Octavia and Lumb sat at a short table in his living room, an empty decanter between them and a stack of books beside it. He lived in one of the heavily populated rings of houses that surrounded his museum, a ten-minute walk away. She had agreed to meet him there for tea and a light lunch while the others explored the town on their own, their third day in Hoofington. While waiting for the Astras to call in their favor and furnish them a new airship, they had only a pair of reparative spells to cast, and there was little sense of urgency to the task. Enough time had passed that only the largest gaps posed an issue, and any major damages done to houses had been undone, or swept away.

Lumb had told her of his conversation with Twilight, and her plan to research his find in her attic, and she accepted the news with a nod and a grave “very well.” As she sat on his couch, she watched his reflection in the decanter as he spoke, looking up quickly each time he paused, making sure it was his strange affectation, and not him waiting for a response.

“It makes sense,” she thought, “but not completely.”

“My own research into the affair has brought up several names, few of which I think of as relevant,” he said. “I doubt that Golden Slumbers had much to do with it, but I could be mistaken. There is little verity to be found here.”

“They thought—think, still, many of them—that I was mad. My friends as well.” She thought of Rarity. “Anyone would be mad after the time I spent in that house.” She looked at Lumb, holding himself in an interval of silence. “Why he is drawn to it, I could never imagine.”

He gestured to a book in the stack. “And this oblique reference to Tartarus doesn’t help the mystery. One usually takes such references with a grain of salt. Minced oaths, many. That passage seemed oddly serious.”

She looked at the smudge of gray in the decanter that was herself, but looked up again at a rise in his voice.

“I’ve faith in your friends, though. How could I not?”

“Yes. They are good ponies,” she said.

“In more happy news, I have a confession for you.”

She raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Confession,” she knew, was his favored word for “announcement.”

“For a time, I was not certain of…” Pause. “…this course of action, but my conference with your friends has inspired me. Octavia, my friend, I intend, with full conscious and free will, to hold an event.”

She smiled lightly. “It has been too long since I have seen him. I nearly forgot how circuitous he gets when he is excited.”

“The Astras are a loathsome bunch, it is true, but they make a fine point in the use of disposable income. I shall never condone their wantonness, but a single demonstration can not hurt. I shall call it ‘A Change in the Weather.’ Perhaps that’s what it is.”

“I still have no idea what he is talking about.”

“The engagement, if you will, shall be a masquerade ball. My own museum will be the venue. The large spaces it inheres will fit perfectly—rather, in them it will fit perfectly.” He laughed once.

“Please do not ask me to perform,” she thought, still smiling. “I did not know that you were interested in such things.”

“A gathering of this sort does not fit within my usual cares, it is true.” He held a hoof to his chin before licking his lips. “I cannot say where this sudden idea originates, except that it is in some way related to your friends. I suppose they are as fitting a muse as any.”

“Of course,” she said, thinking of the statues they had seen the evening before. The carving on Fluttershy’s chest.

“Perhaps it…” Pause. “…is my way of showing the Astras that they are not the only ones capable of such things.” He sat back and sighed. “Or, perhaps I am conceited.”

She only looked at him.

“Would you say that I am?”

“I…” She thought, not sure how to respond. Her time with Lumb, in the past, had rarely extended beyond the discussion of her library, and the contents therein.

“I do not want to put you on the spot, and for that I am sorry.”

“I do not think of you as conceited, or selfish,” she said. “Though I do not know you very well.”

“Something I’m finding I now regret, given the years we shared,” he said, nodding. “I worry for my integrity, as a pony.”

“I understand.”

“My research, and my interests, frequently…” Pause. “…converge upon unsavory magics, and I know that I am regarded strangely.”

She only watched, and, after a minute of struggle, Lumb continued, his voice halting and unsure, as if unburdening himself of something great.

“I would disdain them if they held a ball of this nature. Should I not disdain myself?”

Octavia propped herself on the couch. “You are not like them. They are of high status, and are accustomed to that. They are fortunate, where you are hard-working. There is no shame in that.”

“The same could be said of some of their number, I am sure, yet I see them in this pernicious, general way. What will ponies see when they see me?”

“Why should that be your concern, though?”

“Why should it not? I am social, in my way. I want to be liked.”

She furrowed her brow. “Yes, that is true of us all, but what I mean is, why should that overtake your desires?” “And I am one to talk.”

He shook his head for a long time. “I cannot say. It sounds ludicrous when you put it so simply.”

“I do understand, though. Image is important to many, myself included.”

