For their first night in Snowdrift, packed into their hotel rooms with bags unceremoniously strewn about, not sorted or picked through, the snow fell throughout. Sometimes, it was thick enough to hide their neighboring building’s lights, and sometimes it diffused in the air like fog rolling off the glacier just west of town. Twilight said she was not tired, and took the time to set up her divination station in the bathroom, where her roommates would be safe from the worst of the acrid smell or the occasional flashes of light. On even ground, free from the pitch and yaw of the airship, she was able to see more, but still not precisely what she wanted. Discord’s whereabouts were still a mystery; she assumed that if the princess could not find him, then she stood no chance, but had to try anyway. His castle she could only see from a great distance, rendering it into a stony point on the sere, winter-touched landscape of the east. Its appearance disclosed nothing, but just seeing it at a safe distance gave her heart.

She checked in on Ponyville after half an hour of fussing and recalculation. A mare she didn’t recognize had taken up residence in the library, and kept it in good condition from what Twilight could tell. The only major change she noticed was a large, silver birdcage on the first floor, taking up the central table that had once held some of her favorite books, or the ones she wanted to get rid of.

The farm slept, all its trees eerily still in the dawn light, and for a while as she looked over the orchard, Twilight thought that it was abandoned at last. Dusty tarps were stacked in open spaces for the apple trees and carts leaned against walls or sacks of flour in the barn, but then she saw an apple pie on the counter through a window, and she knew all was well. She had not the memories of the farmhouse that she did for her library, and could not see inside, but made herself smile at the thought of the remaining Apple siblings tucked in their beds, with a few temporary workers downstairs or in houses just on the farm’s edge.

She went to Fluttershy’s cottage, still abandoned and slowly returning to nature. The walls were painted in ivy and cat claw, the windows opaque with grime and water spots, the stoop reclaimed by flowers, Fluttershy’s mailbox peeking its head out of a sea of tall grass that bent under its own weight, the illusion of wind to Twilight’s eyes. She wondered what had come of the animals that lived there, and decided it was better not to think about it too much.

Sugarcube Corner looked the same as it always had, perhaps a little better, Twilight thought. She could see a light-coated pony skulking outside, making no attempt at concealing herself; after a minute, Twilight saw her take up a trash bag and hurl it into the bin behind the shop. Pinkie had been replaced.

Twilight checked on the place where Rarity’s boutique had once stood. A pair of houses had sprung up in its stead, thatched and squat and utterly unremarkable, turned from the town at an odd angle and connected to the main road by a winding, dirt path. Whoever lived in the houses, they had left their stalls out overnight, and Twilight peeked in on what they were selling: she saw vials and jars of sauce and jelly in one; and hanging, covered squares in the other, what she assumed were drawings or paintings. Finally, she checked the spa, shocked first to see it not boarded up, and shocked a second time to see a pegasus furtively enter. Her lilac coat and spiky mane looked familiar to Twilight, but she could not place the mare’s name.

“Twilight? Don’t tell me you’re still in there,” Rainbow said through the door.

“Just researching,” Twilight said softly, not realizing that she had entirely doubled over to fairly press her face against the water’s magical surface. “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

“No, it’s just a social call. Of course I have to!”

“All right, all right, hang on.” She gingerly lifted an apparatus from the toilet seat and set it in the tub, and admitted Rainbow.

“Get some sleep, Twilight,” she said, trotting in. “It’ll all be here tomorrow.”

From the café downstairs, Twilight and Fluttershy sat over twin cups of coffee, waiting for their breakfasts. Aloe had indicated that she would be around later that afternoon, and until then, the ponies were free to do what they liked. So far, everyone else was in bed, even Octavia.

Fluttershy blew on her coffee and nodded to a surprised onlooker. Outside, they could see the street paved in white, gilt from the dawn that had persisted, and in the greater distance, an activity of lights and propellers hovering over the airship lot. Twilight tried to get a better look, but could not.

“What’s wrong?” Fluttershy asked.

“Nothing, I’m just trying to see.” She sighed and thanked the waitress who brought their food. “I’ve got this idea, and I’d like to know what you think.”

“Mm.”

“I told you about the Contraction last night, right?”

“I don’t remember everything you said.”

“But I told you the basics, at least?”

Fluttershy nodded and picked at her dish. Twilight thought it strange, that Fluttershy had skipped the breakfast options and only gotten a slice of lemon cream cake. Part of her wanted to bring it up, but she saw no point.

“I was thinking, if we could somehow tie the ship into the magic that controls this Contraction, we could use it to get around a lot faster than we do now.”

“How?”

“I’m not sure, that’s why I really want to find a library today. I don’t know how the Contraction works. All I know is, if it’s just a large-scale teleportation enchantment, then with the right magic, we can use it as a… It’s kind of like a giant slingshot, maybe. We can use it to jump us to any point on the country. Kind of like how Vanilla does it. Actually, maybe exactly how he does it.” She paused. “What if instances of the Contraction coincide with him moving us around?”

“Does it matter?” Fluttershy asked.

Surprised at her candor, Twilight blinked and took a bite of her hash. “Not really, I suppose.”

“No, I mean using the Contraction at all. You said the Contraction’s going to happen in a couple days. Do you think we’re going to get this newest Element by then? Also, we don’t know where we need to go next.”

“I think we can,” Twilight said. “In fact, I’m going to see to it that we do.” She swiveled in her seat and smiled at the concierge, who was beaming at her from across the hall. “If only those spa sisters would cooperate.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Calling it a plan is being charitable at this point, but I think our first step has to be marking the new area of affect for this hazard thing. While we’re doing that, we can get a better look at the warehouse, the parking lot, and the fields behind it. If it’s a membrane we’re dealing with, like Colgate thinks, then I’m thinking we’ll need some acid.” She chuckled. “Imagine if the solution to our problem is just as far as the nearest pool supply store.”

“That would be something,” Fluttershy said.

“I know, it’s not much. I’ll have something better after I talk to Aloe today.”

“I know that. What about knowing where to go afterwards, though?”

“Vanilla’s been letting us know in pretty good time. If we get this next one, we’ll probably get a note from him inside the day.”

Fluttershy nibbled a curl of lemon peel, and Twilight thought she could read the doubt on her face. Instead of responding, Fluttershy took another bite, and Twilight turned to her own food.

By noon, the group had scattered into the neighborhood, all keeping close to the hotel so as to return quickly when Aloe finally showed; Twilight stayed closest and said she would throw up a magical flare to mark the occasion. Only Applejack remained behind, chained to the hotel by the imprinting enchantment Twilight had cast on her and the airship. She made their beds, tidied the rooms, tried to clean a stain off the bathroom floor where Twilight had been divining the previous night. She ordered room service, and, telling herself that there was nothing wrong with getting room service alone, felt the smallness of the action all the same when it came up to her. At the work desk, with a book before her, she ate and looked out the window, watching the snow’s progress as it veiled the town.

