Only Applejack was awake when they returned, standing at the top of the plank, watching them approach with an expression that was at once stern and sick. They went below, and Fluttershy examined Octavia, noting internal bruising and nothing more, while Twilight explained to Applejack where they had gone and what they had seen. Expecting anger, Twilight was shocked when all Applejack said was “Ah’m just glad yer okay,” and left it at that.

The following morning, they opened the hatch to the sound of Rainbow and Pinkie engaged in a snowball fight on the deck while a cascade of flakes came down on them from a windless, gray sky. The torch was covered in frost and snow wreathed its base, and icicles hung from the ropes keeping their balloon in place.

“Incoming!” Big Mac cried, diving into the middle of the snowball barrage and kicking up a shockwave of powder in a hasty attempt at a snow fort. He was pummeled, but didn’t back down, and it wasn’t long before the three of them had the entire ship covered in a freezing crisscross.

A wild snowball flew and smacked Octavia in the face, and she hmphed. Rarity laughed as she magically dabbed the powder away, and they watched in silence until the morning play stopped and turned into a warm breakfast back in the cabin, after which Twilight, Octavia, and Fluttershy cleared snow off the deck and balloon, the latter taking the time to practice her own telekinetic magic, rudimentary in comparison to the other two’s. Applejack put them into the air manually.

“Where we goin’, Twi?”

“Northeast, towards the end of the chain,” Twilight said. “I’d like to do another spell, and then we can go to Applewood.”

“What about after that?” Rainbow asked.

“Well, what’s closest to Applewood?” Rarity asked, looking at Octavia.

“Several miles south of Applewood is a large plot of land where they have built an amusement park,” Octavia said.

“Park! There’s an amusement park out there?” Pinkie cried, racing over to them from where she watched off the back.

“Yes. It covers around a hundred acres.”

“Twilight, we have to go there.”

“I’m with Pinks on this one, Twilight. We’ve been busting our flanks for a while now; we deserve a break,” Rainbow said.

“It’s not going to be running,” Twilight said. “It’ll just as messed up as everything else in the world.”

“Yeah, but it’s an amusement park!” Pinkie insisted.

“And maybe once we fix it, it’ll start working again,” Rainbow said.

“That’s not how it works, Rainbow,” Twilight said.

“Could be.”

Twilight shook her head. “Have you been there, Octavia?”

“I have, many times. We would often spend a day or two there before or after a concert in Applewood.”

“How is it?”

“Most find it fun. I do not enjoy rides, or carnival games, though. In that regard, I was at a severe disadvantage. I think you would enjoy yourselves.”

“Twilight, come on,” Rainbow said.

“It’s not even going to be operational,” Twilight said.

“You don’t know that,” Pinkie said.

“I can guess it, okay? Girls, come on, Canterlot just repelled Discord again. Do we really want to waste our time at a stupid amusement park?”

“Yes!”

“Pinkie!” Fluttershy turned from where she stood at the front. “Will you please focus?”

Pinkie fell to her knees and rolled onto her back. “Fluttershy, it’s an amusement park! An amusement park! How do you say no to that?”

“By caring more about finding these,” she lifted her Element off her neck to demonstrate, “than some broken down toys.”

“Fluttershy is right,” Octavia said.

“I’ve tried to keep quiet, and be polite, but this is ridiculous. How are we supposed to make any progress if we get waylaid every single time something interesting appears? We’ve rushed into obvious complications more times than I can count now.” She sighed and put her Element back on. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice.”

“You’re absolutely right, though,” Twilight said.

Pinkie lay motionless, her upside-down face drooping. “But… but roller coasters, and carnival games, and prizes, and—”

“All defunct,” Fluttershy said. “Also, no, there aren’t any Elements out here. Not that anypony asked.” She turned back around and folded her wings tightly across her shivering back.

“So, d’ya s’pose we can see Applewood from here?” Big Mac asked after a moment.

“No way,” Twilight said. “It’s over six-thousand miles away.”

Applejack whistled long and low. “Shoot, that’s far. Ah reckon that’s ‘bout a week in the air right there.”

They landed on a large, jagged finger of stone, hanging off into the narrow void like a balcony, and the first thing Pinkie did was race to the edge to look off. Twilight followed, admonishing her to be careful the whole way, and the others remained on the deck to watch, crouched under Rarity’s first attempt at a shield that could keep the wind out. It hardly worked.

Rainbow read Trixie’s response, delivered not long after breakfast, and folded it up with a sigh.

“How’s she doing?” Rarity asked.