“Yet you speak as one for whom integrity is a given, not something to pursue.”

She averted her eyes back to the decanter, where she saw his reflection lean forward.

“I have incited silence.”

“I am thinking,” she said. “I do not know how to respond. It is not something I have ever considered.”

“Integrity? Or the nature by which it germinates?”

“How I got mine, because you are right. I am not accustomed to questioning myself in terms of my morality.” “But that is not entirely true, is it, Octavia? You have six good reasons to question yourself, wandering around town.”

“Things originate from experience,” Lumb said.

“Yes.”

He only continued to look at her.

“I grew up in a house of strong ponies,” she said at last. “Certain things were absolute. I must assume that I take my stance from this.”

“Then I envy you. It was never a challenge.”

“I did not say that.”

“But it must be true,” he said, frowning into the decanter. “Integrity was thrust upon you. Strength of character was bred into you.”

“I had to learn these things, just as anyone else,” Octavia said. “I simply did so at a younger age than most.”

“Youth is as clay. There cannot have been much difficulty in shaping you into the…” His pause lasted nearly a minute as his dark face darkened. “…wonderful mare you are.”

“You are making it sound like I am fortunate for my upbringing.”

“Are you not? Your conflicts cannot be as personal as mine, not on the foundation you bespeak.”

She stood, and he watched her calmly move from her seat to the other room.

“I wish I could be you, Octavia.”

“Shut up,” she sighed.

He coughed. “Forgive me?”

“Forgive me? Really?” Suddenly, his words sounded false, feeble, and she kept her eyes pinned to the window. “I said, shut up. As in be quiet, as in stop speaking.”

“Miss Octavia…”

“How dare you compare yourself to me?” she barked, snapping her head to face him. The calm had drained out of his face, and he looked as though he were ready to try to escape a potential attacker. A stallion more than twice her size, nearly cowering from her; the picture incensed her further.

“I do not want to have an argument right now,” he said weakly.

“I am not just some mare that a family decided to create one day, moral compass pre-made, and I am not your metric to measure character. I am that for no one.”

“But how can that be so? You are—”

“I am not your symbol, Lumb.”

He only stared at her, and, after a second, his eyes began moving across her body, flicking to her legs, her barrel, her neck.

“My eyes are up here.”

He forced a cough and turned away entirely.

“For someone with such a pathetic idea of what a pony like me might have to offer, I say that you should hold your masquerade. Maybe the Astras will like you better once you show your superficial side.” She crossed the room again to go to the front door. “Thank you for lunch. I will see myself out.”

Rainbow and Twilight met in Octavia’s dining room for lunch, and the servants were happy to oblige them. An errand had kept Lumb from the mansion more than usual, and they were frequently without anything to do except maintain unused rooms. Everyone else was on the other side of town, either exploring or speaking with the Astras.

“So, Trixie never got back to me,” Rainbow said. “Right?”

“I didn’t get anything,” Twilight said. She took another sip of wine, something she had never tasted, and that she did not intend to have more of after her goblet was politely finished.

“Well, I’ve got this other letter, if you wanna send it. I figured, you know, maybe a little more might not hurt. I was kinda vague in the first one, I think, or at least it felt that way. I dunno.” She pulled a roll of parchment out from under her wing and placed it on the side of the table, beside a bowl of green olives.

“I’ll send it.” She fixed Rainbow in her eyes. “If you’re sure. Are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You really want to try to keep the relationship.”

“Yeah, of course. I… uh, yeah, I do. I do like her.” She wet her lips. “I want this, even if I’ve gotta wait to actually see her again.”

“Okay.” She wrapped the parchment in her magic and activated the spell, and it flamed. After a second, it dropped, unharmed, onto the tabletop.

Rainbow laughed. “You mess up your spell, egghead?”

“No,” Twilight said. “At least, I don’t think so.” She grabbed it and cast the same spell, putting more concentration into it, though she knew she didn’t need to.

The letter fell to the table once more.

“Seriously, send it this time,” Rainbow said. “I don’t like this.”

“I’m not playing,” Twilight said, trying one more time, to the same effect.

“Why’s it not working? I’ve seen you send letters a gazillion times.”

Twilight bit into a slice of cantaloupe and thought back to her magic lessons. There was little theory behind the magic of sending letters between unicorns, and little variance in the methods.

“Could it be the paper? Should I write it again on something different?”

“You can try,” Twilight said absently.

Rainbow sprung from her seat and tore out of the dining room. “I need the lightest paper you can find!” she cried, disappearing into the house.