From her north-facing room on the fourth floor, she had a good view of the streets, alive with hoof traffic but still gloomy under the rolling cloud sea. Though the sun was up, the snowstorm had cast the town in milky gray light. In that light, and from her elevation, Applejack was reminded of a photograph she had once seen of Ponyville. Years ago, before the Element of Honesty had passed to her, a photojournalist had come to town to work on an article for some magazine in Canterlot. Everyone was happy to oblige him, but the memory that stuck out to Applejack was on his fourth day in town, when a team of local pegasi came together with a net and carried the photographer up into the sky, where he took close to a hundred pictures of Ponyville from on high.

They had been told once that Snowdrift was similar to Ponyville, and Applejack had doubted it, but looking down, she saw what that pony had meant. Vendors had set up along one of the main roads with their stalls, signs and pennants moving in the cold wind, scarves and tails flapping. Single-story houses appeared in the distance, sometimes alongside taller buildings, of which Ponyville had few, and which Applejack could not stop studying. The sounds of city life were a constant white noise, easy to ignore in spite of all their recent time in the silence of wilderness travel.

She reminded herself that they were still in the middle of nowhere. On a map, Snowdrift was one of the remotest towns, tucked into the Equestrian southwest, a hidden village between the Friesian Mountains to the south, the glacier to the west, and the seemingly infinite forest to the east and northeast. The closest city of any import was the system of mines under the mountains, where they had commissioned their new Elements. The thought of that had haunted Applejack of late, putting to her the question of whether it was right that they had done what they did. Further, she wondered whether it mattered anymore whether it was right or wrong, for it had been done, and could not be reversed.

She laughed when she saw Pinkie racing down the street, Rainbow just behind her, clearly enjoying themselves. Snow was nothing new to them, but they still acted like it was, standing in wonderment at the falling tufts and resisting the urge to dive into banks.

“After this is done, we’re probably gonna look back and talk about which city’s everyone’s favorite,” she thought suddenly. “Like it was some kind of vacation. Weird. And here I am, cooped up in this room to keep the ship from moving. Why can’t Twilight just break the spell on me?” She knew the answer; it was too much of an ordeal to imprint an entire airship on its captain, and Twilight did not want to have to do it a second time when they were done, which she insisted would be in just a couple days. Before everyone else left, she had talked of using the Contraction as a slingshot to get to their next city, and Applejack just nodded, pretending not to see the doubt on most of the others’ faces.

Pushing her refuse into the too-small wastebasket, she saw Vinyl’s bottle of wine from the night before, empty, and nodded. It was no surprise, but she decided she would keep an eye on the unicorn nonetheless.

It took just fifteen minutes of reading for her to get restless, and she paced the room, searched for more things to clean, and finally went downstairs. She hadn’t ordered dessert, and really did not have room for it, but thought she could find a little something in the café anyway. It would be something to do.

The hotel lobby was dead, and she took a seat instead on one of the settees, then got a cup of citrus water from the counter, and sat again. She drank and looked at an arrangement of wiry, colorful stems in a fat, stained glass vase. She thought of the future, as she often did, and didn’t notice the concierge addressing her at first.

“You’re Applejack, right?”

She blinked. “Oh? Yeah, that’s me.” She went to the counter, where the same pony who had checked them in the night previous was making busy with some papers and envelopes. Her coat was soft mauve, her mane and tail dark and swirled with blue and gray. It shone with styling product, and did not move with the pony. In a pressed, white blouse and a muted blue tie, she reminded Applejack of a waitress in a fancy restaurant. Her face was gently elongated with wide nostrils on a short muzzle, and eyes a little too close together, but when she smiled, her entire face lifted and became more natural. Her eyes sparkled and her body slouched behind the counter; she was at ease, and not afraid to show it.

“You probably get that all the time.” She tipped an imaginary hat. “You’re missing your trademark, partner.”

“Yeah, I left it in hell,” she wanted to say, but instead smiled and said, “Ah know it. Ah was hopin’ to get a new one in town.”

The pony smiled with long, white teeth. “Best do it soon. Weather’s only going to get worse, that’s what they say.”

“The precogs?”

The pony laughed, a full and not entirely pleasant sound that filled the lobby. “No, the weatherponies! Hey, I can be a weatherpony too.” She leaned to look out the lobby doors. “Evening everyone, today’s weather is: snow. Light chance of more snow. Now for sports!” She laughed with Applejack. “Versus, good to make your acquaintance.”

“Versus?”

“My parents told me once it’s ‘cause I was always fighting with my twin sister. Nowadays, I just like the sound of it, so I kept it. Besides.” She showed her cutie mark, a piece of paper with black scrawls on it. “Writing-talent names are dull. Golden Words, or Pale Parchment, or whatever, none of that’s got any jazz to it.”

“Writin’, huh? An’ here you are checkin’ ponies in to… This hotel don’t got a name, Ah just realized.”

Versus laughed. “Corkscrew? Ol’ Twisty? It’s the building that looks like a macaroni, that’s what ponies need to know.”

“Some illusion.”

“Some mistake! Ol’ Twisty used to be called… Clover Something-or-other. But then one day, a family of unicorns nested here, did some magic that they really shouldn’t have been doing, and one two three, here we are!”

“Some story,” Applejack said with a light laugh.

“Some lawsuit for those unicorns.” They shared another laugh, Versus’ voice rising into a honk, which only made Applejack laugh harder. After a minute, they calmed. “There’s not much work for a writer in Snowdrift, so I just do this. It pays the bills.”

“What do ya like to write?”

“Articles, I guess, like for magazines. It’s fluff, like about sports and public events and stuff. I’ve got a couple published back home, you can dig ‘em up if you really wanna, but that’s all. I used to live in Fillydelphia.”

“What brings a pony all the way down here from a city like that?” Applejack asked.

Versus ran a hoof over her mane, eyes widened and mouth taut.

“Got it, personal. Pretend Ah didn’t ask.”

“Oh, you’re fine.” She spoke briefly with another pony at the counter, giving him her recommendation for a good brunch spot nearby. “Your friends have caused quite the stir in town, Applejack.”

“Ah wouldn’t expect any less.”

“A good stir. Not a nasty, stinky stir, but a good one, like sugar in water.” She chuckled at her phrasing. “You do autographs?”

Applejack sighed, and Versus laughed before sobering.

“Just curious, I don’t need one. My grandfather’s obsessed with you all, particularly Pinkie.”

“We get that a lot.”

“Obsessive gran-grans?”

Applejack laughed. “All of it. You ever been to Applewood?”

“Nope ma’am.”

