on the sight of a pink tail sticking out from behind a heavy boulder. Raising an eyebrow, she shuffled over and knelt her muzzle towards the far side of the stony obstruction. “Uhm... Hello?”

“Eeep!” The squatting pegasus jolted, nearly banging her head on a low lying branch. “Oh... H-hello, Miss Harmony.”

“Hi. How are you doing? Uhm—You do remember our scheduled search for the Capricorn, right?”

“Mmm... yes...” she shivered.

“Aaaaaaaand you do know that the thing was sighted in the Everfree Forest, correct?”

“Mmmhmmm...”

“And you know that the Everfree Forest is—like—right over there, don't you?”

Fluttershy trembled all over, covering her face with quivering hooves. “Don't remind me!”

“Nnnngh,” Harmony facehoofed as a suddenly pathetic fact of yesteryear flew upwards from her foalish memories. “You've gotta be friggin' kidding me.” Her voice had the ironically raspy twinge of rainbow hues to it.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You're kidding me, Miss Fluttershy! You practically live on the welcome mat of the Everfree Forest for Celestia's sake! And yet you can't bring yourself to go in there?”

“Oh... I have gone in there... several times.” The caretaker smiled nervously, then shivered even harder, struggling to avert her blue eyes from the forested wall. “But on many of those occasions, I had my friends with me...”

“Wait just a second, though!” Harmony leaned down and squinted directly into the animal caretaker's face. “Didn't you tell that female dog you call a Captain that you physically searched the forest just recently like she asked you to?”

“And I did!” Fluttershy said. It was her turn to look guilty that day as she gulped and cast a trembling glance aside. “Mostly.”

“How do you mean, 'mostly?'”

“Well, I... Mrmmmm... I walked around the sides of the forest, and... I stuck my head in a few places. And... And I practiced my Capricorn call a few times, and I figured it was loud enough for the creature to hear it. Capricorns have good hearing, you know—”

“Nnnnngh... Fluttershy, Fluttershy, Fluttershy.” Harmony all but pratfalled, groaning. “Tell me, how far does a dog run into a forest?”

“Uhhhh—”

“It's a trick question! A dog only runs halfway 'into' a forest! Miss Fluttershy, correct me if I'm wrong, but your friggin' job is on the line! Captain Redgale is chomping at the bit to have your head on a silver platter over this stupid Capricorn crud, and you're telling me you haven't properly explored Everfree for the elusive target?”

“I've explored! In my own way...”

“Fluttershy, your 'own way' is fantastic when it comes to feeding animals. Your 'own way' is great for babysitting a friend's kid. Your 'own way' is marvelous for showing me when I've been an ignorant moron, but you gotta go the distance if you want to keep your cottage, and keep being able to do all of the good stuff you do... in your 'own way!' How am I going to get the information I need for Princess Celestia when Ponyville's lead animal caretaker no longer has a daily itinerary to observe?”

“I...” Fluttershy shivered and sadly squeaked, curled up in a yellow ball behind the rock. “I've never been a good pegasus when it comes to going the distance. I'm not as courageous as you, Miss Harmony. I don't even have to know you to say that. That's just me.”

“So you think you don't have courage?” Harmony knelt beside her on folded hooves and spoke softly, endearingly. “I read an extensive report before coming here, Miss Fluttershy. You've tamed a raging Manticore, talked down a fire-breathing dragon, outrun a menacing hydra...” With a deep breath, and a proud filly smiled through Entropan lips. “...you even out-stared a good-for-nothing Cockatrice, single-hoofedly saving several blank-flanked foals.”

Fluttershy's lips parted in shock. She gazed up with twitching blue eyes. “How did you know about that? I never told anypony, except for maybe Twilight Sparkle.” She gulped. “The royal palace's thin walls... ?”

“Let's just say that when a pony does brave things, word travels fast.” Harmony smiled. “Haven't any of your friends ever encouraged you in this manner?”

“Mmmm... My friend Pinkie Pie helped me with my fear of heights.”

The copper pegasus blinked at that, her eyes floundering over the filly's folded wings. “Your fear of what-now?”

“She taught me that, with a hop, a skip, and a jump—I can overcome anything.”

“Like this silly forest here?” Harmony pointed.

Fluttershy followed the direction of the copper hoof and wilted further behind the rock, squeaking and... squeaking.

Harmony took a deep breath. Still, she smiled. “Miss Fluttershy, you are a living element of kindness. Don't pretend that I'm wrong when I say that. And, y'know, kindness is a courage all on its own, especially when...” she paused, shuddered, and finished. “When we live in a world that's so easily blinded by fear and half-truths. It takes courage to be kind in the midst of so much darkness, and to take care of ponies that other equines are too ignorant to respect. You should be proud of that quality you have, because it makes you do even more things to be proud of, like saving a Capricorn from falling into extinction.”

“I... I just can't...” Fluttershy stammered, fighting to hide her gaze from the forest. “I just know that Captain Redgale will have my neck. But I cannot help it. I'm so helpless when I'm alone...”

Harmony's eyes rounded upon hearing that. She felt a rush of blood to the head, like an afternoon downpour soaking her mane, and the last pony reached over and nuzzled the pegasus' velvety coat. “I tell you what. You bring the kindness, and I'll bring the courage. And maybe, just maybe, Miss Fluttershy, we'll learn from each other along the way. I know for a fact that I will learn something. At least I'm willing to. Can you say the same?”

Fluttershy gazed up at her. She gulped, and her petite wings flexed with sudden hope as she murmured, “Yes. I do suppose.”

“So then...” Harmony grasped Fluttershy's shoulders and stood up, yanking the twitching pegasus to her hooves. “It's just a hop, a skip, and a jump. And maybe add a 'wink' to that.” She finished with a smile.

“Okay... Okay... Okay... We can do this...” Fluttershy stammered and trotted ahead of the time traveler. “For the Capricorn.”

“And while we're at it, we can talk about stuff! Like the sky! The animals! Ahem—Anystrangechangesinthelocalfloraorfaunathatyoumayhavenoticedlately—Aaaaand maybe we can even gossip about—Oh, I dunno—Hot stallions! For instance, there's this total hunk at Sweet Apple Acres with the disposition of an angel but the well-toned body of a crimson thoroughbred—”

“Eeeeeek! A demon! I see a demon!”

“Miss Fluttershy? Uh... That's just a tumbleweed.”

“Oh... Oh. Erm... Very well then. Uhm... What were you saying about a crimson thoroughbred?”

“Nnnngh... On second thought, let's just talk about oats instead.”

Chapter Twenty-Four: Everkind

“Uhm... Fluttershy?”

“Yes, Scootaloo?”

“How did the Everfree Forest get its name?”

“Oh. Ohhhhhh... Now there is a good question.”

The two pegasi—older and younger, yellow and orange—sat side by side on the green reading seat of Fluttershy's front room. Together, on folded hooves, they stared serenely out through the wide-open windows of the animal caretaker's cottage and watched as the wet-wet world sloshed and billowed under an endless curtain of afternoon rain. There was a blue haze to it all, as if Princess Celestia had decided to bounce her sunlight off a dozen giant mirrors before finally casting its lazy dimness over the thundering landscape. The dense green earth all around the quaint home squeaked and hissed with the energy of a billion leaves applauding to this righteous downpour.

“Is it such a good question that it's not worth answering?” Scootaloo smirked after several soft seconds had drifted by.

“Hmmm? Oh! My apologies, Scootaloo. I guess I was just distracted...”

“Nothing wrong with that, Fluttershy,” Scootaloo said with a smile. Behind the two of them, the cottage's fireplace crackled warmly, bathing their dry bodies in a happy heat as they stared leisurely out into the monsoon. “I know a lot of ponies really dig rainy weather. Sweetie Belle says it puts her to sleep sometimes. And Pinkie Pie likes to get her mane wet.”

“Pinkie Pie likes to get a lot of things wet,” Fluttershy said, blushed, then helplessly giggled at herself. Her flighty chorus was briefly joined by Scootaloo. Then the mare smiled and asked, “Are you a fan of rain, Scootaloo?”

A pair of violet eyes blinked. The flightless filly imagined several barn crossbeams rotting away while a drizzle of rainwater somehow always, always found its way down to Scootaloo's one and only blanket in the middle of yet another shivering night.

“My mom and dad are always telling me to stay out of the rain,” she murmured with knee-jerking instinct. “Leave it to older pegasi to be afraid of water. What's up with that?”

“I... uhm... I am slightly aquaphobic,” Fluttershy said and blushed into her pink locks. “Among other things...”

“I mean, it's not like my wings are gonna fall off because I just happened to splash into a puddle or two! Pffft!” Scootaloo raspberried and rolled to her side, playfully kicking at the air with orange hooves as she squirmed further into the plush reading seat. Scootaloo winked in Fluttershy's direction. “I heard about this theory that pegasi evolved from ponies that were made for living underwater. Could you imagine us with gills instead of wings?”

“I... uhm... I wouldn't know about that, Scootaloo.”

“You don't believe in seahorses?”

“I'm... I'm not sure that I would want to...”

“Heeheehee!” Scootaloo's grin was wide. “Sometimes you can be a real hoot, Fluttershy.”

“Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be—”

“That's a compliment, Fluttershy, yeesh!” The foal rolled her violet eyes. “I thought you grew up with Rainbow Dash!”

“Oh, but I did.”

“How come you can't recognize when somepony's playfully teasing you?”

“Because when I was your age, I was teased an awful lot. And—uhm—it was not a very pleasant thing.” The mare shrunk into herself, biting a lip.

Scootaloo blinked. She rolled upright and sat—slumped—on her hunches. She produced a guilty breath. “I'm sorry, Fluttershy. That's... That's really sad. I had no idea—”

“There is nothing sad about a life that has seen me come so far...” Fluttershy looked up, smiling sweetly. “...and that has given me so much to be grateful for. Such as your company, Scootaloo. I'm glad to have you here to talk to. If I could go back into my past, somehow, and change things from the way they were, it would affect what I do now, and furthermore what I enjoy. So don't be sorry, Scootaloo. Sad things only happen to make us stronger, and they carry a grace all of their own.”

“If you say so,” Scootaloo murmured, her tiny wings drooping slightly.

She gazed at the several leaves of a nearby bush glistening in the pelting rain. Moisture dripped off of two white roses, flickering to her like a pair of white names, white rocks, white spaces lost to her life. The rain suddenly had a low hum to it, like a bass violin that Scootaloo had heard on Granny Smith's record player one day while the pegasus was visiting Apple Bloom. There was something divine and powerful about melancholic strings in the hooves of an equine artist.

Scootaloo would never admit it to her fellow crusaders, but she had often daydreamed about having a record player of her own someday, so that she could listen to what her close friends could only call “boring and stiff” music. Sitting down and drowning in violin music was a stone's hurdle away from the likes of riding a scooter, zip-lining, or wrestling alligators, but there were times—gray shadowed, lonely times—when there was nothing else that Scootaloo wanted to do more. Even at age eight, the foal wondered if all things in nature simply wanted to stay put and release from time to time, much like the stationary raincloud enshrouding her and her melodic-voiced acquaintance before the window.

“Would you still like to know, Scootaloo?”

“Uhm...” The foal blinked, then glanced aside. “Huh?”

Fluttershy's face smiled like living platinum in the dancing kiss of the warm fireplace. “About how Everfree got its name—”

“Oh! Sure! Ahem...” The young pegasus smiled bashfully and gestured with a hoof. “Fire away!”

“Fire? Why would I-I want to fire someth—?”

“Flutterrrrrrshyyyyyyyy...”

“Oh. Eh-heh-heh-heh. Ahem. Everfree was named when pony explorers surveyed the land in advance of the Faustmare caravan that settled in Ponyville.”

“I know.” Harmony nodded her black mane.

Fluttershy blinked, creeping pensively through the densely shadowed forest that loomed hazily on either side of their sluggish trek. “You know?”

The copper pegasus smiled sweetly. “I've heard the story of Everfree's discovery before. I have to say, it was told to me remarkably well.”

“Oh. Then I can't presume to tell it any better.” Fluttershy's hooves dragged limply in the rich black soil.

Harmony chuckled. “On the contrary, I'm all ears.”

“But, Miss Harmony, I thought you said—”

“What matters most about this place is what it means to you, Miss Fluttershy. That will make itself obvious to me in the telling. And if I'm to collect all of my information for Her Highness Princess Celestia, then the 'how' is just as important as the 'what,' especially when it comes to the things you know about this place and all that it means to you.” She gazed aside and winked pleasantly at the mare. “So, please, tell me a story, Fluttershy.” She gulped slightly, but maintained professional airs. “I like hearing your voice.”

The caretaker's yellow coat blushed rosily from underneath. For whatever the time traveler's words were worth, they ushered a gentle current of energy into Fluttershy's spine, so that she strolled with an evidently firmer gait alongside the “Canterlotlian clerk” as the two ponies made their way into the sprawling heart of Everfree, on the lookout for an elusive Capricorn.

“Well, like I said previously, the land needed to be surveyed before Faustmare and her pioneers even set hoof here. After all, there could have been several unforeseen dangers to ponies, especially when the richest farmland was located so close to an unchecked cluster of forest...”

“...and in those days, nearly halfway through the Third Age, wildlife was not as capably stewarded as it is in the present,” Fluttershy explained, her wings twitching before the rain-swept window of her cottage. “Cloudsdale wasn't formed until about two hundred years ago. The closest place to find pegasi like you and me was in Stratopolis, and that was located over the Eastern Ocean, and not north of Stalliongrad like it is today. So you see, Scootaloo, the earth ponies were on their own when they founded Ponyville; they did not have the flight advantage to tame the skies as well as the land.”

“Well, didn't they have unicorns to at least cast protection spells?”

“Hmmm... That's just it. There weren't as many unicorns willing or able to live outside of major cities in that time period. You see a lot of that today, of course, but several hundred years ago was a different matter altogether. Aside from places like Canterlot and Whinniepeg, you'd be lucky if you could even find more than one unicorn out of a thousand random ponies! It's on account of the huge number of unicorns who... who died during the war with the Lunar Empire, you see...”

“Yeah. I think I remember Twilight Sparkle mentioning something about that.”

“Without unicorns and without pegasi, earth ponies couldn't use magic or flight to tame the landscape. They had to rely on sheer willpower and courage alone. That means that they had to plan ahead. So, long before Faustmare dared to bring her many traveling families into the center of the Great Equestrian Valley, she sent a brave band of ponies to investigate the land and determine what earth ponies could take advantage of and what they had to look out for. It were these courageous surveyors who came upon the forest just beyond this cottage here.”

“And then they named it Everfree, right?”

“Well, no, not at first,” Fluttershy murmured as she nervously inched her way down a series of steep steps made out of exposed tree roots.

Harmony had hopped down beneath her. Trotting a circle in the moist earth, the time traveler spun about and leaned up on her rear limbs to offer a strong hoof to the mare. “Well, they had to do it sometime, right? I mean, it's not like they took one step past the treeline and settled for 'Evermuddy.'”

“M-most certainly not.” The caretaker's yellow limbs wobbled, quivered, and slid. “At first, they didn't even dare trotting near the place. It's written that the untouched landscape of the Equestrian Valley was brimming with enough manticores, hydras, and timberwolves to put today's wildlife to shame—Eeeep!” Fluttershy completely missed a root and plummeted—

—straight into the last pony's grasp. Harmony awkwardly but professionally caught her. She gently lowered the twitching pegasus to the rich earth. “Y'know, you have wings.” She winked.

Fluttershy blushed deeply, fidgeting with her iron-tight, coiled appendages on either side of her. “You may have better luck convincing them that they're there.”

“Heheh...” Harmony motioned eagerly with her skull and led the duo's trot down a deep ravine bustling with shrubbery, butterflies, and various scampering amphibians. “So, the Faustmare surveyors ran into a lot of danger? Or were they smart enough to avoid it?”

“At first it didn't matter. Many of the creatures attacked their campsites while they were still several hundred meters from the treeline.”

“Yeesh! Talk about cranky history!”

“They sustained several injuries. Many ponies in the group wanted their chief explorer to write back to Faustmare and declare the land untameable. One writer in particular crafted a very popular note where he wrote that—let me see if I remember it... Oh! Ahem. He wrote, 'Though Her Highness' esteemed decree of Manifest Destiny is divine, there is very little chance that ponydom will ever be free from the forest's presence while in the bold act of colonizing the Equestrian Valley, for the landscape is perpetually malevolent at best.'”

“Or something to that extent...” Fluttershy added.

“Wow. Ponies wrote with a lot of flowery words back then.”

“It was a simpler time, Scootaloo. There weren't nearly as many distractions for the settlers as there are today. Literary eloquence was a matter of habit.”

“So that's how the forest got it's name? Cuz it was—uh—'Ever-Malevolent?'”

“Well, the truth is far more encouraging.”

“Oh really?”

“The Royal Court of Canterlot forwarded the letter to Faustmare herself,” Fluttershy explained. “She was... mmm... put off by her own ponies' fear and reticence, to say the least. In a potentially suicidal act, she herself traveled to the unsettled Equestrian Valley. She brought along her foal, a daughter, a brave act which has been poetically discussed in several books written since. Unfazed by the treacherous landscape ahead of her, Faustmare made sure that the camp was rebuilt from the animals' attack first-hoof. And then, along with a few of her most trusted pioneers, she marched into the depths of the Everfree Forest. She led the first expedition into that foreboding landscape. Under her courageous lead, the first earth ponies of Ponyville made careful written observations of everything they saw. Several hundred unknown species of animals were discovered in that week-long expedition alone. There were trees that nopony had ever seen before—rock formations and weather phenomena too. By the time Faustmare and her troupe had come back, she had gathered enough data to produce a book, which is famous to this day, named—”

“Lemme guess: Faustmare's Home for Imaginary Wildlife.”

“Heeheehee—No, Scootaloo. It was far more appropriately called A Pioneer Pony's Journal of the Ever Free Forest of Equestria. You see, Faustmare had found a way to turn around the rather negative words of her dismayed associate who had first written about the woes of the colonization to Canterlot. The point she made in her book was that the forest bordering the Equestrian Valley was innately special, for it was—and still is—a free landscape where wildlife runs unchecked and yet remains perpetually self-sufficient. The grass grows, the animals eat, the weather does as it pleases, and if any pony attempts to tame this landscape, he or she would ultimately be harming it instead of preserving all of the amazing things that dwelled within.”

“Sounds like Faustmare was a tree-hugger.”

“Miss Harmony!” Fluttershy flashed her a bothersome look as they strolled under a low ceiling of green canopies beside a glistening waterfall.

“Heheheh—I'm just saying.” The time traveler smirked. “She brings a kid no older than three winters to the edge of Equestrian civilization and she ends up writing a five hundred page book about grass? Sounds like earth ponies of that day and age were more than simple; they were friggin' bored.”

“Faustmare was an exceptional example of earth ponydom, and if it weren't for her courage, tenacity, and leadership, then Ponyville would never have come into existence, much less have survived for a single season! It was her genius and her genius alone that transcended fear and ignorance while revolutionizing the way ponies would forever admire and respect the wildlife in their backyards.”

“I like listening to you talk so favorably of this 'Faustmare,'” Harmony said with a knowing smirk as she bent a few branches out of the way for Fluttershy to pass through unharmed. “It fills your voice with a strength that's sorely lacking, if I may be so bold as to say, Miss Fluttershy.”

“Oh... uhm...” The pegasus bit her lip. “I only meant to defend Ponyville's founder and her legacy.”

“And there's no need to. I know what awesome things Faustmare did. I... uhh...” Harmony squinted slightly, then brightened with: “I read up on her right after I was assigned to this... uhm... this fact-finding visit.”

“Then why are you asking that I share everything that you already know?”

“Didn't I already tell you, Miss Fluttershy—?”

“Why do I feel like there's another reason for why you've asked me to talk during our search?”

“Well...” Harmony took a brave gulp and smiled her way. A few stray hairs escaped the mahogany cascade of her amber-streaked mane as she bravely uttered in a flippant voice: “All of this discussion has gotten you to forget the fact that we're about two kilometers deep into a forest full of crazy animals who would like nothing better than to eat us.”

“Eeep! OhdearOhdearOhdear!” Fluttershy instantly scrunched up against the last pony, shivering as if a million earthquakes were bubbling down the fault-lines of her buried face and clenched eyes. “I had no idea we were this far into Everfree! Eeek! That log—that log—it has a timberwolf's claw marks all over it! And that smell! We're being stalked by a cougar! I know it! I could smell that from across a room full of sk-skunks!”

“Actually, cougars smell muskier than that.”

“How could you possibly know that, Miss Harmony?”

“Well, I... uhm...” Harmony blinked into the green canopy. Her eyes fell upon the dangling webs of a copper spider, bouncing like lanternlight over a steamy broth of meaty soup. It took a dinosauric amount of will-power to resist the shamefully habitual growl of an Entropan stomach. “Let's just say that I'm well fed—er—read... I'm well-read in 'cougar.'”

“Ohhhhhh!” Fluttershy practically hung off of Harmony's flank like a tattered yellow cape. “It will take us too, too terribly long to make our way back now that we've come this far! Oh... whatever shall we do?!”

“Uhm... Since when were you named 'Wussyshy?'”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Miss Fluttershy...” Harmony smiled sweetly and knelt down on her haunches. She clasped the caretaker's trembling forelimbs with her own steady hooves and gazed into the mare's twitching blue eyes. “You were doing so well until you realized that you were doing so well. So what's to stop you from—y'know—doing so frickin' well?”

“But it's just that we're so deep into this forest and by the time we went back to the cottage—even if we turned around now—darkness will have fallen! Nopony wants to be in Everfree at night! It's suicide!”

“Wasn't it also suicide for Faustmare to march straight into this same dang forest hundreds of years ago with no prior knowledge of the place and—might I add—no wings, no magic, and certainly no talent for short book titles?”

“Erm...”

“Miss Fluttershy...” Harmony stifled a chuckle and made sure that her anchor got the full blast of a beaming grin. “Don't you get it? Your admiration for Faustmare and other pioneering ponies isn't just a vicarious thing, it's indicative of who you are. You are strong, you are knowledgeable, and you are gifted in all the right ways to do the sort of stuff you think you have to be scared of! Don't you see? When you put your mind to it, you're brave! Heck, you're braver than brave!”

“Mmmmm....” Fluttershy curled up against Harmony, gazing past her own pink tail-hairs and regarding the surrounding shadows with concave blue eyes. “But you're here! I wouldn't have gotten this far without you!”

“Feel free to shudder all you want from this, Miss Fluttershy, but—Bullcrap!”

Fluttershy demurely convulsed just as the time traveler had prophesied.

Harmony didn't pause for a single breath: “All I've done is tag along and listen to your awesome dictations. You've been doing all of the navigating and searching and... uhhh... Capricorning.”

“And we still haven't found it.”

“But we will, Miss Fluttershy! Have faith in the moment, like I do in you! You think I have a clue about how to find this giant cosmic question mark? Heck, no! For all I know about this Forest, we're practically lost!” She chuckled, tilted her head up, and gazed about the green landscape. With a blink, her brow furrowed. “Well, shoot, I think we are lost. Now... nngh... dang it, where did we...?”

“Mmmmmm! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! Oh Miss Harmony, I am so sorry—”

“Pfft. Just a minor setback.”

“Minor...?”

“In a worst case scenario, I'll just fly us both out of here. That is the extent of my assistance here, ya see?” She patted Fluttershy's shoulder and smiled again. “Think of it this way, now we have no excuse but to come back with the Capricorn. We're in here so deep: what else is there to do but accomplish the task that the Cloudsdalian Commission Board Thingy has laid out for you?”

“But what if I panic?” Fluttershy gulped and quivered. “What if I just lift off, leave you, and fly all the way back to the cottage?”

Harmony stared at Fluttershy. She cast a bored glance at the pegasus' tight yellow wings. Then she stared at Fluttershy again, unblinking.

Fluttershy blushed deeply. “Right. Uhm... Let's go find the Capricorn, I suppose...” On trembling legs, she bravely shuffled forward. It was a fifty-centimeter-per-minute waddle, but it was enough to bring a brave smile back to the time traveler's face.

“Don't worry, Fluttershy. If you must know, I can and will protect us if need-be. But I really don't think I have to. You've sooooo got this, girl!”

“Your words of encouragement are as charming as they are... mmm... misguided.”

“Why are you so frickin' hard on yourself?!” Harmony exclaimed. “For crying out loud! All I wanna see you do is get your job done so that you can rightfully shove the fruit of your talents right into Corporal Rosefart's face!”

“Captain Redgale.”

“Whatever—Don't you want to show her off?” Harmony winked as she trotted slowly to keep within the caretaker's “courageous” gait. “That uptight basket of gray feathers treats you as if you're weak and helpless.”

“But I am weak and helpless.”

Harmony never wanted to choke and hug something more than she did right then. With a groaning breath, she traversed the palpitations of her Entropan heart and managed, “Miss Fluttershy, if you just let ponies treat you like crap—and I don't care if they're hired by Cloudsdale, Canterlot, or Her Majesty herself—then that's all you're ever going to get in life: crap! You owe it to yourself to have more faith in who and what you are, not to mention in all of the amazing things that you're obviously more than capable of!”

“I... uhm... I've always believed that it is never my place to owe... But rather to earn.”

“Same thing, isn't it?”

“N-not exactly, Miss Harmony. Like I've said, I am very weak and helpless.”

“Nnnngh...Miss Fluttershy—”

“Hear me out.”

It was a command, very rigid at that, almost like a certain elder pegasus' off-ruby glare. The last pony was instantly silenced by the suddenly rough edges of that voice as Fluttershy next spoke:

“I have my faults and my shortcomings. There is nothing I can do about them; it is an essentialist thing. But... uhm... who I am and what I do is a result of the fact that I have... I have tried so hard and so long to become something useful in spite of my weaknesses. And do believe me when I say that I have weaknesses, Miss Harmony. It's even a factual thing; you can look into the Cloudsdalian Medical Records if you have any doubts. I was foaled over a month earlier than I should have been. I grew from infancy with very brittle limbs. My wings took an extra year to stretch out, and even then I couldn't pass flight school at the same time as all my peers. On top of that, I'm very susceptible to the side effects of magical resonance and I have too many clinical phobias to even bother listing out loud. These are all very real, very true things that I know exist in my life. To deny them is to deny what I am and the long way I've ascended to become Ponyville's lead animal tamer.”

“And you should be proud that you've come that far.“

“That's just it, Miss Harmony. As far as I've come, I still have too many weaknesses. They are things that will never go away, even if I make enough accomplishments to put the legacy of Faustmare herself to shame. No matter what I do, or where I go, those weaknesses come back to haunt me. They're the reason why I can't get anywhere near an adult dragon, or why it's so hard to even think about buying a home in downtown Ponyville, or why my family never... n-never...”

It was after three successive cracking sounds of broken branches underneath her hooves that Harmony realized Fluttershy had ended in mid-speech on purpose. With a squinting expression, she gazed curiously back at her anchor of kindness. The pegasus' face was hung, a posture flanked by lingering sighs. Her hooves padded the earth steadily, shuffling bare inches away from tripping on her own silken mane. It was a practiced type of trotting that the caretaker had obviously mastered, a pitiable talent. Her platinum wings remained locked in porcelain imprisonment, an ironic yet delicate stranger to clouds.

All of the sudden, that deep and dangerous trek into Everfree didn't seem worth it, not even for an endangered Capricorn. Harmony felt the same as she imagined Fluttershy did—for all of her life, staring into a mirror and only seeing the flaws. It was such a natural conclusion to the wilted creature limping before her that the time traveler shuddered to think of how easily she could have come to believe it; she sank all the more at the thought that so many other ponies could and did.

Fluttershy was an angel, camped out on the edge of a demonic forest that threatened to lash out at her at anytime, simply for the carnivorous impulse of the bleeding moment. While Ponyville hustled and bustled a cantering dance away from the cottage in leisure habit, the villagers all had one softest-of-soft souls standing as the thankless bulwark between civilization and a tree-laced cluster of naturally clandestine madness. The same blatant stigmas that forged that horrible dichotomy had equally forced Fluttershy to make the same blasé conclusions about herself that an apathetic hovel of ponydom had flippantly and lazily stapled upon the hapless mare.

Harmony sighed. She was three-and-a-half months away from the most horrible Cataclysm that could ever transpire, and yet here—knee-deep in the unassumingly somber fountains of yesteryear—she was constantly discovering more and more tragedies that rocked her heart harder than she could ever remember the waves of fire and ash doing. Harmony briefly wished she could hug Fluttershy, just wrap her strong Entropan forelimbs around her soft shell forever, and yank her impossibly back to the blistering gray skies just to have her there, to smile with her, and to teach her that weakness is an animal of a different color that too can be tamed by a life dedicated to preserving all of the good things about ponydom, the very things that Fluttershy reveled in as much as she epitomized, though she apparently lacked the grace—or perhaps the permission—to tilt her head up from the ground that she had forever descended to and simply acknowledge it.

Still, the last pony knew better. If the Everfree Forest merely terrorized Fluttershy, then the likes of the Wasteland would utterly destroy her. Precious things lived in a precious world, and Fluttershy's caution sang with an ever-present wisdom that preserved her as much as it preserved her faults. Tragedies existed because happy things did, and Harmony suddenly felt too tired and too sick to continue beating her charm over the caretaker's skull like so many teasing bludgeons of innately caustic pony grit had done before the Entropan avatar even arrived there on green flame.

Searching for Fluttershy's spirit would have to be like searching for the Capricorn; it would take time, and time was the least of Harmony's weaknesses, while it was the only true one of Fluttershy's.

“Tell me more about Everfree, Miss Fluttershy,” she uttered with a meditative smile while trotting alongside the caretaker.

“Uhm...” It was Fluttershy's turn to raise a quizzical eyebrow. “What more is there for you to hear about?” She blinked, then nodded her face towards the grim foliage surrounding them. “Or to see?”

“How about 'to think?'” Harmony smirked . “It had to have been more than a history lesson that got you to live so close to this creepy place.”

“I... uh...” Fluttershy trembled one last time from the shadows, took a deep breath, and remarked, “I guess that the Everfree Forest... uhm... reflects a certain philosophy of mine.”

“Fluttershy's Philosophy?” Harmony grinned wide. “Now this I gotta hear.”

“Miss Harmony, wouldn't you rather deliver to the Princess the facts that I know about local plant life or how to keep parasprites from spreading beyond the tree-line or—?“

“We can talk about that sort of stuff after we find the Capricorn. Speak to me, Miss Fluttershy. You know you want to.”

“I do?”

“It's only because you sound so fond of the place,” young Scootaloo said before the window. “I mean—before I knew about Cockatrices, I thought it was just some ordinary forest. Now I understand why you think it's so friggin' scary.”

“Scary things have a nobility to them, Scootaloo. I know that must sound rather... uhm... silly, coming from a pony who is so often frightened...”

“I think you're one of the bravest ponies I know, Miss Fluttershy.”

“Heeheehee—Aren't you forgetting a certain weather flier?”

“Well... I did say one of the bravest.”

“Mmmhmmm.”

“Seriously, though, that one time you totally outstared that ugly Cockatrice was soooo cool!”

“I only did it to protect such precious things as you and your friends. But, really, the Everfree forest means more than just being a place full of scary things. It represents something that is inherent to life—that nature works cyclically. There's a reason why living things are self-sustaining, in Everfree as much as elsewhere. I believe that it's all because of a spirit, a spirit that exists solely to maintain that everything takes care of itself. In a way, you could say that there aren't really living things—plural. But, we are all the... the multiple parts of just one living thing. We all have a purpose, and it's to ultimately support each other, rather than compete with one another, though sometimes the way in which we support each other can... erm... can be interpreted as cruel... and even scary competition.”

“You really believe that?”

“Is it so strange that I do, Scootaloo? I assure you, there is a spirit of kindness that embodies all things that are.”

Through emerald glades cobwebbed with the shadows of ageless trees, the two pegasi marched in search of the Capricorn. Wingless, they climbed hills of mulch, navigated the uprooted intestines of ancient cedars, and pierced the mossy curtains of row after row of gnarled foliage. The labyrinthine bowels of Everfree quivered about them, as if the great green body of Equestrian nature would expel the two foreign objects at a moment's tremor.

The shadows of furred and leathery things stirred from the overhanging branches. Harmony was quick to spot them before a fleeting Fluttershy could, all the while ushering the caretaker forward and forward, keeping the mare's blue eyes locked on the grassy spaces within which an elusive cosmic creature could be—hopefully would be—but inevitably did not happen to be residing.

As the brisk forest stroll steamrolled into an interminable limp of lethargic proportions, Harmony resorted to far more drastic methods of surveillance. With Fluttershy's permission, she took to the air, spreading the distance between the two ponies by a tense twenty meters, thirty meters, forty; all the while she tested the lengths of her green-flaming anchor.

Wordlessly, Harmony hovered at the level of the ginormous tree canopy, peering her amber gaze for any sign—a cosmic silhouette or a flickering aura against the expansive green sea of the forest—that might point out the Capricorn to the last pony's elevated sight and render this search to a successful finish. She found it hard to concentrate, though, as the ever-gnawing fear of being whisked away on green tongues to a dark thorny world pierced her inner soul with the snarling fangs of a feral blue monstrosity.

The sky above—or what scant golden shred of it that could be seen through the living ceiling—melted from a gentle blue to an autumnal yellow as the day began its ritualistic slide into the cascading afternoon. It never ceased to surprise the time traveler how fast an actual Equestrian day went by. The rise and fall of Princess Celestia's orb, no doubt the most beautiful of beautiful things, was a disastrously short poem compared to the epic lengths of a gray Wasteland Dirge. Harmony wondered if there might come a time when she could anchor herself to a pony or to a point or to a moment in the past where she might simply lie down and allow the full length of a spinning day to wash majestically over her. However, the last pony had to remind herself that it was reverse-time that she and Spike had at their disposal, not everlasting-time.

Touching back down to the springy Everfree floor after a solid hour of elevated hovering, Harmony had to apologize to Fluttershy with a helpless shrug of twice-helpless shoulders. The time traveler had personally urged the caretaker to make this sojourn into the forest, and despite all of her emphatic assistance, she could not get Fluttershy any centimeter closer to finding the source of Captain Redgale's imperative. She wondered for a moment there if Fluttershy would have had any luck even if she had ventured into the forest on her own before Harmony's arrival. Somehow it didn't seem like this creature wanted to be found by anypony, even if an entire legion of warhorses had been sent to track the star-fallen Capricorn down.

For the next hour and a half of hiking, it hurt Harmony to look at Fluttershy. It hadn't taken long, but the bitter shame of somehow failing the pegasus had impaled Harmony's Entropan soul more than a million trolls could ever hope to achieve. Finally, when she did manage to give the Ponyvillean animal tamer a solid look, what she saw was an image that brought all of the gray ash of the future shooting out of her in a single breath.

Fluttershy could best be described as a dainty doll of a pony. A touch of melancholy hung off her face with the grace of wilting flower petals laid before a field of white stones. However, the speed at which she was suddenly and fluidly charging this stoic expression forward through the mist-laden froth of Everfree gave her the presence and the inertia of an iron battleship plowing its way through a soupy cloudbank. Somewhere in that silky platinum heart, wrapped placidly in a yellow coat, was the burning determination of adoration—like a mother's love—that drew Fluttershy to puncture the depths of Everfree in search for an unknown, mysterious creature as if it was the one and only thing chiseled into the insides of her lonely eyelids.

Harmony had—once or twice—imagined herself a courageous pony, as if she could somehow have brazenly imitated some prismatic shadow from her past. It occurred to her then, as it had occurred to a rain-watching orange foal several eons ago, that the one true hero of her childhood was not a mare that could shape the weather with her wings, but one that could selflessly console a trembling soul when the weather itself refused to bend.

In Harmony's adult lifetime, she had tackled hydras, outrun trolls, battled harpy pirates, and infiltrated crumbling ruins. Still, the last pony had never—in all of her years of angst and struggle—ever once taken the brunt of a merciless world's blow for another and far more naïve creature, nor had she ever ventured headlong into a life-threatening melee when her only weapon was the utterly absurd refusal to use weapons altogether.

With one single afternoon stride into the Everfree depths, Fluttershy had suddenly shown more courage than the last pony had exhibited in a lifetime of torture. Harmony's brain ached over this realization, until she realized that her heart wasn't aching, and she realized the difference between herself and Fluttershy. Harmony scavenged out of the sheer will to survive. Fluttershy marched into the gaping green maw of that forested landscape to look for a creature that she—or any other pony for that matter—barely had a common concept of. Fluttershy's pursuit was not a task of survival; it was a task of love. The last pony felt equally honored and shameful to be within the same breath as this peaceful anchor of anchors.

She clung to her, like a foalish shadow, and she held her smiles as she held her secrets, close to her Entropan chest, until the occasional moment when a certain melodic voice would spark the heart beneath her copper coat to beat. Such breaths suddenly made her feel far safer than any brass rifle or weighted runestone magazine ever could.

“Kindness is more than just a word, more than just an Element of Harmony. It's a gift that keeps on giving for lives that keep on living. When you do something kind for a pony, you're doing something good for another pony you may not even know about. It's because the first pony whom you've blessed is likely to be inspired by your generosity and be moved to do something kind or nice as well. In Everfree, in a forest where such amazing examples of life brush up with each other like an endless sea of nutritious roots, you can see how the natural things of this world are perfectly and infinitely connected. And what's so amazing is that this intricate labyrinth of interrelationship was not forced upon the environment by individual minds of logic, but rather it all happened because of the essential motivations of Mother Nature.”

“I was always taught that Princess Gultophine breathed life into the world that Elektra and Nebula had built.”

“Mmmm... A very divine truth that is, Scootaloo. But have you ever wondered why Gultophine was motivated to instill purpose and animation into the many things of this world?”

“Because her parents, Epona and Consus, made her do it?”

“Heeheehee—Kindness is eternal, Scootaloo. Of this, I am convinced. Kindness has forever been, will forever be, and very presently is the inspiration behind all things that are alive. The goal of all living things is to help each other; don't let a hoof-full of horrible monsters and other bad eggs in this life make you think otherwise. This world is a kind world; it wants to be. The only proof you need for this is the world that we live in: Equestria. Equestria is a result of the spirit of kindness having nearly achieved its one noble goal throughout the history of existence.”

“And what goal is that, Fluttershy?”

“Harmony.”

The shadows of the dying afternoon devoured the kaleidoscopic mosaic of Everfree leaves that had infrequently bathed the grassy floor over which the two ponies had been treading. A soft girlish gasp filled the echoing spaces between branches; Harmony realized that Fluttershy was yawning. When she gave the pegasus a concerned look, the “Canterlotlian Clerk” merely received a velvety soft smile as a response.

The last pony's mind limped over a distant mirage of sensations, of apple trees and daffodil alfredo and leather bodies collapsing in the moonlight. The time traveler briefly thought that she had actually mastered persistence when visiting Applejack, that she had become the epitome of patient hard work and strength rolled up into one Entropan sandwich. As the minutes of Everfree bled into hours, and she witnessed a once-trembling Fluttershy marching ceaselessly across the lengths of a Capricorn-less forest, she realized that there were still some creatures of ponydom that could put even the most superheroic feats to shame, for they were the very things that gave the world before the Wasteland its toasty joy and glow, the magical spark between painful breaths that made the briefest of lonesome dreams in the ashen clouds worth crying over afterward.

Harmony found that the role of “helper” that she had silver-tongued her way into becoming for the caretaker was as literal as it was necessary. When Fluttershy needed a boost up onto an earthen cleft in the forest floor, Harmony hoisted her spine to lift the trembling pony to her platform. When there was a muddied space of sloshing earth that needed traversing, Harmony was quick to carry the yelping mare over in a conjoined leap. Any and all malevolent shadows that briefly flanked the thin paths available to the two wandering souls: the last pony was quick to spot them with her scavenger's eyes and tactfully steer Fluttershy away from such dangers.

With each means of assistance, Fluttershy's blushes grew hotter and hotter in boiling humility. If the engineer inside Harmony could somehow string together a steam-operated meter for scaling Fluttershy's adorableness, the last pony had no doubt that the resulting explosion of such a device would render half of Equestria to ashes three months in advance. Being so close to such a dreamily beautiful soul should have made her sad, Harmony speculated, but the proximity of the mare's aura tamed the crumbling beast that was her countenance, so that she was forced to remember a certain platitude that was spoken to her in melodic breaths, that sadness was something that possessed a certain grace of its own. Harmony somehow couldn't feel the normally venomous fangs of desolation in lieu of that.