“Fine. She’s still on the airship out to Appleloosa,” Rainbow said. “I dunno, I just have a bad feeling about it. She said her ship was perfectly fine, but she doesn’t really know about airship mechanics, you know? What if she missed something?”

“Is this what you talk about in your letters?” Octavia asked.

“I asked.”

“‘Bout her airship mechanics,” Applejack said.

“Hey, I don’t want her crashing in the middle of the desert, okay?”

Applejack pursed her lips for a moment. “Ah’d like to take this moment to express somethin’, an’ that’s that yer actin’ right out of character, RD.”

“Am not.”

“Are too. It ain’t like you to be this protectin’ of someone.” She looked at her brother. “An’ Ah ain’t forgot ‘bout you neither, big bro. Yer still strangely talkative. That’s two ponies now who ain’t actin’ right.”

“Applejack, dear, I think Rainbow’s solution might be a bit easier than what it sounds like you’re suggesting,” Rarity said.

“If yer gonna say somethin’ sappy ‘bout how love changes someone, an’ ya never really see the real pony ‘til they’ve given their heart to another, yer sorely mistaken. Ah’ve seen Rainbow smitten before, an’ it was never like this.”

“Being smitten is not the same as being in love, Applejack.”

“I’m not in love with Trixie,” Rainbow said. “We’re not even going out.”

“Then what in the world d’ya call this?” Applejack asked. She snatched the letter out of Rainbow’s hooves. “Here, look at all these X’s and O’s before her signature.”

“Give it back!” She folded it again and stowed it under her wing. “These are mine, and mine only, okay?”

“Ah didn’t read anythin’ up top.”

“I don’t care.”

“Rainbow, what is your relationship with Trixie?” Rarity asked. “If you don’t mind.”

“Nothing. We’re friends, that’s it.”

“Ah thought you said you had a thing fer her,” Applejack said.

“I agree,” Rarity said. “I thought you were sweethearts.”

“No!” Rainbow said. “I mean, yeah, we had a bit of a… moment, back in Manehattan, but it didn’t mean anything. I’m not even gay.”

“Ah’m gettin’ mixed signals here,” Applejack said.

“It’s not complicated, Applejack.”

“Yer actin’ like a pony in a relationship, the way you covet those letters.”

“And how you’re worrying yourself into knots about her move,” Rarity added.

“Girls, listen.” Rainbow’s voice was a stern monotone. “We’re just friends, okay? There’s nothing else going on.”

“If that’s true, you’d better let Trixie know,” Applejack said. “‘Cause all those X’s an’ O’s on yer letter don’t look like any ‘just friendship’ Ah’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe I will.”

“You should, if ya wanna be honest with her.”

“Fine!” She turned to storm off, but didn’t. “It’s really cold out there.”

“Be sure to let her down gently,” Rarity said.

“That’s enough, Rarity. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Maybe Octavia’d like to talk ‘bout her little adventure last night,” Applejack said.

“I really do not know what to call it,” Octavia said after a time. “It was like no ship that I have ever seen.”

With another length along the mountain chain restored, and nothing keeping the crew invested in staying, they took the first path they could find down and away from the perilous, white cliffs. With each mile behind them, the air lost its bite, and the final volley of snow thinned to a weak stippling of hail on their deck just at noon, as they passed the final slope to hover over the clouds covering a vast, empty highland.

Rainbow had written Trixie, asking her about Octavia and Twilight’s mysterious discovery, and with nothing to do, they fell into their usual flight routines. Octavia went below to play her cello, not trusting the dry air without a shield spell, while Twilight coached Rainbow and Applejack on their magic. With no mountains to avoid or wind to do battle with, Applejack was able to reach into their ship and practice her communion with the mechanics, first coaxing only grating protests from its parts. The process, she said, made her feel slightly ill, and, after half an hour of swiftly switching her magic on and off, she complained of a headache, and practiced no more.

They landed by a narrow turn in a stream, the field around it speckled with lichened stones and the bleached, frostbitten remains of a broken down cart. There, they refilled their water tanks, advised to wait at least three or four hours before showering for the ship’s internal heater to make the river water bearable. Under the shade of a growing cumulonimbus, they ate rations heated up over a magical fire that Octavia had lit with Twilight’s guidance.

There, too, did Trixie respond. Rainbow grabbed the letter before it hit the ground, scanned it once, and read aloud.