The lobby remained dead for the early afternoon, and Applejack stayed with Versus, telling her about Applewood and the other places they’d seen. She wondered whether she was getting Versus in trouble for distracting her from her job, but Versus gave no indication that she was out of line, easily moving from her conversation with Applejack to the phone or the occasional pony needing assistance. She was bright and cheery, and laughed easily, sometimes at herself. Many ponies would laugh when the Elements said things, a wide but innocuous sycophantic streak, but Applejack did not get that impression from Versus. As they talked, the concierge grew more and more bold, interrupting or correcting Applejack in places. She acted familiar and friendly, and did not at all let on whether she was intimidated by the mare on the other side of the counter. Applejack tried to never come off as more than how she saw herself, but also knew it was futile; ponies who did not know them placed them on a pedestal automatically, before word one was exchanged.

“You here all day?” Versus asked eventually.

“All day, every day,” Applejack said. “It’s complicated.”

“I get off at seven, and I’m not doing anything. Wanna hit the bar with me and a friend? You’ll love her, she works in the kitchen.”

Applejack thought for a second, figuring whether she would be needed for whatever machinations Twilight and the spa twins were sure to have hatched by that time, but said she’d be there.

Octavia, Rarity, and Colgate explored the stalls and stores just north of their hotel, a remarkable and unmistakable landmark no matter how far they strayed. Snowdrift, famed abroad for its bounty of experimental magic, was not so very strange up close. The ponies and griffons smiled and waved, called out prices for their wares, haggled and argued about where to park their carriages or cars. The ground was uneven and slippery, and they had to duck into a clothing store for three sets of overpriced snow shoes.

Icicles trailed from street signs and the large, industrial clocks that had been set up atop them, and at these corners, there was always a crowd to push through. The streets were filled with pedestrians, and the air was filled with laughter and music and the smell of food. Colgate purchased a funnel cake from a grouchy-looking stallion in a cramped stall, and at Octavia’s prompting, they stopped by a bank and withdrew a couple hundred bits; up to that point, they had been using their treasury slip only, and in the smaller towns, it was not always welcome.

The first instance of strange magic, outside their hotel, they saw was in their waitress when they stopped for lunch. As she led them upstairs, they were free to stare at her mane, cropped short but for strands of bright green ribbon that flowed out of it as though underwater, unaffected by gravity. As she took their orders, the ribbons floated up behind her head like languid seaweed.

Their table was right before a wide window overlooking a freezing pond, where a few loons remained yet, their calls mixing with the restaurant’s soft, ambient music into a sonic pastiche that did not fit with the clatter of crockery and the conversation of ponies and griffons all around. Halfway through their meals, Colgate noticed a griffon that kept looking their way, and they were prepared when she approached their table and sat down, unbidden.

They made small talk, Rarity signed an autograph, and then the griffon produced a pair of envelopes from within a baggy jacket. Asked what they were for, she only smiled and repeated that she wasn’t completely sure, just that a friend of hers was interested in meeting the friends of the Elements.

“All four of you, but less than that number in other guests,” she said. “He prefers intimate gatherings, and,” she chuckled, “he’d be kicking himself if he passed up an opportunity like this.” She glanced at Rarity, her aquiline face drooping slightly in polite disappointment. “Unfortunately, it’s just for the four friends. He has enough sense to know the Elements are busy, and cannot be disturbed.”

Rarity smiled and agreed that, yes, they were very busy. The griffon made more small talk with them, offered to buy them drinks, and then went back to her table, still looking at them up until they left.

“Let’s just see what these are,” Rarity said, floating the letters to herself when they stepped outside. “If you don’t mind.”

“Please,” Octavia said.

She unfolded both and read them side by side. “Cordially invited, dinner party, candlelight, lots of praise for you all. I don’t know, but I think I recognize this street name. It might not be far away.”

“I am immediately suspicious.”

Colgate grunted.

“Ooh, but it’s this coming Thursday. And today’s Friday… Will we be here that long?”

“I would rather we not be,” Octavia said. “It is cold.”

“We’ll see what the others say,” Rarity said. “Speaking of which, I think it’s about time to head back. I’m getting tired of keeping this snow off of us, anyway.”

Colgate stayed in the hotel room long enough to turn a couple quick circles, hear about everyone else’s days, and look over the strange invitations before going back to the lobby and plunging into thinning snowfall. She said she would be back before it was too late, and no one tried to stop her. It was not said, but mutually understood that she was likely not instrumental in dealing with the hazard in the warehouse.

It was to escape the crowded room that she left, but as soon as she was loose on the street, she was overwhelmed, not by fear, but by something that felt very much like it to her. On their approach, she had known Snowdrift had the highest concentration of Daturas; out wandering with Rarity and Octavia, she was aware she had probably met a few without knowing it, and had futilely watched for them. Only alone, though, did she take the time to explore the implications of what she knew, which came to her in disjointed bursts.

On a street corner, with a clear view of the recently evacuated radio station, its antennae blinking softly in the pale light, she let her hooves sink into snow, and then lay down and rolled until she had reached the asphalt beneath. A pair of onlookers watched and laughed to each other.

Aloe and Lotus were Daturas: that was point one. Point two was that they were comfortable revealing that fact, unofficially, to her and the Elements, which meant to Colgate two possible things: the situation in Equestria was bad enough that maintaining Datura secrecy was more trouble than it was worth, or the twins knew that the Elements had figured the Datura out. If Lotus was the Information Handler, then the latter seemed to her more plausible, and if that were the case, then the Datura had a way of keeping tabs on them wherever they went.

She thought back to Tartarus and her imaginings of the invisible Datura eye, peering in on her to assess her relations with the others, cataloguing where and when she slipped up. She wondered whether she was still under the microscope, and realized with a sickening feeling that she probably was, and it was probably Lotus’ clear eye that looked down on her. Perhaps even in the snow, her mane frizzy with moisture and her body shivering, her actions were going into the cloud of thoughts. Twilight had been happy to lecture them all about the cloud the previous night, but Colgate did not understand the finer points.

Thus, she was at a crossroads, and a familiar one at that. In Canterlot, she had been studied without her knowledge or consent, and it had carried through toward a lethal end. She still held that luck alone had saved her from sharing Powder Rouge’s fate, slapped out of the sky to perish in flaming wreckage, nothing more than a calculated distraction.

“Not this time,” she mumbled, throwing herself out of the snow and gracelessly gaining her hooves. This time, she knew she was being watched, likely manipulated. She raced back to the hotel and sat at the bar, put a couple shots on the room’s tab, and went back outside, chasing the old feeling of unstoppable, destined courage and feeling it all the way to the forest’s edge. She fairly skipped into the brooding pines, following an obvious set of hoofprints along, but not on, a glistening hiking path.

As her head cleared and the fog of courage dissipated, she could think more of what she would do when she found Lotus, what she would ask her, and her walk slowed.