The green haze of the world died away, and there wafted through the canopy a deep redness that ushered an ever pervasive throng of crickets and several more unnameable choirs out of hiding. The impulsive trembling briefly returned to Fluttershy's shoulders, but Harmony was quick to console her with a nudge of her snout... and a smile that reflected twice in the caretaker's pearlescent gaze.

The forest may not yet have yielded a Capricorn, but as Harmony served an ever loyal caboose to Fluttershy's brave sojourn, there were many happy breaths hanging from the branches above them, and the dark trees lingering ahead.

“We live in a harmonious world. It's beautiful, it's rich, it's vibrant. It sings beneath our hooves and it gives weightlessness to our wings. Just talking about it right now almost makes me want to burst into a chorus.”

“Oh seriously, Fluttershy. Uhm... There's no need.”

“Hehehe—No, I suppose not. There's a hum to everything as it is. If you're quiet enough, soft enough, and patient enough, you can feel it in your heart. You can feel the soft silken threads of the spirit of kindness pulling you, tugging you, urging you to do that which you were foaled for, urging you to make all things that live enjoy being all things that live, to the best of yours and their ability, until the one sad day that they can no longer be. This is our purpose; this is our golden rule. We exist together, so it is only natural that we help each other. To this end, kindness works like a circle. When you look hard enough, you can see such a spinning pattern of self-sustaining wonders. And in the Everfree forest, the truth of it all is... well... it's positively dizzying.”

For a brief moment of adorable absurdity, Harmony stood on her hindquarters, leaning back against the wooden bark of a tree as she apathetically watched a quaint scene unfolding right in front of her. Fluttershy had paused in the midst of their Capricorn quest to usher half a dozen hapless frogs from the bone-dry center of the forest clearing and into the delightfully moist edge of a pond just beyond a throng of bushes. She murmured lovingly and clicked her tongue against dainty lips as she urged each amphibian into their new watery homes. As each wart-laced creature plopped one after another into the muddy depths, Fluttershy cooed with increasingly warm breaths of relief.

Harmony raised an eyebrow. She tried not to grin, but it was like fighting a mountainous avalanche one-hoofed with nothing more than a dustpan. This soft, joyful reverie briefly distracted the last pony, so that she was almost oblivious to a multicolored string of scales suddenly drifting down from an errant tree branch located directly above the caretaker's hand. With bulging eyes, Harmony gasped and sprung into action. She lunged forward at a dangling coral snake and heroically batted it away with an Entropan hoof before its flicking tongue got within a centimeter's length of Fluttershy's mane.

The Ponyvillean animal tamer glanced up in time to blink at a nervously grinning Harmony, her forelimb innocently scratching the back of her amber-streaked head. None-the-wiser, Fluttershy flashed a cheekish grin, cleared her throat, and trotted with an exhausted gait towards the last, unexplored lengths of Everfree's eastern fringe.

Exhaling sharply, Harmony followed after her in a depressed slump. She cast a lonely, forlorn gaze towards the dimming forest canopy above. Beyond the wind-blown leaves of Everfree, the stars were twinkling into existence. Though the sight of the blossoming constellations should have overwhelmed the apocalyptic time traveler with joy, she shuddered with an immediate wave of helpless shame, for the only cosmic sight that she deserved to track down had eluded the two of them completely that day.

As the last legs of the trek fell into the foreboding thick of black night, Harmony struggled with a lump in her throat. Her mind fought the skin prickling visions of ink-dark brambles suddenly thorning their way into her memories with each fruitless hoofstep she made herself take... and made Fluttershy take in turn...

“If Everfree's such a big example of this 'spirit of kindness' fluff, then why are you so scared to go in there all the time, Fluttershy?”

“That's a good question, Scootaloo. As beautiful as Equestria is, we still live in an imperfect world. I do whole-heartedly believe that living things naturally want to help other living things. But I never pretend to believe that the world accomplishes this perfectly. There are... mmm... there are weaknesses, Scootaloo.”

“Weaknesses?”

“You cannot have strong things without weak things. This is the sad but real split in reality that has existed since the Sundering of Consus, when Goddess Epona herself was forced out of sorrow and heartache to take flight and make her exodus to the stars. But just because the world's weaknesses still plague us with the same violent monsters, diseases, and misfortune that ended the First Age, it does not mean that we have to give up hope. We can be strong—we can be so strong, Scootaloo, so long as we fill in the gaps of our weaknesses with love... and with kindness.”

“Do you really think it's that simple, Fluttershy?”

“Scootaloo, I am very happy that you are here.”

“Uhm... eheheh—What does that have to do with anything?”

“Quite simply that you are filling a gap right now, though you may not truly know it. And... And I thank you. I thank you for that, Scootaloo.”

“It's very kind...”

An exhausted Fluttershy glanced over towards Harmony at the tail-end of the pegasus' utterance. “Yes...?”

Harmony shook her head. “Ahem. Don't mind me. I was just...” She looked across the dim foliage and blinked in concern at her anchor. “Erm... Miss Fluttershy, do you need a breather?”

The frail pegasus nodded with a wilted shudder. “I think that would be most comforting, Miss Harmony...”

Harmony smiled gently and guided the two of them over to a soft mound of grass alongside the beaten path. The lengths and breadths of the Everfree Forest croaked, chirped, and billowed about them. Scant bursts of starlight flickered directly overhead between the waving clusters of tree branches.

There was an eerie tranquility to the place, far from resembling the utterly obsidian nightmare of the future Briar. Not a single drop of fear had alighted the time traveler's mind. Perhaps it was on account of her durable Entropan body, but Harmony hardly feared for her life. During the entire fruitless trek, she had kept her sights on Fluttershy. So long as Ponyville's animal tamer was safe, the last pony didn't fret the freakish shadows of the dense wilderness. At the same time, she was undeniably proud—not to mention inspired—by the firm degree to which Fluttershy was unwaveringly pursuing the lengths of their suddenly nocturnal search.

“I gotta hoof it to ya, Fluttershy,” Harmony mused in a humming voice as the two reclined on folded legs. “You hardly resemble the freaked-out mare that I had to shove into the forest when we first set out this afternoon. What changed?”

“Erm... Nothing changed.” Fluttershy gulped and scrunched low beside her “assistant.” “This is still quite a dangerous and foreboding environment.”

“You hardly seemed fazed. As a matter of fact, you were trotting even faster than I was.”

“Only because, as frightened as I may be, the Capricorn has even greater reasons to be scared.” Fluttershy bit her lip and gazed with sad eyes towards the far corners of the green, star-kissed place. “It is a creature of the heavens. To be lying here on the earth for so long can't be healthy for it. I'm more frightened for the Capricorn's health than I am for our well-being. Each second we lose in our attempt to find it, the bleaker the whole situation becomes.”

“I'm sure Her Highness will find that trait of yours admirable.”

“What trait?”

Harmony smiled. “In the end, Miss Fluttershy, you think more about the creatures you're in charge with caretaking than you worry about yourself. Princess Celestia is a sucker for selflessness. Erm...” The time traveler blushed slightly at her choice of words and flounderingly punctuated with: “A r-royal sucker.” She gave an awkward grin.

Fluttershy stifled a yawn and pressed her sad muzzle towards the soft earth. “No offense, Miss Harmony, but I am far more concerned with what the Captain will think of my failure than the Princess.”

“Who says this is a failure?”

“Please, I do find your enthusiasm encouraging, Harmony. But...” Moist blue eye scanned the slivers of purple starlight above the branches. “This situation would be all the more rapturous if we had actually succeeded in finding the poor creature.”

“How come it's so hard to find, you think?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly, Miss Fluttershy.”

“Mmmm...” Fluttershy narrowed her eyes, her yellow face scrunching in thought. She murmured finally, “It is a cosmic creature. Like a fish or an amphibian, a Capricorn can drown outside of its element. But instead of water, the Capricorn's element is the stars.”

“I imagine it'd be rather difficult to fill a tank up with stardust and just—uhm—dump the Capricorn inside of it.”

“Most definitely. Still, it feeds off of starlight. With the trees of the forest blocking the night's sky so intensely, it's no wonder that we haven't just stumbled upon the animal along these shadowed paths.”

“You... uh... You think that the Capricorn would have wandered beyond the lengths of the Everfree Forest so it could bask in uninterrupted starlight?”

“I highly doubt that. Capricorns are as pensive as they are endangered.”

“Heh. Who'd a thunk it?”

“If we only had enough starlight of our own to work with... we might... we just might...” Fluttershy began but her tongue tripped over a thick valley of sighs and she slumped once more to the earth.

Harmony raised an eyebrow and pivoted her copper face towards her. “You think there might be a way to coax the thing out of hiding?”

“So long as these shadows are bathing us—and it—I hardly imagine there could be a way, Miss Harmony.” With a stifled groan, Fluttershy gazed towards the far ends of the forest. “I am so very sorry. You are here to help me and to report back to the Princess, and so far you've only been rewarded with boredom and frivolity.”

“Uhhhh.... I beg your pardon?”

“It's not enough that your kind and proper assistance has been wasted, but I haven't been able to help you in any fashion whatsoever.”

“Miss Fluttershy, assisting you is hardly what I call a waste. I've learned new and nifty things about the Everfree Forest, I've been refreshed in my Faustmare history lessons, and I've seen first-hoof how you... uhm... corral frogs!”

“You had all of these questions that you wished to ask me about the local wildlife, and I hadn't even addressed a single one of them.”

Harmony gulped. Her amber eyes traced the ceilings of her skull. “Well...” She mentally tap-danced around the chirping lengths of the night-drenched forest until she fell once more into the center of Fluttershy's soft gaze. “We could tackle those anytime, y'know.” She smiled innocently.

“Well, what did you want to know?”

“Oh... Oh... Hmmm... For instance...” Harmony kneaded her hooves into the soft pliable grass beneath them. This was the last pony's moment, hopefully the first of many occasions in which she could grill an expert observer of the past on the red dawn that would precede an unimaginably horrible storm. “Have you... Miss Fluttershy, have you noticed any bizarre things with the local wildlife as of late?”

“Is there something specific that Her Majesty may be concerned about?”

“Oh, I dunno...” Harmony cleared her throat and attempted to smile her way through the next few hurdles of inquisition. “Mass migrations, disruptions to the food chain, unnaturally nomadic habits, indications of... uhm... instinctual panic?”

“What kind of panic?” Fluttershy blinked steadily. “And for what reason?”

Harmony hissed under her breath. This was becoming a constant game of plate-spinning, in which she had to find the appropriate degree to which she could press a holocaustal issue without so much as describing it. She realized that there were very rare occasions when she could actually make use of her resilient Entropan body. Time traveling was more delicate a process than stitching together silk, and there she was plopped down in the middle of a forest with the titanium shell of a compacted elephant.

“Do you... Uhm...” Harmony squinted off into the starry purple slivers dancing flimsily above them. Tactfully, she reached a hoof into an ancient afternoon hanging somewhere beside a pond full of ducks, cranes, squirrels, and turtles. In an energized breath, she quivered in a foalish voice: “Fluttershy, do you remember the cyclone that struck Ponyville approximately three years ago?”

“Oh, absolutely! I had to ask several local ponies to help me in building a shelter for all of my animals to take cover in! It was absolutely frightening!”

“Before that storm hit, did you notice any changes in the local wildlife that may have forecasted it?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. But it wasn't until later that it suddenly all made sense to me.”

“Like—What kinds of things did you notice?”

“The rodents had hid themselves away in burrows. The birds had all flocked south. The larger creatures—bears and coyotes and manticores—had foraged for food and fled to their lairs. It was quite the elaborate bustle of activity, but it wasn't observable until the very last second.”

“Are we talking about days in advance of the cyclone?”

“More like hours, Miss Harmony.”

“Oh. Oh... Uhm... Okay...”

“It is far easier to foresee a coming season in the behavior of animals than it is to predict a single frightening event of inexplicable weather. Animals possess a great deal of far-reaching senses, but they aren't all magically enabled to foresee more than the average equine. We mustn't forget, Miss Harmony, that ponies are animals too; we are simply of a blessedly complex variety.” Fluttershy finished with a stifled yawn and a soft smile.

“So... uhh... I guess that you haven't witnessed any strange or frightened behaviors of the local wildlife lately?”

“I can't say that I have, Miss Harmony.” She shook her head and tiredly blinked. “Why? Is the Royal Court of Canterlot expecting a terrible storm?”

“In a manner of speaking...” Harmony began, blinked, and felt the weight of the gray future bubbling like a distant blizzard on the back of her neck-hairs. “...No. Not really.” The words that came out of her next felt numb, defeated, stale. “But if there ever was to be a terribly large and incalculably damaging... weather pattern, the Canterlot Court thinks that animals could be a far better form of prediction than—say—transitory leylines. Unicorn magic isn't all it's cracked up to be lately... or something. Meh, I dunno...”

“I'm... I'm sorry to have let you down with my lack of answers...“

“You haven't let anypony down.” Harmony smiled gently over at her. “I swear, I'll never understand why you're always so quick to blame yourself, Miss Fluttershy.”

“You needn't try to understand, Harmony.” Fluttershy blinked tiredly and sat with drooping yellow ears. “Even my friends have a hard time withstanding my personal habits.”

Harmony raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Mmmm... I think so, sometimes.” Fluttershy produced a yawn, and her gaze fell into the soft grass as she played through the springy earth with demure hooves. “So many of them are nice and supportive of me. But I can't help but think sometimes that I'm more of a chore than a joy to be around. I'm just not as brave nor as outgoing as the rest of the ponies I've come to know over the past year-and-a-half. It's because I'm so—”

“If you say 'weak and helpless' again, I swear, I'm gonna toss you so hard into the sky that we'll put the 'Flutter' in your name to the test.”

“Eeep!” She shrunk into the shadows of herself. “But it's so true, Miss Harmony! If only you knew how much my friends have had to sacrifice, how much they've had to slow their exciting days down, how much they've had to give up just for the sake of floating down to my level...”

“Has it ever occurred to you that they've done all of those things because they love you?” Harmony bravely smiled. “And that they find it a joy to do those things, if it means that they could be around you?”

“I can't see what could possibly inspire them to do that besides pity.” Fluttershy sadly shuddered.

Harmony loaded the runestone, cocked the rifle, and fired. “Kindness?”

Fluttershy blinked. Her cheeks instantly turned rosy as she lifted a tired gaze to inhale the trailing scent of that word.

Harmony smiled again. “I've been around quite a bit, Miss Fluttershy. On account of working for the Court and all, I've seen...” A bitter gulp, but she continued. “I've witnessed the legacy of ponies. We're not creatures of obligation. We follow an unbreakable spirit. There's something about each of us that loves and adores our kin, not because we're obligated to, but because we want to. I think a lot of this has something to do with your favorite element, Miss Fluttershy. Kindness flows through all of us like electricity through a ring of batteries, getting stronger and stronger with each revolution. When something gives way or something shorts out, we replace that dying part with love and devotion just to keep the spark alive. This is because we know what a happy and wonderful thing it is to live in this glorious world, and the best way to live is to...” She closed her eyes, inhaled, and punctured the thick wall of irony. “...is to do so in perfect harmony.” She reopened her amber eyes and managed: “Kindness is what makes that possible. And your kindness, Miss Fluttershy, is positively infectious.”

“I... I do try...” The caretaker tiredly blushed. She avoided Harmony's gaze. “I just want all of my friends to be happy...”

“I'm quite sure they know that.” Harmony nodded. “And that is what keeps them coming back to see you. You're not a chore, Miss Fluttershy. You're a treasure.”

“Isn't everypony?”

“Thanks for making my case for me.” Harmony helplessly giggled.

Fluttershy laughed lightly—only because the time traveler did. After a deep breath, she murmured past the curtains of her own exhaustion: “You must have many friends, Harmony.”

Harmony froze at that. She gazed aside in a sudden cascade of shadows and stifled a sigh from rising in her lungs. “I have many memories...” She winced at having uttered that, but bravely recovered with: “Happy memories. They grant me wisdom occasionally, though I'm always on the lookout for other ponies to share things with.” She gulped. “Ponies new and old.”

“But surely...” Fluttershy suffered another yawn and curled up next to her. “Surely you have close companions now... hmmm?”

“I... I have... I had...”

Harmony gazed off into the green haze of Everfree. She blinked, and between the snow-gray picture frames of her adult mind she saw, or thought she saw, two foals prancing across the purple starlight. Their blank flanks shimmered with crimson and gold capes, emblazoned cutely with blue and yellow patches of an immutable crusade that drew the bouncy souls within them across the growing lengths of time, long before a great red flame fell to consume their faces. Before the end of galloping days, they turned around to call back to the last pony: green and amber eyes, yellow and white coats, red and lavender manes, smiles and smiles and smiles... and ash.

“I had a foalhood...” Harmony's dead words fluttered through the cricket-crackling air of the night. “It was full of fear, it was full of tears, and it was full of hunger.” She gulped and murmured. “But... because of them... it was full of smiles as well, so that all of the rest really wasn't all that bad. No... No, it wasn't that bad at all.” The world blurred out of focus. A pair of amber pools trembled in the middle of a copper face, stone still, like an obelisk outside of Everclear. “I'm not an expert on kindness, M-Miss Fluttershy, but I know all the things in my life that have kept me... that have kept me living for hope of invisible things that were once as real to me as raindrops. And it wasn't just because of them.” She smiled painfully into the everlasting echo of a melodic voice. Pivoting, she smiled bravely and spoke towards the heavenly source of it. “But it was because of you—“

Fluttershy was asleep. In soft, cloudy waves, her yellow coat inflated and deflated, preserving a warm breath that only her soft shell of a body could ever feasibly house in the great Equestrian void. Her pink tail hairs had entwined foalishly with the curves of Harmony's hooves. Her cutie mark's butterflies shimmered suddenly like a nightlight, casting a permanent halo on her immaculate soul.

With a deep breath, Harmony smiled. In the blind gap of her companion's unconsciousness, she finally granted the tears freedom to pierce the night. Swiftly drying her cheek with a forelimb, Harmony gazed sideways at her anchors, feeling the glen light up with the phantom glow of an invisible fireplace. Before her beating heart, the forested hovel magically illuminated with a toasty aura indicative of a cottage atrium, blossoming suddenly in the starved corner of the last pony's mind. Before she could confusedly blink the sensations away, she heard—or thought she heard—a creaking of stairs. Gazing aside, she saw a series of wooden steps, and there shuffled down them an orange foal with no room for tears and even less strength to afford them. The ghostly image trotted quietly towards Fluttershy on the green grass, and the world threatened to explode upon their forbidden contact—

Harmony immediately buried her face into shuddering hooves. With sweaty palpitation, she reopened her twitching amber eyes into the dark folds of the Everfree forest. Her friends were gone. The fireplace was gone. The stairs were gone. Her orange childhood was gone. All that was left was shadows...

...and Fluttershy, in immortal slumber, her limbs heavenly devoid of thorns or ash. It would not be this beautiful forever.

“It doesn't have to be,” the last pony said in a wise, somber voice.

She regained her smile by staring at Fluttershy. With motherly ease that haunted her, the pegasus got up on all fours, trotted over, and effortlessly nudged Fluttershy until she had planted the whole of her dainty weight atop her Entropan shoulders.

“Hmm... Light as a feather. Friggin'' figures.”

Her voice was punctuated with a grin and a sigh at the same time. With greater caution than she had ever afforded the brass instruments of the Harmony, the last pony balanced the anchor of kindness safely on her spine, sprouted her wings, and flew the two of them up through the forest canopy of Everfree, and safely towards the caretaker's home.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Everdazzle

It was on a green velvety chair in the front room of Fluttershy's cottage that Harmony laid the dainty pegasus down. The sleeping mare barely stirred, mumbling a day's worth of Capricorn worry through her porcelain lips. The last pony had no doubt then and there that Fluttershy was capable of sleeping through a sonic rainboom.

“Bet her parents had it easy,” Harmony dryly murmured.

In an insomniac gait, she trotted her Entropan body towards the reading seat beside a pair of double windows. With a gentle hoof, she lightly tapped one of the window panes. The thing swung open on a squeaking hinge, bathing half of the room in the soft chirps of eternal crickets. The purple night twinkled in starry bedazzlement beyond.

The last pony's amber eyes narrowed. The soonest she inhaled the cold night air wafting in, she found her body riddled with the queer sensation that something was wrong. The stillness wasn't right. She was waiting for something: what, she didn't know. A throng of ghostly pelting noises flickered through her ears. Instantly, Harmony flashed a look towards the bushes outside the window. The dark leaves glistened and danced, reflecting a gray sky of an afternoon's thunderstorm. In a panicked breath, she glanced down at the plush velvet of the reading seat and saw orange hooves toying in the shadows of rainwater misting inward from the refracting haze outside.

Hissing, Harmony stumbled back, almost knocking into the chair where her anchor was sleeping. With a toss of her black mane, Harmony squinted fearfully at the window once more. The starry night had fallen back into place. There was no hint of rainwater anywhere. The cottage was a lonely wooden cave looking out into the dense treeline of Everfree. Everything was painted with the hues of the past, and yet it wasn't the past... and yet it was.

“Get a hold of yourself. What friggin' gives?” Harmony hoarsely murmured.

She glanced halfway towards the kitchen, where she knew a bucket and a mop waited beyond sight with all of the haunting gravity of ten million campfire stories clawing at her eardrums. This was a hovel of happy memories, of warm golden conversations piled up on top of each other like silken bedsheets. Still, for yet another heart-stopping moment in a great blistering sea of shivers, Harmony stumbled to find peace here. It was, without a doubt, the most quaint and innocent setting from her foalhood, and yet it was piercing her more coldly than the bone-chilling hollow of an Everbriar full of monsters.

The thorn-encrusted future awaited her green-flaming self at the end of all this pointless floundering, and yet she somehow looked forward to it more than this. A part of her begged for the red-glistening trees of Sweet Apple Acres once again; that place had a certain alien enchantment to her foalish memories. But here, in the warm and toasty womb of Fluttershy's cottage, Harmony could barely stand straight, as if a good chunk of her had been mysteriously and secretly foaled there.

Biting her lip, Harmony glanced over her copper shoulder. With great hesitance, the time traveler looked at the wooden staircase for the first time since she arrived. She imagined, against her better judgment, an orange shadow slowly creaking its way down the stairs, and with each hooftrot the shade made towards the velvety green chair upon which Fluttershy slumbered, Scootaloo felt her heart about to explode in cold ice.

With a pale shudder, the last pony flung herself back towards the windows, drowning herself once more in the starry haze, trying to imagine the twinkling cosmos being replaced with endless twilight... as if it could paradoxically ease the survivor's trembling soul.

“Like a fish out of water,” Harmony mumbled. For a brief moment, she couldn't decide if she was talking about herself or a certain Capricorn that the two pegasi had failed to find. She settled for the latter, wracking her brain over the infinite reasons for why the cosmic creature had remained annoyingly elusive. “Maybe it died,” she grunted. “And then space ants carried it away in a million pieces.”

With a sighing slump, she rested her Entropan body across the lengths of the reading seat and stared with greater intensity at the stars. She briefly wondered if the cosmic trails of Epona's Exodus would ever give up trying to pierce the ashen horizons of future Equestria. The last pony had only made three and a half trips back into the past, and somehow the staleness of a world where most of the Goddesses had left for the stars felt just as cold as the Age where two of them had died.

“Maybe this Capricorn is a friggin'' pet of Epona,” the cynic inside her projected soul-self murmured. “It explains why it's nowhere to be found.”

A cloud of guilt settled around Harmony, reminding her of a certain “Canterlotlian Clerk” that had shriveled under the explosive ire of Fluttershy after Dinky and Derpy Hooves' departure that afternoon. She gazed over at Fluttershy with a deathly exhale of worry. In a sickly sensation, she imagined an off-ruby Cloudsdalian Captain leering over the sleeping pegasus, impaling the angelic filly with phalanx after phalanx of razor-speared words—deplorable words—all of which were punctuated by sarcasm and sighs. For the life of her, Harmony couldn't imagine the gall of a pony—anypony—that could actually get a winged rise out of grilling Fluttershy like some worthless piece of meat.

“If the captain wants the Capricorn that badly, she should have just speared it out of the sky—“ Harmony blinked, stopping in mid-monologue. She glanced a curious gaze up to the stars once more. Her lips murmured: “'If we only had enough starlight',” she quoted a melodic voice, not even trying to emulate the satin tone of it. “Starlight...” The last pony scrunched her copper brow. Suddenly, on a rising current of spontaneous euphoria, a thought blossomed forth forth from the deep soul of the runescaping, moonrock forging, and flame-bottling scavenger. “Of course!”

She giggled—foalishly energized with a sudden crusade—and soon Harmony found herself excitedly pacing counter-clockwise circles around the room like an inverse Redgale.

“I just need two mana stones and a telescope. But where could I get them? This is Fluttershy's home, not Twilight Sparkle's... or Rarity's for that matter.” She paused. She tapped a copper hoof to her chin. She gazed, gazed, gazed—then froze as her face fell upon a simple wooden writing desk standing against the wall across a space of wooden floorboards where a blue table once resided. “Ah-Ha!”

Scampering on light hooves, Harmony shuffled up to the table and opened its wooden lid. Immediately there lay before her a plethora of parchment, scroll bindings, envelopes, and ornate Cloudsdalian stationary.

“Hmmm... Lemme see... Lemme see... Lemme see...”

Tonguing the corners of her mouth, the last pony went to work. She unrolled a scroll of parchment, clasped a pen in her jaws, and neatly wrote with the aid of years upon years of calligraphy practice inside the Harmony's lonely cabin. After a very proper letter was written, she held the document up to her squinting perusal and muttered to herself: “Hmmm... Something's missing. This is coming clear out of the blue, and I need a silver bullet.” Her amber eyes brightened. She glanced down at the cutie mark on her flank, then at one of her hooves. “It's so stupid, it has to work.”

With a grin, she slid out a pad of ink, glanced over her shoulder at the slumbering Fluttershy, then quietly lowered the lid of the desk shut. As she did so, a frowning white face with pointed ears stared fluffily into her vision.

Harmony did a double-take. With a raised eyebrow, she smirked at the disapproving rabbit. “Look, it's not stealing. It's for a good cause. Besides, if she needs more parchment that bad, I'm sure I can buy her more.... Mmmm... S-somehow.”

The ivory bunny rabbit folded its arms. The glaring frown intensified.

“Oh, like you're such a saint.” Harmony rolled her eyes. She placed the ink pad and paper side by side on the desktop. “If I find your ashes in the future, I'm giving them to Spike so that he can clear his sinuses.”

Angel Bunny upturned a haughty chin and raised its left arm towards the pegasus at an offensive angle.

“Yeah... uh... I think you need five paw pads for that gesture to work. Now scram, furball.” Harmony concentrated hard as she lightly planted the whole of her hoof against the blackening pad of ink. Afterward, she carefully... carefully pressed the end of her limb to the parchment. With gentle pressure, she was able to create a faint circle. Gracefully, she brought the pen back to her lips and drew a solid “infinity” symbol in the center of this crest. Smirking at her efforts, she added the finishing touches with several “celestial” squiggly lines emblazoned around the circumference of the hoofmark...

“Well, it m-m-m-m-most definitely looks like a Royal Seal!” Derpy Hooves blinked, both of her yellow eyes aimed decidedly away from the scroll being held directly in front of her.

Harmony grumbled. It was the next morning, the sun was shining, and she was practically shoving the letter into the mailmare's grasp. “That's because it is a royal seal, Miss Hooves!” She stood in the grassy front yard of Fluttershy's cottage under the dew-laden haze of sunrise. “It's imperative that you deliver this parchment immediately! The Royal Court of Canterlot depends on the speed and swiftness of this order!”

“And the Royal Court wants it sent to the Novelty Shop of downtown Ponyville?” The wall-eyed pegasus briefly chuckled as she snatched the scroll from Harmony's hoof and shoved it with more or less grace into her cluttered mailbag. “Well, who am I to question Her Majesty's servants?”

“Who indeed?” Harmony's amber eyes flared above a plastic smile.

“I thought you and Miss Fluttershy were looking for a C-C-C-C-Capricot.”

“'Capricorn,' Miss Hooves. And, no, we haven't found it yet.” Harmony pointed with a copper hoof. “But what I've requested in this letter should help us. If you care at all for the well-being of Fluttershy's job here as Ponyville's lead animal trainer, you'll make sure the items I've requested get here as soon as possible!”

“You can count on me!” Derpy's hoof saluted half a meter away from her forehead as she stood on wobbly hindquarters. “Anything for Miss Fluttershy! Dinky would hate me forever if I let her babysitter lose her job!”

“Glad that we're seeing eye to eye—” Harmony's smile fell under a self-imposed grimace halfway through that train wreck of an utterance. “Erm... Eheh... Y'know what I mean.”

“I sure don't!” Derpy grinned gleefully. “Good luck, Mister Squirrel!” She flew away in an upside-down gray blur.

Harmony blinked. She glanced sideways into her reflection in the cottage windows, shuffled up to examine her profile, flicked her amber-streaked tail, but ultimately gave up with a rolling of her amber eyes. She trotted around and waltzed in through the front doorway of the cottage, instantly assaulted with the delightful aroma of vegetable soup wafting over from the far kitchen of the place.

“Do you need help with that, Miss Fluttershy?” Dinky called across the cottage, her horned head hovering over a splayed-open astronomy book twice the size of the petite foal's body.

“Oh no!” A melodic voice rang from beyond the nearby door-frame. “It is far too messy in here! I would rather nopony see my kitchen unless it was an absolute emergency!”

“Don't take it personally, kid,” Harmony said with a devilish smirk. “Miss Fluttershy just doesn't want you to see what she puts into her cupcake mix.” She made a melodramatic expression with two hooves pressing her facial muscles into a goblinesque grimace as she leered above the little child. “Or who! OoOoOoOoooh!”

Dinky stared up at the copper pegasus with dull yellow eyes. “Your joke escapes me.”

“Yeah, well, that's why I'm a clerk and not a bard.”

“Are you attempting more humor, Miss Harmony, or should I be legitimately concerned?”

“'Yes' and 'no' to both questions,” Harmony's voice returned to the kitchen. “Miss Hooves just left, by the way. Wanna bet twenty silver strips she'll knock loose a few bird's nests on the way to Ponyville?”

“Silver strips?” Dinky blinked up at the time traveler yet again. “I didn't know that Canterlot was acquainted with the economic system of Mount Ogreton!”

The time traveler faltered in mid-step. “Er... Yeah. Well, I wouldn't—uh—bet golden bits against your mom, kid. That'd just turn a tease into an insult.”

“I'll have you know that my mother flies at an altitude that completely avoids any and all bird's nests.”

“Oh yeah? Since when?”

“Since the summer that she had to stay at home because a quintuplet of severely endangered Equestrian Falcon chicks had imprinted upon her forehead. The Hooves Family's hereditary mane hair is coarse enough to resemble the tail feathers of most birds of prey.”

“Guess that explains why your head always looks windblown, kid.” Harmony winked. “I figured it was just because of your brain flying around at four hundred kilometers per hour.”

“Did you know that the average Equestrian Falcon ingests enough meat in the course of a year to reconstruct an entire herd of buffalo?”

“I rest my case.”

“As a matter of fact, if you disemboweled no more than ten falcons and stretched their unraveled intestines from end to end you could easily surround the circumference of the Great Wall of Stalliongrad—“

“Did I or did I not just say I rest my case?”

Fluttershy trotted in from the kitchen with a tray of smoking soup bowls balanced on her dainty yellow head. “Brunch is served! I... uhm... I do hope you are fans of tomato broth.”

“Finally. It's about time something more than statistics filled this kid's mouth.”

“Your labors are much appreciated, Miss Fluttershy,” Dinky said with a cute smile. “It smells good.”

“Does it? I'm rather proud of it myself. Oh, I know that I sound positively boastful... But I cannot help it. I feel so well-rested this morning for some reason.”

“Heh...” Harmony smirked towards a white fluffy shape in the corner of the room. “I wonder why that could be?” Her skull vibrated upon impact with a thrown sofa cushion. Her frown was ever so briefly outshone by a raspberry retort.

“Dinky, how are you enjoying that new book that your mother got you?” Fluttershy asked, laying the tray down on a nearby stool in the center of the atrium.

“Oh, I finished it already.”

Harmony and Fluttershy blinked simultaneously.

“You did?” the caretaker murmured towards the tiny unicorn. “That's... erm... That is most—”

“Freaky?” Harmony filled in the blank, only to have her copper face filled with a silencing fan of pink tail hairs.

“It is exceptional for a foal of your age to have digested so much text in such little time.” Fluttershy smiled sweetly as her silken voice continued, “Would you care to share with us some of the things that you learned?”

The time traveler stifled a moan and smiled plastically upon the crest of the incoming dictation.

“Actually, it's all stuff that I've learned before—mostly—either from what Miss Sparkle has shared with me or some of the things I perused at the astronomy section of the library. Are you familiar with the Soul Sundering of Consus?”

“Oh, who isn't familiar with that age-old tale, Dinky? For better or for worse, it's what absolutely defines ponydom.”

“Well, A Young Unicorn's Guide for Astronomy suggests that the constellations as we know them today are shaped entirely by Epona's exodus to the stars when she flew to the heavens immediately after the Sundering.”

“Mmmmhmmm. That's right, my little pony. When the world experienced its first death with the passing of Consus, life as we knew it was forever changed. Even the Great Goddess herself couldn't reverse the damage that had been done. Her grief was so great that there was no room on the planet for her tears. So, for fear of flooding all creation, she flew to the heavens where her sobs formed the stardust that would ultimately become the stars that twinkle at us at night.”

“Didn't she know that she would be abandoning her Six Alicorn Daughters?”

“Five.”

“Hmmm?”

“There were only Five Alicorn Daughters at the time, Dinky. And there have been many scholarly ponies throughout the history of Equestrian civilization who have endeavored to answer your question. Quite frankly, Consus' and Epona's daughters were centuries old at the time of the Sundering. It wasn't like the Great Goddess had left infants alone to deal with the weight of Creation. The Alicorns' Mother had taught them well, and they were ready for the tasks at hand. The Sundering of Consus, for all of its tragedy, had hardened them, so that they were more than well-equipped to engineer the Elements of Harmony during the Chaos Wars that followed.”

“Is that what you believe, Miss Fluttershy?” Dinky asked as she shuffled up to her bowl of soup, inhaling its rich smell. “Do you really think it was Epona's sorrow that made her leave Equestria?”

“I think what she did was brave,” Fluttershy said with a tranquil smile. Settling down on silken haunches, she leaned forward and murmured across the warmth of the room, “A mother's love is everlasting, even if her presence isn't. She loved her daughters so much that she didn't dare think of endangering their lives on Earth by staying. Epona knew that the same taint that sundered Consus' soul could eventually infect her, and for the sake of her children—and all of Creation—she made her exodus. You see, a mother really is willing to give up all for the ones she loves. The innate devotion that exists inside ponies today owes itself to the spirit of the Goddess who made everything to begin with.”

Dinky sipped briefly from the crimson broth, hummed at the deliciousness, and smiled up at the “Canterlotlian Clerk.” She asked, “What about you, Miss Harmony? What do you think on the subject?”

Harmony blinked, jerked out of a lonesome bubble of thought. “Uhm... Eheh—Seriously, kid, you don't wanna know what I think about it all.”

“Oh please, Miss Harmony, you are as much a guest as Derpy's brilliant offspring here.” Fluttershy winked in the buzzing spirit of company. “Your thoughts are just as significant as ours; we would enjoy hearing them!”

“Really... Eh heh... I-I've got nothing to add to the conversation. At least nothing fruitful.”

“It's quite alright, Miss Harmony,” Dinky said with a creepily knowing smile. “Lots of ponies these days are agnostic, even the ones who serve in Canterlot.”

“What—?” Harmony blinked until she suddenly had Derpy's eyes. “Snkkt—No! That's not... ! Kid, have you ever thought of lending your horn to the Equestrian Energy Commission? I'm pretty sure it alone could provide power to all of Manehattan for a month.”

“Don't press the issue, Dinky.” Fluttershy gently chided the foal. “Not everypony is comfortable discussing topics of Creation and the Sundering so intimately.”

“It's not that... It's just...” Harmony stumbled upon a knot in her tongue.

She sighed, then squatted down on Entropan knees, tapping her own bowl of soup with eternal indifference. A cloud of gray apathy wafted over her copper features as she stared into the blood-colored broth that reflected a future of endless chaos and destruction.

“What I think—what I really believe—is that everything has an end, even long before all matter was ever purposed into beginning. I'm sure even Epona and Consus knew that the divine nature of their union—simply by existing—invited the possibility of someday not existing. Everypony talks about the Sundering being the reason for death first tainting the Creation of Equestria, but I think reality is a lot colder than that.”

She stumbled briefly upon the deep bass voice of a purple dragon haunting her from twenty-five years in the future.

“Death encompasses life,” Harmony said. “Epona and Consus were as wise as they were audacious to think that their breaths could outlast the absolute zero within which the first flame was ever kindled. Sometimes, kid, the things we love leave us—by death or by Exodus—not because it's noble, but because it's natural. Don't be surprised if, in the future, the world follows this natural instinct, something that transcends immortal Creators, so that even the Sun and Moon will get tired of the whole friggin' race. I mean... I mean it's just as if we're all waiting for something to—”

She glanced up from the soup bowl and froze, her expression immediately wincing.

Ms. Cheerilee's students had blanched in horror, and it was a pale thing. The Apple Family dinner table had frozen in perplexity, and it was also cold and pallid. But this, this pair of uncomfortably shifting bodies, this featherlight frame of crumbling spirits that deflated across the cottage atrium before her: it sunk deeper than any black briar in the womb of a bitterly familiar world, so that Harmony wondered if she was the one—and not the Cataclysm—to have blasted all fertile soil from the face of the planet, to have dredged all that was good from the world as she had once again, with such bitter repetition, sucked all the life from the room simply by being herself, simply by being honest, simply by being the end of ponies.

Spike's words once again spun around the infinite swirls of time to bite her through her immutable copper skin. She more deeply dreaded seeing his purple scaled face than she did the blue glistening maw of a ravenous Ursa Major that undoubtedly awaited her return. The last pony wondered if she had purposefully ignored all of Fluttershy's cyclical dissertations on Kindness, or if perhaps there was a naturally invisible fishnet of titanium encapsulating her soul and preventing all manner of good fruit from entering her system.

Perhaps she was the last pony by habit as much as by incident. Upon again remembering so many self-imposed foaldays of starving across the shadowed hovels of Ponyville with nothing more than a scooter for a friend, the pegasus solidly believed that to be the case.

She muttered something unintelligble to the dried-up corners of the room and leaned over to take a brave sip of her soup, hoping that the warm texture of the past could wake her back up to the noble venture at hoof. However, as soon as the vegetable broth entered her mouth, a haunting shadow reclaimed the breadths of the room, so that her amber eyes twitched frightfully towards the wooden stairs in the far corner of the place. Instead of a petite orange shadow, there descended a melodic voice.

“Is there something wrong with the taste?”

Harmony turned her head...

...and tilted her young chin up, blinking. “Huh?”

“It's not bitter or sour, is it?” Fluttershy bit her lip pensively as she stood above the young foal in the gray shadows of a rainy afternoon drizzling just beyond the windows. “I'm out of practice when it comes to using herbs in a soup, on account that I'm almost always making food just for my animals. Ohhhhh I do hope it doesn't taste stale!”

Scootaloo's stomach was a pit that grumbled at the merest sight of discarded crumbs on the grass bordering many a Ponyvillean restaurant outdoors. Her violet eyes had retained their pigment from staring whole-heartedly—night after night—into the darklit windows of Sugarcube Corner after it had been closed for business. So many ravishing feasts had clattered uselessly against the glass walls of her soul, and for once in as many moons as the filly could count, she was ingesting something that wasn't unsavorably fished out of the refuse of a world that was barred from her nomadic loneliness. The foal didn't have the strength to imply that she deserved it, but she did have the polite breath to be thankful for it. She made swift with her reply, so that the fire in her belly might overcome any tears in her eyes.

“It's the best soup I've ever tasted.” Scootaloo grinned a crescent moon. “I only wished you had let me into the kitchen to lend a hoof!”

“Oh no. It's too terribly dirty in there. There are some things even I'm too embarrassed to share with my friends.”

“I don't see why. Your bathroom is cleaner than the one in Carousel Boutique. And that's saying a lot.”

“But the soup isn't too cold?”

“It's just fine, Miss Fluttershy.”

“The vegetables aren't clumping it up terribly?”

“It's fine, Fluttershy.”

“What about the herbs? Did I sprinkle too many or—?”