“It might be a relic from the old days, when necromancy was more widely studied. Necromancers frequently used magic to give motion to the inanimate, or bestow life upon the lifeless, and that included forcing machines like that airship into strange, liminal sentience.” She looked at Twilight. “What’s ‘liminal’ mean?”

“It means in a condition of being between things,” Twilight said. “Like the ship is kind of alive, but not quite.”

“Discord is kind of mortal, but not quite,” Big Mac mumbled.

Rainbow looked at him. “Yeah. Right. Ponies used to call these creations ‘angels,’ because they were so frequently tasked with menial duties for their masters, or creators. The only sanctioned angel in existence today is in possession of the noble Astra family. Then she goes on to say how she wishes she could have seen it with you, and… some other stuff.”

“Dashie, your marefriend is really smart!” Pinkie cried.

“I told you, she’s not—”

“She’s just jokin’,” Applejack said.

“So it was created by a necromancer, and left to rot in the mountains,” Octavia said. “I still do not understand. Was it alive?”

“Not in the same way we are,” Twilight said. “I think it was alive like how a virus is, or a crystal.”

Octavia only looked at her. “Crystals are not alive.”

“Not technically, but—”

“Where did she get her information?” Rarity asked.

“She’s into arcane stuff like that,” Rainbow said. “She can’t actually do any of the magic, but she loves reading about it.”

“Am I seeing a blush, Dashie?” Pinkie asked.

“Shut up, Pinkie.”

Something warm and slippery seemed to fill Rainbow’s abdomen as she lay down for the night. She shared a blanket on the floor with Applejack, but had to restrain herself from squirming and jostling as her guts spooled and unspooled like oily snakes. Her breath was hot and her mind raced, and she could feel her own pulse deep inside herself, hear it in distracted ears.

She knew what it was, of course.

Memories of Manehattan pounded and pooled inside her head. Betrayal, and money, and Trixie’s kisses and Prince Blueblood’s flaming jaw hitting the floor. Hung-over, flying circles around a park and trying to figure out her own feelings. Haunting, soft music as someone she almost hesitated to call a friend performed with one of her best friends.

She moved to slide out of the sheets, but stopped herself again, not wanting to wake the mare beside her. One leg pistoned across the floor, and a hoof nudged a knot in her fur back and forth. In the other room, sharing a bed with Octavia, was Big Mac.

Trixie had inspired first anger, then impatience, then grudging respect, all before their shared night on her couch. The thought of her flying out to Appleloosa made Rainbow’s skin crawl, and imagining the lonesome frontier town around the unicorn put her thoughts into dark certainty. How she knew—if it was knowing at all—she could not say, but, in her mind, the western town was inextricably tied to disaster. Trixie had said she knew what she was doing, that there was nothing to worry about in the first place, but the faith she knew she should feel was but a forced shell of optimism for her friends.

“Dashie, your marefriend is really smart!” Pinkie’s voice resonated inside her, shrill and tactless. From the instant of its utterance, she had been turning the single, heavy word over and over. Marefriend.

In the city, in Trixie’s company, the idea had wavered between tantalizing and frightening, but, with only her friends and letters that failed to assuage her worries, the implications froze her.

“I’m not even attracted to mares. I can’t be.” She ran a hoof across her lower belly and shivered. “I was drunk when we were together, and not in my right mind the morning after.” Her thoughts went to Big Mac, in bed with Octavia. Jealousy stirred, and she ran the hoof back.

Trixie’s chapped lips, and the point of her horn waking her countless times on the too-small couch. She closed her eyes and yawned, her worry dissolving into absentminded desire, and Applejack moved beside her. Trixie had said, in one of her more recent letters, that she appreciated the inglorious way they had discovered their feelings, for, without pomp or ceremony, there was no room for affected emotion.

She opened her eyes and followed an imagined curve of black over the ceiling, though could see nothing, with no windows in the cabin. Her eyes closed, and Big Mac rested, chest to back, against Octavia. Trixie’s silken mane.

Starlight, the sound of Trixie’s pulse crystal in the park. Grass as cold and sharp as ice against her hooves. A quarter turn under the blanket, and her wings splayed out, defenseless. The music of Manehattan was as soft as it was deep, and the city, reflected in the darkness, steeped and still in a cocoon of arrested, fevered thoughts, shone under her eyelids. Towers.

While Rainbow Dash smoothed her feathers with a soft brush of her wing against the floor, Big Mac brought one hoof up. The moon’s hollow light refracted on endless, amber bottles. Ponies swished around her, restless and unseeing imitations of life surrounding the electric relief of her own activated body.