Twilight frowned. The only reasons that a letter might not send, outside of caster incompetence—which she knew she was not guilty of—was if the paper or ink itself were enchanted, or the receiving unicorn were strongly incapacitated.

“Got it!” Rainbow said, slapping the paper down onto the table. She unrolled her scroll and began copying. “Maybe she’s just asleep or something?”

“Unicorns can get letters whenever,” Twilight said. “Even if they’re in a coma sometimes. I know doctors try sending them letters to determine brain-death.” She snapped her mouth shut and looked guiltily at Rainbow, who had stopped scribbling.

“Twilight?”

She swallowed. “Yes?”

“Send it.”

“As is?”

“Yeah, incomplete, whatever, just send it! Er, please.”

Twilight lifted the letter up, half-complete on lacy crepe paper, and torn in several spots, and sent it. Magical fire engulfed it, and Rainbow sighed in relief.

It fluttered back as the last lick of flame whirled away.

Rainbow’s quill clattered to the floor.

“I need to know what kind of situations can result in a unicorn not being able to receive a letter,” Rainbow said quietly.

“Well… not many.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She might be—”

“Cursed! That’s it, that’s gotta be it.”

“It wouldn’t get stopped on my end,” Twilight said. “Not if the curse was on her.”

“Then… too far away, somehow. Is Appleloosa too far?”

Her mouth was dry, and she finished her wine in a long drink. “Distance doesn’t affect the magic.”

“Well, something else, then.”

“Rainbow.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. Maybe she… I dunno, put up a barrier or something.”

“Rainbow.”

“Twilight, come on! That’s gotta be it, the signs are all there! She got mad at me for being a crappy marefriend, she didn’t respond to my first letter, so she’s blocking me off somehow. She just hates me now, that’s all!”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Well…”

“Rainbow.”

Rainbow looked at her.

“I think she might be gone.”

Rainbow bent and tried to pick up the quill, and Twilight levitated it up to the table for her.

“I can try it again.”

Rainbow didn’t respond, but Twilight could see the thought in her eyes, and she knew it was true: one more try wouldn’t help. She sighed and looked at the rolled parchment, and Rainbow’s chair scraped.

“I can research, to see if there’s something else going on.”

“There isn’t,” Rainbow said. “There… nothing’s going on.”

“I might be wrong.”

“I know you aren’t.”

“But—”

“Twilight.”

“Maybe Discord’s interfering somehow.”

“Twilight.”

Twilight looked at her.

“I can just tell, okay? I’m gonna go fly.”

Twilight didn’t try to stop her from leaving, and waved the nervous servant away when he approached to take her dishes.

Applejack and Pinkie went to get Twilight from the mansion at eight o’ clock, and, at eight thirty, the nine of them crowded into one hotel room while Rarity explained what Mama Astra had told her. The family was grateful at the return of their crow, and it was Violet who had first suggested a reward of some kind.

“Fortunately for us, I was there to steer them into getting us an airship, and not, say, fabulous wealth or some such tawdry silliness,” Whooves said, sharing the bed with Fluttershy.

Papa Astra would not go into why he had the connection, Rarity said, but he had assured her that he needed only to make a call to Canterlot, and an airship capable of housing all nine of them comfortably would be sent from the coast. He said he planned to do so that evening, after setting a different affair in order on the other side of the country.

Rainbow said nothing, and when they went to their separate rooms, she climbed into the nearest unoccupied bed without comment.

“A change in the weather: masquerade ball at the museum. Refreshments served, music procured, all surfaces decorated. Tuesday, six of the clock. No costumes provided. Lumb.” Applejack read the ad in the paper, complimentary with coffee and pastries in the dining area. “So it’s a costume party?”

“It’s a masquerade ball, dear. It’s right there on the paper,” Rarity said.

“Ah don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a formal get-together, originally reserved for royalty or nobility, for ponies to dance, mingle, and so forth, but with their identities concealed,” Whooves said. “Embarrassment is an impediment to social enjoyment, after all.”

“Soooo, boilin’ down all those five-bit words, it’s a costume party.”

“Disregarding the need to ameliorate dissonance on the topic, one might affirm so.”

“Aw, shuddup.”

“He went through with it after all,” Octavia said.

“Was he not gonna?” Pinkie asked.

“He was not sure he wanted to. He asked me whether I thought him selfish.”

“You sound annoyed, dear,” Rarity said.

“And not ordinary ‘I am Octavia and I am the most serious pony around’ annoyed, but annoyed annoyed,” Pinkie said.