“Hold on one second!” Scootaloo took a deep breath. Like a deep sea diver, or a living cannonball, the hungry foal scarfed the entirety of the bowl's crimson broth with one sputtering swoop. Gulping massively, she smiled with a dribble of the stuff down her chin and playfully winked. “It's good enough for seconds... that is, if you made more than enough for the two of us to enjoy.”

Fluttershy blinked. With a joyful breath, she giggled gleefully and dashed back into the kitchen. “Just a moment!” she sing-songed and made a wispy canter for the opposite room.

Scootaloo smiled, but as soon as the yellow pegasus had disappeared, she habitually lurched towards the floorboard with a nervous hoof clamped over her tummy. With half-a-wretch, she boldly stomached the enriching broth back down her bubbling esophagus. Proud for having lived up to her audacious gulp, Scootaloo sat with a relaxing breath, watching the endless curtain of rain beyond the windowpanes.

She wondered if this was how Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle regularly lived out their daily lies. The rainy afternoon hadn't been luxurious half as much as it had been simply clean. Life didn't have to have frills or flashing lights. So long as there was a roof, a floor, and soup, Scootaloo couldn't imagine a homelier heaven.

In the many fitful nights of trying to pretend she was a normal filly during random Cutie Mark Crusader sleepovers, Scootaloo had been too frazzled to take notice of all the blessing commodities briefly donated to her. But here, in the placid tranquility of Fluttershy's lone hovel, time slowed down to a meditative glide, so that she could spot for once the crystal clean joy that the usually icy world brought a shine to in the absence of her bitter pangs of desperation.

Scootaloo decided that this was all a preview, a sign of all the things that could be made available to her for when the bright day would come that she would earn such fabulous and wholesome benefits, not through the lure of friendship but through the fruits of strong and hard work. Her tiny wings twitched uselessly in the toasty air, reminding her of the whole weight of the atmosphere that still pressed down on her, so much height to climb with so few years left to scale it.

For the briefest of seconds, the future didn't look so lonesome. Scootaloo had to remind herself that it was all because the present, however transiently, had been filled for once by a voice that wasn't her shriveling own. Something melodic had touched her fitful ears again, and on silk-striding hooves that voice came drifting back with two more bowls of soup in tow.

“I added a touch of cinnamon this time. Pinkie Pie says that a pony should engage the sweet-tooth as much as the stomach. She hasn't done me wrong yet...”

“You're... uhm... You're going to eat too, right, Fluttershy?”

“Mmmmm-But of course. If you're so eager to devour what I've prepared, then it would be a crime not to taste some of it myself.”

“Now that's what I like to hear!” Scootaloo winked and gladly shuffled up to a second bowl being laid down in front of her. “Ponyville's chief animal tamer is proud of herself for once!”

Fluttershy blushed rosily, but she amazingly didn't silence herself, instead exclaiming, “Maybe after the meal, you would care to play a game of 'Go Filly?' I bought a new deck the last time I visited the toy shop in downtown Ponyville.”

“Erm... Apple Bloom's the one who's good at card games, not me.” Scootaloo took barely a quarter of a glance at Fluttershy's joyous features and in a fitful breath sought to immortally preserve them. “But I'm willing to learn! I wouldn't mind showing her a trick or two the next time we hang out!”

“Hehehe—I don't know many tricks, necessarily...” Fluttershy nervously tip-toed around the bubbly recesses of her soul. “But I would be glad to share some of my expertise. Angel isn't exactly a cheerful opponent to bounce strategies against.”

“Heh, I imagine not—Whoah!” The orange foal ducked yet another miscellaneous projectile and barked, “Not now! Your mommy's made soup, ya fuzzhead!”

“And then maybe we could—” Fluttershy paused in mid-grin. Her yellow features suddenly and frighteningly sunk into a wretch of dismay. With flicking ears, she spun a worried look over her shoulder and gazed into the gray miasma of rain outside the cottage.

“Mmmm?” Scootaloo hummed while sipping more broth. She gulped and sat up straight. “Miss Fluttershy? What's the matter?”

“I thought I heard... I thought...” A flurry of hooves: Fluttershy shuffled up to the windowpanes, squinting out into the downpour with hard blue eyes.

“Fluttershy... ?”

She gasped. The windows were slammed shut in a blink. Spinning about, the pegasus spoke in a suddenly thick voice: “Scootaloo, stay inside. Do not come out until I tell you to.”

“Why? What's the matter?” Scootaloo hopped breathlessly up on all fours, blinking rapidly. “Is it a flood or something? A tornado?”

“No. None of those. I... I just need to go check on my storehouse really quick.”

“You have a storehouse?” Scootaloo started to trot forward—

“Stay put, Scootaloo!” Fluttershy half-hissed, a shade of the “stare master” bubbling up through her vocal cords. “I assure you that this is no joke. I... I-I will be back shortly. Wait for me.”

“But Fluttershy—?!”

“Wait for me.” Fluttershy flung the door open. With a deep breath, she scampered out into the wetness of the darkening afternoon. The door floated shut with an eerie creak, and suddenly the soaked world beyond crackled with an infernal gaggle of curious sounds, all of which had been a harmless hum just a few naked minutes before the cartaker galloped out with sudden and alarming fright.

Scootaloo became aware of a sudden pounding to the world. It took her a few hobbling seconds to realize it was her lonesome heartbeat. A sour smell filled the quiet reaches of the cottage, like a rotting barn in the middle of a forest. With a forlorn gaze that became clearer the closer Scootaloo trotted towards a reflective windowpane, the little filly stared out into the billowing world, searching for a single golden shade of her temporary guardian. All she was awarded with was emptiness, like something hollow in the earth, begging for white stone.

“Please...” Something eight years old but eight thousand years true murmured out from her inexplicably shuddering lips. “Don't leave me.” A gulp. “Not you too.”

It was then that a gurgling thunder filled the air surrounding the cottage. Scootaloo explosively shrieked—violet eyes twitching—for she knew that it wasn't the storm that had erupted just then. It was a growl.

She mewled with a pathetic weakness that stabbed herself deeply to hear it. “Fl-Fluttershy?!”

She spun around. “Yes, Harmony?” She blinked and looked down at what was being held before her. “Uhm... What is that?”

The time traveler beamed, grasping a telescope and two crystalline rocks in her grasp. “This is our Capricorn, Miss Fluttershy!”

“Erm... It... It doesn't exactly look like a Capricorn, Miss Harmony.”

Harmony blushed slightly, but did not lose her proud smile. “I guess what I mean to say is that it's our ticket to finding the Capricorn! Tonight is not going to be another fruitless night of searching, Miss Fluttershy; I can promise you that. I can promise Colonel Rutgut that too, if she weren't so friggin' busy getting high off the sound of her own voice.”

“'Captain Redgale,'” Fluttershy meekly corrected for the infinitieth time. “J-just how did you come upon acquiring these... erm... contraptions? I haven't seen you leave the cottage all day.”

“Glad to be of service, M-M-M-Miss Fluttershy!” Derpy Hooves' voice chimed to the roof and floor of the afternoon-lit cottage. She smiled as she teetered to a stop before the caretaker while shouldering an emptied mailbag. “And you don't have to sweat anything! Miss Bon Bon was more than happy to get these things off her hooves as soon as I told her it was for a Royal Rescue Mission!”

“Rescue Mission?” Fluttershy's face twisted and twisted. She turned and looked helplessly at her “royal” assistant. “I don't remember ever ordering anything from Bon Bon's store. Will the Canterlotlian Clerk reimburse her for these things?”

“Yeah, sure, why not.” Harmony was busily adjusting the metallic sliders of the telescope, disassembling it with a flurry of expert engineering hooves. She tongued the corner of her lips as she tinkered, fumbled, and mercilessly manipulated the equipment in her lone corner of the cottage. “I just gotta put the finishing touches on all this stuff, and then we'll have our key to finding the friggin' star creature that's been hiding from us—Come on, you dang little—” She smacked the telescope until a glassy lens fell offensively to the floor. “Ha! There ya go. Now to shove you in there...” She stiffly crammed one of the crystal rocks into the hollow of the copper mechanism.

Fluttershy bit her lip under half-a-dozen forming sweat bulbs. A pale hoof patted her on her shoulder.

“You're lucky to g-g-g-g-get such regal assistance from Her Majesty!” Derpy chirped. “Why, if I had a Canterlotlian squirrel of my own to follow me around, I'd get my deliveries to Trottingham done in half the time!”

“Yes, well, I suppose some of us are blessed half of the time—” Fluttershy paused in mid-speech, blinking. “A Canterlotlian what, Miss Hooves?”

“Muffin!” Derpy suddenly beamed as she trotted across the homely interior towards a little unicorn on the plush reading seat. “Why is it every time I so much as look at my pride and joy, she's got her nose stuck in a b-b-b-book? It's like the pages will sprout flowers any second! Heeheehee! Mommy made another funny!”

“Yes, Mother,” Dinky murmured with a thinly shadowed gaze. After sighing, she further droned, “You made another funny.”

“If you would excuse me, Miss Hooves, I'm late with chopping Angel some fresh carrots.” Fluttershy excused herself and shuffled into the nearby kitchen. “I'll be right back.”

Even if the mailpony's eyes could look at Fluttershy, she didn't bother aiming them her way. With a half-hearted nod, Derpy sunk down on blistered knees beside the reading seat and placed a gentle hoof on her daughter's shoulder. “What's eating at my Muffin, today? Just last night, you were so excited to get Twilight Sparkle's new book. What's the matter? Is it full of astro... astron-n-n...full of space stuff you already know? I swear, your Mommy's always making that mistake. I'd buy you a whole library if I could make things easier. Heheheh...”

“I love the book, Mother,” Dinky said with a passing smile. With another cold breath, she gazed into the golden afternoon as if it could die under a wall of rain any second. “It's a very helpful almanac of all things celestial, and it serves as a good history primer to boot.”

“Then perhaps my Muffin has a fever?” Derpy exclaimed with a mock gasp. Eyeing opposite edges of the window frame, she sat up and felt the unicorn's blunt horn. With a pivoting smile, she uttered, “Certainly feels like the compass needle is pointed north! Drink a glass of milk and call Doctor Derpy when it p-p-p-p-points south. Heeheehee!”

Dinky's lips curved slightly, but a stone weight was pulling the edges of them down. “Did you know that, since the initial Celestial Exodus at the end of the First Age, the cosmic trail of Epona's spirit has spun the constellations around the Equestrian Solar System an estimated five hundred times over the last several millennia?”

“I... erm... eheh... Wow! For once, something is flying over Mommy's head and not the other way around!”

“Some scientists say that at least two dozen stars have died out in the last three hundred years alone. In a bold astronomical study started in Canterlot, several ponies are claiming that they can predict the lifespans of the stars that make up the trailing end of the Northern Eponal Band. For the first time in recorded histories, scholars of pondyom are claiming to track the death of a Goddess.”

“That's... erm... huh... That's awfully d-d-d-d-depressing stuff for a book about stars and planets. You mean to say that this is the stuff Twilight gave you to read?”

“So many ponies in the scientific community were quick to angrily discount these scientists,” Dinky said in a learned voice, mumbling. “It's amazing that, even to this day, an equine's instinct is to defend Goddess Epona, even though she left the planet. She left all of us. Do you think that's why it's always the mothers of a household that feel compelled to take care of the family...” She gazed up with twin yellow eyes suddenly quivering in an undiscovered childishness. “...while it's always the fathers who leave?”

Harmony looked up from the suddenly unimportant task in her hooves. Her lips parted as a gray-hued monologue from earlier sparked a fiery guilt that compelled her to watch... and listen.

Derpy's eyes pivoted further away from each other under sickly lids. The pale mare bit her lip, gulped, and tried smiling as she said, “Oh, Muffin, it isn't always the d-d-d-daddies, it's—” She winced, hissed, and shut her eyes. A grumbling hum was missiled into her insides. The gray pegasus smacked the dense skin of her own forehead with a frustrated hoof before forcefully summoning clearer words from her desperate lungs: “I give you those books to learn, Dinky, to get smart... to be a smart pony. And I know you can be smart, Muffin, in so many ways that your Mommy c-c-c-can't. But...Nnngh...” A hint of a snarl: the mailpony clamped her hooves briefly over her forehead, hissed through the next few half-thoughts painfully, then calmly produced: “But even being the sm-sm-smartest pony can't give you all the answers. Mommy knows that...”

“Sometimes, Mother, I wouldn't mind being dumb, if only it would mean I could know those things,” Dinky murmured.

“Who told you that? Who—nnghh—who told you to think someth-th-th-thing like that?”

“Nopony! Mother, I was just—”

“Oh Muffin... My Muffin...” The gray pegasus hooked a forelimb around the petite unicorn's body and nuzzled her cheek against her side. “There are so many mean ponies in this world that will say bad things, because they don't know who you are. They don't know how precious and special you can be. That's why I bought you all those books, so you can show the likes of them that you're b-b-b-better than what they think of you, what they think of us.”

“And I appreciate that, Mother! What I meant was that I only wished to—”

“You're so precious to me. You're my precious M-M-M-Muffin. When you're my age, I don't want you to be like me. I don't want you to feel like you're lonely and d-d-d-dumb, just because the world makes you think that. You deserve so much more, Dinky. You're the target of my ador... adora... adora-ra-ra...”

“'Adoration,' Mother.” Dinky murmured in a soft, melancholic smile. She softly nuzzled the space between the mare's eyes with a dainty horn. “It's 'adoration.'”

“Mmm... Yes,” Derpy murmured. She kissed the unicorn's forehead and nestled her child in the crook of her shoulder as she gazed off into infinite shadows. “Yes it is...” Her eyes were crooked, but a pair of blossoming tears aimed true towards the ground.

The two ponies formed a heart-shaped splotch of gray against the warmth of the cottage atrium, like a bubble of ashen clouds. Briefly, Harmony's gaze flew through the horizons of the two, until all too swiftly Derpy coughed away the billowing mists of somberness and hoisted the blonde unicorn in her forelimbs.

“What say Mommy flies us both to Sugarcube Corner? Let's see what Auntie Pinkie Pie has baked today! You can't get sweets from books, can you, Muffin?”

“Heeheehee...” Dinky dangled and smiled placidly. Her voice was a placating song at the end of a nameless funeral. “Okay, mother. Okay.”

“Heeeeeheee...” Derpy inhaled a deep giggle and planted the little foal into her mailbag before prancing out of the cottage with the unicorn in tow. “Good luck with the Capricorn, Mister Squirrel!” She nodded towards the last pony. “See you bright and early in the m-m-m-m-morning!”

“Yeah,” Harmony murmured after them. “Sure thing.” She watched forlornly as Dinky's dangling eyes passed beyond view of the cottage door, like blistering yellow headlights of a gray airship passing through the fog, and then was swallowed up into dismal thought. For a moment, she wondered if Capricorns were the only unlucky creatures to have fallen from the night's sky.

It took Fluttershy's dainty presence to once more summon warmth into the empty room. “Huh?” She wilted and breathed. “Did they leave already? Oh, how I do hate missing good-byes.”

“You can say 'hello' to somepony forever and still never get to know them.”

“What do you mean by that, Miss Harmony?”

“Nnngh... Nothing. Just briefly... briefly distracted,” Harmony said with a cough. Shuffling on re-energized limbs, she motioned towards the manual construction of the telescope-to-rock abomination in her lap. “I'll have this thing whipped together in a jiffy. Then we can see about accomplishing the task that last night lost to us.”

“Uhhm... Okay...” Fluttershy gulped. “Might I be so bold to ask just what this 'thing' is, and how a 'jiffy' will inspire us to find the Capricorn?”

“It was something you said that gave me an epiphany, Miss Fluttershy.”

The caretaker's blue eyes blinked. “It was?”

“The creature feeds off of starlight, right?”

“Yes, I do suppose I implied that.”

“Then I've got just the thing to lure the creature out of hiding.”

“If you insist.” Fluttershy limped towards the doorframe. “I suppose we must make haste, then—”

“No ma'am.”

Fluttershy nearly tripped on her pink mane. “No?”

“We wait...” Harmony glanced up with sharp amber eyes as she slapped the finishing touches onto the roughly augmented telescope. “...until dark.”

Fluttershy's yellow coat paled. She hissed through chattering teeth: “D-dark?”

“What? You thought stars come out in the daytime now?” Harmony slung the telescope over her shoulder and stood up on four limbs. “I mean—where have you been, girl?”

“I... uhm... I just had to go and check on something.” Fluttershy smiled sheepishly, all the while dripping a fresh puddle of rainwater as she stood in the cottage door. “Please forgive me for the brief interlude.”

“Brief?!” Scootaloo barked, her violet eyes bright and her features incredulous. “You were gone for half-an-hour! I was almost scared you drowned in all that rain or something!”

“Nonsense!” Fluttershy summoned a contrived giggle. “I most certainly would not have... h-have... haaa-haaaa—” She sneezed like a wet firecracker into the muted air half a centimeter before her. She produced a shuddering breath, a sniffle, and then once more bore a plastic grin as she slogged her way towards the warming fireplace. “I was in no danger of drowning, Scootaloo, I assure you—”

“Then just what were you doing?” Scootaloo scampered breathlessly across the cottage after her. “One second you ran out into the storm, and then I hear this growling noise, and then it's like the world is ending cuz I haven't heard a peep from you and I dunno if I have to call the weather flier team to come clear the stormfront just so Ponyville can conduct a search for their suddenly missing animal tamer and—and—and—“

“Oh Scootaloo, your concern is most endearing, but I was fine.” Fluttershy tried in vain to stifle her shivers as she held her hooves before the fire, breathing deeper and deeper into the warm glow of the hearth. “I simply had to go check on the storehouse. I thought there might be—”

“What? What's so important about the storehouse that you had to go give yourself a Mule's Shower?”

“Scootaloo, what have we talked about rude stereotypes?”

Scootaloo sighed. “You worried me, is all, Fluttershy. Could you at least... I dunno... explain what's so important about the storehouse?”

The yellow pegasus took a deep breath and glanced forlornly across the amber blazes before her. “It's not just the cute creatures that I take care of here, Scootaloo. A lot of Cloudsdalian Animal Tamers rely on my services for when they need special materials for wildlife taming across the rest of the Equestrian Valley. To that extent, I've had a wooden shack built here that acts as a supply house for oats, animal feed, frozen fish, and several other things other animal tamers come for from far and wide to acquire at random moments. Lately... uhm... I've had something or some things exiting the edge of the Everfree forest that... well... that are taking a severe interest in the contents of my storehouse. It's nothing dangerous, really—I just would hate myself if I let anything unnecessary happen to the stuff that the other local animal tamers so desperately need.”

“If it's nothing dangerous, how come you had me promise to stay inside like some horrible tornado was about to hit us!”

“Just a precaution, Scootaloo. I take babysitting as seriously as I take the feeding and care of my precious animal friends.”

“So that's what this afternoon has been?” Scootaloo blinked with sudden haughtiness. “An exercise in babysitting?”

“Uhm... Er...” Fluttershy bit her lip with a slight blush. “I would like to think that after all of these months, I've grown beyond the need of 'exercising' in that department.” Her eyes flickered. “Eeep! But I didn't mean to insist that—”

It was too late; the damage had been done. In a fuming gait, Scootaloo marched firmly towards the rain-drenched doorway of the cottage where her scooter was lying, glistening, waiting for its homeless soul to take arms again.

“It's okay, Miss Fluttershy. I get it. I'm tiny and frail. I don't have the strength to look out after myself, never mind the fact that I can burn circles across Ponyville faster than any other pegasus my age, flightless or not, under rain or shine!”

“Oh Scootaloo! Please, don't go! I didn't mean to suggest that—”

“Don't get me wrong, Fluttershy. I'm more than thankful for having had a shelter from the rain and for being given your delicious soup. But if this is all because you think I'm not able to handle the storm on my own, then don't let me burden you and take advantage of your kindness.”

“It's no burden at all, Scootaloo!” Fluttershy left the delightful warmth of the fireplace to scamper wetly after the foal. “Please—I just wanted to give you a warm and pleasant afternoon! I mean, with your parents gone for the weekend, it was the least I could do—”

The orange foal's wings coiled tight. Scootaloo didn't entirely mean to snarl. Regardless, the front half of the cottage rattled from her voice as she spun and said, “Miss Fluttershy, I would have been fine on my own! I'm sure my parents know that! Don't you see, not everypony is weak and helpless!”

The rattling stopped, and once more the rain's hissing roar drifted into the cottage, filling the empty home with a wave of shadows that the foal hadn't realized were always there until now... now that Fluttershy's face had melted, now that her pink mane fell around her like a wet veil, now that her body pivoted about in a sullen trot that dragged her back towards the suddenly dim fireplace.

“Oh... Well... I understand that, I do suppose,” Fluttershy murmured in a voice that had somehow lost its melody. “You're right, Scootaloo. You're not weak and helpless. You've very strong, and I should have known better than to question that. I... I'm sorry...”

Scootaloo stood halfway out the door to a very cold place, familiar in its destitution. She lifted a pair of shivering hooves from the frigid surface of her scooter's handles, staring at her forelimbs as if they had been stained in blood. She bit her lip and glanced at her anorexic reflection in the rain-slicked metal body of the mechanism, the one thing she afforded herself to hug in the dank dark nights of her foalhood, until her body secretly wished she could fold the wheeled thing inside her orange self and become one with the strong yet mindless machine that could effortlessly whisk her flightless wings away from every setting sun that bit her with lonely, starving shadows. Suddenly, being strong didn't seem so rewarding, not in a world that also paid sweet and fragile souls with the same degree of apathy and desolation.

Fluttershy had descended into a fragile slump beside the fireplace. She was navigating the fathoms of her third or fourth sigh by the time that a tiny orange shell sauntered up and plopped down beside her. Blinking, the caretaker glanced over with curious blue eyes. “Scootaloo...?”

“Meh...” The girl folded her limbs and frowned into the ashen corners of the hearth. “It's too friggin' wet out there. I don't want to get mud on my scooter.”

Fluttershy's smile was crooked in all the right places. “You've been dirtied before.”

“Yeah, well, I don't feel like being dirty tonight.”

“You're more than welcome to wait the storm out until morning, Scootaloo.”

“I know, Fluttershy.” Scootaloo choked on something. Whatever it was, she didn't pretend to know. There was the sound of something sniffling, and she gazed further away from the caretaker. “I know.”

Fluttershy smiled. Over the few next minutes when she gently nuzzled Scootaloo, the orange foal didn't budge. The mare couldn't have been more thankful.

“Miss Harmony, may I ask you something?”

“Have at it.”

Fluttershy gazed demurely upwards from the dark floor of Everfree as the two traversed the bowels of the forest under nightfall. “Why are you going so far to help me?”

“Uhhh...” The time traveler carried the telescope and rocks over her shoulders. She playfully navigated the crest of a wry smirk and simply replied, “Because it's my duty?”

The caretaker's hooves dug into the earth as they strolled further through the dark foliage. “I've never known the Court to care this much for the welfare of a mere animal tamer. The Princess is a fabulously generous pony, but even she can't afford to pay so much attention to an individual citizen at the extent to which you've been assisting me.”

“Yeah, well, last time I checked, the Princess wasn't here. You and I are here. And you know what else isn't here?—The Capricorn, that's what. But I think we're about to solve that little conundrum, huh?”

“Miss Harmony...”

“We just need a break in the trees. C'monnnnn Starlight!”

“Miss Harmony, please, do tell me why you are doing this.”

“There once was a pony who told me something...” Harmony tongued the insides of her cheek as she scanned the forested ceiling with twitching amber eyes. “It had to do with the spirit of something that worked in a circle...”

“Uhhm... Wait, are you insisting that—?”

“There we go!” Harmony grinned devilishly and squatted beneath a purplish splotch of Equestrian starlight shining on the grassy floor. “Time to make or break this night.” She rolled the telescope over her neck and tossed it Fluttershy's way. “Here, hold this.”

“Eeep!” The yellow pegasus nervously flinched, juggled the instrument, and then held it in shaking hooves. Before she could so much as spot her reflection in the metallic finish, a crystalline rock was being held directly in front of her face, similar to the one that had been lodged in the fat end of the telescope.

“Ever seen one of these before?” Harmony asked, waving the twinkling gem before the caretaker's face.

“It's a star prism,” Fluttershy said with a nod. “According to legend, they're constructed from nothing else but the actual tears of Goddess Epona.”

“Mmmmhmmmm.” Harmony nodded. “Brave pegasi explorers forged these from crystalline dust found floating at the distant north pole of the earth, close towards the cloudless break in the atmosphere which Canterlotlians like to call the 'Point of Exodus.' It's believed that Epona's essence left these behind when she departed from Equestria—and the whole world for that matter—after the Sundering of Consus.”

“So it was a star prism that you had Miss Hooves procure from Bon Bon's novelty shop?”

“Yup.” Harmony nodded. “I dunno about you, but I can't help but stop and marvel at the beautiful silliness of it all. The world is covered with the remnants and fossils of Gods and Goddesses that once walked among us.” She turned the rock around in her grasp. “There may come a time in the future when all that was once sacred in this world will be gone.” A deep breath. “But no. That's not this time...a time when you can pick a piece of the magic of Creation up off a shelf and carry it in your hoof like a loaf of bread. A wise pony once told me 'It's a wonder to be alive.' With each passing minute in this place, I can't help but believe her.” She turned and smiled at Fluttershy. “So do forgive me if I'm so bent on helping you, Miss Fluttershy. It's all I can do to keep myself from screaming in delightful hysterics.”

“If that is a star prism in your grasp, Miss Harmony, then suddenly I think we have the edge we need in our search,” Fluttershy said with a gentle smile. An optimistic hope was already rising toastily through her yellow cheeks. “If I am not mistaken.”

“You bet your silken mane, girl! Watch in awe!”

The scavenger from the future flew up to the fractured edge of the Everfree forest canopy. She raised the gem into the purple haze from Epona's shimmering Exodus beyond. For a dozen seconds, it appeared as if nothing was happening. Then—in an exponential increase of bedazzlement—the gemstone fluctuated from deep within. Sparkling bolts of energy danced all around it, as if the distant stars had fired a volley of fireflies downward from the heavens, all of them collecting within this tiny jewel in the pegasus' hovering grasp. Soon enough, the thing pulsed like a living lantern, strobing softly and casting kaleidoscopic bands of multi-colored light across the many tree trunks and leaves of the otherwise darkly shrouded Everfree.

“It's... It's beautiful,” Fluttershy obligatorily murmured.

“I would hope so,” Harmony wryly returned, twirling the now-glowing prism in her grasp.

“Now that you have captured the starlight, what is your plan?”

Harmony floated down and gestured with her black mane. “Hold the telescope out if you will.”

Fluttershy obliged, positioning the cosmic spyglass horizontally.

“Mmmmm... Andddddd... Now to line it up just riiiiiight...” Harmony pivoted the small end of the instrument towards her and slowly... slowly brought the pulsating rock towards it. “Eh... Eh-yeah... aaaand...”

The star prism flickered suddenly, and a beam of light was sucked through the telescope and drawn into the identical rock wedged into the fatter side. The thing suddenly became an illuminated spyglass, casting a wide swathing beam of stardust across the black lengths of the Everfree Forest.

“Voila!” Harmony grinned proudly. “We have ourselves portable starlight!” She emitted a girlish giggle. “Ohhhhh Nebula, I love stupid things that work!”

“It's... It's certainly quite the spectacle,” Fluttershy murmured, watching with mesmerized blue eyes as a purple halo of light danced across the forest, turning the black shrubbery into cosmic radiance with a divine contrast that rivaled day and night. “Could this really be enough concentrated starlight to coax the Capricorn out of hiding?“

“There's only one way to find out, Miss Ponyvillean Animal Tamer,” Harmony said with a proud wink.

Fluttershy stared back at her. Instead of wilting or blushing or demurely deflating in any fashion whatsoever, she stood up straight and took charge of the situation. Her yellow features furrowed into a concentrated squint. “Follow me.”

Harmony obeyed her anchor, pivoting her end of the glowing ensemble as Fluttershy navigated the womb of Everfree with renewed determination. The two pegasi lit the forest floor up before them, forcing various dark and chirping things to scurry away as they burned a cosmic path deeper and deeper, tracking Fluttershy's professional instinct. All fears and trepidation about the dark and misty place melted under their firm hoofsteps as they fought to outrun the limited illumination available to their rock-laden instrument.

Soon, even the crickets' song dissipated as all things daring to live through the night bowed down to their mutual crusade. With Fluttershy leading, the two waved the effluent shades of Epona across the untouched wilderness, rejoining the breath of a Goddess with a landscape left to the devices forever and cyclically emulating her.

It was barely a naked thirty minutes into this trek when Fluttershy suddenly halted the progression. “Wait!”

Harmony breathlessly skidded to a halt on copper hooves. She blinked over the twinkling aura in their grasp. “What is it?”

“Do... Do you see it?” Fluttershy murmured in a hoarse voice.

“See what?”

“Right in front of us, Harmony.” The yellow pegasus pointed to a dark impression alongside a beaten path of bent grass blades. “Besides the bushes and the hollow log.”

“But... Miss Fluttershy, I'm pretty sure we passed by that place two or three times yesterday.”

“Nevertheless...” The caretaker's blue eyes narrowed. She motioned back with her pink mane. “Harmony, let us aim the light this way.”

The last pony nodded. Rotating the rock and the looking-end of the telescope, she hinged sideways from behind Fluttershy's flank.

Fluttershy stayed put, allowing the illuminated part of the spyglass to swivel towards the left. The grass turned purple as the swath of starlight burned over it. As soon as the dusty, cosmic aura settled upon the dark impression in the earth, a twitching thing materialized into view. Like an inside-out effigy burning into existence, a skeletal structure illuminated via frothing red bands, then ballooned outward into translucent flesh before finally coalescing into a weakly breathing hide made of fur, scales, and an endless fountain of bleeding stardust. With a sickly bleating sound, the Capricorn's face came into view. A pair of pearlescent teeth gnashed in the night, then fell under a weighted snout towards the ground, kicking up dead leaves as a pair of ivory-bright eyes teared with lonely nausea and agony.

In a burst of magic, the two rocks on either end of the telescope shattered. All of the starlight that had been pulsing through them had shot like a bullet into the hungry frame of the limply sprawled creature. A pale blue glow fell about the landscape as Harmony nervously brushed the ashes and chunks of prism pieces off of her.

Fluttershy, however, did anything but stand gawking in one place. “Oh my... Oh my Oh my Oh my Oh my!”

She galloped forward and slid to a stop on her knees, cradling the twitching neck of the large, limp creature. The cosmic entity groaned and bleated deathily as the pegasus turned its pale head gently about, her expert eyes examining the shredded ends of its white coat and the two twinkling horns upon its crown. A pair of cloven hooves—bleeding white comet trails—painfully kneaded at the ground beside Fluttershy as the specimen stirred pitifully under her featherlight ministrations.

“This is so horrible! You poor thing! You have suffered for so long! If only we had found you sooner! Don't worry, we're going to take care of you! We're going to make sure you get the rest and nourishment that you deserve!”

The creature bleated again. Its glowing eyes blinked slowly like burning bubbles of lava. Every other second, the creature's brow furrowed painfully as bolts of energy did a lightning dance between its two pristine horns. With a pained groan, the thing's lower half thrashed and slapped at the loose soil in the form of a thickly scaled fishtail.

Fluttershy couldn't help it. Her eyes watered. With a sniffling shudder, she pressed her forehead to the end of the creature's snout. Somehow, the gesture temporarily soothed the convulsions of the groaning beast, far more than any words in the Celestial Tongue ever could. With a stronger breath, Fluttershy stood up and murmured across the blue haze of the forest clearing. “Miss Harmony, we must be quick. This noble animal must be taken back to the edge of Everfree now, while it's still nighttime.”

Silence.

Fluttershy blinked. She turned about, gulping. “M-Miss Harmony?”

Harmony was staring. She thought that this would be the first time she'd be staring at a Capricon. She was wrong; she had seen it before, this cosmic and starlit creature—brimming with magic—that possessed the upper torso of a goat and the lower body of a fish. She had seen this, lost in the deepest and blackest pit of the Wastelands, where black vines of horrifically barbed thorns had crucified it to a granite wall... along with the corpse of Fluttershy. Fluttershy's dead body was strung up next to this pathetically absurd thing, and here the time traveler had just helped the innocent caretaker of Ponyville waltz right into the forest to find it. The blue aura dancing around the whimpering creature even mimicked the pallid light wafting out from the gaping maw of a giant angry bear. The Wasteland Survivor would gladly have given her pitiable flesh to the consuming jaws of timberwolves and the burning flame of phoenixes if it simply meant avoiding this—

“Harmony!”

Harmony jumped in place, glancing across the suddenly frightening forest with the amber imitation of a nerve-wracked foal.

The ghost of a stare master was in her face, pleading: “We must make haste! We have to save this creature's life!”

“Save... Save its life...” Harmony gulped, and under Fluttershy's direction, she grabbed the opposite end of the creature and began hoisting it southward with Entropan limbs. If this was destiny, the time traveler wanted to sob. “Save it... Save it all...” The last pony murmured listlessly, her body bathing in the blood of stars.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Everdizzy

The Capricorn stirred and squirmed under the lanternlight of Fluttershy's manger where it lay in a disheveled bed of hay. Several various foodstuffs rested in an array of dishes before its snout, but the endangered animal refused a single bite. Its ivory eyes glossed over as it panted wiltingly into the night, where the dangling stars above did little to re-energize its heavy limbs and tail.

A hardened pair of blue eyes scrutinized the torturous lengths of this creature, until finally—with a toss of her gray-scarlet mane—Captain Redgale stood up and muttered towards the cold night air, “It's dying.”

“You would say that,” Harmony droned, glaring from where she stood in a lean against a wooden stable behind the elder pegasus. “Is that your best prognosis?”

“I doubt that Miss Fluttershy here could provide a more encouraging second opinion, without the risk of forcing inaccuracies.” The off-ruby Cloudsdalian half-snorted. “Isn't that right, child?”

“Yes, Captain Redgale,” Fluttershy predictably murmured in a deflated voice from where she sat on folded hooves beside the groaning creature. “It is severely dehydrated. Its system has been starved of cosmic starlight for so long that even the night sky isn't feeding it. We... uhm... We'll be lucky if it lasts until morning after all that it has been through.”

“This is just like the one case twenty years ago with the Scorpius that was discovered having fallen onto the rooftops of Fillydelphia,” Redgale muttered, trotting around the Capricorn while giving it disinterested looks. “The apartment tenants who discovered the creature thought that it was a monstrosity; so they wounded it and left it—abandoned—inside the deep, dark alleyways of the city. Lo and behold, once the city council had discovered the unfortunate beast, it was too late to nurse it back to health. Oh, how I hate to see history repeat itself—”

“Oh come on!” Harmony barked with a frown aimed the Captain's way. “Don't compare Ponyville's chief animal tamer to the likes of a bunch of impoverished thugs with arachnophobia! Fluttershy here did her darnedest over the course of several days to find this creature, and with no help from you, much less any dang City Council!”

“What surprises me, Miss Harmony of Her Majesty's Esteemed Service, is that it took her so long to do just that! These are hardly the grimy back alleys of Fillydelphia! Miss Fluttershy here has had several years to make herself acquainted with the lengths of the Everfree Forest. For once, an endangered creature falls into her backyard—of all ponies—and the best she can do is deliver it to its grave!”

“And what surprises me,” Harmony spoke with a poisonous smirk, “Is that you obviously have a record of something like this happening before. So maybe it was in Fillydelphia where a cosmic creature once fell to its death. So what? I bet it took the entire city council days to figure out that focused starlight was the means to finding it, huh?”

Captain Redgale said nothing. Her lips clenched tighter and tighter as the seconds following the copper pegasus' bold inquiry burned away.

“Well?!” The time traveler hissed. “Did you ever think to share that tidbit with Fluttershy any? Or maybe you just wanted her to fail from day one!”

“Harmony...” Fluttershy murmured—

“Was that it?!” Harmony further growled.

“Any of the devices that the Cloudsdalian Commission has at its disposal, so does Miss Fluttershy.” The Captain gazed cooly across the lantern-lit manger at the “Canterlotlian Clerk.” “The Ponyvillean Caretaker's competence has been fully tested, Miss Harmony. When and if you report your observation of this to Her Majesty, I'm sure you'll find that she will be in perfectly logical agreement with me.”

“Oh, sure.” Harmony scoffed with a bitter chuckle. “And all that test took was the blood of one near-extinct creature.”

“Everything that lives eventually bleeds, Miss Harmony,” the Captain spoke in an off-ruby glaze. “Our sole job is to maintain this equilibrium, not to change it.”

“Why you smug, arrogant, heartless—!” The last pony marched the length of her sneer towards the elder pegasus.

Fluttershy stood in the way, staring. “Your assistance has been most appreciated, Miss Harmony.”

Harmony blinked, her lips parting. “But... B-but Miss Fluttershy—“

Fluttershy twirled with a silken swish of her pink tail and stared painfully up at the elder. “Captain, as always, I defer to your expertise, and to the authority of the Cloudsdalian Council. What would you have me do with this poor creature?”

Redgale stared ambivalently at the anguished shape occupying a good half of the hay-strewn manger. “Your facilities here are replete with medicinal herbs and natural anesthesia, I presume, child?”

Fluttershy blinked. She breathily made to utter something sharply, but soon deflated upon the serrated point of contemplating it. With a wilting voice, she hung her head obediently. “Yes, Captain Redgale.”

“Then you already know what needs to be done.”

“Yes, Captain...” Fluttershy shuddered. She gazed sadly at the slow rise and fall of the creature's starry ribcage. “I shall see to its... to its ease of passing.”

“Very good, child.” The off-ruby mare brushed a few straws of hay off her hooves and trotted indifferently towards the edge of the manger. “I will admit: you do have a gift in aiding weak things. As for the nature of this latest... example of your 'talents at work,' we shall discuss it on a much firmer date—Sooner than later.”

“That's it?” Harmony blinked in disbelief. “After all that work, we're just going to let this thing croak—?”

“And you.” Redgale glared directly into the pegasus' amber eyes. “I expected more from the likes of Canterlot's elite! You should have been a stronger example to the mare you were charged with observing. This field of work she's in: it takes more than frivolous compassion. It takes tenacity, without which...” She pointed at the lifeless Capricorn decaying dustily before them. “Things like this can happen. Alas, these are the lessons we must all learn with age. Maybe someday you'll grasp this, but I can't presume to hope. As for now, farewell.”

With a burst of hot air, the Captain took to the skies, and returned north towards the star-shaded haze of Cloudsdale. The two ponies were left with the shadows of death, festering beneath them in intermittent bleating sounds that shook the shells of their souls.

Harmony shut her eyes. For once, the perpetual snow and ash inside her mind was a welcome reprieve from the muted tragedy bleeding before her. When her vision returned, she blinked to see Fluttershy having padded over towards the horned cranium of the stirring beast. With a soft breath, the caretaker laid herself down beside the neck of the Capricorn and gently nuzzled it, murmuring melodic words of comfort that vibrated with the strings of somepony's twenty-five years of empty dreams.

It drew the breath out from the last pony's lungs like a low, whimpering scream. “What... Wh-what are you going to do now, Miss Fluttershy?”

“I'm going to be here.”

Silence. Harmony finally realized that Fluttershy had answered her. The copper pegasus cleared her throat and prodded further. “For how long?”

“As long as it takes,” Fluttershy murmured. Her blue eyes were like opposite ends of a rainy horizon as she stared into the cloud of the creature's cosmic effluence. “I have all the ingredients to make the process painless for it... But nothing to make it swift.”

The last pony glared into the shadows with a sigh. “Isn't that always the way it is?”

Either Fluttershy didn't hear her, or she was too busy formulating a proper way to say: “When you write to Princess Celestia, I do hope you have the grace to mention that Captain Redgale has only ever meant to inspire me to greatness. I know that you have your own convictions, Miss Harmony, but despite the way it looks, this creature's life was completely an incidental tragedy. There was no sabotage involved.”

“What are you getting at?” Harmony squinted at her.

“You have done so very much to help me, and I am exceedingly grateful, Miss Harmony. But you need not stay any longer. Your work is done; mine is just beginning.”

Harmony stared into the abyss that was the hazy blue space between Fluttershy and the spasming death that she was cradling in her hooves. The melodic lengths of the caretaker's voice yet again adhered to the last pony's beating heart, so that she mewled in a foalish breath that resembled an orange shadow trotting down a ghostly set of stairs somewhere.

“I don't want to leave you, Fluttershy.”

A pair of sad blue eyes darted her way.