She could not get away from the events in Canterlot, from thoughts of Fleur and Rouge, and the whirlwind of alcohol, pills, and seemingly infinite disheveled rooms in their wake. They had a hotel back in town; perhaps it was that simple fact that had set her to wandering. She had been reminded of the past, and, not able to face it, chose instead to emulate it. The insight, to her, came and went like the snowflakes alighting and melting on her muzzle. If she had been asked to explain her thoughts, she would have frozen at the first sentence, but inside her head, the impressions spoke for themselves.

“If this is Canterlot, then who’s Fleur? Who’s Rouge? Who’s Fancy Pants?” she thought, stopping by a towering fir and studying the pattern of snow in the runnels of its bark. She walked on, reaching a large clearing from which she could see a wide, west-facing slope. A gap in the trees halfway up told her that there was a second clearing, and further observation revealed that the taller trees between it and Snowdrift were spaced to afford a good view of the town. Panting with the exertion, ignoring the advice she had given earlier about not sweating in cold temperatures, Colgate began to ascend the hill, all the while bearing down once more on her time in Canterlot, the ponies she had known there, and the trouble that had found her.

Thoughts quickly turned to alcohol and pills, and to open water where she could heedlessly consume and be surrounded by friends. There was no pool at their hotel, nor fountain large enough to act as one.

It was never with nostalgia that she looked back at Canterlot, but with a nervous longing that would occasionally turn to outright fear: a sudden, absolute knowledge that someone, somewhere, was looking for her; or the heart-freezing realization that she had made one mistake too many by a simple gesture or glance at the wrong time. These fears had become familiar to her, but in the context of the new city, one which still reminded her so acutely of Canterlot despite the large and manifold differences, she felt as though her ability to cope had been stripped away, that everything she had learned in Tartarus had been boiled off. By the time she reached the clearing and its abandoned-looking shed, she felt emaciated and naked, as though the simple fact of her fear were visible on her face or under her skin. Someone might see right through her, and seeing only fear, decide to squash her—or they might squash her without intending it, simply by saying “hello” when she was not ready to hear it.

“Should’ve done five more,” she thought, looking around without seeing, hoping to spot something to validate her journey uphill. Mist blanketed a depression in the forest northeast of town, and the radio tower’s lights blinked still on the opposite side. In the dawn, the forest was a tableau of pristine snow and black branches, like a picture rendered in charcoal. There, she could feel the distance between her and the capital, and she looked north anyway, just in case. There was nothing to see except more forest, a thick carpet of black treetops yielding in the eventual distance to a brownish line of flatland, an arm of desert that hung between them and Appleloosa.

She breathed of the clean air, the smell of cold pine, and for a minute, she couldn’t stop herself from crying. She sat down and watched the mist change shape with wind that did not rise to her, and the tears stung in her soft fur. She wasn’t lost, but she felt lost, and worse, alone. She told herself that she had friends, but the same distance that emancipated her from her past was as a pane of glass between her and Octavia, her and Applejack. For a while, she sat and let herself cry, not questioning her emotions or their expression. After a few minutes, she felt better, though the tears kept coming; a laugh escaped her between gasps of chill air.

As she got a grip on herself, she placed characters in the image of the pool, then replaced them: Rouge with Octavia, and the friends whose names she never knew with Vinyl, Applejack, and Rarity.

“What are you doing up here?” a voice asked, and Colgate fell back into the snow with a sigh.

The pony approached and helped her up, then glanced at the shed. Without speaking, she led them inside and turned on a gas lantern. She let Colgate calm down, which did not take long, and asked again what she was doing.

After a second, Colgate knew who had found her, and she said, “Looking for you.”

Lotus sighed and unwrapped a scarf around her muzzle. “Are you okay? I saw you crying.”

Colgate looked around, suddenly self-conscious. She was reminded of Octavia after telling her story, expending so much energy on so much emotion, and left feeling only that she had made a fool of herself. She said, “I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know that either.”

Lotus looked at her, and Colgate turned away. Her wide eyes were blotted from a bad night’s sleep, sunken into the soft, feminine face, and she attempted a smile. Colgate looked back at her, nervous, and stared a little longer at the face, the only visible feature under layers of coats and scarves.

“That’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it, but why did you come for me? Is it important?”

“I don’t know,” she wanted to say again, but could not. Even though her reasons for seeking out Lotus seemed empty to her, she knew she had to say more.

Lotus went to a window, fiddling with the blinds to trigger the latent magic therein, and from there she looked in on Snowdrift. She scanned the town in quick rows, with all the attentiveness of routine. “You don’t mind if I do this, do you? I’m supposed to have a complete picture of the town every day, and I haven’t done it yet.”

“I don’t mind.”

She zoomed in as she passed over Umbrella Park. Ponies were setting up for the Contraction there, arranging tables and hanging decorations, watched by many more as they promenaded on the frosty grass. A pair of mares argued in front of an empty bandstand. “Did you just follow an impulse out here, Minuette?”

“Maybe I’m just stupid,” Colgate said, trying to think.

“Nope.” She glanced back at her, and Colgate felt pinned.

“I’m a—”

“I can’t stand ponies who talk bad about themselves. It’s a filthy habit.” Apparently noticing her own tone, she softened. “If you were stupid, you’d be dead. You had a few chances in Canterlot, to kill yourself by doing something stupid, and I can assume you had a few in Tartarus as well.”

“You know what happened in Canterlot.”

“You mean I know what happened to you? I know what the reports said, and they said plenty.” She forced a laugh. “Shall I enumerate their contents?”

“You shall not,” Colgate said, edging closer and drawing another look from Lotus. The two met each other’s eyes for a minute, each one sizing up the other. Lotus’ cloud had already recalled and sorted everything it knew on Colgate, and Colgate groped to untangle her own feelings. Among everything else, the echo of sadness, the liquor from the hotel, and the constant fear, there glowed a feeling of immediate attraction.

“It is because you are not stupid that Fleur dis Lee took you in.”

“I thought I was lucky.”

“She was the lucky one.”

Colgate smiled, not taking Lotus’ meaning, assuming it was a joke. “Why is she dead?”

Lotus surprised her by laughing. She laughed loudly and reverted the window to its natural state, tossing her head back, letting her soft, pink mane spill across her back; for a moment, against the light, she reminded Colgate of one possessed, before gathering her mane and blinking rapidly. The moment of mirth made Colgate feel diminished, as though she had intruded, as though at any second, Lotus would notice her and put her guard up.

“She died because she got shot in the head by a pulse crystal. Right here.” Lotus leaned down to tap the spot just under the corner of her jaw. “She burned up too fast to be saved.”

“And why did she get shot?” Colgate asked slowly. “And from what angle was she hit?”

“Minuette,” Lotus mumbled, beginning to circle. “She got shot because she was in a battle. That’s what happens.”

“Hey.”

“You asked.” Her heavy clothes shifted with a shrug. “So you came after me to talk about your old commander? Was there something unresolved between you that you needed help with?”