The deep thrum of airship mechanics filtered through the walls; half a country away, Trixie heard the same thing. Her drunken embrace, awkward and gentle. Big Mac’s hoof came to rest, and Octavia’s powerful chest bore his weight. A quarter turn back. Starlight washed across an empty park, leafless trees spangled with a pillar of rising, distant lights. Wet heat groaned and see-sawed in her pelvis, and her heart quivered.

While Octavia’s breast swelled with her sleeping breath, Big Mac scooted closer. Trixie kissed her again. A siren grew. She was inundated with alcohol and excitement, and two lips parted to a bold tongue, and she turned in her blanket once more to smell Applejack’s mane.

Her tail brushed his inner leg. Trixie calling her names, and then, when it was all said and done, telling her she wasn’t playing around last night. Through closed eyes, she saw the silhouette of Rose Tower from where she glided over the park outside the apartment.

When she raised her head for him to better feel the taut musculature of her body, Rainbow moaned where she lay. Sluggish imaginings sloshed uselessly in her empty, sleeping head. Trixie. Big Mac. Octavia.

Two ponies shared yet another kiss. She watched in her dream, fractured by turns. Octavia kissed Trixie. Trixie kissed Rainbow. Rainbow kissed Big Mac.

Applejack mumbled something in her sleep.

The following day found them over a wide swale of yellowed grass and freckles of poppies, unvaried but for a crack several miles to the north. Applewood was out of range, but their compass kept them on point, and Applejack spent the first few hours practicing communion with the ship.

After breakfast, which was more like brunch, Twilight and Rarity retreated below without a word, leaving Rainbow stranded with no way to send her letter. She had wanted to follow, but Fluttershy stopped her with a plaintive glare. Instead, she went to the other cabin, where Big Mac lay, reading.

She froze in the doorway.

“Howdy, Miss Dash,” he said without looking. He turned a page, and Rainbow saw a linear diagram.

“What are you reading?”

“Sigils. Ah never understood ‘em. Twilight told me to look it up fer myself.”

“Huh. You’re lucky she didn’t talk your ear off about them instead.”

He shrugged, and she saw his glossy eye roll over noncommittally.

She moved to the bed to sit on its edge. “So… pretty interesting stuff, huh?”

“Kind of.”

“I mean, you know, all this. Not that.” She put a hoof on the mattress to get his attention, but his eyes did not stray. “First that freaky swamp, then Vanilla Cream, then the mountains. Octavia’s angel.” She recalled a phrase she had read in one of her Daring Do books. “These are interesting times.”

“Eeyup.”

“Am I distracting you?”

“Eeyup.”

“Sorry.” She slid off and went to the desk, but her writing was in the other one, and she sat in the chair, defeated. “So…”

“Say what you want to say, Miss Dash. Ah can listen.”

Rainbow pulled a drawer out of the desk to look in on a lone inkwell, no quills. She nudged the inkwell, and then pushed it into the drawer’s side until it rolled away. She was insulted that he should see through her pretense so easily, but her voice bore no sign. “So, what do you think of me and Trixie?”

“Ah dunno what to think. Ah’ve heard different things.”

“Well, which one do you agree with?”

“Ah think yer hidin’ from yer feelin’s. Ah think ya like her, but yer afraid to admit it to yerself.”

“Why would I be afraid of something like that?”

He shrugged.

“I’m not gay, Big Mac. I know that.”

“You’d have to be to have feelin’s fer Trixie.”

She frowned. “What are you saying?”

He turned a page delicately with the tip of his hoof. “Ah’m merely thinkin’ out loud here, but is it not possible yer foolin’ yerself?”

“About my own sexuality?”

“Eeyup.”

She stood up and returned to the bed, sitting beside him. Her tail curled around to lie across his shoulder. “I think I’m pretty clear where I stand on that.”

“It’s okay if yer not.” Another page flipped.

“I am, though.” She leaned in to emphasize herself. The dream from the night before filled her head again, and she leaned to nearly brush his fur with her nose. He smelled like nothing. “Are you gay?”

“Nope. Not even curious.”

“Really?”

He finally looked away from his book. “Really.”

She lowered her own gaze. “Do you like Octavia?”

“She’s not my type.”

“I thought you two were sharing a bed last night.”

“She’s nice, and warm. Keeps her hooves to herself.”

Rainbow blushed. “Someone else doesn’t?”

“You ever share a bed with Pinkie?”

Rainbow thought back, and crept forward again. “I think so.” She looked at the smooth muscles across his back, tapering into his wide neck. A hoof inched toward him.