Harmony gulped and reiterated, “I do not want you to be alone in this. I mean it.” She produced a painful smile, and then in a voice that could mold glass: “Not after your Captain has abandoned you, not after Cloudsdale has ignored you, not while...” She bit her lip, then whimpered, “Not while you're so alone.”

“I'm not alone, not really. I'm just—” Fluttershy stopped in mid-sentence. She turned and gazed suddenly with a solid pair of stone blue eyes, taking note of the sparkling bolts shimmering between the Capricorn's twin horns. “Hmmm...”

Harmony blinked. “What?” She squinted harder, shuffling towards the animal caretaker. “What is it, Miss Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy continued studying the creature. Her yellow hooves gently stroked the rigid contours of the electrically brimming horns. A blue-violet aura lingered just a few anguished centimeters from the bleating creature's face. Nevertheless, the hulking cosmic entity breathed slightly easier under the porcelain touch of the graceful animal tamer.

Fluttershy's voice was a pindrop, and yet it shattered the silence like the bow of a battlecruiser. “Do you truly wish to assist me, Miss Harmony?”

“Anything, Fluttershy! Name it.”

“If you would be so kind as to gallop quickly into my cottage. There is a desk positioned against the wall opposite to my reading seat. Please do me a favor and grab a book entitled A Third Age Study in Cosmic Zoology and bring it back here, if you would.”

Harmony saluted like an age-old rainbow soldier and dashed off. It was halfway through her night-lit canter that she faltered briefly, assaulted with the brief fear that she might incidentally trot her way beyond the limits of Fluttershy's anchor. Her venture, however, took her harmlessly into the depths of the caretaker's house beyond the manger. There was no risk of green flames as she swiftly lifted the aptly titled book from its wooden shelf and rushed back. She wondered if perhaps the size of Fluttershy's heart allowed the time traveler to fly loops around the moon and not be thrown back to the Everbriar of tomorrow. Harmony knew better than to bother testing that notion.

When she returned and hoofed the book over to Fluttershy, the animal tamer immediately flung the dense tome open to a chapter located halfway through the dusty forest of pages. Her blue eyes swept through paragraph after paragraph as she exercised the skills of an avid scholar. All the while, she held one hoof up to her side and gently stroked the twitching cranium of the terminal creature to her side.

Minutes went by, consuming half-an-hour from the quiet misery of the dimly lit manger. Harmony began to stir uncomfortably, expecting something to melt to dust at any moment. She couldn't tell which would crumble first, the Capricorn or the discovery that Fluttershy was evidently about to make.

It was finally with a fractured breath that the yellow pegasus deflated from her hard-skimming of the book. “It is as I feared,” she stonily murmured.

“What, Miss Fluttershy?”

“I had my suspicions, but I wasn't entirely sure of myself until you brought this book to me.” She sadly gazed the Capricorn's way, staring pointedly at the thing's glowing horns. “Thank you very much for your help, Miss Harmony. But... But I really think you would do yourself well to leave.” She sighed sadly and nuzzled the edges of the stirring creature's neck. “Dear Gultophine, have grace and mercy...”

“I don't get it!” Harmony cackled. “What's going on, Fluttershy? Can't you at least give me an idea? What could possibly be worse than this thing dying?”

“You are a very sympathetic pony, Miss Harmony, though sometimes you do not possess the grace to express it. You needn't worry about my task at hoof.”

“It can be our task if you just let me, Fluttershy!”

“This was never your burden to share,” Fluttershy droned in a somber tone. “It's hard enough to bear the brunt of two deaths, much less one.”

“But you're going to need somepony to—” Harmony dropped off in mid-sentence. She blinked, and her eyes burned suddenly with hardened amber. “Wait... What do you mean 'two deaths?'”

Fluttershy stroked the goat-like mane of the whimpering, glowing Capricorn with silken hooves. “Captain Redgale was right. This creature won't make it past the following day. But the Captain's years of working as an intermediary for the Cloudsdalian Commission has made her forget the finer details of animal caretaking. It is important to take into account any and all details of the lives under our observation.” She gently brushed a hoof towards the sparkling pair of horns atop the creature's head. “See its crown? See the blue sparkling energy dancing between the bone structure?”

“Uhh... Y-yeah?”

Fluttershy stared back. “She's pregnant. Her body's fluctuating with the need to discharge her infant in the form of energy. She came back to earth to go into labor. But someway—somehow—something intervened, and she fell.”

Harmony didn't realize she had fallen down to her haunches until she felt a crater of hay fluttering to a stop around her legs. “She... Sh-she's foaling?!”

“Was foaling, Miss Harmony,” Fluttershy melancholically explained. “The book you fetched for me provides a detailed explanation. This creature's propagation is nothing at all akin to the process that ponies go through. Capricorns—much like Ursas and Scorpia—reproduce by replicating their body patterns in the form of energy. Since they were all created on earth, they must migrate back to the planet's surface and find terrestrial mana crystals that can reflect the energy of their offspring long enough for them to materialize in the flesh. After months of development, their flesh grows with cosmic energy, and they can join their families in the stars, completing the natural cycle.”

“Then... It... It needs these mana crystals...” Harmony thought aloud, her head painfully swimming through her thoughts left-and-right. “They're in Everfree, I'm guessing! That's why the Capricorn landed here of all places?”

“Mmmhmmm...”

“Then... Then let's go fetch some crystals! We can—I dunno—get it to zap its baby into the things and save it from—“

“It's far too late for that, Miss Harmony. Look...” Fluttershy gently turned over a lengthy flank of the stirring creature's fish-tail, revealing a wide swath of scales that had been seared brown as if from a giant hot iron. “At some point during its speedy trip to earth, a cosmic anomaly of unknown proportions mortally wounded the creature. It cannot deliver its child naturally anymore.”

“What do you mean by 'cosmic anomaly?'” Harmony blinked.

Fluttershy went on: “And even if it could deliver its young, just a hoof-full of mana crystals would not do the trick.” The yellow pegasus sadly shook her head. “It would require an entire cave lined with the magically attuned material to allow for a naturally energized foaling.”

“And Everfree has caves like this?”

“It's long been assumed so.”

“Then what if we—I dunno—dragged the fishgoat to one of those places and let nature run its course?”

“You mean move her now? In this condition?”

“Isn't it worth a try, Miss Fluttershy?”

“No, Harmony. It's not.”

“But—”

“This heavenly creature was doomed to die—its child in tow—long before it even touched the ground from its fall,” Fluttershy gravely said with finality. “Do not let its immense size fool you. The book here describes Capricorns as terribly fragile creatures. I'm amazed that it has stayed alive as long as it has. If we had found it three days earlier, there still would have been nothing we could have done.”

Harmony winced, gnashing her teeth as she suddenly avoided looking at the moaning beast. “All this time that your beloved Captain Redgale was here, you knew this, didn't you?”

“I... I had my suspicions, yes,” Fluttershy somberly admitted. “I almost dismissed the idea, until I saw the creature's horns up close. There is no denying it now.”

“Okay, so you had your suspicions,” Harmony groaned inwardly, buckling under a brief twinge of anger. “You suspected that there was more tragedy here than the old bag-of-wind could possibly see, and yet you said nothing to her?”

“This is a very dismal scene that we have been granted the solemn grace to witness, Miss Harmony. I... I had no intention of making it more dismal than it already is.”

“Even if the truth could have excused you in Redgale's eyes?”

“It's not that simple—” Fluttershy bit her lip, then re-uttered: “It's never been that simple with the Captain. I cannot expect her to see what I see, not all the time. It... erm... It doesn't matter. All that matters is that I must see to it that this life here comes to an end peacefully, and not drowning in the sorrow that this poor creature is undoubtedly comprehending. To lose a child is the worst pain I could ever imagine—and to multiply that by the loss of one's own life before being able to grieve such a tragedy...”

Fluttershy inhaled painfully. Her eyes glistened as she came down the crest of that liquid breath. She gave Harmony a forlorn glance..

“So, as you can see, your presence as an observer is no longer required. This... This is hardly the dazzling side of my job as Ponyville's animal tamer. But... But it is so terribly real, nonetheless. I... I'm sure that Princess Celestia knows all she needs to about death and loss.”

“Maybe so.” Harmony nodded, then in a breath that superseded her Entropan voice, she remembered just how old she was. “But I need to know about it.” She walked over softly and sat down on the other side of the creature opposite of the caretaker. “I'm staying with you, Fluttershy. And with them... Both of them.” Her hoof gently stroked the white mane of the twitching creature. For a brief moment she forgot the dark thorns of the future that anchored a chimeric skeleton such as this one to a stone wall of desolation.

Fluttershy's gentle smile was appropriately haunting.

Even the most epic of good acts was easier said than done.

Accompanying the throes of a pitifully dying creature was a job fit for a Goddess, much less two mortal ponies landlocked by the endangered specimen's constant, rattling moans. As the night bled slowly onward, Fluttershy murmured various words of comfort into the beast's shimmering hide. The two mares could only imagine that the Celestial Tongue held merit in the animal's twitching ears, while they were both helpless to measure the hollow significance of its own bleating cries.

Minutes stretched into hours; hours stretched into blinking eons. The lantern of the manger had to be replaced several times. Under Fluttershy's directives, Harmony made even more trips into the inside of the cottage to acquire medicines, herbs, and various tools. The liquid miles of the anguished evening would ever so randomly be punctuated by the thrashes and kicks of the creature's hooves or fishtail—and then everything smoothed once more into a quiet hum of lingering pain and confusion.

When Spike had first reunited with Scootaloo and offered his “gift” of green flame, the last pony didn't quite know what to expect. She had lived a life of death—of witnessing a gigantic landscape turned into a virtual cemetery of ashen fossils—but actually being seated in the past along the front row of death's rattling dance was one thing she hadn't anticipated, for all of its bleakishly messy textures, like this disheveled hunk of stardusting meat that lingered before her and failed to go quickly beyond the black curtain of night.

It wasn't that Harmony pitied this shell of an animal. As the droning hours limped by, she shuddered to so much as look at the thing. The closer Fluttershy got to it, and the more she nuzzled and murmured to it like a distant kin, the clearer and clearer the last pony saw a sea of thorns encapsulating the two of them, like dead twins strapped to the same umbilical threads of the future, where all fates shared one womb and one womb alone... and there was no sign of Epona's brilliance to be found anywhere in the pitch black reality of it all.

Just what did this creature mean—in the manger, or in the Everfree Briar? If Fluttershy and this Capricorn were together at the moment the Cataclysm hit, did that mean that the creature would actually live past this long and fitful night? Would an Ursa Major find them both in each other's hooves—like an owner and its pet—and drag them both to the same unmarked grave in the festering abyss of tomorrow?

Harmony's breathing suddenly sharpened, for she knew that she was thinking too hard. She was forcing logic down avenues where it did not belong. As Fluttershy's breaths slowed to an oozing pattern that matched the terminal wheezes of the creature against which she was cuddling, the last pony could only see one plausibility burning its way towards her like a constellational creature hurdling towards the earth.

Perhaps it was not the Cataclysm that ended Fluttershy. Perhaps it was the immutable will of time for the Capricorn to die—and the yellow pegasus as well—right here and now.

With stabbing pinpricks of spear-laden thoughts, Harmony instantly dove back into the dammed up pools of her painfully clogged memories, and all she saw was a curtain of gray afternoon rainwater surrounding her last memories of Fluttershy like some infernally thick prison. She hadn't realized she was hyperventilating until she saw the straws on the manger floor dancing from her heaving breaths.

On stumbling, Entropan hooves, the last pony limped numbly around the full length of the cottage and all but collapsed inside. Under candlelight, the filly's knees and joints wobbled. Her wings weighed a million kilograms. Even if a million timberwolves were chasing her in the future, the sensation would not make her collapse like she was wanting to right then and there. Ignoring the burning sight of a wooden stairway to her left, Harmony lurched through a space of floorboards still kissed with the blue haze of a phantom table and flung a hoof into a thin wooden door...

...that opened to the first floor bathroom.

“I'll be out in a sec!” Scootaloo called over her shoulder.

“Take your time, Scootaloo.” The yellow shade of Fluttershy could be seen adding more logs to the fireplace. Then the door shut on her like a passing dream.

Alone, the eight-year-old slumped in darkness. A guilty cloud coalesced over her shoulder, colored with the frowns of a violet-haired foal that had nearly taken off on a scooter twice as cold as the rain pelting the bathroom windows behind her.

The dimly refracted light of the dying afternoon danced across the pony, so that she was suddenly swimming in a sea of dull, ivory shadows, like bleached white stones in front of a barricaded mine shaft.

The young soul winced all the harder. Stifling a weak breath, she dipped her hooves...

...into the sink before her, splashing cold water over the gasping lengths of her copper features. A breath shuddered, like so many groans that had bled out of the lips of a dying Capricorn, the chimeric harbinger of Fluttershy's crucified remains. Black thorns encrusted the the peripheral of Harmony's eyelids, so that she instinctually reached up to push away goggles that weren't there, and a tiny bright shadow mimicked her.

Amber eyes bulging, Harmony looked straight ahead. Her hooves parted a slick wet black mane, and soon she was staring into the face of an exiled Goddess. In place of an Alicorn's horn was an amber streak of hair. It shimmered in the mirror...

...like a hollow reflection off of a granite obelisk, dancing with names-names-names that flickered off the black surface of it along with so many shadows of the refracted raindrops blanketing the shadowed bathroom walls.

Scootaloo stammered, her heart palpitating as she swam down the etched names, searching for the ivory-winged pair that still spurred her stubby legs into a blazing gallop, even when she was standing still. But beyond her reflection was a darker aura, something that scared the rain shadows into hiding like shrouded lightning strobes beneath an eternally black cloudbank.

With a trembling breath, she stretched a tiny orange forelimb...

...and raised it to the numb shell standing beyond the glass. For the first time in three decades, another pony was actually looking at her, and not this foreign shell encasing it. Harmony shuddered under the sensation, her knees buckling as her hoof closed the gap between her projected soul-self and the cold kiss of the reflection that scoffed at her with each clock-ticking-second wasted in the hovel of some learned purple dragon that was waiting for her in the past, in that Spike was waiting in the future, but the future was just as predictable as the past—and yet the past was something of color and spontaneity and mystery that stuck the last pony with pins and needles much like this moment of...

...breathless confusion that drowned the foal, that froze her—with every centimeter of her hoof contacting the glass wall that barred her from her every dream ever, encapsulated so weakly in this banal ghost of a pony that she was trying so terribly hard to outrun, outgrow, outlast. And yet this shadow followed her, echoed her on every shadowed sojourn into the abandoned hovels of Ponyville where she thought—and wished—that her sobs would be heard by her and her alone, and not by this stranger from beyond who was leaving a large ringed smudge...

...from where her Entropan hoof had pressed thoughtlessly against the mirror. Harmony blinked and pulled her forelimb back, gazing at the ghostly familiarity of the solid ring within which a foal's grasp could easily fit.

Her heart was beating ten thousand kilometers per minute when the ice first started creeping down her copper temples. In a panicked breath—her lungs full of black thorns—she spun back towards the door. Her copper wings bumped into a shelf along the wall, knocking something over. There was a dainty crashing sound.

The last pony looked down—panting—to see that a porcelain rabbit had shattered across the bathroom tile. A breathless whimper escaped...

...the foal's lips as Scootaloo spun from the circular smudge in the mirror and stepped in something. Glancing down, she saw the ivory fragments of a snow-white bunny figurine spread across the floor. She all but collapsed back into the front room on teetering limbs, summoning a curious gasp from...

...across the atrium. A furiously sweating Harmony flashed wide-amber eyes upwards. In her bobbing vision, she saw a yellow ghost of a pegasus lying on a green chair in deathly slumber. An orange shadow was burning down the wooden stairs towards it, one thunderous hoof at a time.

Squealing, the last pony blinded herself from the sight with Entropan hooves, hobbling on two back legs until she fell fatefully through the front door of the cottage and rolled—sprawling—onto the lawn's springy grass, dancing with invisible monarch butterflies in the warmth of Cheerilee's schoolyard. Her ears roared beyond a Goddess' heartbeat with the frozen rain of an undying golden afternoon, so that she forced herself to fly an airship past the gray ashen shadows—like a screen of moonvision—and beyond them the briar thorns stretched bloodily and blackly, tying the past and the future together like a dead sun and moon, and no matter how loud she wanted to scream and pound against the hard metal surface, she knew that Rainbow Dash was never going to hear her from the flames beyond the arcane vault.

In a hissing breath, the last pony rediscovered her center and hugged it—like she hugged a cold scooter to her bosom on so many fitfully freezing nights—and the snarl that came out of her scared the leathery bodies away from her mind just long enough to reopen her twitching eyes once more to an alien night sky that lingered in purple surreality above her.

“Keep it together... Friggin' keep it together! I've battled hydras... I've hunted down Goddess-forsaken timberwolves... I'm stronger than this... Stronger!” Her wheezes had no merit, like a dying mother giving birth to an unsung eulogy under cold and apathetic lanternlight. “Dang you, Spike. You should have told me that there would have been side effects... You should have friggin' told me that there'd be danged side effects to all this... this... this!”

She shivered, all alone—always alone. The past and the future made no difference, spread no different a shade on her endless sojourns. She had floated down into the blackest Briar of the Wasteland alone. This frolic through the past was no different. Even if she danced rings around Fluttershy's lamentable form, she would leave no imprint on her immutable fate. When the pegasus' body would finally be unhinged from a dead wall of stone, it would be by decapitation and pulverization in the presence of an Ursa Major, like a big blue exclamation point at the end of the biggest joke in Equestria, and the last pony would never... never give it the grace of being laughed at.

“Nnnngh... And you did tell me, Spike.” Harmony hugged herself tighter and shivered under the piercing starlight, as if her soul was being pulled inside out from the forest's shadows, the harbinger to a dreadfully heavy remembrance. “Somehow... You did... You told me everything.”

She was suddenly too tired to cry.

Her legs still wobbling, Harmony stood up with a sigh and slowly, slowly trotted back towards the manger. She decided on a whim to go around the side of the cottage opposite of the direction from which she stumbled, as if the only way to solve a paradox was to obstinately circumnavigate it counter-clockwise like an infant's hoof stubbornly pushing back the minute hand of time.

And then—in yet more pins and needles of fate—Harmony stumbled upon something. Beside a hauntingly familiar storehouse there rested a pile of lumber, within which a few planks of wood stabbed the soft meaty parts of her soul with curiosity, like pearlescent inquisition. With amber eyes narrowing, the last pony numbly strolled forward for a closer look. There was a reason for why those lonesome planks of wood looked familiar. As her gaze fell deeper and deeper upon the blue finish still painted over them, she remembered a warm night—a night of guilt and a night of glory—that perpetually sang across the hollow edges of her soul, reminding her she still had one.

“Hmmmph...” Harmony smiled a pale smile. “Fluttershy: pack rat or saint?” Blinking, she turned towards the manger and limped over to find out which was the truth. After gazing at the soundly sleeping form of Fluttershy—draped silkily against the wincing shape of the Capricorn in an angelic embrace—Harmony got her answer.

It was a golden enough sight to solace her. Soon, her head was spinning in a new circle—a softer circle—and it rolled with the locomotive words of comfort, the one piece of Celestial Tongue that could usher a mythological beast peacefully into the great beyond. On whisper-quiet hooves, Harmony rummaged through a wooden trunk in the corner of the manger. She acquired a few basic carpentry tools, blanketed in dust and cobwebs from years of feminine reticence and neglect.

Shuffling back to the woodshed, Harmony carefully pulled out every blue piece of lumber she could find. Then she laid each fragment side by side in the star-kissed dew of the grass aside Fluttershy's cottage. Seating meditatively before it, Harmony focused on her golden anchor, and—with a little help from a lonesome shadow seated in a claustrophobic airship's cabin somewhere—she set herself to work, tool-in-hoof.

“Small things. One at a time. Thattagirl...”

Fluttershy's eyes twitched open. When they did, the dim kiss of sunlight stabbed her deeply. She shot up with a gasp—only to have a pair of copper hooves gently embrace her shoulders from behind.

“Whoah... Whoah, easy, Miss Fluttershy. It's okay...”

“But, I fell asleep! Oh dear—The Capricon—!”

“It's okay,” Harmony said, then bit her lip. “Erm... Well, what I mean is... you haven't missed anything.” She gestured towards the still-stirring form of the starry creature occupying the haybed of the manger. “You haven't slept on the job, so to speak, Miss Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy scooted over, wincing through a throng of stiff muscles, and gently stroked the frothing white mane of the beast. “Has it been experiencing any pain? Does it need more medicine—?”

The “Canterlotlian Clerk” slowly shook her head. She sat solemnly in the fading shadows of the other two bodies in the waxing kiss of dew-laden day. “If that was the case, I would have woken you sooner, Miss Fluttershy.”

“I... I see...” Fluttershy murmured. She continued to gently stroke the wheezing creature as she tossed a tangled curtain of pink hair out from her brow. “I hadn't expected it to last this long. It's such a brave... brave creature.”

“It's had very delightful hospice up to the end,” Harmony said with a fragile smile.

“I don't think it's that, necessarily,” Fluttershy ever so humbly remarked. A painful gulp. “Let nopony ever underestimate the power of a mother's will.”

Harmony shifted uncomfortably. She brushed aside an amber-streak of her mane and murmured, “Miss Fluttershy, you said it yourself: the creature was doomed before it hit the earth. It has to give up sometime.”

“I know, Harmony.”

“We... We cannot pretend to give it hope.”

“I know. But... But I suppose it's not her hope that I am thinking about. I just...” She bit her lips. With a shuddering sigh, Fluttershy gazed beyond the creature's bleeding stardust to say, “I... I have always dreamed of someday being a mother.”

Harmony gently smiled. “How come that doesn't surprise me one bit?”

“It's always been a deep, deep wish of mine.” The caretaker breathed. In a soft voice that cradled the creature's twitching ears, she said, “Nothing fills me with more joy than to look after precious and fragile things, to bring them into this world, to bestow them with all of the things I have learned, to bless them with all of the hopes and aspirations that I could expect them to live up to.” She gazed over her shoulder at the “royal clerk.” “I... I really think that is why I have such a talent with taking care of animals... and occasionally Miss Hooves' delightful little foal.” A passing smile, then she gazed off into the shadows. “It's all just an extension of the same dream... of perpetual motherhood.”

Harmony wasn't thinking. After all, the last pony didn't believe she needed to think for what she said next: “Why don't you do it, then?” A hopeful grin. “Why don't you become a mother, Fluttershy?”

The caretaker's ears drooped. She drowned herself once more with the sight of the dying Capricorn's starry essence.

Harmony's eyebrow raised quizzically. She leaned her head to the side, as if a sharper angle of the yellow-coated pony could somehow render an explanation.

Fluttershy's voice had a hollow echo to it when she finally said, “Let's just say... it takes more than a fall from the cosmos to shatter a dream, Miss Harmony, no matter how heavenly.”

The last pony wilted from that. She wanted to pierce the issue, to dig deeper just like she was so darkly burrowed into that moment. Try as she might, she couldn't. The hush of the blossoming morning stretched her eyelids to the extreme, and all she could feel was... weak and helpless.

Just then, there was a monumental roar. The manger shook and shuddered as the Capricorn suddenly thrashed, kicking hay about while its ivory-white eyes exploded in a blistering new vitality.

“Good heavens!” Fluttershy gasped, clasping her limbs over the creature's hide in a desperate attempt to anchor it down to the floor.

“Whoah—What gives?” Harmony gasped, her gaze dashing left and right in a sudden panic that mimicked Fluttershy's reaction. “Is it dying? Are these its death throes?”

“I can't explain it! It's like she's suddenly got a new surge of energy!” Fluttershy leaned down to hiss and coo whispery sounds into the spasmatic creature's ears; it did not pacify it.

Harmony bit her lip. Black thorns flickered across her amber eyes like ghostly shadows through moondust. “What if... What if...” She gave the creature's goat-head a fitful glance, taking notice suddenly of several blue sparks dancing between its porcelain horns. “Miss Fluttershy, what if it's giving birth?!”

“Impossible!” Fluttershy sputtered. “There would have to be an object nearby capable of being enchanted! If you do not believe me, consult the book!”

“What about that mana-crystal stuff you were talking about last night? Maybe she found it?”

“From this distance? Dozens of kilometers away from the central caves of Everfree? I'm telling you, Miss Harmony, it simply is not possible!”

“Then what the heck's gotten her thrashing about?!” Harmony pointed a shaking hoof towards the increasing storm of energetic sparks between the creature's horns. “I'm no zoologist, but that sure has heck looks like cosmic labor to me!”

“If that was the case, then she's using her every last ounce of strength to discharge her infant's unborn spirit into a nearby mana battery! But that would mean—” Fluttershy froze, her blue eyes shrinking into sapphiric pinpricks. Clasping the Capricorn's shivering fishtail, she flashed a sweating expression up towards the copper pegasus. “Harmony! What time is it?!”

“I... I don't know...” Harmony wracked her brain, pacing in circles. “The Sun rose up two hours ago. I was watching you and I lost track. Why, what are you thi—?”

“Good M-M-M-M-Morning, Miss Fluttershy! We brought breakfast!”

Fluttershy gasped as if the ghost had left her. The Capricorn stumbled onto its front cloven hooves, its jaw lurching in a shuddering wail. “H-Harmony!” She pointed a hoof out beyond the walls of the manger towards where the chirping voice had emanated from. “Fly out there! Stop them! Make them turn around!”

“The heck?! Fluttershy, I don't get it! What's—?”

“Dinky!” Flutttershy literally snarled. “Get Dinky away from—!”

All sound in the room suddenly drowned beneath the epic roar of the Capricorn's skull lighting up in a blue cyclone. Harmony's amber eyes reflected it as she burst forth a knowing gasp: “Oh hoarseapples!” In a copper blur, she soared out of the manger, wings slicing the morning air.

“Hey look, Muffin!” Derpy Hooves grinned wide as she trotted up the beaten path towards Fluttershy's cottage. “A welcoming p-p-p-p-party!”

“Oh?” A tiny, helmeted unicorn cutely yawned from where she was perched in the mare's mailbag.

“Miss Hooves! Miss Hooves—!” An airborne pegasus shouted, flailing her copper legs as she hurdled murderously towards the pair.

“Hi, Mister Squirrel!” The wall-eyed pegasus cheerfully waved back. “Do you like doughnuts?”

Dinky suddenly squinted, her educated eyes reflecting a bright blue glow from beyond the grassy knoll. “Uhhhm...” She shrunk nervously into the leather folds of the bag. “M-mother...?”

“Dang it, Derpy!” Harmony snarled against the beating wind of her flight. “Turn around! Go back! Get her away from—”

An explosion. A bright blue beam of magic energy shot directly through the side of the manger.

Harmony spun around, eyes wide. In a heroic breath, she lunged her Entropan body directly into the path of the cosmic discharge. With a crackle of star-laden thunder, she was suddenly being plowed seven meters through the exploding earth, for the Capricorn's beam had knocked her aside. Her vision briefly blurred in emerald tongues of madness, and once the hazy horizons of the past had miraculously coalesced back into existence around her, she found her world rocked by a perpetual wailing sound, haunting enough to drive a world of gray ash into hiding.

Hissing, Harmony struggled up to her haunches. She was rubbing a green-smoking forehead just as a series of galloping hooves arrived at her side.

“Miss Harmony, are you all right?” A melodic voice dripped into her ear, followed by soft forelimbs that grasped her shoulders.

“I'll live to die another day.” The scavenger from the future grumbled. In a dizzy spell, she glanced aside. “The Capricorn...?”

Fluttershy exhaled. “Deceased. As soon as that energy billowed out from her, she gave up the ghost. Her body is now a pile of cosmic dust in the manger.”

“Dust, you say?” Harmony's numb soul was no stranger to sudden elation, though it would be short-lived. “But... But what about—?”

Fluttershy's gasping shriek was the firmest answer the last pony could hear. “Oh, dear Celestia, no!” She shot forward.

A tired pair of amber eyes followed her, then widened at the sight of a burnt crater, to the side of which a tiny helmet rested—smoking—with a great hole having been magically blown in the center of it.

Harmony's twitching gaze rose up the lengths of a shivering gray pegasus, cradling in her forelimbs the quivering body of a unicorn foal, her tiny horn shimmering brighter than the Sun as Dinky's mother desperately held her. The child's eyes were blisteringly bright, shimmering from within, carrying more heat than ten thousand Harmony boilers could ever fathom achieving. Steam kissed the air as the foal's tears instantly evaporated, and her lips mumbled an indecipherable constellation of words as she convulsed and shivered in endless spasms.

“M-M-M-Muffin? Oh, my darling Muffin, speak to me! Please!” Derpy glanced up, blanching breathlessly as the winged mare grayed even further, stammering: “Miss Fluttershy, what in Nebula's name is wrong with her? What was that bl-bl-bl-blue flash of light?!”

“Oh no no no no no!” Fluttershy fought back her sobs as she clasped the unicorn's cranium in two twitching hooves. She had to squint to so much as look at the faint edges of the foal's strobing horn. “It's just as I feared! Worse than I feared!”

Harmony stumbled up, panting. “You mean to say that the creature's friggin' unborn child is inside her horn?!?”

“What?!” Derpy nearly wretched. “What creature? What unborn child?! Miss Fluttershy, what's wrong with my daughter?!”

“All of the energy has stored itself in her horn. But it's not enough to contain the Capricorn essence!” Fluttershy gulped and shivered to speak. “Not even an adult unicorn could maintain such pressure! A pony's nervous system isn't equipped for it! It'll collapse in on itself with the force of a hundred shattering leylines!”

“What... Nnngh... Miss Fluttershy, what does that mean, exactly?” Harmony's gaze hardened against the shimmering spectacle between all three worried pegasi. “Is Dinky's horn going to explode?”

“No, Harmony.” Fluttershy's voice dripped under a tearful pair of eyes. “Dinky is going to die.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Everdaring

“Scootaloo, are you feeling alright?”

“Hmm? What?”

“I was asking if you were feeling alr—”

“Oh! Oh, yeah. Ahem. I'm just fine, Fluttershy,” Scootaloo murmured as she fought brief dizziness and squatted on folded hooves before the fireplace of the caretaker's cottage living room. Outside, the world grew dimmer and dimmer beneath the cascading hush of the rainstorm's silk screen. “Why are you asking?”

“You looked a little dizzy as you were coming out of the washroom.”

“Oh—Pffft. It's nothing.” The foal waved with a smirk. “I'm just not used to being inside.” She took a breath, winced, and jerkingly added, “Inside of such a long rainstorm, I mean! It's almost like the weather fliers are dumping an entire friggin' ocean on top of us.”

“I was beginning to think that it was quite the deluge myself.” Fluttershy nodded. “The last time I... erhm... remember the other pegasi arranging such a surprisingly intense thunderstorm was a little over a year ago when Twilight Sparkle first came to Ponyville.”

“Hey, I think I remember Apple Bloom telling me about that one.” Scootaloo managed a tiny smirk. “Something to do with Applejack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, and a tree stuck inside a tree.”

“Uhmm... Perhaps you're right. In all honesty, the finer details are rather lost to me.”

“Could you imagine a tree standing inside a tree? That'd be like—I dunno—'tree squared' or something.”

“I wouldn't want to be that tree.”

Scootaloo smirked and gazed towards the flickering orange tongues within the fireplace. “A storm like this could wash away all of the dirt and grime from Ponyville.”

“I wasn't aware that Ponyville had much dirt and grime. I thought the mayor had done a decent job of keeping it clean.”

“Believe me,” Scootaloo murmured into the death of shadows before her. “There're filthy places in this town.”

“Oh... Uhm... Okay...” Fluttershy fidgeted.

Scootaloo fidgeted. A chunk of firewood sizzled brightly before her, splitting and collapsing into hot white clumps of ash, like brittle charcoal, or two ivory stones. “Fluttershy?”

“Yes, Scootaloo?”

“You don't think the rainstorm would wash away the memorial, do you?”

“Hmmm?” The caretaker's blue eyes blinked. Then she raised her eyebrows. “Oh, do you mean the site at Everclear?”

Scootaloo slowly nodded, her pink mane facing the yellow pegasus.

“I highly doubt it,” Fluttershy said. With a gentle smile she spoke, “That place was built to stand the test of time. It is a site that's dedicated towards the preservation of memories, as well as the honor that's forever connected to them. Nopony in their right mind would let such a location fall to ruin just because of a day or two's inclement weather.”

“Is that what a memorial is, then, Fluttershy?”

“Hmm?”

Scootaloo gulped. “Something that lasts forever...?”

The answer that followed was cold enough to snuff out the flames, but somehow the filly wasn't disheartened. The entire time, her violet eyes were locked onto the ashes.

“Nothing lasts forever, Scootaloo. But so long as everypony is committed to a memory, the treasures that make life special will last as long as we do. Could we ever ask for more?”

Scootaloo exhaled hard. “Yeah. We could ask for more.” She propped her chin down onto her hooves. “But I think most of us know better.”

“I've always believed that the key to happiness is to give more than to ask.”

“Does this have something to do with the element of 'Kindness' which you believe so much in?”

“I was going to say that it's the reason why I volunteer at the Memorial, Scootaloo.”

“But if nothing lasts forever, what's the point?”

“Because kindness is like a memory. If we sit and do nothing, all that is good and honorable about us will fade away. So, as you can see, Scootaloo, forever is always 'now.' If we just work on what's before us 'now,' in faith and in kindness, then—indeed—what point is there in fretting about the end of all things?”

Scootaloo took a deep breath. For the life of her, the flightless pegasus couldn't summon an answer, because...

...she was too busy staring at Dinky's writhing form. The petite unicorn's eyes glowed a bright ivory that rivaled the pulsating madness centered inside her quivering horn. She was being laid down on a plush green seat located towards the far end of the living room. A series of wooden steps stretched behind her, and with ghostly quiet creaks a shade of orange was wafting hazily down.

The last pony hissed and clenched her eyes shut. Rubbing a hoof over her copper face, Harmony blinked and refocused in time to see a shivering gray pegasus wrapping a blanket over the unicorn's body, struggling to hold the foal's convulsing limbs still.

“Mmmnghh... Alabaster rivers meandering!” Dinky rambled madly, hissing through clenched teeth as her brow furrowed like it was being fed through a vice. “Rotating blades upon the score! I cannot... c-cannot touch the one iris in alicornia, alertedly!”

“My poor poor Muffin,” Derpy shuddered, tears forming in her offset yellow eyes as she nuzzled the girl's mane, risking blindness from the unicorn's white hot horn. “What is she tr-tr-tr-tr-trying to tell us?”

“I don't believe she even knows what she's trying to tell us, Miss Hooves,” Fluttershy said in a forlorn breath as she rushed back and forth across the cottage. Her mane danced like a billowing pink flag as she scooped several herbs from a multitude of jars and poured a medicinal quaff out of the combined ingredients. “She's suffering from aphasia.”

“What's aph-ph-ph-ph... What's aphas-s-s-s-s—?”

“It means that she cannot properly process her words into decipherable speech,” Fluttershy said in a pitying grimace as she concentrated on the mixture in front of her. “Right now, her mind is scrambling with the force of several hundreds—if not thousands—of leylines converging on her cranium. Her horn has become a receptacle for countless magical auras, from this world and beyond. Nopony's mind is built to handle the sheer amount of information that is coursing through her.”

“And this is all because a space baby was shot into her?” Derpy asked with a quivering look of horror.

“Miss Harmony and I were taking care of a dying Capricorn. The creature was with child, and with its dying breath the mother discharged the essence of its infant in the form of energy. Dinky's horn was the only thing within range that the late Capricorn sensed was capable of housing magic. Ohhhhh...” Fluttershy slumped in the middle of her medicine gathering and hung her pink head. Wells of tears formed in her eyes as she shuddered to say, “It's all my fault! I was so preoccupied with caring for that poor suffering creature! I completely forgot that you and your daughter would be coming so early this morning! And now, because I was weak and narrow-minded, Dinky is going to... She's going to—”

“Miss Fluttershy,” Harmony suddenly spoke as she planted two strong forelimbs on the yellow pegasus' shoulder. “Just work on what's before us now. Finish making the medicine that Dinky needs. Let's all approach these issues one at a time—“

“One at a time?” Derpy gasped. “My poor Muffin is dying!”

“Miss Hooves, your kid is not dying—”

“But earlier! Outside the manger! Miss Fluttershy said—!”

“I'm sure we all know what Miss Fluttershy said!” Harmony growled, reeling on her haunches as if she was piloting the center of a hurricane laced with a unicorn's anguished cries. Fighting the brief dizziness, she stared into the foal's glow and said, “But one thing at a time, alright? You want us to fix this, then let us fix this—Nebula dang it!—Just let me think!”

The cottage rang with the rattling concussion of Harmony's shouting voice. Derpy shivered. Fluttershy silently finished the broth. All the while, Dinky's moans filled the rustic place with a deep undercurrent of agony.

Harmony exhaled strongly through her nostrils. She dug two copper hooves through the length of her amber-streaked mane until her anguished breath was finished and she mechanically groaned, “Okay. Okay... Okay, so here we've got a unicorn with a giant cosmic fish-goat baby thingy trapped inside her horn. Yes, that sucks, but if it got into her, then it can get out of her. This is Equestria, land of an Alicorn Princess who raises the Sun by the mere whim of her hooves. Not a single one of us can swing a dead cat without running into something magical of some sort or another in this land. So—nopony panic! There's gotta be a solution to this, through sheer statistical probability if nothing else what-so-friggin'-ever.”

“The medicine's ready,” Fluttershy quietly said.

Harmony nodded. “Good. Give it to the kid.”

Derpy shuffled aside as Fluttershy rushed forward on sliding hooves, squatting directly in front of the green bed upon which the unicorn twitched and stirred. “Okay, Dinky. Listen to your babysitter, Fluttershy.” She held out a sloshing wooden dish of soupy liquid. “This will help you to—”

“Nnnngh! Avian glass eye! The splitting black stare, sky slicing!” Dinky shrieked, her horn flickering hot white bursts of plasma across the room. “Hncnkkt—Punish the flock, meteorologically!”

Fluttershy jumped, nearly dropping the rattling dish as she simultaneously fought to contain her tears. After a stifled whimper, she flashed a desperate look at the mailpony. “If you would hold her down...”

Derpy nodded. With two motherly limbs, she steadied Dinky's shoulders while Fluttershy leaned in and poured a liberal amount of the herb-laden juice down the unicorn's mouth. Dinky's muttering lips paused long enough for her to swallow two or three gulps of the broth. Then, with a painful grimace, the foal coughed and sputtered, but ultimately squirmed with slightly less violent spasms.

“That's enough for now,” Fluttershy exhaled in a soft, melodic voice. She stood up and planted the half-empty jar onto a nearby stool. “It should ease some of the pain that she's experiencing in her head right now.”

“Ease her p-p-p-p-pain?” Derpy stammered. “Miss Fluttershy, we gotta get my Muffin healed!”

“There is no tool nor remedy in my cottage that can do that, Miss Hooves—”

“Then we need to take her somewhere else so she can get better!”

“I know, but there's no—”

“She's suffering and I hate to see her suffer!”

“Listen!” Harmony growled with her hooves raised. An errant beam of plasma danced across the cottage, glinting in the copper pegasus' amber eyes. She squinted and dodged her head to avoid the glare from Dinky's horn. “Fluttershy has a point. This is out of our hooves.” She breather, her voice descending to a calmer tone. “Thank you, by the way, for the medicine. She's looking better already.”

“I can only hope—”

“But she's st-st-st-st-still squirming and—”

“Now...” Harmony's voice once more consumed the volume of the room. She spoke slowly and steadily over the distant moans of the glowing foal. “We've got a town full of ponies just a brisk trot away who might be able to help us. A unicorn, perhaps? How about Twilight Sparkle? I hear she's the friggin' star pupil to a Goddess, is she not? Right there, beyond the hill, is Ponyville's and Princess Celestia's chief apprentice in the magic arts. Sounds like the best expert on freaky-glowy horns, in my book.”

“B-but Miss Harmony!” Fluttershy exclaimed. “I don't think—”

“But that's just one smart pony in an entire town!” Derpy interjected. “Why can't we fly my Muffin to Cloudsdale? I know there are hundreds of doctors and medical experts in the City Council at any given time of day!”

“That's not going to—” Fluttershy squeaked to say something.

“I've got a better idea!” Harmony pointed with a hoof. “We're all pegasi. Between the three of us—” Her amber eyes were stabbed once more with a random beam of plasma from Dinky's horn. Growling, she shifted where she stood and continued speaking, “We can fly Dinky all the way to Canterlot in a blink! It doesn't take a Court's Clerk like me to tell you that there's no better place in all of Equestria to solve a magical crisis!”