The question froze Colgate. Lotus’ guileless concern was like a stiff wind, driving her response away, leaving her defenseless. The voice, the earnestness of the question, and the sheer physical beauty of the pony before her were all too much.

“She spoke highly of you. She and I talked sometimes; she had affairs down here too, and more than a few ponies she cared about that she asked me to keep an eye on—which I was happy to do. I’d have kept an eye on you too if I were in town.”

“Not that I’d have known,” Colgate said.

“That’s the point.”

“What did she say?”

“About what?”

“About me.”

“When she was speaking highly of you, I assume you mean.” Lotus cleared her throat. “She said you were fast and adaptable, and the sort of mare a pony can’t underestimate. She praised your problem solving and your eye for detail. It’s been noted in your file, her compliments.”

“Goody.”

“Does that help?”

“I don’t know.” There was comfort in the old refrain, as if with it she had rebutted Lotus’ disarming presence.

“I get the feeling that’s not all. Am I right?” She went to a water cooler and poured a paper cup for herself and a second for Colgate.

Sipping, Colgate said, “The red’s worn off your warm water tab.”

Lotus rubbed the water cooler affectionately. “Two months now. No one replaced it.”

Colgate set the paper cup down.

“Seriously, what’s on your mind?”

“You’re busy.”

“I’m always busy, this is fine. I…” With a sigh, she continued, “I try to keep an open-door policy when I can, which hasn’t been much lately. But I can talk. The cloud thinks separately from me, if that’s your concern. I assume Twilight told you about it?”

“There was no stopping her.”

“Good. I hate talking about it, personally.”

“Why?”

“I get tired of it. I get tired of… everything. That’s why I retreat to the forests.”

Colgate took up the cup and studied the drops of water yet clinging to its interior. “I think I get that.”

“You’ve exhibited similar behavior,” Lotus said gently. “You shouldn’t have come up here, though. Ponies freeze to death in these forests sometimes. It’s lucky I was nearby.”

“Yeah.”

“You can be honest with me, Minuette. If you wanted to be alone, you would have stayed in the trees, so I know there’s something eating at you.”

“Mm.” She could not decide whether she was being tested, and if so, if it were to her advantage to go along with it. She imagined the Datura Information Handler exercised a lot of authority that could be used against her should she make a mistake.

“Enough to follow me to Canterlot,” she thought then, eyes widening. Lotus had the cloud, though, which Colgate did not well understand. She could probably detect a trap further in advance than Colgate. For a moment, she did not look so attractive.

“I was the one who pushed the TV,” Colgate said at last.

Lotus looked at her and shook her head. “There are so many possible things you can mean by that.”

“In the hotel in Grass Graves, I pushed the TV off its stand and woke up Rouge. I told her she did it, or something. I think she believed me.”

“Thanks. I won’t ever forget that.”

“You didn’t know it before?"

“Was I supposed to?” She paused. “Minuette, if you think I’m watching you so I can punish you for tiny mistakes, that’s a sorry misconception. I assume that’s what the TV comment was, seeing if I would be surprised by a small detail like that, and thereby show you just how much scrutiny you’ve been under.” She grinned. “Am I right?”

“You… I don’t know,” she said, hanging her head.

“That makes you the fourteenth pony this year who’s tried that trick on me.”

“Well aren’t I special?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Lotus said, edging closer, not taking a full step. “You’ve made your feelings known to Fleur. Your doubts.”

“And therefore to you.”

“Not in as much detail, I’m sure, but essentially. Ahh, did you not get to air this out with her before she passed on? If so—sorry, I’ll let you respond.”

“Yeah, thanks.” She thought frantically, afraid but aware she probably shouldn’t be. She could think of only one thing in the moment, and said it. “If you wanted to, you could have had me indisposed long ago, I assume.”

“Uhhh… The most complete answer is that decisions like that are handled locally, at least for ponies of your level. But the point of your question is that if I wanted to, I could have sought you out at any time, yes?”

“Sure.”

“Then the answer is yes.” She shook her mane again and smiled, reverting for a second to the pony Colgate had been acquainted with in Ponyville. Always then, she had seen Lotus and her sister as perfectly nice, if not slightly dumb, mares with easy jobs and carefree lives, but nothing of that remained in the Snowdrift watchpoint. She reminded Colgate of an office manager, full of calculated friendliness and cheer; she had known plenty of the sort in Manehattan. “And look at you, still kicking. So you can see that I mean you no harm. Yes?”

She did not want to agree so quickly, afraid as she was of falling into a trap, but nodded anyway.

Adjusting her scarf and revealing a slit of light blue neck, Lotus went on, “I know what you did in Canterlot because I know what everyone did in Canterlot, every day.” She thumped her forehead. “Some way or another, every single report makes its way up to me, from the most mundane garbage to the wackiest capers you can imagine.”

“Example?” She bit her tongue; the word slipped out.

“Oh, you want an example? Sure.” She frowned, her hat wiggling with rising ears, her tail switching as she paced before Colgate. “A Datura by the name of Pristine Paints had his first mission in Hoofington twelve days ago. His commander took him out of town and they spent the next six and a half hours inspecting railroad ties. Why? Because they got a tip that one of the ties, maybe, had moved on its own. Fascinating, I know! But the Datura has to follow up on that, because just in case it did move on its own, then that could be curtains for the whole railroad. Six and a half hours, these ponies were on their knees, looking at every single railroad tie.”

Colgate stared.

“Shall I go into greater detail for you?” She turned a quick circle and swiped her paper cup with her tail. “They had to take a fifteen-minute break between the times of eight fifty-two and nine oh-seven when Pristine Paints’ commander accidentally stepped on an anthill. She has a mild allergy to ant bites. It was hidden underneath a particularly large tuft of grass. How about this? She was bitten seven times altogether, once—”

“I think I get it,” Colgate said.

“Do you think so? Do you think so?” She lowered her voice and smiled again. “I’m sorry, I just don’t appreciate being tested. I know you have no reason to know that.” She smiled even wider, falsely, a change which Colgate did not distinguish. “But now you do! So don’t do it again, okey-doke?”

“Right.”

“I read this stuff all the time, and I’d just as soon forget it or put it in a book somewhere, stick it in one of Luna’s libraries. She’s got enough of them, she wouldn’t even notice.”

“I… believe we were talking about my time in Canterlot.”

“Yes.” Lotus sighed and picked up her cup. “Forgive me if I’m irritable. You’d think the other Daturas would be used to me by now, but they test me all the time. I’m like a novelty to them.”

“A novelty,” Colgate said, thinking about the word.

“Back to Canterlot,” Lotus said. “And please be specific with your questions.”

“Okay…” She thought, the old phrase popping up in her head. “No harm, Cole buddy. No harm here.” “Why did the Canterlot Datura exterminate its useless members, instead of exiling them or something?”