“She can be hard to sleep with. She moves around a lot.”

“I’ve heard her laughing in her sleep before.”

“Eeyup. That’ll happen.” He turned another page. “Ah’m guessin’ she has some pretty funny dreams.”

Rainbow smiled, forced a chuckle. In the momentary lightness, she moved a hoof to pat him on the back. It lingered there, and her weak laughter died away. As he shifted, turning a page back to look at another diagram, the muscles slithered against her hoof. Her own foreleg tensing, she moved her hoof up his shoulder, then down. Up, then down, eyes not leaving the spot; a streak of mussed fur, as brazen and clear as her confused expression. Lips parted, eyes wide, capillaries under her cheeks aflame.

In her mind, as it had the night before, Trixie turned over and kissed her drunkenly, breath hot and stale on her face. Big Mac gave her no reaction, and she closed her eyes. Octavia replaced Trixie, and then Big Mac, and then it was Trixie again.

His cavernous body vibrated with a content hum, and she opened her eyes to see him resting his chin into the pillow, deeper than before. She drew a longer arc across his warm back, her blue meshing uncomfortably with his red. She found the nub of his scapula, and drew away. A barrier of bone, reversing her advances.

When she reached the slight rigidity of his spine, buried in flesh, she paused again. His skeletal geography filled her overflowing mind, and, before it was him again in the bed, she had moved on, downwards, stretching, nearly to touch the dock of his tail. His fur and skin, oily; she inhaled. Trixie rolled over, and Rainbow with her. Big Mac grunted, and she withdrew.

In a second, her mind cleared, and she saw the lurid canvass of his body beneath her perplexed face. Shifting her weight, she brought the hoof back, and then the other. His eyes rolled over again, and he moved his head. Emboldened, she straddled him to better drag her hooves up and down his broad shoulders, withers, and back, even daring to dip down to the croup. At her touch so near the base of his tail, the red corpus shivered, and he shifted himself, back legs extending momentarily to bring them both up. Resting again, she resumed, heading up to his neck.

Her chest fluttered, and her breath felt loud and intense in her ears. The same bed had shared both Big Mac and Octavia, and Rainbow had shared a couch with Trixie. Flesh pushed and dammed against her hooves, and his pulse thrummed in her frogs. She was an interloper, completing the union; Trixie, to Rainbow, to Big Mac. Octavia: suddenly an afterthought. With a toss of her mane and a renewed sense of determination, the gray mare was cast away, and then there were but three.

Her stomach was hot, and her insides were heavy, rapidly unctuous and sensitive. Her ears tingled, and her eyes did not move from where they rested on a dimple in the fur of his neck. Her hooves worked the flesh of his shoulders, malleable and warm, and he shuddered with subvocalizations. He shifted them both again, and she flapped her wings once, reflexively.

“Higher.”

His voice was a low shock to her, so distracted inside her own head. She slid her hooves over his shoulders, coming up to his crest and working small crescents along the sides of his neck. A sigh quivered in his throat, and he squirmed. She adjusted her weight on his back, disconnecting, as she did so, from his pulse.

“Wait.” Her massage slowed as she looked upon his head and neck, seeing, for the first time, only what was there: Big Mac, not Trixie, clueless on the bed, enjoying her touch. There was nothing more. No hidden significance, no tacit understanding between them.

“Aw, crap.” She reeled back, and he tried to turn to look at her. Her ears still buzzed, but her chest sank into her body.

“What’s wrong?” His voice was quieter, and she looked onto his perplexed face with disgust.

“Get up.” She slid off him, off the bed, using her wings to avoid more contact. “Get, get up and go, and… and, aw, Celestia.” She jerked her head away, too slow still to avoid the look at his engorged penis. “Was that sexual for you?”

He looked at her, but she didn’t look back. “Was it not fer you?” he asked eventually.

“I’m out of here.” Head down to keep herself from seeing him again, she went to the stairs and stumbled onto the deck, nearly running into Pinkie.

“Heya Dashie! I was just coming down to say hi and to let you know that we—”

She shoved past, ran for the gunwale, and cast herself over.

The wind flew fresh and sharp against her wings and face as she kept pace with the airship, occasionally having to hold on to the rudder to rest. Rainbow’s thoughts were a nervous concoction of unaired lust and guilt, but they soon slowed and converged around Daring Do, and the story she was creating. Utter perversity, she thought, and insulting flippancy, swatting at a trail of cloud that had been chopped by the ship’s progress. In the air, Big Mac and Trixie, and all they represented, had been reduced to nothing.