“Please! If you both would just—!”

“No way!” Derpy gasped. “I fly routes to Canterlot regularly! Even at m-m-m-m-mailpony speeds, it takes over an hour to get there!”

“Then we go into Ponyville and find a pegasus faster than the three of us combined and have her take Dinky to proper care!” Harmony shivered upon the sudden, blood-rushing thought. “Do I even need to say her name?”

“And just how do we know that Canterlot can give proper care? I'm telling you, we should take my Muffin to Cloudsdale!”

“Fat lot of good Cloudsdale will do! They've already let a friggin' Capricorn die in a manger! You think they're gonna lend a hoof to help your kid anymore?”

“No more than those bur... those b-b-b-b-burea... those dumb-heads in Canterlot—!”

“Ladies!”

Derpy and Harmony both jolted. With one and a half pairs of twitching eyes, they glanced Fluttershy's way. She blushed immediately under their gaze. After a brave gulp, she spoke up:

“There is no solution to Dinky's problem that any magical ponies in Ponyville, Cloudsdale, or Canterlot can find!” She stirred pensively. “At least, not in time. And the last thing that Dinky can afford right now is time.”

“And what makes you say this, Miss Fluttershy?” Harmony asked with a narrow gaze.

Fluttershy nervously squirmed. “Because I already know the solution.”

“What? What is it?” Derpy rushed over on twitching wings and grasped Fluttershy's shoulders. She stared desperately towards either side of the animal tamer's yellow ears. “Tell me how to save my Muffin, please!”

“Miss Hooves, your child's problem isn't a simple enchantment or affliction that can be undone with the mere application of a spell.” Fluttershy's gaze shifted towards Harmony. “Twilight Sparkle is a very gifted pony, and there are many like her in Canterlot. Furthermore, yes, there are many doctors in Cloudsdale well-versed in Equestrian medicine. However, even the most powerful Equestrian practitioner in magic or smartest surgeon in the land can't remove this creature from Dinky's horn. We're talking about the cosmic essence of a creature that has been inserted into the same junction of leylines to which Dinky's magical horn has been fused since birth. The nature of a Capricorn's soul is unearthly; not even Princess Celestia herself is properly equipped to handle any heavenly body other than the sun and moon.”

Harmony immediately balked at that with a knee-jerk cackle: “C'mon! Our Princess is practically a goddess amongst ponies! There's absolutely nothing that she can't do!”

“If that is true, then why would she need the Elements of Harmony to defeat Nightmare Moon, or the changing seasons to balance out the amount of sunlight she's allowed to bestow a given day?”

Harmony opened her mouth to respond, stumbled at the tip of her tongue, rubbed her skull with a thinking-hoof, then eventually remarked, “Still, Celestia's old enough, wise enough, and magical enough to deal with one little foal and a possessed horn, don't you think, Miss Fluttershy?”

“Our faith in the Princess is righteous, and I do not condemn your suggestions in any way. But what if we spend the time and effort to bring Dinky before her Majesty and it turns out that we are wrong to have assumed that the child's life would be saved thusly?”

“So what if the world ends?” Harmony randomly spat. She winced rightfully at herself, cleared her throat, and added, “What if anything happens that we can't predict? So? That's life! Taking Dinky to the Princess of the Sun is the best bet here!”

“I would agree with you.” Fluttershy firmly nodded and even more firmly stated, “Except that—as I said before—I already know the solution here, and it isn't Princess Celestia.”

Derpy leaned in, shuddering in desperation. “Then if it's not the Princess' place to help Dinky, whose is?”

“Mmhhhm...” Fluttershy wilted slightly. “Uhmm... Mother Nature's.”

“M-M-M-Mother Nature?”

Fluttershy gulped and gazed forlornly at the twitching foal on the green seat. “There are natural essences—instincts and forces—that have been at work in this world long before Faustmare's caravan or the rest of Equestrian civilization has ever been competent enough to chronicle them. True, the Alicorn Sisters were the ones to give nature its energy, its animation, and its law. Nowhere in Equestria is this self-sufficient drive more evident than in Everfree, and it was towards Everfree that the Capricorn was initially headed with the purpose towards foaling its infant. However, due to unforeseen cosmic circumstances, the creature could not reach its destination. Ironically, the same natural instinct that would have allowed the late mother to give birth was what made her deposit her offspring into Dinky's horn.”

“Miss Fluttershy...” Harmony trotted a few meters forward, squinting at the caretaker. “Are you talking about those caves of mana-crystals that are hidden somewhere in the forest?” She blinked her amber eyes. “Do you think that, in its death throes, the Capricorn mistook the magical essence of Dinky's horn for those rocks?”

“Mana crystals?” Derpy remarked, jittery. “What are you two talking abo—?”

“It was only following nature's way!” Fluttershy exclaimed in a defensive tone. “It did not mean to do Dinky any harm! The poor creature had spent days lying in the forest, starved of stardust, and the closest thing it ever came to that could remotely be enchanted with its infant was Derpy's child!”

“So what are you saying?” Harmony made a sick face and shrugged with her hooves. “The Capricorn thought that Miss Hooves' kid here was a friggin' cave of mana crystals?”

“What I'm saying is that nature is still at work here!” Fluttershy exclaimed fitfully. “The same impulse that drove the energy into Dinky's horn could still drive the energy into the mana crystals that the Capricorn was searching for to begin with! Don't you see, Miss Harmony? Mother Nature has had a solution to this; it always has! If we take Dinky to Cloudsdale, Canterlot, Twilight Sparkle, or even Princess Celestia, they will ultimately come to the same solution, and we will have wasted valuable time, during which Dinky will have suffered horrible brain damage or... or... mmm—even worse...”

“Miss Fluttershy,” Harmony said with a sigh, running a tired hoof over her face as Dinky moaned in the background. “You told me yourself that those caves of mana crystals were deep in Everfree, so deep that a thorough search couldn't find them in time to save the Capricorn.” She helplessly frowned into the cottage air. “What makes you think we can find those stupid caves any faster to help—” In absurdly proper timing, Harmony's amber eyes were once more stabbed with an errant beam of bright plasma. “Nnnngh! Could somepony—I dunno—put a sock over her horn or something?”

Derpy frowned towards the ceiling and roof. “I do not think my Muffin c-c-c-c-can help it, Mister Squirrel.”

“Okay, first off—I apologize.” Harmony once more struggled to dodge the shimmering beam. She snarled: “Secondly, it's high friggin' time you and I had a discussion about my lack of a bushy tail and other questionable appendages.”

“Wait!” Fluttershy gasped.

Derpy and Harmony froze in the midst of glaring at each other. Fluttershy brushed past them, grasping Dinky and slowly, gently pivoted her head. The little foal murmured and stirred under the movement, but all the while the same tiny beam of bright plasma that had randomly blinded the time traveler was persistently aiming at the same wall of the cottage, regardless of what angle the unicorn's cranium was being tilted.

“Do you both see that?” Fluttershy stammered.

“Uhhh... Yeah.” Harmony numbly nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

“Even I see that!” Derpy uttered.

“The life essence inside her horn is being drawn towards something,” Fluttershy thought out loud in a cool murmur. She blinked her blue eyes as her vision trailed the errant beam of plasma. “I can only guess that there is something outside the cottage that is a potential receptacle for the Capricorn infant, something greater than Dinky's bone structure.”

“Like another unicorn?” Derpy breathed.

“Mana-crystals...” Harmony exclaimed. In a dry voice, she flashed a glance over her shoulder and pointed towards the randomly lit side of the cottage. “Miss Fluttershy, what—roughly—is beyond that wall?”

“That's the northwest side of the cottage. And beyond that, where the beam of light is pointing, is Everfree.”

“And those caves that you were talking about, Miss Fluttershy?” Derpy excitedly panted. “With the cr-cr-cr-crystals that can save my Muffin?”

“Whoah-Whoah-Whoah-Whoah!” Harmony raised her hooves and frowned. “Nopony said that the crystals would save Dinky!”

“But Miss Fluttershy here just said that Mother Nature—”

“I don't care if she was talking about Father Winter, Uncle Solstice, or Aunt Menopause! Miss Fluttershy, we've got boatloads of unicorns from here to Stalliongrad who can examine Dinky before it's noon and give an expert opinion—”

“Miss Harmony...” Fluttershy trotted around and gazed up at the time traveler with an earnest expression. “I am Ponyville's Chief Animal Tamer, the longest and most dedicated observer to the sights and sounds of the Everfree Forest. and I am telling you... that the only way to rid Dinky of the Capricorn's essence is to go about it naturally, by bringing her to the mana-crystal caves so that Mother Nature can run its course! To attempt any other solution is noble, but dangerous, for we would be risking Dinky's life when there already is a solution, and if I may be so bold as to say it—her horn is already pointing the way.”

“But—”

“As a matter of fact, since the cosmic life-form inside Dinky's horn is attracted to a magical receptacle inside the Everfree Forest, any attempt we make to take her elsewhere—like to Cloudsdale, Canterlot, or even Ponyville—may be potentially fatal!”

“Why, Miss Fluttershy?” Derpy breathily asked.

“So long as we know where the essence inside of her horn is wishing to go, taking it in a direction opposite to that would drive the life-form deeper into Dinky's nervous system. The leylines that Dinky's magical bone is fused to would bottle up and crush her senses with it! The only healthy move we should make is to bring Dinky towards the mana battery that the Capricorn infant seeks. That way, Miss Hooves' child will ultimately suffer less!”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Derpy glanced over at the “Canterlotlian Clerk.” “Every second we waste here only m-m-m-m-makes the situation worse!”

“This... This is nuts!” Harmony squeaked like the disbelieving foal she suddenly was again. Her eyes twitched in a beam of plasma, dotting the windows briefly with rainwater before they flickered back to the bright haze of a deathly clear morning. She fought a dizzy spell, gasped, and exhaled, “Just the afternoon before yesterday, Miss Fluttershy, you could barely even stand to look at the depths of Everfree! And now you're suggesting that we march straight in there with a foal being possessed by a cosmic migraine in hopes that somewhere and somehow we'll stumble upon caves allegedly filled with mana-crystals—that nopony has ever seen, mind you—and then just expect for the magical curse to undo itself?!”

“What matters is that it is a firm and solid direction to a singular and ample solution, Miss Harmony,” Fluttershy said. “I know that I have my weaknesses, and I know that I am helpless to save Dinky in any other fashion. But I also know things, deep and complex things about animals. This is my knowledge to possess simply by the sheer experience that I have accumulated throughout the years. I do not suggest this course of action out of pride or to protect some silly ego. All I ask is that you trust me, Miss Harmony. I most certainly do not blame you for feeling hesitant. Captain Redgale surely would not believe in my strengths in this matter. But... But I had come to hope that... that you would believe in me by now, Miss Harmony, and that you would know that my idea is the best and only way to save Miss Hooves' precious child, before it is too late.”

Harmony stared at Fluttershy, her mouth agape. She blinked her amber eyes hard and ran a hoof over her face. Temporarily blinded, she saw a field of white stones, and soft yellow hooves landing in the springy grass suspended between them. The last pony forced her eyes brightly open again, only to see a breathless wall-eyed pegasus occupying the whole of her vision.

“Miss Harmony, please, I will do anything for my child! Whatever it takes to gget this thing out of her! My life, my health, my job, I'll gladly consider it all f-f-f-or... for-f-f-f-f-f... for”

“'Forfeit',” the scavenger from the future grunted, then blinked from the sight of the gray pegasus to the distant caretaker. She shuddered from their combined gaze. “And now why is everypony looking at me?”

“Uhm...” Fluttershy bit her lip and scratched the floor with her hoof. “Because... you're a Clerk of the Canterlotlian Court. Technically and legally that means that you have the royal authority to hold sway over this decision—”

The last pony blinked and turned cross-eyed. Her next breath came out in a cackle: “Oh you've got to be friggin' kidding me!” Frowning, she shoved a pointing hoof the spasmatic foal's way. “I did not come here to play guardian angel or grim reaper over a child's life! I came here to observe Ponyville's Animal Tamer and hopefully learn more about the forest for Princess Celestia! This is totally not what I signed up for!”

“Nevertheless, Miss Harmony...” Fluttershy trotted across the room just as Derpy was on the verge of a breakdown. She lovingly nuzzled the pegasus' neck and shouldered her quivering, muted sobs as she gazed with soft blue eyes towards the last pony. “It is your authority that determines what happens next. I... We will understand if you must fall back upon protocol. I too must do the same when it comes to answering to Captain Redgale and the Cloudsdalian Commission. But there is a life on the line here: Dinky's life. I implore you to think of not just the right thing to do, but the kind thing to do... for the child and for her mother.”

Harmony opened her mouth to speak... but faltered. With a savage groan, she fell back to her haunches and ran two hooves over clenched eyes. Dinky's distant moans melted into a hum, so that she was once again piloting the Harmony over the dead Wastelands to the roar of a solitary boiler at her rear. The cemetery of the future was an easy place for the scavenger to live out a lonely misery, with nopony's suffering to care about but her own.

Dinky would die. Derpy would die. Fluttershy, Twilight Sparkle, Ponyville, and the green vistas of Everfree, in all of its mystery and all of its transcendent self-sustaining wonder, would likewise succumb to the deadly and all-consuming flames of the Cataclysm. It would just be a matter of months, and everything would be the simple and monochromatic gloom that the last pony had learned to sleep to.

This was the past. To these wounded pegasi, it was a stark naked reality. To the time traveler, it was also real, but a good portion of it was also a dream, a fantasy afforded her through the numbing distance of two and a half burnt, charred decades. With a single wave of green flames, Harmony could easily “wake up” from it all. The wilting Fluttershy, the sobbing Derpy, and the moaning child would equally return to the lifeless, pointless corpses that they would forever be—for all that the last pony could or couldn't possibly care.

After all, the last pony wasn't there, not really. Neither was she lying in front of a warm fireplace, under a cascade of rippling rainwater that kissed the windows along with so many other pathetically worthless memories that danced like refracted ghosts beyond a foal's eyes that had long, long lost their violet youth and joy. There were no warm bodies, no hugging forelimbs. There were only white rocks and white names and white wings etched into a dead field of soot before the hellish mouth to a mine shaft. There was only barren stone before life, and there would only be another stone obelisk after death. Once the last pony had breathed her last breath, the only living memorial to the legacy of Equestria would be gone. Restoring the sun and moon would mean nothing to a future without spirit, without honor.

The only thing eternal, at least to Harmony, was that voice, that melodic voice that the dragon tooth in the Everbriar grave had reminded her of. It sounded like something else that was priceless, that sang with more immutable strength than the threads of time, cradling the last pony more warmly than any hammock or fireplace could. Everytime Harmony tried to feel it, to touch it, the orange shadow started hobbling down the creaking wooden steps and the lingering green seat beyond—

Harmony's eyes reopened, twitching, and—instead of a yellow shade—Dinky was lying on the emerald seat. The little foal stirred, ached, and cried. Misty tears turned to steam as her glowing eyes strobed in opposite rhythm with her pulsating horn. She murmured pointless and unintelligible things, like the worthless and unheard lyrics to a melodic lullaby quoted by a sobbing little foal in a deep mooncrater of the Wastelands, surrounded by monsters, starved of all nourishment and love forevermore.

All of life was a dream, Harmony suddenly pondered, including the monochromatic absurdities of the future. She briefly wondered if a phantom from beyond, wearing the skin of yet another unnamed goddess, might happen to crawl back on otherworldly-colored flames to visit her and Spike in the ruins of Ponyville. Would she want such a suspended pariah to turn her world of death into a happy ending, even if it was just a dream, and if the only way to wake up was to turn to ashes by a wave of Goddess-forsaken fire?

“Miss Harmony...” Once again, the melodic voice cradled her, cherished her, stabbed her. “We must have a decision, and we must have it soon.” Fluttershy gulped. “For Dinky's sake.”

Harmony wanted to wake up, to become Scootaloo once more. She wanted to tear the damnable wooden steps in front of her apart, fashion an impossible airship out of it, drag it through a curtain of green flames, and outfly an Ursa Major just for the sake of returning to her comfortably simple hammock once again. But, as she had to remind herself, this was not her past, at least it was not hers to live. This past was a warm reality to the deep and forever lost well of history, and she was the nightmare, dangling amongst the confused souls before her, dressed to look like a copper-coated lure, a false savior.

The last pony could not save these souls, and yet she could: a bitterly brief salvation. She shouldn't have been thinking so hard about this. She shouldn't have been debating the situation; she shouldn't have even been considering it. Harmony should have dragged both ponies and the child out of there, taken them to Twilight Sparkle, grabbed the attention of Princess Celestia, confessed every detail about the end of the world, and gotten what she needed before returning in a green belch to the future with no intention of returning.

In one fatal swoop, she and Spike would have crossed the gap of the dead future's mystery, achieved audience with the Princess of the Sun, discovered the curse that doomed the world, and finally brought an end to an eternity of ash and snow. And as for Dinky... as for one pathetically insignificant half-wing of an egghead pony in the quietest town of Equestria... as for one expendable and tiny soul balanced against the legacy of an entire race, an entire kingdom, an entire Fourth Age gone to ruin....

The last pony huffed and puffed. “Okay, here's the plan....”

Harmony fought an interminable groan as she hurriedly marched with iron hooves towards the edge of the Everfree Forest. The morning Sun glistened haplessly onto the flanks of Fluttershy and Derpy Hooves as they followed her in a breathless canter. Dinky was nestled in one of the pouches of the mailpony's saddlebag. The child's pitiful moans echoed against the thickening sea of green-hazed tree trunks that lit up with her horned aura.

“I'm the strongest pony here. Trust me; don't ask. I'll take point and look out for any hazards along the way. Miss Fluttershy, you're the animal expert. We'll need your expertise when encountering any nasty creatures that might sneak up on us and... uh... show us exactly how nasty they are.”

“Yes, Miss Harmony. I shall do my best.”

“If the random light shining from Dinky's horn is leading the way to the nearest cave of mana-crystals, then we're going to have to use her as a compass, so to speak. Once we've gotten a fix, we'll fly high and triangulate a position towards which we can take wing—”

“I... uhm... I wouldn't advise that.”

Harmony blinked widely. “Why not?”

Fluttershy winced. “The essence of the Capricorn is only showing us the direction towards the nearest cluster of mana-crystals because Dinky's horn has intercepted a terrestrial leyline, among other signals. If... uhm.. if we take to the sky, we risk flying outside of the range of that one mana-stream. We could lose the horn's focus on the cave's location... maybe even permanently.”

“Then what?”

“Assuming Dinky's horn fails to relocate the mana receptacle that it's currently locked onto in Everfree, the Capricorn infant will take a fatally long period of time to rediscover the mana crystals, or it may never find the receptacle again whatsoever. Then Dinky's mind will surely collapse.”

“Fan-friggin'-tastic,” Harmony hissed. “Fine. Looks like we're doing this the hard way. Miss Hooves?”

“Yes?”

“Obviously your daughter's... uhhh... 'horn-light' is the key here. Why don't you make it your job to keep your eyes on where it's shining so that we can—” Harmony stopped in mid-speech. She took a glance back, took one good look at the mailpony's not-so-good optics, and glanced forward. “Scratch that. Just keep close to your kid while Fluttershy and I examine the beacon and judge where we need to go.”

“Is there anything else I should do?” The gray mare shivered. “You two are d-d-d-d-doing so much for my Muffin, and I want to help the best way I can.”

“Just try not to fly through any schoolhouse windows on the way to the cave.”

“Miss Harmony...” Fluttershy quietly chided, blinking with brief dizziness.

“Fluttershy...” Harmony looked at her. “I need you to tell me something.” She leaned forward, then murmured, “In the best case scenario, what can we expect when or if we get Dinky to a cave full of the mana crystals?”

“The life force of the infant that the Capricorn Mother shot into Dinky's horn would exit the foal's bone structure via the same level of discharge. The mana-crystals would absorb the energy, after which the life essence would sustain itself, coalesce, and then effortlessly materialize in the physical form of the Capricorn offspring, thus finishing the cosmic foaling process.”

“And my Muffin?” Derpy whimpered with soft, lopsided eyes.

Fluttershy gulped with a sad expression. She teetered momentarily on four hooves, then breathed, then said, “If and only if we're swift enough, there will hopefully be little to no brain damage.... Mmm... If it is—as Miss Harmony puts it—the 'best case scenario'.”

“L-lightning!” Dinky murmured, wincing, hissing under glowing eyes as she reeled in the gray pegasus' saddlebag. “A mountain of irony! The dead palace has plunged!”

Derpy's face instantly wretched. She tried to nuzzle the foal in her midst, but shuddered and nearly fell on collapsing hooves. Fluttershy quickly padded over and supported the sniffling mother's weight with her silk-soft frame.

Harmony paused in mid-trot, her mind stabbed with sudden numbness. The edges of her projected soul-self tingled with green fuming embers and dissipated. She shook the bizarre sensation off, gulped, and murmured in a low voice over her shoulder. “Miss Fluttershy... Are you saying that... That when all of this is said and done, then we... we could have a brand new Capricorn materialized before us? Like... in the flesh?”

“Hopefully... Indeed so...” The caretaker managed to say while gently embracing Derpy. She glanced over with calm, sleepy eyes. “The infant may actually be healthy enough to ween itself off the crystals in the caves before taking to the heavens several months from now. But, again, we must be swift.”

The last few words were lost to the time traveler, for once again the shades of the Forest's edge were melting, blending, frothing into a blacker-than-black sea of thorns, in the middle of which—strung up by brambles and fate—were two corpses: Fluttershy's and a capricorn's. There was suddenly a third corpse gazing at the first two, far more guilty and far more infernal than a million ages' worth of Ursa Majors combined.

“Oh Spike...” Harmony hissed under her breath. With twitching eyes, she faced forward, throttled by a new and frightening numbness. “Please, for once, send me someplace that doesn't burn.” And she marched straight into the thickening darkness like a weed, dragging her hapless anchor along with her.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Evertime

Into the green basin of the Everfree Forest, the three pegasi marched with a possessed unicorn in tow. Keeping low to the grass-strewn earth, they navigated ravines, scaled earthen hills, traversed a sea of fallen tree trunks, and ducked beneath row after row of gnarled branches. The deeper they went, the denser the forest canopy became, so that a Sun-filtered miasma of green haze was gradually replaced with a deep emerald shadow that positively blinded them.

By the sheer glow of Dinky's horn alone, they managed to pierce the darkness, and with studious eyes they made sure to capture every pitch and angle of the plasma beams randomly shooting from the child's shimmering cranium. They followed the magical streams, tracing the sporadic bursts as far they could into the thick intestines of the forest. The vegetation grew messier and messier, narrowing around them in veritable tunnels of vine-encrusted opaqueness, so that the heat and humidity of the cooking afternoon formed a sheen of loose sweat and exhaustion off of their panting bodies.

As the bush-laden paths were suddenly replaced with labyrinthine drops that plowed deep into the roots of the Everfree's enormity, the three ponies were deafened by the claustrophobic echoes of Dinky's rambling voice. The tortured foal lectured about cosmic abstractions, unnameable horrors, and faceless shadows beyond the veil of limited vocabulary. Harmony shuddered to imagine that the child's inexplicably soulless tongue was the one thing painting the canvas of the green world black, so that festering vines of thick black thorns would sprout from the dark splattering paint of her words alone.

The world indeed grew bleaker the deeper as the three dropped, one after another, sliding and hopping down half-dead root structures as they punctured a forested basement that lingered coldly below sea level. It was no longer a mystery to the last pony how the Everbriar of the future could occupy an absurdly deep basin of soil-less rock. She briefly imagined that the Forest was an accident, a random hole in the ground where Elektra's hooves had stabbed the planet in a brief tantrum of frustration. Gultophine's breath had merely lingered there before swimming the surface of the rest of the world while on its crusade to bring life to bodiless stone. In the future, Tartarus would claim simply what lingered closest to it.

Harmony's mind wandered over memories, some twenty-five years old, others twenty-five hours old, and she briefly pondered as to why the Alicorn Sisters would construct a forest where so much had to die before anything could live. She was positive, from every lesson ever taught to her since foalhood, that the Sisters aided in their mother's Creation long before the Sundering of Consus, when the elements of death and discord were introduced to the world.

Fluttershy had placed Mother Nature on a pedestal, had exalted it like a deity as much as an abstraction. Perhaps Fluttershy was right about nature. Perhaps nature was eternal, an essence that inspired the Alicorns in their act of Creation as opposed to being a direct product of their divine hooves. Did that mean—then—that nature was immutable, like time? And if that was true, then did that make time—like nature—something that was eternal, something that could never have been manipulated or altered by any god or goddess even long before Princess Entropa was ever foaled in the purpose of becoming time's everlasting avatar? If that was true—if any of that was true—then maybe Princess Entropa was eternally helpless to change the course of things, like the last pony was, before and after the Cataclysm happened on its very own.

Harmony felt sick. She couldn't understand the purpose of nature, the reasoning for a force that animated all things mercilessly down a burning funnel into apocalyptic flame. It didn't take a Cataclysm to make nature absurd. Things were born only to die. In a world without sentience, this would hardly have been a crime. But there Harmony was, followed by a paling Derpy, a rambling Dinky, and a limping Fluttershy. She knew that she was leading all three ponies to their deaths, even if there was no Capricorn factor involved in the matter. Everypony in that forest, or in all Equestria for that matter, was destined to be crucified by the thorn-encrusted vines of fate, and it was all because of a series of events that had been thrown into motion by time and Mother Nature, eons before any purple dragon would discover the means by which he could hurdle a hapless soul deep into the throbbing heart of the holocaust to watch it unfold from the bleeding inside out.

Harmony shouldn't have been there. She shouldn't have been doing this. There was no point, no sense, no significance to this facade of selflessness and heroism that motivated her to hike a possessed foal in the fruitless chase of a paper moon. She was fighting time, she was fighting nature, and she knew that she could not win.

However, when Harmony looked at the mother and child, when she looked at Fluttershy, when she saw their sweating features, their blistering pains, their desperate faces with each shuddering breath that lunged them into the depths of Everfree, she knew that nopony would win by doing anything else either. Death and doom was their fate. Nature would see to that, but Harmony's presence there was anything but natural. She trotted through the forest on Entropan hooves, the same hooves that stood firmly on the ground between a storm cellar and a pale sea of trolls. Two and a half months before an infernal Cataclysm, and there was a chance—one damnably absurd chance—that these innocent ponies could experience it in peace. Nature wouldn't see to that, but Harmony could. Perhaps that was her part to play in fate.

The idea for her was hope, or faith, but it was a very thin veil of faith, like the refracted air between a warm cottage and a cold window looking out on a blistering cold rainstorm. An eight-year-old foal walked forever towards the afternoon glow, her hooves slipping on an ocean of pale white rocks. A melodic voice beckoned her from below, and she saw stairs... wooden stairs just a collapse away via an orange streak laced with tears—

Harmony hissed and shut her eyes. She skidded to a stop on numb hooves and furiously shook her head. A warm body nudged her in concern. There was a sensation, like a parting cloud of green fumes, and Harmony blinked her vision back to the dark depths of Everfree, spotting a breathless pair of crooked yellow irises blinking like oppositely swinging lanterns before her. Glancing briefly at the shimmering horn atop Dinky's crown, Harmony took a deep breath and solaced Derpy with a pat on the mare's shoulder. Derpy nodded, gulped, and trotted onwards, briefly taking point.

Harmony glanced back behind her. She squinted to see Fluttershy trailing behind, her dainty yellow legs moving with a sudden sluggishness that worried the last pony. When the time traveler and the caretaker finally made eye contact, the Ponyvillean animal tamer took a deep breath and decidedly quickened her pace, strolling past her “assistant” with a summoned strength that forced the nearby shrubbery to bow towards her grace.

A gray cloud wafted over the last pony's vision, so that the wandering form of Fluttershy's frail shape became enshrouded by black lines, like faceless monstrosities worming out from the peripheral vision of a scavenger's enchanted moonvision. Harmony could not help but think that the further they descended into the cavernous bowels of Everfree, the closer she was dragging Fluttershy's soft silken limbs to where they would fatefully form a snow angel against a granite wall beyond the goggles of a Wasteland survivor standing soul-deep in the pit of an enormous Briar.

Derpy was horror-stricken, Dinky was crumbling under the weight of madness, and a certain caretaker's job was on the line. In spite of all of those crises, in spite of all those things that could very well perish, the immutability of time ended this desperate scenario with two exclamation points in the shape of two corpses: Fluttershy's and a Capricorn's. Harmony knew very well that the second she returned to the present, an Ursa Major would likely be devouring the last pony from a dinner plate of green flames. Regardless, she could only think of the two bodies that she had found, that she was already digging a grave for with each hoofstep she was making, with each breathless excuse that she was forging to legitimize the already indomitable length of this absurd descent.

The fact that Fluttershy was visibly growing weaker with each blistering hour of the journey was of absolutely no consolation to the last pony. Then, as the three pegasi crested a sudden rise in the earth, after so many fitful drops taken down a quivering basin of soot, soil, and branches, the entire group shuddered upon a horrifically bright green sight before them.

They had stumbled upon a horizon, overlooking an enormous valley of green trees, dense foliage, and sprawling vegetation. The afternoon shine of the world stretched from east to west with this veritable eternity of Everfree life. Even from the height of an airship traversing the stale cold skies of the Wastelands, the Briar never revealed this incalculable size to the last pony. What had originally appeared to Harmony as a sea of trees from the outside had suddenly blossomed into a daunting ocean of unbridled nature. She suddenly couldn't fathom second-guessing the courage and legacy of Faustmare, nor did she care to.

It didn't help that the glances she received from Derpy and Fluttershy were utterly lacking the same surprise that was blanching across her own face. These two warm souls of the past obviously knew a lot more about what they were getting into than Harmony did, and it dunked the time traveler's black mane into a bubbling trough of shame, so that she took a deep breath and nudged Dinky briefly, encouraging another errant beam of plasma to billow from the foal's tiny, sun-bright horn.

Of course, the beam pointed downward, straight into the ocean of bone-thick trees, and hopefully towards unseen caves of mana-crystals beyond. Harmony gave Derpy a firm nod, and the gray pegasus descended first, flapping her wings briefly to balance herself as she skidded down exposed root after exposed root, scaling the earthen wall before the inevitable plunge into the endless basin of green.

“They're so huge. They could swallow us in a single b-b-b-b-bite!”

“Miss Hooves, it is imperative that we keep our voices down,” Fluttershy said hushedly as the three pegasi and the one unicorn hid low behind a thick cluster of branches. Bright crimson and blue fountains of light danced across their shadowed coats. “It'd be best if we not speak at all.”

“I've only seen the blue one before,” Derpy exhaled in a deep whisper. “It could crush an entire Ponyvillean house to dust. It almost did! I was there a year ago; I thought Equestria was coming to an end!”

“I remember that,” Fluttershy breathlessly said. Her tired eyes blinked in and out of a curtain of sweat as she nevertheless gulped and fought to stay focused on the scene unfolding several hundred meters beyond them. “Twilight Sparkle was brave enough to solace the creature, but this is the first time I've ever seen it in nature, along with its mother, no less.” She glanced aside with a nervous shudder. “Miss Harmony, in all of your Equestria-wide errands for the Canterlotlian Court, have you ever come across such a sight?”

Harmony stared and stared, her amber eyes frozen like petrified stones. Her nod was icy cold as she murmured: “Yes, I have.”

From beyond the clearing, the gigantic earth-rumbling presence of an Ursa Major made its presence known with deep bass growls as it clawed at the earth with titanium-thick claws. It was a pulsating red hulk of a beast, its crimson jaws lined with glistening fangs as it persisted in its digging task, sending flakes of dirt and rock sailing every which way like a foal tossing sand across a beach. Hobbling around this scarlet menace, bleating and mewling with the docile height of a mere twenty meters, was a blue dwarf to the gigantic bear. The twinkling of its sapphiric coat of constellations stabbed at the last pony's eyes with a haunting familiarity.

“I've seen it all before,” Harmony absent-mindedly drawled.

Fluttershy mumbled to say, “The Ursa Minor has certainly grown since the last time anypony has seen it, but it hasn't yet reached maturity. Hmmmm... Very strange...”

“What's strange?” Harmony hissed. “I mean, besides three adult ponies standing this close to an instant decapitation waiting to happen?”

“It's not like an Ursa Major to keep its cub on earth for this long...” Fluttershy thought aloud, her eyelids sleepily dancing up and down her soft yellow brow. “Typically speaking, they should have migrated back to the heavens months ago.”

“You mean like a Capricorn?” Harmony replied, giving Dinky's horn a brief, nervous glance.

“It makes me wonder...” Fluttershy said. “The same cosmic anomaly that wounded the mother Capricorn, that seared the burn mark across its tail—perhaps it's affecting other heavenly creatures as well. It would certainly explain why Cloudsdale hasn't chronicled the appearance of a Scorpius in years.”

“I thought we had Fillydelphia to thank for that golden nugget.”

“The symbol will fall and the moon will watch her die,” Dinky suddenly shrieked in a loud pitch.

Fluttershy yelped. Harmony hissed over a copper shoulder: “Miss Hooves! Dinner table voices, pronto!”

Derpy nervously clamped a hoof over her daughter's twitching mouth. She winced and scrunched down even lower with the unicorn in tow. “I am so sorry! She cannot help it! The longer we wait here, the m-m-m-more she might—!”

“Let's all just make like mules and shove oats into our holes for a spell!” Harmony sneered as she yanked herself and Fluttershy behind the thickest row of bushes.

Briefly, the crimson Ursa Major paused in its digging. Its gigantic nostrils flared as it took a whiff of the tree-covered air. Several seconds passed, full of blinking, glancing, and sniffling. With a deep grunt, it returned to its digging. The Ursa Minor beside the larger beast playfully pawed at the thick clumps of earth that its mother was piling up.

Harmony parted a few branches of shrubbery, shook loose a random centipede, and squinted clearly through the hole she had made in the foliage. The last pony watched as the giant bear plowed its serrated maw through the earth, clamped over something, and finally emerged with a deathly necklace of dangling bodies—dears, coyotes, cougars, and a few unknown creatures strung along a tripled loop of thorny vines—before standing up, growling at its offspring, and marching firmly towards the blossoming depths of Everfree. The blue “cub” waddled eagerly after its mother. With the majestic beasts' shimmering departure, the shadows of the tree-laden grove collected with a cold breath shared by all three ponies.

“Finally, I couldn't stand another minute of watching those scary things,” Derpy remarked while hugging her quivering foal dearly.

“They are mostly harmless, so long as they are not challenged,” Fluttershy said.

Harmony nodded her copper face towards the fading glow of the distant pair. “Tell that to the unlucky creatures dangling from Mommy's teeth.”

“Oh, those—I seriously doubt that they were victims of the Ursas. The bears likely scavenged the creatures after they died of other causes.”

Harmony blinked. “You're joking, right?”

Fluttershy bit her lip. “Uhmm... I'm not saying that the cosmic bears don't kill creatures to eat their meat. But they mostly consume the flesh of heavenly game that never touch down to earth. Besides, those specimens hanging from her jaws were far too small to serve as a proper diet.”

“Then...” Harmony gulped, her amber eyes navigating a blacker-than-black lair full of crucified skeletons. “Then just what possesses them to collect all of those corpses and crud? Are they trophies?”

“Nopony knows. Only once or twice in history has an Equestrian explorer survived trotting in and out of an Ursa's lair. While it's been written that Ursas keep the bodies of deceased terrestrial animals around the walls of their caves, it's still nothing but a pile of rumors. I... erm... I've long had a theory, though...”

“What's that, Fluttershy?” Harmony asked. In a hoarse breath, she murmured, “I really want to know.”

Fluttershy gave her a sideways glance of blinking blue eyes. Looking aside, she pensively uttered, “I believe that the dead trophies are a sign of... of frustration.”

“Frustration?”

“Anger, despair, even pain. Like I said, the Ursa Major shouldn't be here still. For all things considered, she should have taken her cub with her back into the heavens long ago. It's quite possible that something is preventing her. If that was the case, then I'm certain that her frustration would be most understandable.”

“Like what is preventing them from leaving Equestria in the future?” Harmony asked, then winced. “I mean in the n-not too distant future?”

Fluttershy shrugged. She reeled suddenly, as if about to collapse, but dizzily regained her balance. “I... I do not know, Miss Harmony.”

A beam of hot white plasma shot across the glade. Cradling Dinky, Derpy looked up, gulped, and breathlessly said, “Can we please keep on moving? My little Muffin is b-b-b-b-burning up. We've waited here long enough as it is.”

Harmony glanced at the gray pegasus, at the burning afternoon sky peaking down through the treetops, then at the infinite depths of Everfree stretching green-and-brown before them. With sigh, she shuffled back up onto all fours. “Miss Hooves is right. The Ursas are gone. We have no time to rest—at least not yet. For the kid's sake, let's make some friggin' ground already.”

“Your courage is poetic, Mister Squirrel.” Derpy eagerly galloped ahead with Dinky's glowing horn streaking behind her.

“For the last time—!” Harmony made to snarl, but was suddenly shocked by a crumpling sound beside her. She glanced over with wide eyes to spot her anchor having collapsed on her knees. “Miss Fluttershy! Are you all right...?”

“Mmmm... Yes, I am fine. I... erhm... I've just been squatting for far too long and—”

“You've been out of it since we began this crazy trip. Are you sure you got enough sleep last night? You were looking after that Capricorn for an awful long time—”

“I am not too tired to do what needs to be done,” Fluttershy said. She shook her pink mane back and looked ahead with a hardened stare that briefly mimicked her off-ruby mentor. “Every second we waste is a second taken from Dinky's precious life. Come, Miss Harmony. We cannot stay another moment here.”

Harmony gazed after her. With a deep breath, she trotted alongside Fluttershy, briefly glancing back to look at the deep earth dug up by the red ursa's claws—almost drowning in the blacker-than-black meat of it all, like a future wound festering twenty-five years in advance...

“The limbo queen, the false bride, into the graveyard of forgotten breaths she sings and shatters,” Dinky hissed against a wave of misty water coldly billowing about her.

“Lemme know the moment she picks up a Wonderbolts Airshow,” Harmony grumbled as she balanced herself across a weathered log stretched before a waterfall. “Then I'll be all ears.”

“It would m-m-m-m-make me very happy not to hear you joke about my daughter's suffering.” Derpy frowned over her shoulder as she crossed the last few meters of the log and landed atop the rock cropping on the other side. “It's not her fault that she's giving us random magical soli... soli-li-li-li... solilo-o-o-o—“

“'Soliloquies',” Harmony uttered from halfway across the log. The waterfall roared and billowed in bright ivory steam behind her. “And I do care about Dinky, Miss Hooves. But forgive me for trying to preserve my sanity. It's hard to make a joke about a joke—like this whole situation friggin' is. We've been following that glowing horn for hours. At this rate, what's to hope that the mana-crystal caves are any closer than the Goddess-forsaken center of the earth?”

“I have to have hope!” Derpy exclaimed, glancing back to briefly nuzzle the breathless child's glowing crown. “She's my daughter. She's all I can hope for.”

“I'll start hoping as soon as I see a point to this crazy trip,” the last pony grumbled aloud, as if mistaking the walls of the forest for the rustic inside of the Harmony's cabin. “I still think we should have gone to Twilight Sparkle or some other magician in Ponyville over this!”

“You know as well as I do what's at stake!” Derpy sneered, her yellow eyes angrily orbiting wrong ends of the copper shadow hobbling towards her. “I know you royal clerks are trained to follow duty and logic, but what have you to say about k-k-k-k-kindness?”

“I'll tell you what I think about kindness.” The last pony frowned. She glanced back over her shoulder. “Why if you knew half as much as—” She paused, her mouth agape. “Miss Fluttershy...?”

“I... erhm...” The pegasus was barely two trots' length over the far edge of the log. The waterfall's mist and froth pelted her mercilessly as she stumbled to get a hoofhold of the flimsy bridge. “It's awfully hard... to... to keep my eyes... m-m-my eyes... Mmmm.. Ohhhhh—” Fluttershy's blue pupils rolled back in her skull. With a toss of her pink mane, she fell like a discarded flower towards the razor-sharp rapids roaring below.

“Fluttershy!” The mailpony gasped.

“Mule muffins!” Harmony gnashed her teeth and dove like a copper bullet after her anchor. The white froth of the waterfall knifed her Entropan wings in a sea of tiny ivory daggers. She squinted glossy eyes through the foggy haze of it all, hurdling her invulnerable body towards the obscure yellow shade that dotted the edge of her twitching vision. In a breathless scream, the last pony timed her dive just right, flung her hooves forward, and scooped blindly into the wet explosions of chaos. A silken body landed in her grasp, and she swiftly burst out of the tumultuous cloud of water with a quivering Fluttershy cradled beneath her.