At this, Lotus sat down and put a hoof to her brow. She opened her mouth, and Colgate watched, amazed. She had expected an immediate response; she was surprised that Lotus was surprised.

“You need to tell me how you know that,” Lotus finally said. “I mean it.”

“I figured it out.”

“Yes, I can see that, but I need to know how. Did someone tell you something? If so, who?”

Colgate thought back. She could not recall how exactly she had figured it out, only that she had. The impression of disgust remained with her, and had stuck like a brand all the way through the second round of rehab. “I think Fleur mentioned something. Like the ships coming out over the battlefield.”

“The escape convoy, yes, she would have mentioned that. Anything else?”

“They crashed.”

“Yes, I know that.” She looked at Colgate, and, with an effort, softened her tone. “Sorry. Please, continue.”

“I don’t know! I saw that they had crashed, I saw some bones or something in the wreckage, so I put two and two together. I figured if you had tried to kill me off once when I was a reject, you’d probably do it to the others.”

“And what makes you think it was deliberate, this crash?”

“I dunno.”

“Try to remember. Please.”

“Ugh.” She got more water, poured it over her head, and drank her second cup. “Oh, right, ‘cause they were all facing the same way, like they’d crashed together. Like as one unit. Plus, Fleur had been there before, practicing.” Too late, she realized she had said too much again as Lotus’ face darkened further. She looked at the door, half expecting it to lock on its own.

“And how do we know that detail?” Lotus asked. “Do not tell me that you ‘figured it out’ again.”

“It was her shoes,” Colgate said at length. “Muddy shoes, and her coat in the hamper. It was cold at nights, but still warm in the afternoons, so I knew she had gone out at night. No map in the drawer, either, so it was somewhere familiar and outdoors, at night. No meetings, ‘cause those are indoors usually. That plus what I figured about the crash, I dunno, it made sense.”

Lotus took a long, slow breath, in which she looked into Colgate’s eyes.

“Was I not supposed to know these things?”

“You can say that,” Lotus said. “Stop right there. We’re not done.”

Colgate stopped, one hoof on the area rug and three on the floor, a sprint away from the door. Behind her, she saw death, not even looking at her, apparently working over some insoluble conflict in her head, or out of it. She wanted to be quiet and let her fate take her, hoping that a gentle submission would prompt mercy, but the door was so close.

“If you run, you won’t leave me a choice,” Lotus said, back to the calculated kindness. “I can tell you’re thinking about it.”

“I’m not thinking.”

“Can you relax for me?”

Colgate shook her head.

“Can you try? You’re not in trouble, I just want to keep talking about what you know.”

“I don’t know anything. I was making everything up, I was faking it. You don’t trust me.”

“Enough. You’re not in trouble,” she repeated. “Shall we sit?”

“I don’t sit.”

Lotus smiled. “Certainly. I will. Is that okay?” She sat on a cushion at the other end of the room and looked placidly at Colgate, who slowly lowered her ears. “This is a security concern, a hole in the cover, that’s all, and it seems you detected it. You’re helping me, Minuette.”

“Sure am.”

“Helping us all, I should say. If you can figure out something like that, then who’s to say someone else hasn’t? Fleur needs to be more mindful of her laundry, that’s for sure.”

Noting Lotus’ use of the present tense, Colgate nonetheless held her tongue.

“Would you like something to drink, at least? I can get you something from the mini fridge. I think we’ve got a couple bottles of pop left. You like tangerine?”

“Poison,” Colgate thought, and then, right after, “how bad could it be?” She shook her head with a gracious smile.

Lotus smiled back, and Colgate looked at her face, seeing the severity of her infraction writ in the stress lines and serious pull at Lotus’ mouth.

“This is the only thing I’ve figured out from you all,” Colgate said.

“But that’s not true, is it? There was an attempt on you and Rouge earlier in Grass Graves. The watchpoint, the fire? Yes? You’ve mentioned it already; you know what that was.”

“I remember. That’s why Fleur took me in, ‘cause I impressed her by slipping the fire trap.”

Lotus just continued to look at her, her smile growing, reaching up to her eyes and widening her face into something more akin to the natural friendliness Colgate remembered. To Colgate, it was not a face at all, but a warning sign, telling her to get out of town as fast as possible. “We’ve got Ponyville and Canterlot. Why not Snowdrift? What’s a third?”

After a while, Lotus sighed, her expression conflicted and unsure, but to Colgate’s eyes simply sad. “Minuette, I think you’re free to go.”

Colgate blinked, and the face reverted to haggard impatience.

“You’ve got nothing to fear from me.”

“I bet I do,” she blurted. “That is, uh, not really. That was a lie.”

“Settle down.” She patted the cushion with a hoof, and for a second, Colgate believed her.

“I’m settled.”

“A security breach like this would normally be treated with a memory wipe after a full interrogation.”

“That was the soda.”

“That was just to knock you out.” She laughed to herself. “I don’t want to conduct a whole wipe interview on my own! Can you imagine how miserable that would be for both of us? I suppose you can’t.”

“She’s gonna turn and get me as soon as I get back to town.” Something must have shown in her eyes, because Lotus straightened her face. “That was my first idea, but I don’t think it applies to you. You’ve had opportunity after opportunity to talk about what you know, and you haven’t.”

“I haven’t?”

“I would know, believe that.” She flicked her ears under her hat. “I think I can trust you.”

Colgate frowned at her.

“Plus, I hate wiping ponies’ memories.”

“You killed Rouge and them, though.”

“I did not,” Lotus said softly.

“Authorized it.”

“Minuette.” She forced a laugh. “Just because I’m not going to wipe you for knowing what you know, doesn’t mean we can talk about this more. Frankly, I could do with some more alone time now. This is still a security breach, and I need to assess the risk involved.”

Colgate took a step toward her, licking her lips, a barrier like paper between what she wanted to say and her petrified tongue. Lotus looked at her, her expression tired, but expectant. “I don’t like that you killed my friend,” Colgate managed.

“Again—”

“I get that they were a cancer to the Datura. Why not wipe them all, though?”

With closed eyes, Lotus said, “because that’s not how it works.”

“That’s no answer.”

“I can’t talk about this right now.”

“Shall I ask Aloe?”

Lotus just glared at her, curled on her cushion, like a dog that had been whipped. “Ask her anything you want.”

Colgate nodded and went to the magic window, conscious of the Information Handler’s eyes on her the whole time. Recalling what she saw Lotus do, she activated the magic and, with some fiddling, found their corkscrew hotel. She rotated the view until she had found their floor, and, zooming in on a window, was able to see Aloe and Twilight conversing in the room.

Lotus watched her exit the cabin, sick to her stomach.