Daring Do had been left, on Rainbow’s page, perched on the edge of a volcano, cornered by the advancing Ahuizotl. She would dive in, Rainbow knew, but the question was whether she would find a ledge to hide on and wait for him to pass.

She shook her head, the chirring turbines wavering back and forth mildly. Trixie popped into her mind, but slid away just as quickly to make room for Daring. The archaeologist’s imagined gravelly voice quipped taunts at Ahuizotl, who would be revealed, later on, to be a mere puppet of the true evil. “Really should have written an outline or something,” she thought.

Rainbow took the first watch that night, but all there was to observe was the shrinking mountains. In the dark quiet, she leaned on the rail beside one of the turrets, its cold metal gleaming like an alien crystal.

“What in the world got into me? Am I attracted to Big Mac?” In her head, a second line of thought joined, adopting Trixie’s haughty voice. “You’re attracted to me, Dashie, and don’t you dare think otherwise.” “Then what happened today? Or last night, for that matter?” The Trixie-thought remained silent, and she put her head on the rail, jumping up at a low, wooden wail behind. She whipped around to see Octavia, standing at her instrument.

“Sorry. I thought you had heard me come up.”

“Do you ever sleep?”

“I slept last night.”

“With Big Mac, remember?” Trixie-thought said. “And she was a part of those dreams too.”

“I will go somewhere else, if I am disturbing you.”

“You’re fine,” Rainbow said. “Maybe you can help, actually.”

“What do you require?”

“How do I say this?” “Well… okay, so you and Big Mac are pretty close, right?”

“We talk sometimes.”

“Did you talk today?”

“He told me of your encounter, if that is what you are referring to.”

Rainbow frowned and tightened her wings.

“He was very confused.”

“Yeah.”

“I assume that you also want to talk about it.”

She looked at Octavia’s inert cello, mentally willing her to play. Her purple eyes did not waver. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“He said that you were not aware of how you were affecting him.”

Rainbow looked away. “I should practice my magic right now.” “Don’t hide from a good talk, Dashie,” Trixie-thought jeered.

“Are you attracted to him?”

“Of course,” she said. “He’s the perfect stallion. Big, strong, a good listener. He’s the kind of pony everyone would be attracted to.”

“That is not true.”

“Everypony who’s attracted to stallions, I mean. I know you’re gay.”

“That is not what I am saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“One is not attracted to someone because they think they should be. He is an ideal partner by many ponies’ standards, but, if you do not feel that way, then there is no forcing it.”

“So then what was this afternoon?”

“How would I know that?”

Rainbow growled quietly. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be difficult, I promise.”

“You are confused. So is he.”

“Can you play your cello?”

“I am sorry?”

“I don’t wanna talk about this like this. It’s… too quiet. That’s what it is.”

Octavia shrugged after a momentary, studious stare, and began a slow song. “Tell me again about Trixie.”

“What’s there to tell? We’re just friends.”

“That is not how it has sounded in the past.”

“Well, what do you know about it?”

“I know that you two shared a special moment in Manehattan, and that you behaved like someone who was in love for at least some time after leaving.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did you give him that massage this afternoon?” She reached a quieter moment in her song, but sped through it.

“I don’t know that either.” “Tell her about the dream,” Trixie-thought whispered. “It just felt… right. At the time, I mean. I went in to say hi and maybe write a little something, but instead, I got on the bed with him. One thing led to another, I guess.”

“So how do you feel now?”

“I’m not attracted to Trixie. We were never a thing, like she thinks.” “I guess I’m into Big Mac.”

“You guess?”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“Someone who is attracted to mares.” She scraped her bow across the cello, giving it a frown at the sour note.

“That’s not me.”

“This is probably something you should clarify for Trixie, then.”

Rainbow stayed up all night agonizing over her letter, going through multiple ways of breaking the news—so she thought of it—of her encounter with Big Mac, and the implications for her sexual identity and the relationship predicated upon it. At dawn, she finally settled on the simple, casual approach of announcing her move, and apologizing for stringing Trixie along. She had Twilight send it at breakfast, and, with a sigh of relief, scooted closer to Big Mac, who shied away.

The mountains were still well within sight as they crossed a wide fissure, approaching as they did so a dense area of hills and valleys. On the south side, partially obscured by the dominating shadows from larger hills, a smooth, grassy ridge protected the marbled green and white colonnades of an ancient, abandoned village.