At the end of the heroic flight, Harmony's lungs were hyperventilating, like an orange foal stung with the cold raindrops of a gray afternoon. Fluttershy's voice had suddenly been reduced to sputtering coughs and choking noises against the time traveler's copper bosom. Harmony landed with a graceful stretch of her wings and planted the caretaker's body softly onto a riverbed bordering with water-soaked oak trees. The gray blur of Derpy Hooves hovered down beside them.

“Is she... Is she d-d-d-d-dead?”

Harmony instantly snarled: “Look, will you just shut up for a second and let me hear if she's breathing?!” The frazzled time traveler crouched over Fluttershy's twitching figure, her mind blazing over a million lantern-lit hours of reading all sorts of ancient texts of survivalism scavenged from the Wasteland's ruins. “Just—please, Miss Hooves—give me room to think!”

“I'm just concerned for Fluttershy, is all—”

“Yeah, yeah, that makes the one and a half of us! Just—Nnngh!” She pressed her copper ear to the caretaker's chest and blanched considerably. “I don't get it! She's not choking on anything! It's like there's no water in her breathing tubes, and yet she's out like a—”

“Hckkkt—Augh!” Fluttershy suddenly shot up with a gasp, her blue eyes blinking wide.

Harmony fell back on her haunches, panting. “Fluttershy...?”

“I... the log... I was trying to walk across and...” She bit her lip. “Oh... Oh dear...”

“Oh Fluttershy,” Derpy slumped down—Dinky in tow—and scooped the Ponyvillean animal tamer up in a deep, deep hug. “You had me so worried! What's g-g-g-g-gotten into you! Your legs have been like rubber all afternoon!”

“I... I don't... It's so hot and heavy today... and...” Fluttershy's blue eyes started rolling back once more. “Unnngh... D-Dear Celestia, so m-many stars...”

“Miss Fluttershy? What's wrong...?” Derpy breathlessly gazed at her.

All the while, Harmony was staring with rock-hard amber eyes. She looked at Fluttershy's wilting figure, at Dinky's glowing horn, at Fluttershy's moaning lips, at Dinky's bright strobing forehead again—

“Dang it!” Harmony dove forward and viciously shoved Derpy off of Fluttershy. “Back off!”

“Augh!” Derpy stumbled back, cradling Dinky and sneering the “clerk's” way. “What is your problem?! I was only—”

“It's not you, Miss Hooves!” Harmony desperately slid Fluttershy's body away from the mailpony and pointed over the gray mare's shoulder. “It's Dinky. It's her horn! Can't you see?”

“Huh?” Derpy's yellow eyes worthlessly rolled like competing clockwork in their sockets. However, she heard Fluttershy's pained groans, and her peripheral vision caught the residual pulses of Dinky's horn in response. “Oh dearest Nebula... I had no idea...”

“Fluttershy...” Harmony propped the wilted caretaker up against a tree and gently slapped the far corners of her yellow face. “Miss Fluttershy—Come back to us. Snap out of it! Open those pretty eyes of yours, do you hear me?”

“Mmmf... Moth-... M-Mother...?” The caretaker slurred, her eyes thinly reopening to gaze at the time traveler.

The last pony's soul immediately buckled upon that utterance. Harmony wanted to collapse, wanted to sob, wanted to watch the orange shade march down those wooden steps and... and... and—“It's me, Miss Harmony,” she uttered, hiding her soul beneath the alien tone of her Entropan voice. “You fainted just now—Twice. I think... I think it has something to do with the energy coming out of Dinky's horn.”

“I...” Fluttershy winced, hissed, and struggled weakly to lift her body up from the tree trunk. “I just need to—”

“Don't pretend that you're not suffering from some sort of goddess-forsaken affliction!” Harmony frowned. “Cuz you are! You've been nothing but rattling knees and shoulders since we so much as set hoof into Everfree! You didn't show this sort of collapse the last two days when we ventured into the forest to find the Capricorn. There's a difference this time, and I think it's Dinky's horn.”

“I... I told you before, Miss Harmony.” Fluttershy struggled and panted to say, “I am very much weak and helpless—”

The last pony fought to stifle a snarl. “Would you can it already with the over-emphatic humility?! This is not a matter of—”

“I am most exceedingly sorry to have to argue with you, dearest Harmony, but it is.” Fluttershy gulped and murmured with a quivering lip, “If you may recall my mentioning it, I... erm... I have an innate susceptibility to magical resonance.” She paused briefly to weather a dizzy spell and resumed, “Around unicorns and magicians like Twilight Sparkle or Rarity, it doesn't show. But when I'm exposed to raw and unfiltered mana batteries like alicorn artifacts, or alchemic stones, or... or...” She cast a forlorn glance towards Dinky's shimmering forehead. “... well... erhm... I start to lose control of my faculties.”

“Since when?!” Harmony scoffed.

“Since I was foaled. I was born a month in advance, remember? That alone has affected my body in so many ways all throughout my life. I never asked to be so frail...”

“It's tr-tr-tr-tr-true.”

Harmony glanced over and frowned at the mailpony. “What do you mean 'it's true'?!”

Derpy gazed on either side of her. “I was there when Miss Fluttershy was being clinically treated. We used to share the same wing in the Cloudsdalian hospital.” The gray mare smiled bitterly as she gently stroked Dinky's glowing head from a safer distance. “You think my eyes are bad now? There were days in my foalhood when I could hardly even stand up.”

Harmony took a deep breath. She shut her eyelids, pointed her muzzle towards the heaven, and—after a vicious exhale—she came down with an embroiled snarl, reopening two amber slits to burn viciously into Fluttershy's silken forehead.

“You knew about this. You knew about all of this, before we even made this friggin' journey into the bowels of the biggest, nastiest, and meanest forest in all of Equestria, and yet you said nothing, Miss Fluttershy?!”

“Harmony, Dinky's life is at risk. I cannot allow such a precious child's warmth to be extinguished by freakish happenstance, especially if I am partially to blame for it. As far as I am concerned, my health... my well-being is of no consequence—”

“Well maybe it is to me!” Harmony exclaimed. “Did you ever think of that?! Huh?!” She dug a hoof into the pathetic earth and growled, “Miss Fluttershy, it sure has heck isn't kind to throw somepony for a loop when she only cares for you!”

Fluttershy gulped and murmured under a rosy blush. “Miss Harmony, I think it's wonderfully noble that you would worry over me, but—”

“You thought nothing!” Harmony snarled. “Nothing!” A hissing breath. “Excuse yourself all you want, Fluttershy, but I sure as heck am not going to let you die from poisonous magical resonance or what-the-crap-ever has been possessing Dinky! And if I hear you blame yourself one more time for what's happened, I'm liable to toss you back into that waterfall! Nebula strike me down if I'm lying!”

“Every second that we waste debating this is another moment better spent in tracking down the caves.”

“Yeah, well, you can contemplate that all you want from the warmth and safety of your cottage!” Harmony proceeded to scoop Fluttershy's torso up and spread her copper wings. “I'm taking you back this instant! I'm pretty sure Miss Hooves here can fly her skull into a cave and save Dinky on her lonesome.”

“You c-c-c-can't be serious!” The mailmare balked. “I don't even know these woods, and what will I do even once I get to the crystals? You can't just leave me and Dinky—”

“Oh hush!” Harmony flashed her a frown. “For all you care, I should be stuffing my cheeks with acorns! Fluttershy and I are out of here like Winter Wrap-Up!”

“Miss Harmony, we can't!” Fluttershy barked—an ear splitting thing—so that it stunned the time traveler's Entropan body long enough for her to hear the caretaker's next earnest words. “Miss Hooves is right; she and Dinky need me. If I wasn't with you three earlier, what would have prevented you from stumbling upon the ursas before?”

Before Harmony could speak, Derpy added: “There are tons of scary and dangerous things out there that would want to eat my Muffin!” The gray pegasus gulped. “And it's not even dark yet.”

“They both need me, Miss Harmony.” Fluttershy's face visibly sweated and strained from the proximity of Dinky's enchanted horn. Nevertheless, she bravely murmured to the “Canterlotlian Clerk” embracing her. “And we all need you. Your strength is priceless, and so far you have guided us with amazing resourcefulness through this forest.” She gulped and added, “These past two days, you have helped me with a spirit of kindness that is unbelievably endearing. I implore you: complete the circle. Show the same kindness to Miss Hooves and her poor, precious child. I promise that you will feel blessed for it the rest of your life... as I have faith that I too shall live and feel blessed...”

“Miss Fluttershy...” Harmony gazed deeply at her, drowning in those blue pearlescent eyes. “Every second you're around Dinky, you fall apart. I... I don't want you to leave us.... permanently.”

A porcelain smile delivered a soothing voice—soft and frail, yet bold and strong. “I am willing to comply, so long as you don't leave us. Do not fear so much about tomorrow. Focus on the moment, as crazy as it may seem. Kindness shall forever be your greatest guide in times like this. So far, it hasn't let me down. I have faith that it won't let you down—or Dinky for that matter.”

Harmony breathed unevenly. Her eyes twitched within the space between her and Fluttershy, a glistening fireplace, the phantom blue aura of a long-dead table. Rainwater had once cocooned them both in an isolated prism of truth and tears, or perhaps it had yet to. The last pony could no longer tell what was past or future, what was a dream or what was reality, what was green flame and what was gray ash. All she could hold onto, all she could embrace, was the voice, the melodic voice, and it was ever so desperately glistening before her now, like a rain-slicked metal scooter molded into a key that would open something that the winged mare had long denied herself, like gravity, like shuffling down creaking stairs...

Derpy's Hooves' stuttering voice was a brief and interrupting thunder: “I'm very sorry to poke my head in, but whatever we're going to do, we need to d-d-d-d-do it now. Please. It's still your royal authority at hoof.”

Harmony briefly clenched her eyes shut. After a seething breath, she fought the moisture from her eyes as she firmly held Fluttershy up and murmured into her ear: “Lean on me. Okay? Lean on me and I'll keep you safe.”

Fluttershy weakly, weakly smiled. “Why is it that I have no doubt of that?”

“Because my poker face stinks,” Scootaloo grumbled, frowning at her cards.

“I didn't think we were playing poker.” Fluttershy smiled across the rug, sitting on folded hooves while staring at her own fan of playing cards.

“Figure of speech. Sweetie Belle says it all the time when she's describing how her sister looks whenever she meets with Hoity Toity.”

“She certainly sounds more and more like an almanac, if I may say so,” the caretaker said with a slight giggle.

“Wrong type of book.” Scootaloo smirked. She shuffled through her cards. “Do you have any eights?”

“Go filly,” Fluttershy muttered.

Scootaloo reached back into a sea of cards lying between them. “That wooden storehouse that you have outside: is it really really important?”

“I'm afraid so,” the caretaker spoke above the rain pelting the now-black windows surrounding the cottage. Evening had fallen, so that the fireplace had become a veritable nightly sun that illuminated them as much as it warmed them. Angel was lying snuggled on a tiny bed in the corner, his soft body rising up and down in deceptively peaceful breaths. “I have at least two separate locks on it. So far, it has withstood several nightly creatures attempting to scavenge from it without my knowledge. Still, it could stand to have better reinforcement, I do suppose. It's not yet been tested against really large wildlife.”

“Don't the ponies lending you their supplies worry about all the stuff going to waste?”

“Mmmm—Of course they do. But I think a lot of them underestimate just how close this cottage is positioned to the Everfree Forest. Ahem—Do you have any fours?”

Scootaloo sighed and slid two cards across the rug and into Fluttershy's grasp. “Y'know,” she said with a blossoming smirk. “I bet I could design a really killer lock for your storehouse.”

“'Killer?' Good heavens, Scootaloo, no!”

“Heeheehee—C'mon, Fluttershy...”

“Oh. Uhm... Right. You mean to say 'a really good lock'...”

Scootaloo nodded. “I don't mean to brag,” she said with a wink, “But I'm pretty snazzy when it comes to tinkering stuff together.”

Fluttershy breathily chuckled, glancing past Scootaloo towards the kitchen of the cottage for some reason. “I know that for a fact.”

Scootaloo blinked awkwardly with thin violet eyes. “You do?”

“Erm...” Fluttershy suddenly blushed. “Do you have any fives?” she asked.

“Go filly...”

Fluttershy reached into the pile, grabbed another card, and shuffled through her new fan. “Uhm... Any improvements you might be willing to give the storehouse would be greatly appreciated. But, in all seriousness, I do not think that would be necessary. Aside from a brief scare here or there, I've not really had to contend with many creatures wanting to get at the precious supplies inside. This side of the country is very calm, in spite of what everpony thinks of the wilderness.”

“If you say so.” Scootaloo shrugged and hoofed through her cards. “You're the only pony who lives here.”

“Mmmm... For the most part.”

“Do you have any nines?”

Fluttershy slid a card over and Scootaloo took it.

“Do you... Uhm...” The filly bit her lip and glanced up nervously. “Do you ever get tired of that?”

“Mmm? Of losing my cards to you?” Fluttershy briefly giggled. “It doesn't seem as though I have a choice—”

“No, Fluttershy. I... uhm... I mean being alone.”

“I've told you before, Scootaloo, that I'm not nearly as alone as you think—”

“Please, Fluttershy. We've been together for so long this afternoon. I don't think I've seen you as happy as you appear right now,” Scootaloo said, her tone low and pensive. “Everytime you stop by Ponyville, it's for very brief spurts, as if you have to dash in and out for fear of turning to ash or some crud. I don't see what there is to be scared of. You're a delightful pony, and so talented. What's so horrible about showing your face around that you have to remain cooped up in this house all the time?”

“I... I'm not exactly a social type,” Fluttershy murmured, eyeing the fireplace.

“But what about your best friends?” Scootaloo gazed at her with sincerity. “Don't tell me you don't enjoy hanging out with them! There's gotta be more to your clique than the Elements of Harmony or what-crap!”

“I'm... I'm not sure I understand the point of your inquiry, Miss Harmony...”

“I want you to talk to me, Fluttershy,” the last pony uttered under her breaths, bracing the stumbling and limp figure of the Ponyvillean animal tamer as they followed Derpy's slow hooftrots up a winding mountain face that curved into a higher plateau of thick green foliage. “I don't know just how bad you're body is biting it on behalf of Dinky's horn and all, so I need you to stay awake and talk to me. Tell me about your friends.”

“I... I don't have a whole lot of friends...”

“You're joking, right?” Harmony smirked as she shoved a few random branches out of the path of Fluttershy's cranium and carried the two of them—shuffling—up the mountainside, keeping wary of the steep drop to their immediate right. “Give me a number.”

“A number?”

“Yeah. Let's get all quantifiable over this conversation!”

“Fives?”

“Go filly.”

“Mmmmm...” Fluttershy reached into the pile, her ears drooped as her eyes wandered over a different matter altogether. “Six, though, if you count Derpy... I suppose...”

“'Derpy?'”

“Miss Hooves. The local mailpony.”

The orange foal shook her head. “Doesn't ring a bell.”

“Sometimes she does, when she flies too low.” Fluttershy blushed furiously and planted a hoof over her muzzle as she stifled a furious round of giggles. “Ohhhhhh... That was rather rude of me.”

“On the contrary,” Scootaloo spoke with a smile...

“I'd say it's worth it just to hear you laugh,” the time traveler breathlessly said as she hoisted Fluttershy up a steep bank and helped her onto a level ground of compact soil. The two pegasi stumbled slowly after Derpy and Dinky, two gray spots along the crest of a hill dotted with moss and shrubbery. “Did this 'Pinkie Pie' really make that joke in front of a zebra?”

“Mmmm... Zecora wasn't offended, if that is what you mean to insinuate. She was just as curious to know what was black-and-white-and-red-all-over as I was.”

“Yeah, uhuh. You want to hear another joke?”

“You mean one that Pinkie Pie has somehow not told me?” Fluttershy breathlessly managed to say.

“A horse walked into a bar and said 'Ouch.'”

“.... I... I erm... I'm not quite sure that I get it...”

“Think about it,” Harmony said. She held Fluttershy up on her hooves and gazed at her with a tired-yet-glinting smirk. “Think about ittttt—”

“Oh... Oh! Eheheheh-nnngh—Ohhhh,” Fluttershy hissed as if assaulted with a vicious migraine. She rubbed her aching head with a yellow hoof and lurched alongside Harmony.

The last pony bit her lip. With a clearing of her throat, she uttered, “You know what? Forget about Pinkie Pie. Already, I can tell she's my least favorite. Tell me more about this Applejack you know.”

“Well, I told you before, Scootaloo, that she was the first earth pony I had the grace to meet here in Ponyville. Her family found me sleeping at Everclear, and without a single moment's hesitation, they brought me over to their house to eat, sleep, bathe, and have a warm place to briefly call my own.”

“Jee, that sounds really, really sweet, Fluttershy.”

“Mmm... It was most definitely kind. Applejack will label it as 'country hospitality,' but I know it for what it was. The Apple Family has been doing kind things in Ponyville for generations, long before anypony in my family even knew about the colony that Faustmare had settled here. You cannot meet a single member of Applejack's tree and not somehow feel happy to simply stand amongst them. I think they've lived off the land for so long that they've become a part of it. They are much sweeter fruits than the bounty they harvest every year.”

“I bet Applejack would be tickled pink if you invited her for a sleepover one of these days—just to... I dunno... repay her for what she and her family did for you when you first landed from Cloudsdale!”

“Oh... I dunno. That was an awful long time ago. I think she would just find it silly...”

“Fluttershyyyy! She would love to hang out with you! Or Twilight for that matter!”

“Twilight Sparkle is always busy these days,” Fluttershy stammered. She swallowed a lump down her throat and leaned sickly against the copper pegasus' hide as they strolled together, lethargically, in distant pursuit of Derpy and Dinky. The forest grew dimmer with crimson bands of the setting sun as a cold wind flanked their evening trek. “If she isn't writing to Her Majesty, working on her memoirs, or helping Cheerilee prepare a field trip to Whinniepeg—then she's performing one experiment or another with her adorable apprentice.”

Harmony winced upon hearing the last detail of Twilight's activities. For a brief moment, the trees of Evefree were awash with even darker trunks in the moonlight. “Ahem... Adorable apprentice, you say?” Harmony remarked, fighting a brief bout of shivers. She eyed the growing shadows of the ominous forest around them. “Does Miss Sparkle have—ahem—a handsome stallion at her beck and call?”

“Mmmm... No. Not quite.” Fluttershy's lips curved slightly. “She's a Cantertlotlian student from Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. As part of her entrance exam, she had to hatch and tame an infant purple dragon. But... mmmm... Of course you would know all of that already, Miss Harmony.”

“I wasn't aware that many of the students actually kept their dragon as a pet.”

“Oh no!” Fluttershy woke briefly from her exhausted slump. To Harmony's mute joy, she spoke with a renewed vigor. “Spike is anything but a pet! He's an intelligent, caring, selfless, resourceful bundle of joy!”

“'Spike...'” Harmony rolled her eyes and hid her smirk from the yellow pegasus leaning against her. “Boy is that a creative name for a dragon.”

“For instance, just this last week he was helping Twilight with an experiment to... uhm... to teleport objects through time.”

“Huh...” The copper pegasus gulped. “Imagine that...”

“I doubt it was successful, but it doesn't matter. The relationship that Spike and Twilight have to each other is adorable. Almost like siblings... Or... Or even mother and... and...” Fluttershy's voice trailed off her lips as her blue eyes sadly rediscovered the gray dots of Miss Hooves and her glowing offspring far ahead.

Harmony blinked. Shifting nervously in their shared gait, she bravely cleared her throat. “You and Miss Sparkle... uhm... go far back?”

“Oh, hardly. She's a very new addition to my life—A blessed addition, but still quite new.”

“Well, which of your friends have you known the longest?”

“Mmmm...” Fluttershy smiled sweetly, ignoring the card game altogether as her blue eyes found a hazy shade of blue beyond the visual spectrum of the windows. “Rainbow Dash and I go back as far as I can remember.”

Scootaloo's violet eyes sparkled as her entire body lit up like an orange lightbulb. “You do?”

“I... uhm... I met her at Flight Camp. I took far too many years to pass, compared to the average pegasus. And yet, even though she graduated two winters before I did, Rainbow would always come back to the campus just to visit me. I... I was the target of much teasing and practical jokes when I was young. I'm sure I've told you that. But Rainbow Dash... she never ceased to defend me, to come to my rescue... hmmm... so to speak.”

“That's awfully cool of her.” Scootaloo smiled, leaning her chin on perky orange hooves.

“To this day...” Fluttershy kneaded the rug with silken soft forelimbs. “I've never quite understood what motivated somepony as cool and as brave and as fearless as Rainbow to look after me and me alone. I once thought I figured it out... but... uhm, no, that wasn't the reason. Nor was it the other reason... ehm...”

Scootaloo raised a curious eyebrow.

Fluttershy sighed, but smiled gently. “I know we hardly see each other these days, and there are times when Rainbow Dash appears outright frustrated with me because of my frequent fear and cowardice. But I know—I daresay, more than any other pony, I know—that she is the most loyal pegasus you can ever find. And even now, if I was to find myself in a horrible situation or bind, she would come to my rescue, even after all these years.”

“Y-yeah... Rainbow Dash is awesome like that.” Scootaloo beamed.

“I would rather say that she's kind,” Fluttershy remarked. “Even if she doesn't always show it, or would admit to it. Rainbow Dash is really one of the kindest ponies in all of Equestria. Our days—our memories that we have from Cloudsdale—they are all the proof that I need, and I cling to them like I would to my last breaths.”

“Maybe you should hang out with her again.” Scootaloo smiled gently. “You could tell her yourself how much she means to you.”

“I wouldn't presume to interrupt her these days,” Fluttershy said defeatedly. “She's so awfully busy with the local weather flier team and all...” She gestured out a rain-soaked window. “And... uhm... of course, there are the tryouts that she's so fixated on.”

“What tryouts?” Scootaloo stupidly blinked, then brightened euphorically. “Oh, those tryouts!”

“She's been working so hard, and I know that there's an upcoming event that she's been dying to prepare herself for.”

“Well, if you can't invite Twilight or Rainbow Dash to visit you for a spell—”

“Scootaloo, you needn't be so persistent. I respect the fact that my friends live busy lives and I—”

“—maybe you could get together with Rarity again!”

Fluttershy took a sharp, wounded breath.

Harmony gazed at her from where she was tugging her lightly across a bridge of rocks that spanned a tiny river. “Miss Fluttershy, are you okay?”

The caretaker exhaled—however—with the gentlest of smiles, something that could melt straight through the earth. “Rarity...” Her voice was like a song and the air a throng of flutes. “She is a delightful soul, if there ever was one.”

“You speak as if she's a relic and not a friend,” Harmony breathlessly hoisted Fluttershy towards her.

The yellow pegasus shuddered, leaning her weight over the copper visitor's flank as she was practically carried over the river to join a breathless mother-and-child on the other side. “We haven't seen each other in a terribly long time.” Her face hung in a pale slump. “Oh Nebula, I do pray she's okay...”

“Has she disappeared off the face of Equestria, or something?” Harmony murmured, briefly remembering an ancient conversation over daffodil alfredo somewhere.

“It is hard to tell, nor is it my place to find out—”

“Well, why the hay not? She's your friend, isn't she?”

“My very best friend in the whole world,” Fluttershy murmured, eying the rippling waters sickly as Dinky's horn pulsated from just a horseshoe's toss away. “Ever since I had met her, she had taken an instant appreciation of me. As to why, I cannot fathom. But she's only ever treated me like a precious jewel—not patronizing me, but rather indulging me in all of her life's little intricacies, trusting in me the wealth of her knowledge, her vulnerabilities, her fears and joys, her love and hate. Before I met her, I had acquaintances and occasional companions. Rarity has become my one trusted confidant in this world, my B.F.F., as she puts it...”

“BonaFideFilly?”

“Heeheehe—Mmm... No. 'Best Friend Forever.'” Fluttershy confessed with a rosy blush.

“Sounds like you stumbled upon a gem.”

“Only that she values me like one, and yet she's a well-to-do and artistically gifted unicorn who's surrounded by wealth. Not once does she let that get to her head. She's generous, she's compassionate, she's sympathetic, and she gives so much... so very much to both Trottingham and Ponyville. I heard that the town mayor needs a new cabinet member to fill in the vacant spot for Ponyville's Head of the Community Council. Rarity already gets my vote... Mmmm... for what it is worth.”

“As lead animal tamer of Ponyville”—Harmony smirked back—“I'm sure that your opinion would be greatly valued.”

“I can only hope.” Fluttershy exhaled, winced slightly, and recovered from the latest surge of magical resonance. “Just thinking of Rarity, and all the times she's ever talked to me, I respect all the things she's shared. Other ponies might think she does nothing but give me an earful whenever we are together. But I like it... I love it. I'm never too comfortable talking about myself. But hearing somepony like her go on about her life, and being so confident in me that she can share it: it makes me feel so special. And it makes me feel so... so...”

“So what, Fluttershy?”

She sighed, shutting her eyes before the fireplace. “So normal...” She said.

Scootaloo blinked. Her orange jaw fell agape as she leaned her head to the side. “But... Miss Fluttershy, you are normal!”

“Oh Scootaloo, dear sweet Scootaloo...” The caretaker sighed and looked at the foal with tired blue eyes. “No normal pony lives the way I do, spends more time with animals than other equines, deals with the random happenstance of a madly growing forest instead of a gentle and quiet town.”

“We... We all have our talents, Miss Fluttershy. Or... I mean...” Scootaloo blushed and twitched her blank flank. “We all find them. And—sure—we may be alone when we find them, but why do you insist that you have to stay around this place by yourself now that you have everything together?”

“It's... far too complicated to explain—”

“Ugh! I'm sick to death of adults using that on me!” Scootaloo snarled. “Don't you do it too, Miss Fluttershy! You are so... so special, and you've got awesome talents, and... and...”

“Scootaloo—”

“If I had everything understood about who I was or what I could do like you, I'd not be wallowing around all by my lonesome! I'd find as many ponies as I could and I would frickin' party! Like Rainbow Dash does! I don't see why you have to treat yourself like you're the last pony on earth! I know I never plan to!”

“You've got so many discoveries left to make in life, Scootaloo. And... And I do not wish to discourage you with the things I have to share about myself—”

“I don't think you have any idea how hard it is for me to be discouraged, Fluttershy,” Scootaloo said with a jittery gulp. Bravely, she stared directly into the pegasus' face from across the pile of cards. “Please... Tell me. Tell me what it is that keeps you here alone all these years.”

“Sometimes... Sometimes it takes a very long time—if not forever—to earn your way out of the faults that you were born with.”

“Does this have anything to do with how come you don't invite any of your friends over?”

Fluttershy was silent.

Scootaloo blinked. Pale bleached stones pierced her heart. She bit her lip from the icy sensation, as if gravity skewered a measuring tape through her soul and reminded her of the sheer distance between the ground and the clouds... and the white wings etched forever beyond. “Fluttershy, when... when was the last time you saw your family?”

“My family...” Fluttershy murmured breathily against Harmony's black mane. She was being dragged alongside her as the three pegasi marched liquidly through a grassy knoll where the tree canopy broke to reveal purple stars twinkling above. “My family and I have... uhm... we haven't talked or seen each other in a very, very long time...”

“Ehrm... Why the heck not?” Harmony asked. “If you don't mind me asking.”

“Well, first off, I come from quite a large household.”

“Lemme guess, two brothers? Two sisters?”

“I have nine siblings.”

“Whoah... Uhm... Okay...”

“All older than me.”

“Uhh... Really?” Harmony squinted at the pegasus' frail form. “Okay, I guess I can see that now.”

“I know what you're likely thinking,” Fluttershy gently spoke. “And it's quite true. I was... mmm... I was a rather unexpected addition to my family. I do believe that was the start of many things.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, coupled with the fact that I was born relatively early, I easily paled in comparison to how strong my six brothers and three sisters were... and still are. Many of them are weather fliers. Two of them work in the busiest department of the Cloudsdale Rainbow Factory. One is a backup member of the Wonderbolts.”

“Wow.”

“Yes, I know. As you can imagine, my weaker and gentler qualities have made me look all the less special compared to them. While they excelled in every class of flight school, I failed miserably. While they became outstanding members of Cloudsdalian society, I... uhm... I drifted out of the spotlight and settled for a lifestyle centered around the care and taming of woodland creatures. All of my extended family members live in the clouds from here to Stratopolis. In the meantime, I've settled for a quiet and unassuming life on solid ground, ever since that one fateful day when I fell down here. So... as pegasus lifestyle goes, I... uhm... I've always been far from normal...”

Harmony took a deep breath, all the while her amber eyes flickered through garbage strewn alleyways, abandoned barns, night-shrouded forests, Ponyvillean street corners, and the undersides of country bridges. Every single one of those sights blurred by from the back of a scooter, and yet they were burned far hotter into the last pony's mind than any single cloudy hearth or silver-lined bed of wisps.

“There's nothing wrong with a pegasus' life spent on the ground,” the time traveler gently said to Fluttershy. “And if you ask me, the fact that you have chosen a way of living that is so different from the rest of your family makes you unique. You are special for what you do, Miss Fluttershy. Residents of Ponyville respect you. Obviously Her Majesty respects you, otherwise she wouldn't have sent me!”

“Your attempts to placate me are noble, and I do appreciate where you are coming from, Miss Harmony.” Fluttershy attempted a gentle smile. Against the resonating magic of Dinky's nearby horn, her expression came out like a grimace. “But sometimes I would gladly give up all of Ponyville's compliments... all of my friends' respect... if it means that I could win my family's confidence back, that I could talk to my mother for the first time in years, that I could see my father for the first time in years. But... But that is not the case, sadly. Unless something amazingly dramatic is to happen, I'm not sure I will ever be accepted as one with my family. I've disappointed them for far too long...”

“Miss Fluttershy...” Harmony gulped dryly. “That sounds absolutely terrible. And I shudder to think that you blame yourself for the selfish reasons that your family doesn't accept you.”

“Is it selfish for an esteemed clan of Cloudsdalian wingbearers to look deplorably on such an odd member of its family whose weaknesses clash unnaturally with the rest of her litter? Miss Harmony, I may have innumerable qualities in the eyes of my peers here in Ponyville, but until I can make amends with the failures I have made in my natural standing, I... I just cannot feel right with myself...” With a deep sigh, she wiltingly murmured: “...nor with my friends.”

Harmony was suddenly mute; her brain and tongue had been tied about a bitter knot forming at the base of her throat. There were so many things to say, and yet not enough reasons to say them. She suddenly realized that she was carrying Fluttershy towards two graves: one built by an Ursa Major, and one that the pegasus had been building for herself for a very long time now. It was a grave that her family would likely never visit. What an ironic ending it would be, then, for a selfless soul who so avidly paid respects to an entire sea of white stones memorializing ponies she never had the grace to know.

By this point in the trip, Fluttershy's hooves were beginning to drag in the earth. Glancing ahead, Harmony could see a limping gait overwhelming Derpy's canter. The night hummed around them, and the two pegasi of the past were starting to collapse in on themselves. There really was only one thing to do.

“Miss Hooves?!” Harmony called out with strong Entropan lungs. “Derpy, I think we should take a breather.”

“The caves could be just b-b-b-b-beyond that hill, for all we know!”

“I can make it, Miss Harmony,” Fluttershy said, but her words were painful squeaks shoved between wincing expressions. “Dinky is the one pony we should be worried about right now.”

“Fat lot of good it will do to worry or labor over a pony when half of us are too dead on our hooves to do anything once we do reach the caves!” Harmony loudly said, “Let us rest. I'm not saying we have a friggin' sleepover or something, Miss Hooves. But Fluttershy's nearly fainted and you too look like a mess, if you don't mind me saying so. You're both welcome to argue with me, but Nebula help you if you so much as wish to succeed!”

“Mmmm... The grass does look most inviting...” Fluttershy managed in a hissing whisper.

“Do you hear me, Miss Hooves? We're resting,” Harmony managed to say, all the while dragging Fluttershy softly towards a bed of springy foliage and laying her down.

Fluttershy murmured something, fought a rampaging migraine, and curled away from the pulsating location of Dinky and her horn. “Not... Not for too long, Miss Harmony, okay?” Her voice was a melodic whimper, and in a hazy blink the last pony thought she saw an orange shadow marching down invisible stairs to touch her—

Harmony clenched her green flaming eyes shut. She fought a numbing cloud of agony, then blinked her amber orbs back to see Fluttershy lying down alone, breathing soundly as her wings twitched and folded into placid stillness. Ten meters beyond the half-conscious caretaker, Derpy Hooves slumped down to her haunches against a lone rock on the edge of a nearby treeline. She disentangled herself with her mailbag, the straps of which had formed hard creases into her gray coat. With gentle forelimbs, she slid the quivering little unicorn out of one of the pouches and cradled her in the grass between her spread hooves.

“Nnngh... The ancient reptile and its satellite... Alone like children in the night! Hmmnngh... Do not look into the throat of heaven, children of the rancid winter under glass... Nnnngh... Snkkkt...”

Derpy's face contorted into a painful sigh. She clenched her lopsided eyes shut and held the rambling little foal tight. The corner of her skin sizzled slightly as it made contact with the blindingly bright horn. She ignored the painful sensation.

Sitting above a half-slumbering Fluttershy, Harmony forced herself to stare at the mother-and-daughter. It took all of her Entropan strength to wrench even a pindrop of sympathy away from her anchor to righteously address the other tragedy unfolding before her.

“How... uhm...” The last pony bit her lip nervously. “How are you holding up, Miss Hooves?”

“I am not.” Derpy shuddered and reopened her diagonal eyes. Even from a sobbing breath's distance, the mother could barely center her gaze on her suffering offspring. “I am falling apart.” A hard gulp. “I've always been falling apart. Only... with my Muffin, I thought I could p-p-p-p-put the pieces back together.”

“Miss Hooves, don't—” Harmony paused to headbutt an aching dam of hypocrisy lodged in her skull, then continued, “Don't speak in the past tense like that, please.”

“Forgive me,” Derpy shuddered to say. “I am not my normal self right now. Even when I am, I know it's very hard for anypony to speak to me... when anypony bothers to speak to me.” With a deep breath, she cradled the stirring Dinky to her and gazed off towards both ends of the night's sky. “I know what you must be thinking, and I don't blame you. In Canterlot, I imagine there are rule books that would have forced the city to t-t-t-t-t-take my Muffin from me years ago. So it's only natural for you to think that I got my just desserts. After all, she was foaled as a half-wing...”

“Miss Hooves...” Harmony quietly murmured. “I never said... I mean I-I didn't wish to suggest that—”

“It's okay. I know what she is. And I know what I am.” Derpy breathed harder, her taut lips steeling suddenly. After a flaring of her gray nostrils, she grunted, “And it doesn't matter, not to me. If I had to go through every humil... humi-li-li-li-li-li... through every bad moment of my past again, I would—if only it would mean that she would still come into my life.”

“She loves you, Miss Hooves,” Harmony said. “And she respects you so much.”

A quivering breath floated back in response. “I know,” Derpy squeaked. She gulped hard and ran a hoof over the foal's burning forehead. “I know it... But I hardly deserve it...”

“She respects you...” Harmony firmly repeated as she shuffled a few steps towards the mare. In a firmer, braver voice, she said, “But she also deserves to be respected back.”

“But I do respect her!”

“Miss Hooves...” The last pony's amber eyes narrowed. “Everypony in town knows she's not stupid. She wants to know about her father. She needs to know about her father.”

Derpy's face leaned until one of her sad eyes angled appropriately with Harmony. A ring of starlit moisture formed pathetically around its yellow edge as the mare's voice stammered, “I need to know about him too...”

Harmony stood still, biting on her lip nervously. She couldn't say anything to shed light on that.

Derpy could: “All of my life, I've only had other p-p-p-p-ponies laughing at me, joking about me, saying rude things behind my back. I may not see well, but I can hear well. I've never really blamed other ponies, but I always desired something different... something more. Honestly, who in this world doesn't want to be loved, normal or not?”

At the word “normal,” Harmony briefly glanced over her shoulder at the softly slumbering form of Fluttershy. In a pit of nausea, the last pony realized that this yawning moment in time was embracing the company of three Cloudsdalian rejects. Part of her wanted to go extinct right then and there.

Derpy continued speaking, “One summer, five years ago, I met this handsome stallion, a dashing unicorn.” Her face swam briefly through a sea of bitter-sweet smiles, like tattered ships on a gray horizon. “He talked to me when so many other ponies didn't; he said things to me that I never dr-dr-dr-dr-dreamt anypony would.” She produced a sharp breath, like her lungs were being knifed from the inside out. In a shameful stammer, she uttered, “I don't know if you can ever relate, and I hope that you wouldn't. A lonely life lived in the company of laughs and sneers can make you do some really st-st-st-st-st-stupid things.”

“I know loneliness, Miss Hooves,” Harmony said with a quiet nod. “Call it what you want, but I imagine desperation makes fools of all of us in our own time.” She deflated, remembering suddenly the taste and smell of blood in the ashen air.

“Well...” Derpy ran a hoof gently through Dinky's blonde threads. “One day, this handsome stallion in my life was gone, along with all of his sweet words, his gentle smiles... his pretty lies.” A dry gulp morphed into a painful smile. “But I was not alone. No... No... Because in place of a shameful hole in my life, my Muffin came to fill it up. She would not come easily. The hospitals in Cloudsdale rejected me. My family would not speak to me. But I was not about to give up on this life that was gr-gr-gr-gr-growing inside of me. All of my life, the world had ignored me. I was not about to ignore it. Finally... finally... I received help. Miss Red Heart in Ponyville's hospital oversaw the foaling. I didn't realize just how painful it was going to be. A pegasus is not built to deliver a unicorn. I was out for days after Dinky was born; I dreamt that I had died. But I wasn't dead. One morning, I woke up, and they laid my Muffin in m-m-m-m-my hooves.... and when I looked at her... when I looked at her... she... she...”

Derpy's eyelids clenched shut. Her shoulders shuddered once, twice. A hiccup, a low breathy inhale, and she reopened them and gazed everywhere through a sudden cascade of yellow tears.

“She looked at m-m-m-me. She saw me. After a life of nopony looking me in the eyes, my Muffin did. She looked at me. She looked at her mother, me, her mother.” She hissed through her teeth and tilted two streaming eyes towards the stars as she held the quivering child tightly to her shuddering gray coat. “And I finally knew... Praise Gultophine... I finally knew that there were kind and precious things in this world.” A deep, wincing breath. “And every p-p-p-p-painful length I went through to see that she came into my life was suddenly worth it, because I had proof that there could be something beautiful enough to love even me... and I could love it back.”

Harmony stood silent as a stone, weathering the quivering air of the mailpony's sniffling voice. The mare shuddered, laid Dinky gently down in the grass, and caressed the foal's quivering face.

“A few weeks ago... Dinky woke up in the middle of the night with a shriek. I went to see if she was alright. She said she had a nightmare. I asked if she wanted me to sleep with her, to protect her. Do you know what my Muffin said?” She glanced up with two wet eyes pointing away from a painful smile. “She said that nightmares were merely the brain's way of process... pr-pr-pr-pr-pro... of cleaning up information during sleep. She knew the scary things in her nightmare weren't real. All those years of buying her books and making her into the smart p-p-p-p-p-pony that I wasn't had worked. I had done my Muffin right.”

Derpy closed her eyes and took a deep, torturous breath. She came down the crest of her lungs with a wince as she whimpered:

“But it didn't feel right.” She squeaked. “It should be M-M-M-M-Mommy's job to scare away the nightmares, but Dinky didn't need me to. It was then that I realized how selfish I had become. I need my Muffin... I love her and I need her so much. Every day, I do my deliveries in an upside down world full of laughter and sneers and... mmmfffmm—and she is the one thing in the center of my eyes. My Muffin is what keeps me flying back to solid ground: her and her alone.”

“Hmmnngghh... Frozen fields. Crystalline organ beneath the warriors of the burning forge!” The possessed foal sobbed and quivered. “Silver happening... Silver happening...”

Derpy bowed her face and touched her forehead to the crest of Dinky's burning horn. The mother's tears steamed in the heat from her daughter's magical affliction. She tossed her blonde mane as she shook her head left and right and shudderingly said:

“I don't know how Mommy's going to drive these nightmares away. Nebula, help me. Without my Muffin I am nothing, nothing. All I'll ever have to go b-b-b-b-back to is a blind world that notices me even less than I could ever possibly see it. I couldn't live in that world; there would be no kindness in it. None whatsoever.” She stroked a hoof over her daughter's ailing face, sniffled, and murmured: “None wh-wh-wh-whatsoever...”