By the time she had gotten back, she had lost her reason for wanting to speak to Aloe. The talk with Lotus took shape in her head as she walked downhill, growing subtexts and implications that had passed her by the first time, as so often conversations did. She saw why Lotus trusted her: not only had she not betrayed any Datura secrets so far, but she was too afraid of retribution ever to do so. That she knew Lotus relied on this fear did not incite in her feelings of any sort, for she knew that Lotus was correct, and knew that proving her wrong would only hurt her.

Slowly, she realized that more and more things she had taken as mistakes from Lotus had probably been on purpose. Her use of the present tense when speaking of Fleur, her recollection of the phrase “no harm,” the few tacit admissions to events she did not strictly need to acknowledge, they formed an idea of someone whose ability to handle employee complaints and concerns were inveterate, and beyond mere confidence. She had manipulated Colgate and left her with no recourse. To whom could Colgate appeal, and for what reason? Recognizing those thoughts, she then wondered whether she was right to place Lotus on such a lofty, dispassionate pedestal, or whether Lotus had instead just been right, and wanted her employee to feel better.

Her attraction did not help matters. In Ponyville, flattened under medication, Colgate had not looked on anyone with more than passing interest, one of many reasons why her longest running relationship had failed. Was it that Lotus had always been interesting, and it had taken Colgate so long to notice it, or was it a reflection of the power dynamic she had discovered? The thought of someone so far above her, looking down with benevolence—or the courtesy of feigning benevolence—was appealing in a sense. Perhaps Colgate had found another friend. “A pretty friend,” she thought, shaking her head, at the same time wishing to have seen Lotus under the coats.

What she had never properly understood, and which she slowly came to realize on the return trip, was that she had earned her freedom, and her life. Luck had placed her in Fleur’s path in the first place, but it was her intelligence that had let her turn the opportunity into something. Her higher education, as she thought of it, borrowing Applejack’s term. Before, she had seen her actions as outside herself, as if she had stumbled into them quite by accident—that was how it so often felt. Hearing herself talk it over with Lotus, however, she realized that she had thought things through in the past as well, and had made her choices. Ponies made choices, and so did she.

Among thinning trees, she looked around, then up at the snowing sky. “Choices, Rouge buddy,” she said aloud. She wondered which choices Rouge had made, and which had been made for her.

“I choose to lie in the snow now.” She carved out a small place for herself on the ground and sunk to her muzzle in soft ice, the closest she could get to immersion in water. When her nose was numb and her legs had fallen asleep, she struggled to her hooves and gradually made it into town. On certain street corners, there had appeared large clocks to hang from light poles, and it was from one that Colgate saw that it was getting close to dinner time. At the hotel, she put a few more shots on the room tab and then went up to her friends. Aloe was gone, and Twilight was hunched over a map of Snowdrift and the surrounding forests when she walked into the room.

“Ah, you are just in time,” Octavia said. “Rainbow and I were going to go out to find some dinner. Shall you come along?”

“Dinner,” Colgate said, nodding to herself. She turned and walked right back out with them.

The following day, Fluttershy and Rarity walked the afternoon streets of Snowdrift, straying north in search of something to do after brunch. Twilight was back at the hotel with Lotus, working out details on the hazard problem, and Applejack was intermittently between the room and the lobby, where she had made a friend in their concierge.

Snow had turned to rain, and Rarity kept them dry with an effortless shield as they put the larger buildings behind them and entered a residential area, one of two pockets of compact houses that made up the densest parts of town, parallel wings on the east and west ends, cleft by the main road as it widened and split around a long, thin park. There were fewer street vendors up north, and more proper businesses: record stores, boutiques, coffee shops, and the like appeared here and there in clusters not far from the thick sets of houses.

“I wish we had a camera,” Fluttershy said, pausing to look up at a tall, slender house, sleet gray with rain, its upper-story windows open a crack to let the cool air circulate. A ladder leaned against the wall by a lighter patch of paint, and a clapboard doghouse dripped behind a chain-link fence in the tiny yard between it and its neighbor. “This,” she said, “this is perfect. I love serene things like this.”

“It’s certainly that,” Rarity said.

“We’ll just have to hold it in our memories, moments like this, I mean. Where it almost doesn’t feel like we’re on the clock.”

“That’s ironic, coming from you.”

“I said almost.” They both laughed.

“I know what you mean, dear. I kid. We’re all entitled to relax a little bit, even if it is just like this. Oh!” She pointed to a clothing store on the opposite side of the intersection.

“You know how I feel about shopping right now.”

“I do, I so do, but darling, look at it! Well, actually, looking at it now, it is rather drab, but… Oh, I don’t care! To be surrounded by fashion again, even for a minute. I’m tired of my clothes being simply functional.” She plucked the final word out like a pony spitting out a cherry seed.

Thunder rumbled as they entered the shop, and an elderly mare in a sagging, black frock greeted them. Rarity went straight to the jewelry, while Fluttershy simply took in the shop. There was nothing there for her among the doilies and chairs, the morose umbrellas leaning in the corner, and the gossamer dresses that clung to their stands more like shadows than clothing, but Rarity was happy. In a large room in the back, Rarity changed behind an accordion wall while Fluttershy looked disinterestedly at racks of fabric.

They left without purchasing anything, walking past a quiet bar and its neighboring bookstore, of which Fluttershy made a mental note to tell Twilight later.

“Oh no,” Rarity murmured. She tapped Fluttershy on the wing and pointed across the street. Behind colorful houses, leaning slightly apart on uneven ground, she saw the beginning of a familiar name on an imposing, concrete building. She flew up into a tree to see it better for a second.

“It’s them all right,” Fluttershy said, resuming their walk.

“I thought they were only in Roan.”

“I think I remember Twilight saying they were here too, a smaller branch.”

Rarity only sighed.

“We’ll just keep our heads down.”

“Ah, yes, us Elements of Harmony. What could be easier?”

Fluttershy gave her a thin smile and pulled at her hoof when she stopped on the corner, looking on the Mansel bank with resentful awe. They turned down a street rough with potholes and watched as a decorated carriage rumbled by, cloaked in its own delicate shield that sparkled and jumped with each raindrop. Its drivers’ hooves clicked on the wet asphalt, and a tired looking stallion lay in the seat, frowning into a mirror with pursed lips. They walked toward a corner café and, to give Rarity a rest, got coffee and took it on the patio.

“I don’t know if I want Aloe and Lotus to come back to Ponyville,” Fluttershy said suddenly. She had been thinking it all morning.

“I agree,” Rarity said, and Fluttershy could tell that she had been thinking the same. “I don’t care what they say, they aren’t the mares we know. Well, maybe Aloe, since she’s just a… What was her term? Handler? Ugh. Not Lotus.”

“I feel bad for her, in a way.”

“Well, that makes one of us,” Rarity said. They could see the long park, and across it, they could see the short tower of a church.

“She doesn’t like her cloud,” Fluttershy said.