At ten, they passed near a dark, textured area of slopes and protruding rocks, and a high ridge of grass giving way to another split with a vast, windswept plain far beyond. They were far from any city, and there were not even train tracks to point them toward civilization. Only by the ship’s compass did they stay resolutely east by northeast, hoping to touch down in Applewood by the end of the week.

Rarity was just bringing up the supplies for lunch, and Applejack was practicing her new magic, when Thunderhead arrived in a dragged contrail of cloud, quiet as a stir of air. At first, no one moved. Applejack, entranced in her own spell, watched passively as first Octavia, then Rainbow and Twilight, then the others scattered and grouped around a forgotten turret, which Octavia angled toward the ship, not firing.

The standoff lasted only long enough for Applejack to return to her right state of mind, rushed by her friends’ anxious babble. When the ghost ship’s hatches slid open, the resultant clap of thunderous magic made her stop her approach midway across the deck. Dark fire sprayed off the ghost ship’s port side, ringed with splintered debris.

“Big Mac, take the turret,” Octavia said between breaths, and looking at Twilight as she said it. Twilight, one hoof tentatively on the rail as if to stand for a better angle, had her horn strongly lit, connecting her with the magenta shield that already surrounded them. The fire from Octavia’s blast, as usual, did not spread.

The retort of cannon fire made Applejack jump, but Twilight barely flinched. Black balls dropped away from the ship, swiftly unseen, as another round followed with the same result.

“Big Mac, fire!” Octavia cried again. Applejack could see only half his face, and knew what his drawn lips and imperious eyes meant. Growling and turning away, Octavia faced the ship again to deliver another explosion, cleaving the foremast at the midpoint and eliciting no response from the covered unicorn on the other side, her cool eyes watching from her place on the bow, before the wheel.

The mast did not fall. On the coast, ropes had split and popped like wild twigs, and the ship had endured the entire removal of its side before nearly engulfing them in liquid metal. Applejack saw no such damage as she watched, still quiet, still away from her friends. With visible mechanical defiance, the ropes held, and the mast, swaying once in its cradle, righted with a sourceless pull of rigging. Somewhere in the mess of motion, Rainbow was producing a stream of curses, and Big Mac did not move from his spot, even as Octavia shoved at him.

Another explosion lit the ghost ship, one of Twilight’s. Small sparkles followed tongues of flame into the air, and one of Octavia’s followed just behind on the opposite side, her own magic the same color as the smoke that appeared and stopped in a brief puff off the ship’s hull.

When it turned to face them, Applejack’s ears went up at the shrill sound of Twilight’s singular, seldom-heard expletive. Under the bowsprit, just as before, the simple, circular grate fell away, and it was in her frightened, swiveling search for alternatives that Applejack noticed Rarity’s shield meshing just beneath Twilight’s.

Before her heart could slow down, the day brightened in a sizzling punch of liquid on shield, but neither mare cried out in alarm or pain, and Applejack watched, slack jawed. Three lights: the orange-yellow of molten metal, shooting toward them in a fat jet and dribbling off of the rosy combination of Twilight’s and Rarity’s melding shields. Shadows swayed across the deck as the others ran against the outpouring. Octavia maintained her calm, her eyes narrowed as she shifted from side to side, trying to see something. Her movements took her past Applejack to the front of the ship, where she stood up to conjure a guttural, metallic blast that arrested the sulfurous attack in an articulated sphere of flung crescents of solid light, and then nothing.

For the first time that day, the ghost ship reacted. Within its magical body, something wrenched and juddered, and hairpins of smoke lifted off its sails where halos of fire spread, un-stopped. Thunderhead had moved from her position, and Applejack watched her glide smoothly across her deck, green blotches of magic quashing the fires as she moved.

Then, clapping. She first thought it another round of cannons, but the sound was higher and larger, and decorated with Twilight’s and Rarity’s yelps of alarm. Like suddenly being caught in the cockles of a churning machine heart, the sharp slaps came rapidly and with an awesome, surrounding sound each. When she looked up, following Big Mac’s example, she saw the twin wings of ethereal green flapping against their shields, contracting with speed and strength she feared would tear them in half if the barriers went down.

“Stop! Stop!” Rarity squealed. “We surrender!”

The sound repeated twice more, then remitted. Twilight’s shield had faded away, and she stood with her shoulders down and her horn still lit, mouth cracked in a suggestion of speech.

“We do not surrender,” Octavia said, returning to where she had stood with them.

“Yes we do!” Rarity looked over at the ghost ship, but Thunderhead only watched. “Twilight’s out, and I can’t take much more.” She looked Applejack’s way, and then everyone did. “Get us out of here, Applejack.”