Harmony stirred uncomfortably. Every tense muscle of the future scavenger's pained soul wormed through the numb Entropan limbs, until she finally managed to rest a hoof on the mail mare's shoulder. “I may not speak for a kind world, Miss Hooves, but I like to think I know something precious when I see it. The birth of your child—the one miracle that you experienced in your life is but a preview to another miracle, one that could very well happen tonight.”

“What miracle is that, Mister Squirrel?”

Harmony smiled bravely past Derpy's words. “Your child's survival. I have every intent to make sure nobody's kid dies tonight. Yours... or the Capricorn's.”

“I wish there were more clerks from Canterlot that were as sympa... sympa-pa-pa-pa-pa...”

“I may not be an expert on sympathy,” the last pony said, “But I know a thing or two about survival.” She smirked with a shade of pride. Just then, there was a snapping sound—like a branch being stepped on in the forest. She and she alone spun around...

...and glanced breathlessly towards the window. “Did... Did you hear that?” Scootaloo stammered.

Fluttershy was already bounding up to her hooves. In a surprisingly strong burst of wings, the caretaker floated up over the card game and pressed herself to the double windows stretched before the rain-drenched night beyond the reading seat. Hardened blue eyes squinted through the obsidian glass, meandering every knifing drop of liquid that pierced the edges of the Everfree Forest.

Scootaloo bounded up onto quivering hooves, her violet eyes bright. “It's the storehouse again, isn't it? Something wants to get the stuff!”

“That... That remains to be seen,” Fluttershy said in a deep, contemplative voice. She was more confused than frightened, a steely complexion that Scootaloo hardly recognized, but instantly respected. “I am not used to this prolonged amount of rain; I could simply be imagining things...”

“What if we went out together and scared whatever it is off once and for all?”

“No.” Fluttershy shook her head. She spun around. “I want you staying inside.”

“Pfft—Again? I can look after myself, Fluttershy. Helping you scare these critters away is the least I can do for you letting me stay here!”

“Until I know exactly what we are dealing with—if we are dealing with anything—I want you to stay inside.”

“But what if there's something out there that you can't deal with?”

Fluttershy strolled past and cast a desperate smile. “You would doubt the stare master, Scootaloo?”

The little foal wasn't buying it. With a stony expression, she grumbled, “Don't pretend you're not half as freaked out by those noises than I am.”

“Erhm...” Fluttershy bit her lip in a trademark pensiveness. “We both do well to be frightened, but when it comes to the two of us, Scootaloo, it is my place and my place alone to investigate this.”

“But why? Can't you at least let me help?”

“Scootaloo, you've been so very polite to me all afternoon. It would be a shame... erhm... for that to stop now.”

The foal merely raised an eyebrow to that mechanic of guilt.

Fluttershy nevertheless swung the front door open and stared resolutely out into the rain. After a slight shudder, she said, “Unless you specifically hear me call out for you, do not leave this cottage. Do you understand me?”

“But Fluttershy—”

“The storehouse is my responsibility. It falls to me to earn my keep. I shall return shortly...” She bounded out, letting the door swing shut to the dark, wet world beyond.

“Hmmmmph...” Scootaloo folded her front hooves with a frown. “You're not the only pony who needs to earn something, Fluttershy.” With a huff, she marched up to the reading seat and all-but-planted her orange nostrils to the glass, squinting out into the obsidian monsoon that enshrouded the quaint little house. All she could make out were the mere phantoms of shadows, of distorted air dancing around errant drops of rain, kissing their way in and out of the penumbra of pale starlight.

Just then, Scootaloo's heart skipped a beat. She was hearing noises—or the echoes of noises. She couldn't be entirely sure, but she thought she could make out a pounding. Something had scampered from the left side of the blackened yard... over to the right and blacker side of the rain-soaked horizon. There was a sloshing sound... a deep and low bass noise... and then the continual hiss of endless rain.

“Wooooh... Freaky...” Half of her shuddered and the other half smirked in a fitful spell of excitement. Her ears twitched as she glanced left and right, attempting to adjust her violet eyes to the glass' dim reflection of the fireplace that crackled behind her. Several minutes into the witless gazing, Scootaloo heard more sloshing, more shuffling, another bass hum, and then the ever-present hiss of rain shrouded it all once more.

In the tranquil nightlit space between breaths, Scootaloo thought of Everclear. She thought of a mineshaft that consumed the souls of ponies like so many barren rocks that forever plugged the mouth of that terrestrial serpent. She thought of Fluttershy, she thought of flowers, and she thought of shadows—like the outline of darkness that had so phantasmagorically haloed her when she stood before the bathroom mirror with her hoof raised, feeling for the soul of the pony that stood beyond it, only to make contact with the cold kiss of nothing that was reserved for the mystery that was tomorrow. In so many years of homeless scavenging, Scootaloo had only stolen things; she had never earned them. She could be the loneliest soul on the face of Equestria, and she would never get a cutie mark—so long as she allowed herself to be swallowed by that opaque shadow in the mirror.

For once, the foal had tried to do things differently. Fluttershy had let her, but Fluttershy could barely let herself do things differently, the hard way, the brave way, the humble way—by giving up what was precious to her—her gentility—by rushing out impulsively into that dark wet night full of noises. Scootaloo was afraid to give up something as well, and yet Fluttershy had dragged it out of her. She had found a piece of Scootaloo that was willing to receive, and it left the foal feeling just as blessed as she felt nauseous.

For her sake—and for her host's sake—Scootaloo felt compelled to practice the one talent she had always denied herself, but felt the need to exercise then, even if it could end in more blood than cutie marks. Scootaloo had to stretch the invisible wings of her courage, the one bulwark that had kept her safe from all the elements that had hounded a foal's lonely life of survival, but had also blocked her from indulging in the softer shades of life, the shades lent her via a melodic voice on that drenched afternoon, the things that she was still never, ever strong enough to earn.

“Pffft-Yeah. Screw this.” She half-smiled, half-sneered, fully-pushed a hoof forward and opened the windows with a rain-soaked creak. Summoning a deep breath, Scootaloo dove out into the pouring world and landed in a splash upon flooded grass.

The orange foal immediately shivered. She wasn't prepared for just how cold it would be outside. She had slept through worse storms before, but this evening was somehow different. A warm fireplace and a pile of playing cards flew away from her flank like a distant star as she scampered dauntless into that thundering night.

With squinting eyes, she peered left and right. Her pink mane was already wrapping around her neck in a slick mat of surrender, but she didn't dare turn around. She listened for plodding sounds that weren't her own—that may or may not have been Fluttershy's either. All she heard was thunder—distant and grumbling—as her sloshing path lit up in random strobes that revealed a deep black forest of wooden teeth stretching beyond, forming the gnarled ribcage of a suddenly soulless Everfree.

All was madness and obscurity. The foal was more frustrated than she was scared. In a determined breath, she pivoted against the cold rain and marched north—around the far end of the house—where she at least knew where one important thing was.

The storehouse: it stood before her like a pale wooden igloo on the edge of the cottage's windowlit haze. From the bobbing vision of the wet foal's scampering approach, it appeared in one piece. Scootaloo managed a smirk, for this entire situation appeared completely and utterly absurd. It was most likely just the sound of a falling tree branch that had ushered Fluttershy outside, and the sloshing noises that the window-gazing foal had listened to were likely nothing more than the hoofsteps of a rain-soaked pegasus running silly circles in the darkness. When all of this muddied chaos was said and done, the two ponies would have a long laugh—

Scootaloo skidded to a splattering stop. In a breathless stance, she squinted at the wooden door to the storehouse. Against the pale bark of the frame were several slashes—clawmarks—and the deep splintery ravines collected rainwater like a wound would collect blood.

It wasn't fear that made Scootaloo's heart race quicken; it was shame, the sensation of a stupid mistake bringing a stupid survivor to a stupid end. The hairs on her back rose against the raindrops as—just then—a deep bass hum rose from behind, shaking rivulets in the puddles all around her. Scootaloo spun around in a voiceless exclamation.

At first, she saw nothing. And then, there was a strobe of lightning, and she saw it. More specifically, she saw her reflection. Her blanching face flickered a dozen ivory times—glistening off of a row of razor sharp teeth pointed straight at her. Then the lightning's strobe ended, and she was cast into darkness, shivering at the serrated end of a deep and prolonged growling noise...

With an instinctual gasp, the last pony's amber eyes twitched open. She blinked to see purple starlight twinkling down upon the same grassy knoll she had meditatively shut her eyes to ten minutes ago. Fluttershy was still slumbering, her yellow body twitching fitfully in the throes of aching spasms. Propped up against a pale rock, Derpy sat with her eyes shut and her body slowly rising and falling in a bitterly brief sleeping spell. Dinky sat in her mother's lap, and she was anything but unconscious.

“Mmmffft... For the sky to turn red, the earth must bleed. Once more, the black stare returns. The stars melt away. Nnngh...”

Harmony took a deep breath, rubbing her eyes with a copper hoof as the mental barrier of gray ash and snow dutifully washed away a rain-slicked evening to return her to the present... which was the past.

“Gotta hoof it to ya, kiddo,” she murmured across the thick Everfree air. “You've landed yourself in one motley crew. I'd say you're the only pony in this forest that's making sense. I could write a book to your words.”

“Do not be the same herd that he has marched you into being, only galloping at the same speed in a different direction!”

“I rest my case.” Harmony tiredly, bitterly smiled. With a deep breath, she gazed over at Fluttershy, at her silken and wilted figures, at the invalidic limbs that once charged bravely into an obsidian night drowning in rain... and tears. “I could write so many books... with the things that I've seen. With all that I am... with all that I've become.” She sighed heavily out her nostrils, her brow furrowed with a renewed ache. “But a eulogy, Spike? It's all so much... It's all so... so much. I can't. I simply can't do this anymore—”

“Seriously, kid—Would I let the world be any less cool by disappearing?”

Harmony froze. Slowly, icily, her copper head pivoted to stare dazedly at the glowing unicorn. Her amber eyes were twin suns, sudden phantoms that could light up the Wasteland for an eternity.

“I'll be darned if I let you die!” Dinky's lips moved under a pair of glowing ivory eyes. A cool and wind-throttling voice was lurching out from her throat. “Don't fret! I'll be back in—like—half an hour, tops!”

Ten seconds later, the last pony's heart finally beat again. On quivering, foalish limbs she hobbled up and slowly shuffled across the grass, her eyes locked like titanium staples on the child's pulsating horn that throbbed with each of her hoofsteps.

“Her skin is not yours...” Dinky snarled, her hooves curling tighter to her gray tummy. “It is not your skin to wear!”

“What... What did you just say...?” Harmony stammered in a pitiful whisper.

“Da. Is in pony's eyes, Brucie thinks.” Dinky stirred and twitched as a shimmering voice wafted through her, out of her. “Brucie knows...”

Harmony stood like a teetering statue over her. A dry gulp. “Who are you...?”

“Snnkkkt...” A wicked sneer, a suddenly cold and raspy voice. “A silver strip for your thoughts, blank flank?”

“What...” Harmony frowned. “...are you? What do you want with Dinky?”

“There's a good angel, Harmony.” A rich, affluent accent, tainted with sorrow and joy. “That I haven't cried before...”

Harmony didn't know why, but she was hyperventilating. The closer and further she stared into the shimmering horn of the possessed foal, the more she felt green bands of fire eating at the edges of her peripheral. She hissed suddenly, as if the world was about to spin out from underneath her and explode in black briars and thorns, thorns, thorns, thorns...

“Hcckttttt-t-t-t-t-the Onyx Eclipse. The Onyx Eclipse is coming, through a dead keyhole of heartless stars...”

Harmony paled. With quivering lips, she flashed a gaze upwards at the purple haze of endless Equestrian constellations. She then threw the child a horrified look. “What?!”

“It will suck all of the light out of her children...” Dinky's horn pulsed into the black of night. “...and bathe their cradles in chaos' flames.”

“Who are you?!” She gazed once more at the stars, then slid up and all but bit the glowing unicorn's face as she barked: “What is the Onyx Eclipse?!?”

“What is there to change?” A deep voice, suddenly. Evaporating tears. “Don't you see? I killed my mother.”

A ravenous troll leaped out of Harmony's flesh. In a vicious snarl, she grabbed Dinky with two shivering hooves and dangled her by the shoulders. “Celestia dang it, talk to me! Who are you?! What do you see in the friggin' stars?!”

Dinky gasped. With her bright eyes rolling back, she once more mewled, her voice cracking. “I don't want to be loyal to them! I want to be loyal to you, Harmony—!”

“Why is Equestria going to burn up in flames?!” Harmony shouted, her amber eyes burning. Something yellow and porcelain stirred fitfully behind her. “Why am I still here?! Why is everypony dead but me?! Why, dang it, why?!”

Dinky gasped. In a wave of gray ash, her yellow mane billowed into marshmallowy white and lavender strands. “With our cutie marks, we'll rock Equestria.” Sweetie Belle sputtered. “We use our stomachs to digestia?”

Harmony shivered in a green bubble. Her eyes blinked from amber to scarlet to violet—

“Miss Harmony?”

She turned and flashed a look across a carpet littered with playing cards. Fluttershy gazed down from above the fireplace, crucified to the stone wall with black thorns. “Is everything all right?” Her melodic voice was drowned out as the rainwater beyond the windows exploded like Cloudsdalian corpses. The moon shattered as a wave of fire swam over Everfree and barreled against the black bars of the arcane vault. From behind, there was a gray shadow flying—shrieking—towards the orange foal.

Blinking, the last pony turned to look, only to be impaled by a thunderous hoof to the face. The world flashed white like moonvision, and she somersaulted backwards until she was lying—sprawled out—in a grassy knoll beneath purple starlight. Following the thrown punch, a panting Derpy cradled her shivering, possessed foal close to her chest while frowning the time traveler's way.

“What's the m-m-m-m-matter with you?!” The mother hissed. Her frowning eyes swam yellow meteors around the copper pegasus. “Stay away from my Muffin, do you understand me?!”

“Did you hear her?” Harmony hopped up to numb hooves, panting and sweating through a pale sheet of horror. “Did you?! Please—somepony, anypony—tell me you friggin' heard her!”

“My daughter is sick! And none of this shouting is helping her get any better!”

There was a deep rumbling sound—like thunder. The green world shook under the thick voices blanketing the air. “Uhm... Ladies...?” Fluttershy demurely stammered from the background.

“Please—Just let me talk to her again!” Harmony twitched and twitched but tried to calm the situation with an outstretched limb. “She's picking up something! I don't know what it is, but I-I gotta hear more!”

“You've done enough! I can't believe I trusted you, even for a second!”

“Trusted me?! Miss Hooves, I'm trying to save your kid! Just like Miss Fluttershy! I know the two of you are going through a lot of crud right now. But please—for my sake—for... uhm... for Canterlot's sake! Let me just—”

The rumbling intensified. The blades of grass shook. Fluttershy stirred up to four wobbling hooves and murmured once more: “Ladies, please, if you could just—”

“I don't care if it's for Celestia's sake!” Derpy frowned. “Stay away! I mean it! I thought you were a kind pony! Guess I was just st-st-st-st-st-stupid! I'm always stupid!”

“Derpy, for crying out loud, get a friggin' clue! I'm on your side!”

“Oh no! I've fallen for that before! Not again, Mister Squirrel—”

“Pony! P. O. N. Y.!” Harmony fiercely barked in Derpy's reeling face. She flailed her upper limbs before the gray mare's clockwork eyes. “Do you not see the hooves! These were not made for gathering nuts, ya Luna-forsaken optometrist jigsaw puzzle! Look at the friggin'' hooves! Miss Fluttershy, tell her! Tell her you see the friggin' hooves!”

“Uhm... I most assuredly see the frigging hooves.”

“There! Ya hear that?”

“But... uhm... if you two would please stop arguing just for one—”

Derpy retorted above the loud rumbling. “I swear, the only reason you're here is because you're scared for Fluttershy! You d-d-d-d-don't even care if my Muffin lives or dies!”

“Miss Hooves,” Harmony snarled. “Did you or did you not hear me promise earlier that—?”

“You were just trying to make a stupid pony feel better!”

“I was trying to be kind, you envelope-sniffing little—”

“Ladies!” Fluttershy shrieked, suddenly hobbling between the two and pointing with a yellow hoof. “The ground—”

Harmony glanced. “What about the ground—Ho boy!”

The earth exploded beneath them with an ear-splitting snarl. All three pegasi went flying. Dinky's shrieks split the Everfree night, only to be drowned out by a thunderous roar as a great white mass slithered upwards from the depths. With a lashing tail that ripped flanks of grass from their roots, a giant leathery creature stared ravenously at the floundering ponies with milky-white sideways eyes.

“What is that thing?!” Derpy stammered.

Fluttershy gasped and squeaked, “Oh my! Oh my—We were on marked territory!” She gulped and struggled against her magically impaired limbs to point at the monstrosity. “It's an ivory nematode!”

“Well of course it is!” Harmony snarled. On a wave of bubbling anger, the copper pegasus flew mercilessly through the air with an Entropan hoof outstretched. “I'll be danged if I'm in the mood to hug the friggin' thing!”

“No!” Fluttershy gasped. “It's too big—”

The gigantic lizard let loose a banshee cry, spun one hundred and eighty degrees, and struck the airborne time-traveler with the cedar-thick bulk of its tail. In a breathless grunt, Harmony's Entropan body was knocked back like a rubber ball. She slammed into the earth and cut a deep ravine, sliding to a stop besides a gasping Derpy.

“Dear Nebula! Are you okay?!”

“Yeah...” Harmony hissed through a fluctuating vision of green plumes. “Thankfully I landed on my bushy tail!” The last pony hopped back to her hooves. “Just tell me where the dang salamander went! I'll show him a new position he can bend that tail of his in—”

“Fluttershy!” Derpy suddenly shrieked.

Harmony blinked at her, then flashed a pale look across the knoll. She paled. “Oh dear Epona...”

Fluttershy scuffled up against a lone rock, panting. With wide blue eyes she watched helplessly as the full weight of the ivory nematode sailed towards her—howling—its pale leathery skin flickering like a bolt of lightning...

...that punctured the dead thick of the night, revealing the glistening jaws once more to a young Scootaloo. The deep bass hum belonged to a leering maw, and the drooling snout belonged to a dark shadow with glinting eyes that stood across from the foal.

The orange foal remained frozen in place, drenched by the evening's deluge. Her back was to the claw-scratched storehouse full of priceless bundles of Fluttershy's supplies. Scootaloo knew this. It was the single reason why she wasn't moving.

There were few things in her young life that the little pony could afford, and even fewer things that she felt like she deserved. All which was empty was normal—was just—like all the gaping spaces that had been left, like the spaces that had been yanked from her. They lingered and decayed like dead holes in the earth, or empty mine shafts. They sung blank verse with the hollows between white-winged names, or the breathless sobs between a sleeping foal's heartbeats.

The teeth parted slightly—yawning black gaps of heated breath. Scootaloo stared into the abyss; it felt like staring into a darklit mirror. She wasn't surprised at what she did next, at how slowly and steadily she picked up a random branch that she had spotted lying in a puddle before her. She gripped the flimsy bludgeon in gnashing teeth. The wood was thick, rich, like a blue table that she was responsible for breaking, something that was once again an incredibly more important piece of life than what she was about to break next.

She thought of the melodic voice one last time, and then she shut it out and allowed the nightmares to fall in place of it as she growled a low growl... and charged her way towards the beast beyond the blackness.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Evercircle

“Girls!” Fluttershy hissed. She quivered into the crook of her forelimb as the menacing cockatrice flew towards her. Nevertheless, her melodic voice was as solid as a mountain as she tossed the words over her shoulder. “Behind me, now!”

Three shuddering foals obeyed her in a blink. With a billowing of their red-and-gold crusader capes, they stood in a solid line behind the yellow pegasus. One gasping soul out of the bunch—a violet-eyed pegasus—stared in a perpetual grimace while Fluttershy stood as the last barrier between the children and eternity in stone.

The cockatrice's shrill cries reverberated off of the dark wooden bodies of the Everfree Forest. The ground shook from the sheer majesty of its scaled wings. As the monstrosity stared off with Fluttershy, there was a shuddering sensation from behind.

Scootaloo realized—without looking—that her two best friends weren't just hiding behind Fluttershy, they were hiding behind her. In fitful crouching stances, they desperately huddled in the flimsy shadows of the young pegasus' tiny wings. Scootaloo was standing in the absolute pit of horror, but in that frozen moment, realizing that Apple Bloom and Sweetie Bell were hiding behind her standing form...

Something bloomed in Scootaloo, something like a furnace. And when Fluttershy briefly glanced back from the cockatrice in a desperate squint of pearlescent blue, their gazes connected, a bridge was built, the Everfree Forest melted beyond the event horizon of burning righteousness, and it was with suddenly steely determination that Fluttershy flung her face forward into the screaming beak of the cockatrice and stared the creature down under the merciless volley of an animal tamer's lecture, embroiled with Celestial Tongue:

“You! Just who do you think you are, running around and turning others into stone?”

Scootaloo watched as Fluttershy saved all of them. She watched—and in spite of every brave and lonely thing she had ever done—she wished... she wished that... she wished that she—

—was flinging her copper body through the air like a breathless missile. With miraculous precision, Harmony knifed her way beneath the pouncing body of the ivory nematoad while shoving Fluttershy out of the way.

A gigantic roll of thunder announced the beast's collision with the floor of the grassy knoll. Fluttershy squeaked in fright as she and Harmony landed in the Everfree dirt and rolled to a stop on the other side. Harmony dropped the Ponyvillean animal tamer and immediately spun on her haunches to glare at the gigantic thrashing amphibian.

“Shove off, you festering pile of tadpole crap!”

“Is M-M-M-Miss Fluttershy okay?”

“Thanks for your concern, Miss Hooves. I'm fine as well!” Harmony marched icily towards the pale-eyed creature. “You! Yes you, handsome! You picked the wrong night to mess with ponies!”

“No! Miss Harmony, don't—” Fluttershy winced and weakly stirred on the ground. “Let me talk to it! It's only trying to—”

“—get us killed?” The last pony snarled. “Not on my watch.”

The gigantic nematoad stood up on iron-thick haunches and roared viciously towards the copper-coated time traveler. Its rows upon rows of teeth glistened with rancid saliva.

“Bring it on, pond scum!” Harmony ground a hoof into the soil. “I've fought an entire army of trolls and won! You're nothing but roadkill—Daah!” The last utterance was a grunting affair, forced out of her lungs as one single swipe of a claw sent her body flying across the knoll and slamming full-force through a sundering tree trunk. She collapsed on the ground in a froth of green smoke and fluttering leaves. “Nnngh...Sonuva—”

The giant squirming menace let loose another banshee scream before stomping towards Fluttershy's prone figure once more.

Harmony spat into the ground. Glancing aside, she saw an enormous chunk of the shattered tree trunk lying on the grass beside her. Picking up the massive thing in two Entropan forelimbs, the time traveler coiled her wings, held her breath, and rocketed towards the pale lizard in a copper blur. As the monster leered over Fluttershy, Harmony zeroed in on the beast's closing maw just in time. The monster's sideways eyes twitched as it found its jaws stuck in mid-bite. The fat mass of the heavy trunk had frozen its mouth like a wooden brace.

“Choke on that, you walking handbag!” Harmony spun in mid-hover and viciously bucked the middle of the trunk. The large wooden thing shattered into a throng of splinters that flew mercilessly down the beast's quivering throat. The lizard stumbled backwards, coughing and sputtering on the contaminating debris. It shook its snout—bore something resembling a frown—and tilted its neck up towards the “Canterlotlian Clerk” with a flaring of bulbous neck muscles.

“Harmony!” Fluttershy gulped and managed to squeak forth: “Caustic mucous! Get away from its—”

Harmony blinked. She briefly revisited the flimsy memory of a gray unicorn foal balanced on the wooden beam of a manger, lecturing about some frivolous factoid or another. This brief remembrance was interrupted by several globs of translucent phlegm being launched the copper pegasus' way. The time traveler gasped and dodged, glancing over her shoulder in time to see the nematoad's nostril fluids landing in the grass and instantly burning the soil to charcoal black.

“Oh no—You did not just shoot death boogers at me!” Harmony cackled.

Dauntless, the giant pale monster pivoted its neck and launched additional streams of the acidic material. For a moment there, Harmony hovered perfectly still, fully expecting to weather the brunt of the burning fluids. At the distant sound of Fluttershy's frightened gasps, she hesitated, her mind instantly being crushed by a collapsing wooden silo that sent her back to the future on green fumes after saving Apple Bloom.

In a cautious jolt of her muscles, Harmony ducked the mucous blobs at the last second. A random clump of exposed rock sizzled and smoked behind her. The nematoad fired more globs of fluid. The mid-air pegasus spun, spiraled, and ducked under the burning volleys in a copper streak. Twirling around a final stream of acid, Harmony barreled towards the monster's chest and struck it full force with an Entropan elbow. “Haaaugh!”

Together, the pony-and-lizard went bounding, rolling, and sliding until they landed against a collapsing wall of trees. Leaves and branches rained down on the thrashing beast as Harmony came up from behind and viciously locked her forelimbs around its neck muscles, struggling to hold the thing down.

“Snkkkt... After twenty-five frickin' years, I'm finally wrestling an alligator!” Harmony spit and hissed through gnashing teeth as she weathered the creature's bucking and jolting movements from behind. “Give up, dang it! Or I'm sending you back to the outhouse where you belong—Whoah!” She shrieked as the monster roared deafeningly, its neck crests bulging under her desperate grip.

From a distance, Derpy Hooves could be seen planting Dinky down safely beside Fluttershy. After a few breathless pants, she shouted: “Hang on!” With a twitch of gray wings, she bravely flew over. “I'll help you, Mister Squirrel!”

“Nnngh—No!” Harmony's amber eyes twitched as she rode the shoulders of the squirming beast. “Don't help me, Miss Hooves! Don't help me! Don't help me! Don't help me!”

“Yaaaaaugh!” The mailpony flew in under a crown of googly eyes and flung a heavy hoof. “Have at you, big nasty thing!”

“Miss Hooves—Ooof!” Harmony winced and hissed from a direct strike to her nose. “Miss Hooves, you're—Aaugh!” She grunted again, cross-eyed. “Will you at least hit the friggin' nematoad?”

“B-B-B-B-But I am hitting it!” A hovering Derpy snarled and punched, punched, punched, punched Harmony in the face. “Take that and that and—!”

“Aim left! Hit its skull! Ooof! Dang it, aim left, you flying bag of marbles—Augh!” After the last punch, Harmony frowned, gritted her Entropan teeth, and wrenched the nematoad's entire snout aside so that Derpy's hooves finally made contact. After just two hits, the lizard snarled and snapped its jaws down in a gaping roar.

“Gaah!” Derpy gasped. She jerked her head aside just in time for the iron teeth of the creature to clamp harmlessly over the length of the pegasus' blonde mane. She winced as the monster made to throw her. “Ohhhhhhhh sh-sh-sh-sh-sh—” The mailpony's scream flew across the night as her body pinwheeled far away from the monster's vicious fling.

In the next breath, the lizard slammed the full weight of its body back into the crushed pile of wood. Harmony wheezed, her copper body quivering in brief spurts of magical green fumes. It didn't help that the monster repeated this brutish pummeling once, twice, thrice—every time with Harmony grunting and looking more and more cross-eyed. Finally, a vicious hiss, and the monster spun in a circle, flung Harmony off of its hide, and struck her body in mid-air with a thick tail.

“Giyaa-aa-aa-aa-aagh!” Harmony's shriek echoed through the air like a rainbow-maned phantom. Her Entropan body crashed hard through a shattering rock, behind which Fluttershy was desperately cradling a helpless unicorn foal. Fluttershy immediately shrieked from the time traveler's landing.

“Miss Harmony! This madness has to stop!”

“You kidding?!” Harmony sputtered, spat pebbles and dirt from her mouth, and struggled onto fuming hooves. “I do this kind of crud for breakfast!”

“Really?”

“No.” Harmony frowned. She looked up at her sudden adversary.

The ivory nematoad was marching at a full gallop, its pale claws raking at the earth as it snarled upon the peak of its approach. With pale eyes that reflected Fluttershy and the copper pegasus, it advanced on the helpless ponies.

“Just let me talk to it!” Fluttershy murmured and trembled into the raging cacophony. “Just let me—!”

Suddenly, the nematoad winced in mid-charge. It faltered for the briefest of seconds, re-blinked its sideways eyes, and resumed its murderous sprint. For a moment, Harmony was helpless to understand why, until she spotted an errant beam of plasma briefly dotting the pale leathery complexion of the beast.

Harmony flashed Dinky a look. Her amber eyes widened. As the ground literally exploded from the incoming monster's charge, she rolled to the side, snatched the gasping unicorn up, and held her directly in front of the leering monster's snow-white maw.

The foal's horn pulsed blisteringly bright through the night's air and flared against the forehead of the gigantic amphibian. With a suddenly vulnerable shriek, the monster collapsed backwards, tripping on its own legs and tail. It whimpered pathetically, twitching away from the light as its pale skin practically sizzled from the proximity of the shimmering horn.

“Hah!” Harmony spat, grinning like a demon as she trotted icily towards the monster, balanced on her rear hooves with the dangling child in her grasp. “The night's suddenly a lot less fun when you can't see worth crap, huh, ya albino bucket of backsweat?! I hope you enjoy hunting flies with a walking stick for the rest of your friggin' life!”

“That's quite enough, Miss Harmony.” Fluttershy suddenly brushed the time traveler aside with a gentle-but-firm swish of her pink tail hairs. She shuffled weakly but determinedly towards the large, quivering creature. “Let me take over...”

“Huh?” Harmony blinked, still clutching a quivering Dinky. “Miss Fluttershy, I've got a drop on it! Let me deal with the bloodthirsty thing—”

“There is no deal to be made. The poor thing was just angry and confused.” The caretaker gently slumped down before the creature's thrashing head and gulped. “I only need to talk some sense into him.”

“Nnnngh...” Harmony slumped down to her haunches, cradling Dinky. “You've gotta be frickin' kidding me...”

“I assure you; I am not.” Fluttershy raised a silken hoof and stroked the snout of the quivering white beast. “There-There-There... I know it burns. But it's not like you gave us much of a choice, now is it?”

The humongous amphibian mewled and hummed painfully. Its sideways eyes slid open in a sickly fashion.

Fluttershy managed an honest—albeit weak smile. “We all do desperate things to protect what we care about. My friend shone a light in your face because she was afraid for me. And you? This is your territory and we were trespassing on it, weren't we?”

The nematoad exhaled hotly, wincing. In response to the animal tamer's Celestial Tongue, the sorry beast nodded its quivering head.

“I'm very, very sorry for that. But you must understand... the three of us are out here because we're on a desperate quest to save a mother's child. Even you must understand how important it is to protect one's offspring. It's the same reason for why this soil is so important for you to burrow a home in, isn't it?”

The creature hissed and let loose a throng of unintelligible squeaking noises. Its tail wagged in a pitiable slump.

Fluttershy squeaked back before gently speaking, “It's noble that you would protect this land for the ones that you love. But we're only passing through, and you're so much bigger than we are. Was this ever a fair fight to begin with?” She stroked the thing's pale nose and navigated a maze of her own wincing pains before finishing with: “If you just return back to the warm moist earth where you're comfortable and safe, I promise that all of us will be on our way. There: now where was the harm in just talking this over?”

There was a deep, rumbling hum, and the beast's jaws curved, resembling a twisted smile. It nuzzled Fluttershy's featherlight skull with an iron maw before clamoring on liquid limbs towards the deep hole in the ground from which the monster had originally sprung. Just before the final plunge, it squinted past Dinky's glowing horn, frowned at Harmony, and raspberried a two-meter-long tongue. A flurry of earth, a rumbling explosion of topsoil, and the ivory nematoad was gone.

“Hmmmph...” Harmony managed a dry smirk as she held Dinky. “In three decades, he will make for some good zeppelin weave.” A gray blur rode up in the time traveler's peripheral. Harmony blinked, because there was suddenly no Dinky in her grasp. She glanced up—only to have a rear hoof shove her viciously in the sternum. “Augh!” She fell back in a flurry of dead grass and frowned up at the mailpony. “Hey, what gives?”

Derpy Hooves stood, her mane and body covered in sticky sap, branches, and flakes of pine cones. She cradled a murmuring unicorn to her chest and glared lopsided daggers all around the time traveler's figure. “How dare you put my Muffin's life in d-d-d-d-danger like that! First you yell at her, then you shake her, and then you toss her like a torch into the mouth of that beast?!?”

“Look, first off—” Harmony hobbled up to her hooves and dusted herself off. “I didn't toss nopony nowhere! Though Nebula-knows I wanted to!” She glared decidedly at the mailmare. “Secondly, I wouldn't have shoved your kid's horn in the monster's face if I didn't think it would work! As a matter of fact, you should be thanking her! It was Dinky's lecture about ivory nem-a-turds the other day that reminded me that they were sensitive to light—”

“Just shut up! Just—Nnnngh!” The mare's forehead burned red between googly eyes as she spat and hissed. “You're a meanie! A big fat meanie squirrel! You're just as bad as everyone else! I don't care what you think you're here for, I don't want you anywhere near my Muffin again! Or else, help me Celestia, I'll p-p-p-p-punch you so hard your head will suffer hemorrh... hem-m-m-m-m.... hemorrh-rrh-rrh-rrh...” The mailpony shook her snout, growled, then leaned forward to howl in the last pony's face. “Crap out your teeth!” With a toss of her leaf-splattered mane, she marched off, carrying a dazed Dinky in tow.

Harmony shrugged her shoulders with a crazy, cock-eyed expression. “What is the deal here?! I'm not the friggin' bad guy! I just saved us all—including your precious muffin, you ungrateful—”

“Miss Harmony...” Fluttershy squeaked and struggled to trot over on rubber-band limbs. In a panting fever, she sweated to say, “Please, let it rest.”

“Oh come on—Not you too!” Harmony barked. She spun to face Fluttershy. A wooden flight of stairs stretched above a green seat through rain-refracted firelight. She squinted her eyes, then briefly hissed past a dizzy spell. “I swear, Dinky was perfectly safe! I knew exactly what I was doing! I've taken crazier risks and survived before—”

“That may be all well and fine for you, Miss Harmony,” Fluttershy struggled to say. “But you must understand, there is more at stake here. Miss Hooves and her daughter: they're going through so much, and when you heartlessly put her into danger's way—”

“Heartless?” The last pony blinked at Fluttershy in disbelief. Something inside of her melted coldly. “But Fluttershy... I...” She bit her lip. “I'm only trying to be a good pony, I swear it...”

“And I know that.” Fluttershy slumped briefly on the ground, wincing through waves of magical resonance. She fought hyperventilation and finally said: “But you have to understand... Being kind is a great deal more difficult when you have other ponies to look out for other than just yourself.”

A numb curtain instantly washed over the survivor from the future, cascading coldly over her lungs like a sheet of evening rain. She bit her lip, paralyzed by that undeniable truth. For yet another time in her life, she couldn't look into the optics of that bringer of painfully kind words. She couldn't last against the stare master. Harmony slumped back down to her haunches like the pitiful little foal she was and stared into the upturned grass—the signs of a vicious battle that only residually needed to be fought to begin with.

There were no words.

Until Fluttershy spoke them: “We... We have rested long enough. Miss Harmony, I... I can't make it on my own.” She gulped and breathed against the dancing grass around her. “I want to help Derpy and her child so much... But the magic is too intense for my weak body. I'm going to need your help some more...” A quivering pair of lips. “If you're willing to give it, Miss Harmony...”

Harmony's Entropan nostrils sniffled, like an copper tower leaking in all the exposed places, and she was too scared to question why. “Always, Fluttershy.” She leaned over and kindly hoisted the wincing caretaker towards her flank. “Always willing to help you, Miss Fluttershy...”

The pained animal tamer whimpered and leaned over the weight of the time traveler like a shivering infant. With a brave breath, she shuffled her lower hooves, moving in rhythmic timing with Harmony's trotting body as the two limped slowly after the distant gray dots of Derpy and her child, piercing deeper into the great green grave of Everfree.

Harmony gnashed her teeth, dragging the flimsy threads of Fluttershy's body alongside the infinite weight of her copper hooves. Fluttershy's words shook her then as they had stabbed her twenty-five years ago. The bobbing forest before her blurred suddenly in a moist blanket of confusion and sorrow, refracting, like icy cold raindrops...

...that stabbed every square centimeter of the charging foal's orange face. Scootaloo growled into her toothy grip of the flimsy stick as she galloped towards the shadowy creature from beyond. The wooden storehouse disappeared into the storm behind her. The distant firelight from the cottage bobbed and weaved. Thunder shook the puddles like white rocks skipping off of a lake's surface as the lightning strobed.

Dozens of razor sharp teeth glistened in the night. The four-legged beast reared in front of her, its beady eyes reflecting the storehouse that it was about to rip its way through Scootaloo for. But just before flesh could meet sundering flesh, there was an angelic fluttering of wings. A melodic voice raked the scene in two, stringing the would-be combatants apart with invisible reins like black thorns...

“Stop!” Fluttershy shouted. The words were flung towards the foal, but the stare was stabbing into the maw of the lumbering beast ahead.

Scootaloo gasped, spitting the stick from her mouth as she stood in a wet mat of violet mane hair. She craned her neck to cast a shivering glance over the caretaker's flank. “Fluttershy! I'm about to save the—!”

“You're very brave, Scootaloo. But neither of us is a match for a chupacabra.”

“We'll see about that!” Scootaloo snarled and re-enaged the monster on galloping hooves. Her entire world jolted suddenly as she found herself unable to finish the charge. Glancing back, she saw Fluttershy's hooves clamped over the foal's tail hairs in the damp earth. The yellow pegasus anchored Scootaloo in place with a surprising amount of strength and authority. “Fluttershy, what gives?! Let me go—!”

“Shhh!” Fluttershy flicked a wet pink tail over Scootaloo's petite shoulders, like a motherly limb brushing her to the side, paralyzing her. She forced the shivering foal behind and stood protectively between the filly and the shadowed chupacabra in front of the two. “I know what you want,” she murmured towards the deeply humming beast and its fangs, fangs, fangs. “If you need it so badly that you're willing to threaten harmless ponies for it, then I will not stop you.”

Scootaloo gasped. With wide twitching eyes, she stared at Fluttershy in disbelief, not to mention a twinge of foalish contempt.

But the mare stood her ground just as her words did, glaring at the undaunted monstrosity. “You may have the storehouse. You may do with it as you please—But you will leave us alone. Your selfishness is too petty to deserve the blood of the innocent.” She strongly shoved a shivering Scootaloo along with her as she shuffled sideways from the jaws of the beast, opening a clear and muddy path to the rainslicked wooden structure. “But if you so much as approach the cottage... if you make any move to threaten me or my guest here...” She glared—staring daggers at the vicious beast. “...it will be a mistake that you will not remember pleasantly. I have more friends in the forest than there are stars in the sky. Enjoy your victory here for what it is, a triviality. I only hope that the one day that you realize how mean you've been, a stronger creature will show you the same mercy you're refusing us.”

The creature merely hissed, watching and drooling as the twin pegasi weakly shuffled away from its muscular presence. Once there was no room left for sentient debate, the ravenous creature charged on clawed feet and slammed effortlessly through the door of the storehouse, screaming unintelligible obscenities into the bloody shadows of the night.

Scootaloo gasped—a face grimacing between fear and anger. With one last jolt of her petite muscles, she attempted to run across the wet scene and ram the pillaging beast. Before she could so much as move, the calamitous sight of the storehouse was flung from her vision as Fluttershy hoisted the foal by her violet mane hair with surprising effortlessness. On the tail end of an aggravated grunt, Scootaloo was dragged around the far side of the cottage...

... and into the dry air of the thatch-roofed manger behind the home, far away from the thunderous noise of the beast's triumphant ransacking. Fluttershy let go of Scootaloo and pressed herself against a wooden beam, staring over the shuddering shadows of dozens of half-slumbering animals to see if they had been followed. To her relief, there was no sign of the mad chupacabra's pursuit.

“Oh thank goodness! Celestia be praised, that was too terribly close! Oh Scootaloo, I did tell you to stay inside. Please, tell me...” She turned about and raised a hoof to the trembling foal's face. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

“Grrrrrr!” Scootaloo spat and shook herself free of the caretaker's touch. Sliding across an inexplicable pile of ashes, she snarled angrily at the weak pegasus standing in front of her. “What was that?! What was all of that?!”