“Me neither.” They received their coffee. “She’s just a nag now. It pains me to say it, because—well, you know her as well as I do, or the old her anyway—but it’s true. Twilight says she’s overworked. That’s fine. So are us all!” Fluttershy flinched at the sudden shout. “Sorry. What gives her the right to give us the cold shoulder when we’ve come all this way?”

“At least she’s helping us,” Fluttershy wanted to say, but knew that Rarity would take it the wrong way. Instead, she studied the foam on her latte.

“I get hiding it from us when we were in Ponyville. If I came to you and revealed something like that, you’d be agog. You wouldn’t know what to do with me. So I get that they hid it.”

“It’s a shock to find out, though.”

“Don’t think me morbid for saying it, dear, but I’ve been likening it to cancer in my mind. You know, like we just found out one of them has it.”

“This would be the opposite, though, since it’s a good thing.”

“I’m not sure I’d call it that.”

“It’s letting her do good things.”

“Hmph. I’m just angry with her,” Rarity continued after the waitress had gone. “I’m angry because it’s a big shock, as I said, and I’m sure I’ll get over it. That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t… Well, to be perfectly blunt, knowing I’ll get over it later doesn’t help me now.”

“To your point, it would be a lot easier to take if Lotus actually had the decency to sit us down and explain, instead of leaving it for her sister.”

“I’m starting to welcome her being gone so much. Oh, dear, I am sounding like a witch, aren’t I?”

“Well…”

“It’s fine. She can have her cloud. I just… Like I said, I don’t want to see her anymore. That’s all.”

Knowing Rarity was exaggerating, Fluttershy nodded.

“Not just the cloud, actually,” Rarity said. “The secret agent thing too.”

“She said she was genuinely happy doing what she did as a, er, cover.”

“Yes, she says that. How do we even know her cutie mark is real? It might have been… tattooed on, or something, when she was inducted. We don’t know!”

“I think we do.”

Rarity looked at her sourly, but she knew Fluttershy was right. For them to be fooled for years, never for any of their weekly spa trips suspecting that there was more to the chattering, slightly silly duo, it was more than just a good cover.

“Perhaps that is so,” Rarity said slowly into her coffee. “Why a double life, though? It can’t have been easy.”

“Maybe it was,” Fluttershy ventured. “She’s just information. All she had to do was answer questions, and Aloe said that back before the Crumbling, there wasn’t that much. Compared to now, I mean.”

“Well, she was obviously handling it somehow, because she was there every weekend.”

“It makes me wonder how many others there are in Ponyville, and the towns we’ve been to.”

“Well, Colgate’s one,” Rarity said. “She practically announced it to me when I was helping her with her side. I imagine that explains the trouble she doesn’t want to talk about, and why she doesn’t want to go back home. I believe her term was ‘reject,’ that’s what she called herself.”

“She didn’t perform well?”

“Something like that. I didn’t interrogate her, she’s so skittish.”

Fluttershy nodded.

“Then there’s that mare in Passage Town, Cloud Line I think her name was.”

“Oh, with the pump. I remember her.”

“The cops in Cloudsdale, probably. The snow tube.”

Fluttershy kept nodding, not particularly interested, turning in her seat to watch the streets. It was a Saturday, and the pedestrians seemed hardly fazed by the weather, dressed in colorful outfits, some alive with enchantments and some dark with rain.

“I wonder if that creepy reverend was one,” Rarity said. “In Appleloosa, remember?”

“Reverend Green.”

“That’s him! I knew it was a color.”

“I’ll bet that’s not his real name,” Fluttershy said. “Reverend Green, Dr. Whooves…”

“Don’t remind me of him.”

“I liked him okay.”

Rarity made a gagging face, which made Fluttershy giggle, and they paid and left. Thinking their private thoughts, they entered the long park from the side, stopping to watch a pair of younger ponies playing chess at a bench, seemingly unaware of the rain as it seeped into their clothes, which were not inexpensive. The park was only twenty meters wide, but a couple hundred long, and sunk down gently with the land as it reached up into the northernmost section of Snowdrift, where the gateway waited, as yet unseen. They started down one of the snaking paths, pausing at a fountain where a griffon couple was taking a picture. With a little hesitation, they let themselves be photographed as well.

On the far side, they paused at the chapel they had seen from the café, rain coursing down its sheer walls like reflections of living stone, its one window spattered and foggy. Dribbles of snow still appeared in the rectangular cuts in the earth on both sides of the entryway, places where flowers would bloom in the spring and summer, but dark and watery now.

“I’ve been noticing these around,” Fluttershy said. “And holy symbols here and there too. I didn’t know this was a religious town.”

“I’ll bet I can guess which princess they worship here,” Rarity mumbled.

The church they had seen from afar was a short walk away, and they cut through the wet lawn to view it. From the church, they could see the first clipping of gateway past a short wall, and Rarity thought she could make out heat waves moving over its surface. They did not linger on the church’s stoop, though they wanted to, for a service was going on inside. The morose, dignified organ put them both in mind of the typical funerary crowd, and they saw they were not far off when, heading back toward the chapel, they turned to watch parishioners file out into the storm. The priestess—a griffon, to their mild surprise—shook hooves and gave hugs and blessings, and when she was alone, looked about for a minute before flapping up to the belfry and disappearing into a hood of shadow.

“We’ve probably met so many by now, and we’ll never know,” Fluttershy said. “In my opinion, the sooner we learn to live with that, the better.” She glanced at Rarity. “Secret agents, I mean.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“You don’t like the deception, though.”

Rarity looked at her. “You say that as though you do.”

“No, no, not like that. I just mean it doesn’t bother me as much.”

“Since when?”

“Since…” Since she had begun reading about memory wiping spells, she knew, but couldn’t say. “I’m not sure. I guess I just changed my mind somewhere.”

“Eh, fair.”

Fluttershy looked up at a prolonged sequence of lightning flashes in time to see the final bolt touch the forest to the south, and she flattened her ears for the rolling thunder, which was not loud, but still bothered her. She had resolved, the day before, to tell Vinyl to start practicing memory alteration magic. For all her indecision, her desire to forgive Pinkie naturally for her failings, and all her reflection on whether she, Fluttershy, were the one at fault for not having forgiveness in her heart, she had finally cast all of it aside. She could spend a lifetime worrying the problem, but a lifetime she did not have. Time was getting shorter, and she did not know how long it would take Vinyl to learn. Best to just get it over with.

Besides, she thought, after the memory was gone, all her agonizing would be meaningless anyway. That was what she had to keep reminding herself.

“I get it in a way,” Rarity said, “not minding being deceived, if it’s for good. But I can’t be comfortable if I’m letting someone else decide what’s good and bad for me to know. That just doesn’t feel right.”

Not wanting a conversation about it, Fluttershy just smiled and said, “that makes sense.”