“We cannot keep running.”

“Well, we sure can’t keep fighting. What do you expect, Octavia?” She glared at Applejack, still stunned. “Take us away.”

Applejack meant to turn toward the wheel, but the ascent of another green spell kept her rooted to the spot. It arced over the space between them to land in the middle of the deck, leaving behind a pony-sized sigil. No one moved.

“Ah recognize it,” Big Mac said after a moment. “Saw it in one of Twilight’s books. That’s a sigil fer teleportin’.”

“Teleporting where?” Octavia asked.

“Seems obvious to me,” Applejack said. Her mouth was dry.

“Wipe it away.” Octavia stepped toward Applejack, and the wheel behind, but stopped as well beside her at the wings’ reappearance outside, low and ominous, green scythes.

“I think she wants us to come aboard,” Fluttershy said.

“That is ridiculous.” She looked at the wings again, and did not take a step. Twilight came up from below with glassy eyes.

“So what do we do?” Rainbow asked.

“We’re going to do what she wants,” Rarity said, approaching the sigil. It glowed at her presence, and she looked down at its simple design. “I don’t think we have a choice anymore.”

“What about our stuff?”

“I’ve got it,” Twilight said from the back. Her voice, like Applejack’s, was weak, and she didn’t look around as she came up beside Rarity. As soon as her four hooves were inside the green circle, she was gone. Rarity went next, then Fluttershy, then Big Mac, all silent, none looking at the others.

Octavia looked at the remaining mares. “We are throwing our lives away. If we must die today, we should die fighting.”

Applejack took her words in, her mind still blank. She moved toward the sigil.

“I’d rather not die at all,” Rainbow said. She went to the sigil as well. “I gotta… there’s something… I don’t know.” She entered, and was gone. Pinkie slipped in behind without comment.

The ghost ship loomed beside them, totally inert, the only sound the slow engines of their own craft. “If you go, I will stay here,” Octavia said. “I will most likely fall to my death, but I will not step into entrapment like this.”

“That’s suicide,” Applejack said.

Octavia looked around her. The deck was utterly empty. “I have had enough time in my life to get comfortable with that idea. Go if you want; I do not think ill of you for this. But it is not my path.”

Applejack went to the sigil’s edge, not too close, and sat down. “Ah’m not lettin’ ya let yerself die in somethin’ this foolish.”

“That is not your choice.”

“It is if Ah’m yer friend. You can’t just kill yerself ‘cause yer afraid of what’s on the other side of this thing.”

“Death is on the other side.”

“You don’t know that.”

“What else can it possibly be? Do you think that we will be able to escape her ship? We were powerless outside of it.”

Applejack looked at the sigil again, still glowing. “Maybe we can buy some time in there.”

“And maybe I can buy you all some time to escape if I sacrifice myself, here.”

She shook her head. “Ah can’t let that happen.”

“You must.”

“No, Ah mustn’t. Yer bein’ stubborn.”

“I am being reasonable. You want to condemn me to captivity. Again, that is not your choice.” She met Applejack’s eyes. “Please, let me do this final thing.”

Applejack stood up. “Absolutely not.” Taking a second to steel herself, she lunged at Octavia, who fell over heavily in the farmpony’s tackle.

“Let me go, Applejack! You do not have the right!”

“Yer comin’ with us!” she grunted, wrestling Octavia’s forelegs behind her back. She squirmed and fought, but the effects of her insomnia were obvious to Applejack. Her movements were slow, and, after the first two attempts to throw her off, Octavia could only wiggle and growl as Applejack dragged her to the sigil. Still, she was heavy, and her long tail threatened to entwine around her hooves.

“Do not do this! Let me stay here!”

“So you can die?” Applejack positioned herself around Octavia and awkwardly half-tossed her into the green circle, her gray hooves skidding on the deck as she struggled for purchase.

Her shrill “damn you” cut off in a whisk of magic, and Applejack stepped in, readying herself for the gut-wrenching feeling of teleportation, and feeling none of it.

She found herself standing with the others within the confines of a room-filling sigil of a similar design, somewhere within the ghost ship’s hold.

“It’s really not that bad in here,” Big Mac said, pointing at a lone cushion. Pinkie was already resting on it, chin nearly to the floor, eyes wide and curious.

A terrible crash sounded just outside, and Octavia, lying on the floor, glared at Applejack.

“Better than death,” Applejack said with a shrug.

“This is just slower,” Octavia muttered.