“Scootaloo, please. Remain calm. I know that was quite scary, but—”

“But nothing!” Scootaloo hissed. “I wasn't scared! I wasn't scared in the least! Dang it, Fluttershy, that creep is tearing away at all your stuff! I was the one thing standing in between the storehouse and that creature, and then you drop in and let it ruin all of those supplies just to save me?! All of the animal tamers in the Equestrian Valley are counting on you to keep an eye on that stuff, and now it's all smashed to crap—and all because of me?! How could you?!”

“Scootaloo...” Fluttershy gulped. She braved a jittery smile as she flew her voice across the rain-echoing air of the darklit manger. “An entire royal surplus of supplies could crumble to dust, for all I care, so long as no harm befalls you.”

“No! No!” The foal roared. “You're wrong! I could have saved the stuff! Fluttershy, after an entire afternoon of feeding and sheltering me, couldn't you have just let me earn my friggin' keep?!”

“I...” Fluttershy stammered, wilting suddenly from the hot-orange storm of anger that outshone the lightning around them. “I only wanted you to be safe, Scootaloo. You're sweet and precious to me—”

“Stop it! Be quiet—Nnnngh!” Scootaloo dug her face into the hay-strewn ground. Her teeth gnashed. When her eyes reopened, they were burning, violet coals. “Your kindness stinks!”

Fluttershy gasped, recoiling as if from a cannonball.

“I hate it! Your kindness stinks, and you stink!” Scootaloo heaved and shouted into the thunder. “It makes you weak! It makes you weak and helpless! Now look! Look at what it's doing to everything you were ever good at! I want none of it! I want none of your stinkin' kindness!”

“Scootaloo... You're—”

“I'm nothing! I sure as heck ain't weak like you!” Scootaloo's mouth snarled, but her limbs were shaking. The trembles crept up to her torso on blood ice. “All kindness does is run out on you! That's all it ever does! I don't need it! I don't need you, and I don't need them!” Her eyes were twitching, bouncing off green grass and granite shoals before a great serpent somewhere. “I'm strong! I'm stronger than you! I'm stronger than they... than they ever were....” A crumbling, like a scooter shattering down its center. Her violet eyes pulsated into twin white ghosts. Scootaloo's lungs heaved in and out of the manger's ashes, like a bubbling gray future haloed in darkness, and she caved in on herself with a thorn-induced grimace before bursting with one last fitful snarl: “They're... Th-th-they're just rocks! Dumb, stupid rocks!” She hiccuped, heaved, wretched: “That's all they are! Wh-why can't I stop friggin' thinking about them?! Why can't I just get them out of my head?!” She hissed and bowed to the ground, covering her shivering skull with a pair of muddied hooves, the bane of every warm and happy home ever. “D-dumb rocks... J-just stupid, dumb r-rocks...”

The world was spinning, a heated maelstrom of vomitous sobs starved for release. Out from the billowing cyclone, a silken snout emerged to gently nuzzle her, followed by a melodic voice—almost as crystal clean as hers—warming like a womb.

“It's okay, Scootaloo. Let it come...”

“I... I can't... I-I can't! I'm n-not strong enough! I don't understand, Fluttershy, I d-don't understand why it hurts so much...”

“Shhhh...” The caretaker's neck enshrouded her, along with a pair of satin limbs. Celestial Speech cradled her beyond the evening's tears, gradually melting through the veil. “The world is a strange and confusing place. It's okay to cry about it.”

Scootaloo did. Diving into Fluttershy's embrace, she did. Flinging herself into the lonely death throes of all of her shivering memories, she did. She did until she was too dry to do it anymore, and still Fluttershy held her, Fluttershy rocked her, Fluttershy loved her—as Scootaloo secretly wished anypony would, but as nopony ever did, and yet Fluttershy did, because she was there. More than that, she was kind. Strength and courage melted to that melodic voice, a velvety tone that branded Scootaloo far more permanently than any talent ever could—or would.

She didn't even need to be alone for it.

The silhouettes of three pegasi marched in a limping line across the purple backdrop of stars as they stole their way into the dark green bowels of Everfree, their shadowed forms intermittently lit by hovering lantern bugs. Yellow haloes danced across the panting figures of Derpy, Harmony, and Fluttershy as they shuffled deeper and deeper into the bushy hovel of nature, following the random bolts of a stammering foal's possessed horn.

“I'll see you in Equestrian dreams. Nnnngh... Weeping Autumn, post rapture's never returning. Hckkkt!”

Harmony cast a twitching amber glance at the foal hanging from a pouch in Derpy's saddlebag. The time traveler's Entropan skin shouldn't have been sweating, but it was, it damnably was. The unicorn's horn strobed brightly, and just then all the trees in the forest resembled burning green flame. Harmony clenched her eyes shut and hissed. When she reopened them she saw a field of white rocks. Every pale stone floated up towards the burning sky in the reverse explosion of a gigantic moon that swallowed a melting sun. Onyx Eclipse. Onyx Eclipse. Onyx Eclipse.

The last pony stumbled. She felt her saddlebag shifting in the pelting snow. Fearing that her copper rifle would slide out, she reached a hoof up—only to feel the gentle touch of a weak hoof. There was no saddlebag; Fluttershy's very real and barely breathing body was slumped against her backside, struggling to trot straight.

Harmony gasped. Shifting the yellow pegasus' weight, she paused to sit down and cradle Fluttershy's body to her. “Miss Fluttershy...” She stammered desperately, like a foal that had outrun trolls over a million kilometers in a single breath. “Fluttershy, speak to me!”

The caretaker murmured tiredly, her clenched eyelids tensing under a dancing glitter of lightning bugs that danced over her like so many burning thorns. “Mmmmff... Just... Just so exhausted... Mmmnngh... The... Mana crystals... Are we...?”

Harmony heaved and heaved. The smell of rain and ash-laden hay rose with each breath. She flashed a look across the forested trail and whimpered: “Derpy... Nnngh... Miss Hooves, please! For Celestia's sake, just one friggin' moment! I beg you!”

Derpy glanced back confusedly in midtrot. Behind her, Dinky shuddered and hissed. A glowing horn... a foglight pierced the gray clouds as the last pony's airship flew head-on into Gilliam's leering battlecruiser.

Harmony wrenched her eyes away, howling a desperate voice into the center of her spinning self. The entire bowels of Everfree were twirling around her. She was a copper ballast in free-fall. The time traveler seethed, flung her eyes open, and clung to Fluttershy... shaking her... trying desperately to wake her.

“Miss Fluttershy... Stay awake... Please... Stay with me!” Hramony gulped dryly and hissed beyond the caretaker's pink mane. “I'm... I think I'm losing cohesion.” The world danced in brief plumes of emerald madness. She hissed into the crook of her Entropan limb and blindly seethed at the apathetic Exile to whom the flesh belonged. “Curse you! I have an anchor, isn't that enough?! Isn't that enough, you selfish cowardly Princess?!”

“Come with me, my little pony...” A phantom voice sputtered from the foalish quasar floating amidst the three. “And I shall give you healing.”

“You're one to talk, Spike...” Harmony sneered through gnashing teeth as her burning eyes fought through the lightning bugs, the airships, the carcasses and carcasses falling out of Cloudsdale. “You run your iron mouth off like a college professor—And yet you never tell me enough! This is all your fault, dang it! It was too little a smoking breath, or not enough of your flame, or whatever. When I get back, Spike, I am so tearing you a new gem-hole!”

A pair of googly eyes blinked in confusion. A yellow head rose into frame, stirring painfully as a pair of blue pearls returned to the land of the living. “Ughhh... Miss Harmony? What's all this about Twilight's assistant—?”

“Just tell him to shut up...” Harmony ran a hoof over her copper skull and winced. The forest buckled under green vapors between every other heart beat. A schoolroom full of giggling voices speared her from all sides. “Tell them all to shut up... They didn't come all the way back here like I did. They don't understand...”

“Our special talent is not arguing!” a sing-songy voice beside Derpy chirped. “Besides, what would the cutie mark of somepony who's talent is arguing even look like?”

“Nnnngh! Go roast your head you stupid dictionary!” Harmony barked. She spun and frowned across the fuming stretch of forested dreamland. “Why don't you marry her if you love her friggin' mane so dang much?!”

“Miss Fluttershy...?” Derpy backed away with a suddenly strange unicorn at her flank.

The caretaker in question grasped the time traveler with solid hooves. “Harmony, you're not making any sense...” She weakly gulped and braved the aches and pains of the magical resonance. “What's wrong? Talk to us.”

“I... I can't... can't...”

“Can't what?”

Harmony gulped and hung her head towards the ground. Orange hooves and wet hay—A blink—Blood soaked snow and ashes. “Can't... Can't think... Can hardly breathe. These lungs should be... invulnerable...”

“Invulnerable?”

“Immutable...” Harmony hissed and pointed her nauseous head towards the swirling forest canopy. The distant rumble of Timberwolves echoed between the spaces of Pitt's yellow teeth. “But I can't... I feel... I feel...”

“You're just chicken!” Apple Bloom pointed with a smirk. A red and gold cape swished as the yellow foal trotted into the corner of the storm cellar. “Scootaloo-oo-oo! Scoot-Scootaloo-oo-oo!” She exploded into ash and bone.

With a foalish shriek, Harmony flung her limbs forward and clamped her hooves over Fluttershy's.

The caretaker glanced up with quivering lips of confusion. “Miss Harmony...?!”

“Just hold my forelimbs...” The last pony squeaked. There were so many gray skies and not enough golden sunsets. “Just hold them for a second, please. I...” She gulped and heaved. A homeless foal was storing two apples away to last a weekend. All that was real was pain. “I... I can't tell anymore what was then... or what is later. All I can feel is now. Maybe...” She gave a bitter smile, something that could grow under a Celestial mirror, even if it was only half-alive. “Maybe it's always only ever been now, and the rest is a dream... just a bad nightmare. Like the one Dinky is having.” She glanced up at the nervously shivering mother-and-child. “If I could have twice as many headaches, and half as many tears. Nnnnghhh—Epona! I could eat a mountain of cougar meat!”

“Miss Harmony...” Fluttershy wheezed but fought to brush a gentle hoof across the trembling pegasus' copper face. “Could it be possible that the same magical resonance that's paralyzing me could be affecting your head somehow?”

Harmony winced, staring painfully into the pulsating glow. All of the dead world's twilight had gathered into one gray nub of haunting enchantment. She hated it all the same, but she couldn't bring herself to call it truth. That would have been too easy.

“I only wish that were true...” She whimpered. “But that would ruin this moment. I know that it's horrible—It's a pathetic, frightening, and terrifying moment that's threatening Dinky's life.” A raspy hiss, half saturated with a sob. “But I need to know that it is real.” She clasped tighter to Fluttershy's hooves, weathering the sea of lightning bugs, the glinting lanternlight off of a cackling Gilda's goggles as she took swig after swig of mind numbing joy juice. “I need this moment to be as real as anything that I've ever thought has happened in my lopsided life, or else this whole thing... this whole trip is meaningless!” She grunted and weathered fountains of green flames under her eyelids: Onyx Eclipse, Onyx Eclipse, Onyx Eclipse. “Worthless.”

“But it is all real! I assure you...” A hoof rested on her shoulders. “What makes you think that it isn't, Miss Harmony—?”

The last pony shook her head and hissed, “Stop calling me that! Stop saying it! It isn't real either! Nothing is anymore!”

“Then... Then what do you want me to call you?”

The time traveler blanched, staring down a rainbow symbol of refracting memories, unraveling into scattered filament like the disheveled thread of her narrow and singed life. The thinnest strand—the one colored orange with the amber-lit fog of yesteryear—it knew the answer to Fluttershy's question. It knew what it always wanted to be called. In a rain-slick bubble of haze, the shadow of the orange strand shuffled down towards a green seat and beckoned a yellow cloud beyond, but Harmony stopped it there, she always did.

“I'm not strong enough for that.” Harmony dryly gulped with moist amber eyes. “Nopony could earn that. She can't... She just can't say it. She can't trot down those steps.”

“What steps, dear friend?”

“'Friend?!'” Harmony's eyes twitched like daggers into Fluttershy. “You... would call me friend? You, the cleanest and most angelic pony in Equestria, who cannot earn herself the company that she so righteously deserves, would call me that?” It was an anger, a sorrowful anger, that flew through her lips on bitter wings. “Miss Fluttershy, I have lived that life that you think you are destined for. I have lived that cold, gray, friendless life. There is nothing noble about it. There never will be! You deserve more... Both you and Miss Hooves deserve more. Look at me, look at the horrible mess I am. You do not want this. Do you understand me? Run to your friends. Go meet up with Rarity. Pierce the iron curtain that separates you from your family, your father, your mother, and do not end up like this!”

“Just stay calm, Miss Harmony. We... We're almost to the caves of mana crystals. We have to be.” Fluttershy threw Derpy a nervous glance and gulped. “Then we all can be whole again, especially Dinky.”

“Do not ignore my words—Please... I...” Harmony heaved and leaned her trembling weight against the caretaker for a spell. After a shuddering breath, she regained the strength to say: “I am not mad. I am simply not worthy... not worthy of this moment, no matter how real I want it to be.” She gazed sickly at Derpy, the streams of her souls following her yellow eyes as she crumbled every which way. “I am not a kind pony, Miss Fluttershy. What I do—for Dinky or for the Capricorn's infant—I do out of fear. I don't want you to die, Miss Fluttershy...” She whimpered and clung to her tighter, tossing her black amber-streaked mane. “I don't want the same fate that keeps me alive to silence you forever. And... And yet here I am... dragging you deeper into darkness. It's all my fault that you're in the shape you're in. I'm the end of you.” She gazed off beyond the lanternlight into a deep crown of black thorns. Her pupils dilated as she shivered upon the precipice of bitter truth. “I am the end of everything.”

Out from the darkness, a silken touch embraced her, like so many eons ago in a collapsing manger. The softest of blue eyes, the softest of smiles, and a melodic voice converged once more upon the orphan of time.

“There is no end so long as there is kindness, Harmony. Kindness reaches to all ponies everywhere. It circles back from the deepest shadows and blesses all of us in sequence. Everything that a pony does for another, in gentleness or in desperation, comes around to bless them back. That is the key to life; it's what differentiates things that bleed from things that gather dust. There is much kindness in you, Harmony, and there is also much confusion. But it's the kindness that I feel the most, that I know has circled around your less graceful flaws, that has made me glad to be here, even when all shadows struggle to strangle me. I can see a light in your eyes.”

Harmony stared back. Dinky's glowing horn was still piercing. The green chaos in her peripheral vision was still there, but something settled her breathing nonetheless. She didn't have to understand it. She only had to relax.

“I... I can't see that light, Fluttershy...”

“Maybe you can't see it. But it doesn't mean you can't share it, Harmony...”

Harmony took a shuddering breath. Glancing up, she stared at Derpy. “Miss Hooves... I can see better than you. But... for some reason, I can't entirely trust what I see. Miss Fluttershy is too weak right now to keep her eyes open for a long time. I know that you have reasons to not like me... or trust me. But if we're to find the caves, we're going to have to combine our imperfect sights, together.”

It was with remarkable swiftness that Derpy nodded back. “Sure thing, Mister Squirrel. I think we c-c-c-c-can do that for my Muffin.”

“I think we can do it for Fluttershy too.” Harmony weakly smiled. With a wince, she fought the dizziness and hoisted Fluttershy up.

The caretaker merely shrieked and slumped down harder to the ground.

Harmony stammered, “What's the matter?”

“So... So much pain...” Fluttershy whimpered. “I... I'm sorry, Harmony. I... I just can't walk anymore.”

Harmony hissed past a billowing field of burnt-out houses. She clenched and unclenched the green heat in her eyes. “Then get on my back. I will carry you.”

“Oh Harmony, I couldn't! It's too much...”

“I will carry you,” Harmony snarled. “Trust me. I... I am strong enough.” The last pony ventured a frowning breath. “I am strong enough to carry you, Fluttershy. Thanks to you, I can believe that again. Now get on.”

Fluttershy obeyed, trembling. She flung her invalidic self over Harmony's weight and dangled there. On quivering hooves, Harmony trudged forward. Derpy waited for her, and once the two were neck and neck, they sauntered down a suddenly steep slope in the forest.

In such an aching precision, the four ponies descended into the grave of Everfree. One was possessed, one was blind, one was paralyzed, and one was mad. Leaning on each other like crutches, they stumbled bravely, carrying the souls of two dying children into the womb of Mother Nature on six wings and a prayer.

“I've never been taught to say Eponal prayers before sleep...” A pitifully exhausted Scootaloo murmured as she found herself lying under the covers of a bed—not just any bed, but a hauntingly familiar bed, Fluttershy's second floor sleeping arrangement. “My parents... uhhhh... They're not very traditional. They hardly even give thanks to Princess Nebula for the firmaments.”

“Well, I'm not going to judge anypony unfairly. Especially you,” Fluttershy said with a gentle smile as she tucked the multicolored duvet of the bed over the tiny foal's body. The rain had dwindled to a soft patter outside the cottage's window, bathing the warm bedroom in a dancing mosaic of purple hues that kissed the shadows away. “If I may say so myself, Nebula's tenacity shines through you. You're a pegasus of many surprises, Scootaloo. If nightly prayers aren't to your fancy... how about a lullaby?”

“You... You would sing to me?” Scootaloo gulped. “Fluttershy... I...” She kneaded the folds of the blankets warming her as a shameful moisture returned to her violet eyes. “I said so many horrible things to you earlier. I was so stupid and mad. I insulted you... I made you feel bad...”

“You did not make me feel anything but special, Scootaloo,” Fluttershy said with an immaculate, immutable smile. “Maybe you don't understand it, and that's okay with me. But I know that things needed to be said—ugly or not—and it's all good, because in spite of it all... you're still with me now, and there're no more frowns to be had. Now are there?”

Scootaloo sniffled. She clenched her eyes shut all the same. “No...” It was a half whimper, laced with a painful smile that limped from several blackened kilometers away. “No, there aren't.”

“Then what shame is there in rejoicing, Scootaloo?” Fluttershy nuzzled the foal as her soft voice brought calmness to the air. “And what shame is there in singing? Life should be joyous. It was built through the kindness and the generosity of generations of ponies long before our time to be this way.”

“Uhm... Where are you going to sleep if I'm stealing your bed?”

Fluttershy chuckled under her breath. “You're not stealing anything, Scootaloo. And as for me, anywhere I sleep is a happy place, so long as I know that the ones I care for are at peace.”

“You...” Scootaloo shuddered, but there was no reason to fight the simplicity of the matter. “You are too sweet to me, Fluttershy.” It was as honest as it was painful to admit. “You've done so much... almost too much...”

“Shhh... I only do that which I love doing.” Fluttershy stroked the child's cheek one last time. She drifted back, and her soul oozed out into a melodic cloud that gently rocked the cradle of the room into euphoric slumber. “Hush now, quiet now, it's time to lay your sleepy head. Hush now, quiet now, it's time to go to bed. Drift drift off to sleep...”

Scootaloo's eyes shut, and when they did they were not full of a chupacabra's razor sharp teeth, a field of lifeless stones, an empty barn devoid of food or laughter, or any of the other gray things that had formed the patchwork craziness of her young life. Her head drifted in that melodic voice, her infant coat being licked clean by a motherly tongue. She tilted her head up and saw in the noonlight the silhouette of a sunset-colored pegasus with ruby eyes smiling down at her. But sometime into the liquid hours of that nearly forgotten moment, the smile faded—and the mare disappeared in a cold mute scream, swallowed by the bottomless throat of a serpentine mineshaft.

When Scootaloo's eyes opened, the rain had stopped. Half of the night had died in a happy sigh. Fluttershy was nowhere to be seen, but the foal knew better. With suddenly awake, shivering limbs, she knew where that melodic soul was, and where the silhouette that it resembled wasn't. With a heartbeat that could suck the moisture out of the rain-slicked earth, she stirred and slipped out from under the covers... padding on soft hooves towards a set of descending wooden stairs...

The last pony winced, shaking the orange shadow from her amber eyes and refocusing on the boulder-strewn landscape in front of her. The green vines and leaves of Everfree had bled into this sudden pit of rocky earth and jagged stone. Derpy hovered a few meters across the ground, avoiding the uneven floor for Dinky's sake, making sure not to fly so high that she might lose the captured leyline of beaming plasma that the horn was pointing towards their goal.

“What... What did you j-just say, Harmony?” Fluttershy whimpered as she was lying limp as a platinum noodle across the copper pegasus' lurching spine. She resumed a conversation that had fitfully begun several numb seconds ago. “I... I can hardly hear...”

“I said go to your family, Fluttershy! Speak to them. Tell them that you love them as much as you love everypony else in this crazy world.”

“I... I can't even stand right now. How can I possibly go see my family?”

“Not now! Nnngh—!” Harmony hissed and shuddered through a wave of green haze. A ring of trolls surrounded her as she brandished a blood soaked alicorn's marble horn. She felt the light weight of Fluttershy on her shoulders and sunk back to the here-and-now. “When we're done. When we get back! You go to your parents—dang it—and you talk to them! You hug them! You spend as much time with them as well as your friends. Do it, Fluttershy. Do it while you still friggin' can.” She stumbled briefly over a stone. A wheezing lurch: and she steadied herself and Fluttershy before a fountain of rising dust, of ashes, of corpses, of Onyx Eclipse, Onyx Eclipse. “Pr-Promise me...”

“You... You speak as if...” Fluttershy's wilted voice matched the exhaustion of all three pegasi's limbs. “... as if you're going to leave me.”

“Eyes in the darkness. One moon circles...”

Harmony ignored the unicorn's pained mewling. “I am always leaving... Always flying away!” Harmony snarled against the waves of madness and followed the source of it, hobbling after Dinky's strobing horn, pathetically racing on numb legs to kiss the burning future before the others would have to. “It's all that I can afford to do. That's my lot in life. But you—you still have a chance, Fl-Fluttershy. Take it for what it's worth! Don't be alone any longer. If nothing else, this is the reason for my visit! To tell you this.”

“I... I thought you were... Thought you were sent here on behalf of the Court... and to gather information for Her Majesty...”

“I was...” Harmony whimpered. “A million eons ago, I was. But none of that matters now.” She glanced up at the sharp rock walls surrounding the three. Her heart murmured. She saw vines, rows upon rows of thorny vines. There was a place for a Capricorn and a yellow pegasus. She hoped that there was a place for her as well, but she knew better. “All that matters is this moment... and what becomes of it.”

Prophetically, upon a pulse of distant green, Dinky's entire body lurched. Her horn strobed brightly enough to create a second moon. As the world around them flashed in magical illumination, the motherly mailpony carrying the foal collapsed in a yelping heap.

“Miss Hooves!” Harmony shouted. Setting down Fluttershy, she broke into a canter Derpy's way, ultimately tripping over an errant rock. The time traveller landed hard on the pulsing canyon floor. “Ooof!”

“What... What's happening?” Fluttershy called out from where she painfully stirred. “Did Derpy just collapse...?!”

“It's the horn!” Harmony crawled over towards Derpy, hissing as the world billowed beyond the edges of her amber eyes with green waves upon every pulse of the unicorn's horn. She reached forward into the madness surging through her brain and clamped her hooves over one of the gray pegasus' legs. “It's finally gotten to her as well!” She pulled and pulled, yanking a corpse out from under a pile of dried-out unicorns inside a Stalliongrad temple. “Come onnnn!” Harmony slumped down, limply embracing the wall-eyed mare that she had just dragged from Dinky's spasming body.

“No... No... Let g-g-g-g-go of me!” The mother's sobs echoed off of the surrounding walls of rock. “My Muffin! She's dying! Oh Gultophine, please—Spare her! I beg you!”

“Dang it, she's not dying!” Harmony hissed. She waved the fumes of Bruce's cigar smoke out of her face and woke herself up with a yell: “She's responding to something! Her horn is shooting a friggin' huge beam due west! Fluttershy—” She glanced back. “What could it mean?”

“We must be close!” the caretaker's voice desperately squeaked. “If her horn is pulsing even brighter than before, then that could only mean there are mana crystals nearby!”

“Then you mean that we're near the cave?!”

“Yes, Miss Harmony—Why are you shouting?”

Harmony felt like mentioning the shrieking beak of the phoenix right next to her, or the murderous roar of the Dog's Bollocks' iron propellers just a few meters away. She tossed her mane until the shaved violet stubble flew back out in black, amber-streaked threads. “Never mind that! Let's friggin' finish this already! Miss Hooves, do you see a cave nearby?”

“I... I can't see!” The mailpony whimpered and clutched nervously to the last pony as her neck pivoted every which way. “The walls of this canyon are too thick! Oh Nebula, I can never ever see! Where is Dinky?! Where is my Muffin?!”

Harmony hissed in agony and shook the winged mare. “Dang it, Miss Hooves! Close one of your friggin' eyes if you have to! I can't see anything, period! We all need you to spot the cave! Dinky needs you to spot the cave!”

“I... I c-c-c-c-can't!”

“Yes you can! If you can't spot it, Dinky's a goner! Take it from 'Mister Squirrel!' If you can't look for me, look for her!”

“I...” Derpy hissed and heaved. Her head rolled as her eyes rolled. “I...” She froze upon a sudden angle, her body jolting. “Oh thank Goddess Nebula—There!”

“Where 'there,' Miss Hooves?” Harmony tried to look; a drunken raccoon screamed in her face. “Augh!” She winced.

“Due southwest! About thirty tr-tr-tr-tr-trots!” Derpy hissed painfully and struggled to pick her limbs up. “I'm taking her in!”

Harmony suddenly thought of a pony, a very old pony. With lime-colored wrinkles and a gentle breath, this pony spoke words of comfort to her, not knowing that she was the last equestrian soul to ever enjoy being alive. “Like heck you are!” Harmony suddenly shoved the gray mare aside. She hobbled up on pinpricked hooves and stumbled towards the pulsating horn. “You've carried her long enough!”

Derpy reeled amidst the rocks. She shook her dizzied head and gasped: “What are you doing?!”

“Miss Harmony—” Fluttershy squeaked from beyond.

Harmony stumbled. Harmony shuffled. Harmony limped her way into Dinky's cosmic aura. “Neither of you two have the strength left to so much as hold her! At least I can touch her without risk of losing my life!”

“And what about your mind, Miss Harmony?!” Fluttershy desperately yelped across the blistering canyon of lights, lights, lights. “What will be left of you afterwards?”

“Nothing that will matter nearly as much!” Harmony slumped on the ground, reaching achingly with one hoof towards the source of the billowing mana. “This girl is the light of your lives, especially yours, Miss Hooves! All I have to go back to is darkness!” She blinked through a shadowed gasp in the stars, an onyx eclipse. “No matter how much I tell myself that something can be done about it!”

“She's my Muffin! She's mine to take care of!” The mailpony fought in vain to crawl across the agonizing scene. “I told you not to touch her—”

“Miss Hooves, I know how much you love your child!” Harmony slurred against the waves of mana. Her eyelids flickered green. She opened her amber pupils and stared—tears streaming—into the core of madness. Rainbow Dash winked from beyond the black bars and flew away, leaving her behind. A burning strength returned to her copper limbs. “But I promise you, I will not harm her! I may not be a k-kind pony... but I am a strong one. For what it's worth!”

“But... But...” Derpy stirred, only to feel a melodic voice wafting up from behind.

“Let her do it, Miss Hooves,” Fluttershy had managed to crawl painfully over to the mailpony. “Let her save your darling daughter...”

“Why must I?” Derpy sniffled and shivered. “Why do you trust this clerk so much?!”

“Because she's trying...” Fluttershy smiled painfully. “Don't you see?” She pointed so that even the blind pegasus could witness. “She's trying to change. It's a beautiful thing... like completing a circle.”

The mailpony could only watch in breathless fear. Her eyes burned and bled to rotate together as one.

Hyperventilating, Harmony squirmed over and reached for the bright unicorn foal. Celestial bands shot everywhere in vaporous waves, burning the girl's blonde mane to white and lavender and back.

“I'm sorry for every mean thing I've said, Sweetie Belle.” The last pony afforded herself a brief, absurd chuckle and flung her hooves into the fire. Dinky's coat burned at the mere touch, singeing magically through the Entropan flesh. “Nnnngh—Gaah!” Harmony found a muscular ball of fury inside her numb self and let it boil to the surface in a furious shout. She lifted herself up, then hoisted the unicorn and her smoldering horn onto her shoulders. She proceeded to trot a burning kilometer, every hoofstep torturing her like a dance through green lava. The last pony pointed her amber eyes forward—piercing the darkness to see a mineshaft stapled shut with wooden boards and desperate boulders.

A yellow pegasus murmured from far behind, clutching to a frightful mother. “This world is a kind world; it wants to be...”

“...the only proof you need for this is the world that we live in—Equestria.”

Fluttershy had once spoken, smiling, as she and Scootaloo stared out from the reading seat and watched the rain-slick world melt around them in a liquid circle.

“Equestria is a result of the spirit of kindness having nearly achieved its one noble goal throughout the history of existence.”

The orange foal's pink tail flicked as she leaned forward and asked, “And what goal is that, Fluttershy?”

The last pony's amber eyes reopened. The serpentine mouth of the mineshaft was replaced with a yawning cave full of glistening quartz—all enchanted with a magical purple hue.

A snarling smirk, and the last pony answered herself. “Harmony.”

She followed the melodic voice on silken threads that out-throbbed the burning of the unicorn's horn above her. It carried her, lovingly, deeply into the dead womb of Everfree, treading over the holy paths of Faustmare and her daughter, kissing her softer than any yellow-stringed dragon's tooth, clearing the madness like a pair of angelic wings might part the clouding mists of moonvision. Suddenly, there were no thorns, there were no Ursas, there were no fossils—there was only the here and now, and Dinky's life in the last pony's hooves.

Harmony's pained breaths were echoing now as she stood in the middle of the crucible of mana crystals. Her glistening body reflected a million times off the jagged walls, populating the gray shadows of her mind with the infinite shadows of herself, the only future she could ever salvage. It suddenly didn't seem nearly as important as that naked moment, as she slumped down to her haunches, reached her hooves up to grasp the quivering unicorn's coat, and raised Dinky's burning figure up towards the roof of the magical hovel.

“Haaugh... Forest children! The murder of emerald blood! A figure in denim who speaks to nopony!”

“Easy for you to say, kiddo!” Harmony hissed and strained under the tiny supernova exploding above her. “Nnnngh—Dang it, come on!” Her entire body quivered and shook under the sheer force of the magical emanations, capable of ending any one pony... but not all ponies... or the end of ponies. “Get out of her, you stupid mangy space goat! I mean it! Her skin is not yours—Do you hear me in that stubby little horn?!” She snarled with the combined madness of a night full of dying stars. “It is not your skin to wear!”

As the thunderous seconds melted on, Dinky merely hung there, her hooves dangling helplessly in the last pony's copper grasp as her horn pulsed, and pulsed, and pulsed. The glow never left her eyes—as a matter of fact, the ivory essence of the Capricorn's infernal gift intensified.

Soon enough, the blank horizons of Harmony's vision gathered with frothing emerald flame—persistent in heat—dancing a green tunnel from the distance that swam for her, that hungered for her, that lurched downwards from the skies of Creation with the cold, serrated teeth of reverse-time.

The last pony crumbled helplessly under the hellish power of the cosmic force wafting all over her. “No...No-No-No-No-No!” She whimpered against the gathering, blistering clouds of green flame. “Not now, Spike! Please, Princess Entropa—Not now!” She glanced breathlessly up, staring at the shimmering crown of the poor foalish spirit, the soul that knew no peace, that had never known peace—so long as all of her many educated guesses were left unanswered—

A shrill gasp filled the earthen room.

“Th-that's it!” Harmony knew what she was afraid to ask for, what she was afraid to see, what she begged and denied of the melodic voice for so long. Dinky needed the same. She needed—“Miss Hooves!” The last pony shouted above the cyclonic tumult of mana and cosmic chaos. “Miss Hooves—Come closer to the mouth of the cave!”

In the burning green penumbra of the future survivor's peripheral, two shadows—one gray and one yellow—limped weakly up just outside of range of the nightmarish energy vortex.

“M-M-M-Mister Squirrel—?!”

“Talk to her!” Harmony shrieked above the maelstrom that she was holding up with two flimsy hooves. “Talk to your daughter! She needs to hear from you... She needs to make a connection! She needs to hear the truth!”

“What?! How?!” The mailpony stared with horror into the madness encapsulated by the tomb of mana-crystals. “How can she even hear me?! What am I supposed to say?!”

“I think you know as well as we do what you're supposed to say, Derpy,” Fluttershy painfully squeaked, leaning against the mother's side. “Everyday, you come so close to saying it. You even go so far as to show it with the books you give her and your trips to Sugarcube Corner. But Miss Harmony is right. I can see that now; you need to talk to her! Help her bring your daughter back—”

“It's no use! I'm not smart enough! I'm not st-st-st-st-strong enough!” Derpy choked on a sob, half of her eyes locked on the burning anomaly that was crowning her daughter. “It's always been her! It's always been my Muffin that I've leaned upon!”

“Dang it—It's not about being smart and it's not about being strong!” Harmony howled backwards across the illuminated insanity. “It's about being kind! So be a mother! Be kind! Speak to her—or so help me Celestia, I'll march right right over there and—nghhh—kick those googly eyes straight down your friggin' throat!”

Derpy gasped, shuddering. She gave Fluttershy a forlorn glance. The sickly caretaker managed a gentle nod. With a drastic gulp, Derpy leaned against the sharp mouth of the rocky cave and howled into the opening:

“Dinky—My darling Muffin, I know what you have always wanted to be told—that, yes, you came into this world by accident. I never pl-pl-pl-pl-planned for you, Dinky.”

She bit her lip with an anguished toss of her blonde mane and braved the glowing speck that was her one and only child.

“Your father was a horrible stallion whose love lasted as long as his g-g-g-g-good humor allowed him. For years, I suffered because of ponies like him who thought I wasn't worth the dust that kicked off their hooves. All those long sad days I thought I was lonely...I... I... I-I....”

She gnashed her teeth. Her yellow eyes spun concentric, burning circles into the ceiling as her tears fell like pendulums to the earth.

“But I was only waiting, Dinky. I was waiting for you. The world was graciously preparing me for you to enter my life. I would gladly go through every p-p-p-p-painful moment and every bad decision if it means that you can be in my hooves once again. Come back to me, Dinky!”

The hapless mailpony sobbed. After a morose inhale, she wailed into the cave with a painfully proud smile.

“Come back to me, my Muffin. Your mother loves you m-m-m-m-more than any tears can say!”

Harmony panted, feeling wisps of green flame wafting down to her clenched teeth—like a briar-vomited visitor from the future being flung towards the jaws of an ursa. She tilted her head up for one last glance, and was blessed to see a pair of tears rolling down the unicorn's face, and they weren't evaporating...

“Mother...?” A foalish voice spoke beneath the leylines of the cosmos. “Is... Is that you...?”

Fluttershy's quivering lips smiled. She clasped firmly onto Derpy's shoulder. The mailpony buckled under a grimacing, tear-stained smile. “Yes! Yes, Dinky! It's—”

“Hckkt—Mother!”

Dinky tilted her skull back with a shriek. Her horn blackened as all of the light along the ceiling of the cave was violently sucked out. Then, in a mute flash, a bolt of light shimmered into the crystalline walls. The thunder returned, and Harmony rolled back with a quivering gasp. She clutched the smoking foal in one forelimb as she swiftly outscampered a blistering dome of electrical energy. The claustrophobic sphere of mana batteries exploded behind them, and Harmony found herself being hurtled weightedly into a sea of green flame and stone.

Then... black.

It was so dark. Harmony thought it was the Briar. In fact, she knew it was the Briar... until a pair of voices pierced the last pony's twitching ears.

“Oh Dinky—Oh m-m-m-m-my darling Muffin, speak to me! Speak to me, please!”

“Mother... Mother, where am I?”

“Oh darling—You are in my arms. Praise Gultophine, you are in my arms. Where else do you need to be?”

“I heard so many voices... so many confused and lost voices. They floated like ghosts among the stars. I was thinking of writing a book about them. But then I realized you weren't there, and I was scared.”

“You don't have to be scared anymore. The nightmare is over. Mommy's here, and she loves you. I love you so, so very m-m-m-m-much, Dinky. Stay in my arms—Oh please—Stay in my arms forever.”

“Mother, the odds of a pony actually lying in a mare's arms for an eternity is highly impossible, considering the statistical degradation of muscles and body weight over a mere decade, much less an eon's worth of entropy and decay—”

“Ohhhhhh I love my sweet, darling, sm-sm-sm-sm-smart Muffin! You're so smart, I love my Muffin!”

“Heeheehee—Mother! Heeheehee... Mother? Uhm, Mother, why are you crying...?”

Rainwater and hay filled the last pony's nostrils.

With a sharp gasp, Harmony's amber eyes flew open. She scuffled, lying on her back and kicking at the stony floor as if trying to escape the waves of a frothing seashore—but she only fell into the comforting embrace of a warm lap and pair of limbs behind her. Hyperventilating, she flung a numb hoof up and grasped onto that softness, clinging to it as if she was dangling a million kilometers above the gray abyss of the Wasteland.

“Shhh... It's okay, Miss Harmony. You did it. You helped save Derpy's child.”

“And... And... And you...?” The last pony managed pathetically between panting breaths.

“Mmmm... I feel better already. The magical fluctuations are gone. And look—look at what the circle of life has brought us.”

Twitching, Harmony managed a panicked glance past the heart-shaped cloud of a gray pegasus cradling a gray unicorn. In the gentle glisten of warm morning haze that bled through the depths of Everfree, a cave lingered in a harmless glow of mana. Beyond the crystalline mouth of the structure, a gray shadow shifted, bleating curiously as it blindly explored the lengths of the sparkling interior. A thick fishtail thrashed while two infantile hooves wandered every nook and cranny that could be found. A pair of pulsing horns “spoke” to the still-charged rocks that surrounded the newly born creature.

“It's alive... And what's more, it's perfectly safe,” the melodic voice said. Harmony didn't even need to see Fluttershy's smile. She registered it with every quivering square centimeter of her heaving body. “There was enough mana encased in Dinky's horn to not only complete the Capricorn's foaling—but it's left the cave energized long enough to ween the cosmic child until it's ready for flight.” There was a warm breath, like the sunshine before an afternoon shower. “The world will go through many shades, many colors before the end of time. A mother's love will always be as divine as ever.”

Harmony exhaled in a wounded breath. She could barely look at the future fossil lurching before her. “I see it, Fluttershy.” She next produced her words in a whimper: “But I just wish I was able to believe it...”

“Maybe that's not the issue, Harmony,” Fluttershy gently kneaded the time traveler's shoulder. “Maybe... Maybe it's that you believed in it once.”

Harmony hissed through her teeth. Her frightened eyes fell upon Dinky. The unicorn was finally sharing her mother's tears, confusedly weathering the gray mare's shaking sobs as she nestled her horned head in the crook of the mailpony's shoulder.

“I was scared... so scared...” Harmony reached blindly back for those silken hooves as she rested like a feather against Fluttershy's embrace.

“Scared of what, Harmony?”

The last pony gulped. “I thought I would go away in a blink.”

“Wherever would you have gone?”

The past and the present collided across Harmony's face like a wall-eyed grimace. A trickle of tears roped down her Entropan cheek. “I don't know anymore.”

“It's all right, Miss Harmony.” The caretaker's arms softly engulfed her, warmed her from behind. “You're okay...”

“I'm just so glad you're here, Miss Fluttershy...” Harmony weakly and helplessly mewled. “I'm just so glad you're alive...”

“In the end, we show our true qualities when it comes to being kind, when it comes to preserving precious things.”

“I...” Harmony hissed in a sudden re-blossoming pain. She shivered and she hid into Fluttershy's embrace. She saw the stairs. She saw the green seat and the yellow shade atop it. Everything was falling, collapsing. She wasn't strong enough. “I can't bear to think of it...” The orange shadow appeared, the wooden steps cried one by one into the morning light. “I-I can't...” She scrunched her face in a divine grimace, like giving birth. “I-I just c-can't see it!”

“Shhhh...” Fluttershy softly nuzzled the last pony from behind. “It's okay, Harmony. Let it come.”

Harmony heaved and heaved. Every breath was a plummet, every sob was a shriveling descent into this moment, this burning glory that no amount of green flames could ever sail her to. The past and the future died in droves on either side of her as she closed her eyes and hissed into the echoes of her sundered soul. And when she finally opened her lids...