“He asked about his integrity, and when I said that it was not something I ever gave much consideration, he accused me of having an easy life,” Octavia said.

“Ah can’t imagine that went well,” Applejack said.

“No, it did not.” She took a sip of coffee. “Though I am actually gratified to hear you say that.”

“It’s ‘cause we knooooow you!” Pinkie sang, patting Octavia on the back and giving her tail a light tug.

Octavia only looked at her.

Another afternoon with nothing to do. While Twilight poured over books in the library and Rainbow vanished into the sky, Pinkie ran to the museum with Big Mac. The prospect of a party was something she had not had in a long time, and Big Mac was reminded of his own life back in Ponyville as he trotted behind her, following more the sound of her singing than the shape of her moving form.

He and Applejack, to his surprise, did not speak much of the farm, and, though it was frequently on his mind, he could not tell whether it was ever on hers. Her mind often seemed elsewhere, and he wanted to ask her what she was thinking about. She never appeared sad, or even worried, but she was given to intervals of silence more than he had ever seen when they were back home. He wondered whether being with her was how it was for others to be with him, but no one else seemed to mind, so he didn’t voice his concerns. If no one else was bothered, then neither should he be.

They met Lumb in his butterfly exhibit, and Pinkie did all the talking, asking what he had in mind for the party, what decorations he would have, what the theme was, and so on, all at a pace that Big Mac found dizzying. She ended with a mild “‘cause we wanna help set it up,” causing Lumb to smile and Big Mac to raise a brow. He had said nothing about wanting to help, only tagging along to give himself something to do.

Lumb took them to his office, where he draped a large, covered item across Big Mac’s back and directed them to a curio shop on the other side of the park. There, he said, they would find a pale yellow unicorn, with whom he had already arranged the use of magic to enchant the object.

“It will be a great service,” he said, bowing and showing them the door. “And I appreciate the offer. You are welcome to help me set up on the night of the affair.”

They left the museum at a leisurely pace, Pinkie skipping circles around Big Mac, who did not move slowly for the weight, but to give Pinkie adequate space to run her excited rings. One passer-by called out to her, and she responded with a wave, a cheer, and a pop of confetti.

“What d’ya s’pose his problem is?” Big Mac asked at last, choosing a moment while Pinkie was at rest. “Ah never saw him usin’ that horn of his.”

“Certain unicorns can’t use theirs,” Pinkie said. “Twilight told me about it once. I think it’s called a dead horn or something. The magic’s there, but the connection isn’t right, so they can’t do anything. If I was a dead-horn unicorn, I’d hang marshmallows on mine! Or doughnuts! Or maybe a loop-de-hoop!” She laughed, and Big Mac obligingly laughed with her. “As for the creepy pauses, I dunno! Maybe it’s a kind of s-s-s-stutter!” She laughed again and fell to the ground, rolling and nearly bumping Big Mac.

He helped her up, leaning awkwardly to avoid dropping his burden, and they reached the curio shop in time to disturb the owner’s lunch. While he went to find their yellow unicorn, Big Mac and Pinkie loitered in the front, looking at the trinkets.

“You wanna novelty pencil sharpener, Big Mac?” Pinkie asked, poking him and pointing at a pony’s head, wide-mouthed and toothed with a dull-looking blade.

“Ah don’t need no pencil-eater,” Big Mac said, and Pinkie shrieked in laughter. “Ah reckon Fluttershy’d like that, though.” He pointed to a small, colorful ceramic turtle with a picket sign held in the crook of one leg, welcoming them home.

“Oh my Celestia, yes!” Pinkie nearly shouted, jumping up. “Turtles are the greatest! Though that looks more like a tortoise.”

“Shell critter, that’s what Ah used to call ‘em.”

“But what about other shell thingies? What about snails, Big Mac? Huh? Huh?”

“Those are still snails. Ah knew all ‘bout them.”

“Did ya?”

“They eat crops. Ah had to get rid of ‘em when Ah was younger.” He pointed to a nondescript golden dish. “We had bowls of sugar water, an’ the snails would get themselves trapped, poor things.”

“What d’ya need?” the yellow unicorn asked, approaching. She reminded Big Mac of Fluttershy’s color on Twilight’s body, but a little shorter.

“Ah need this enchanted,” he said, shrugging the object of his back. “Lumb told me you an’ he’d spoken ‘bout it.”

“Ah, yes, the shocking thing,” she said, lifting back the cover for a peek. “Very good, very good. I’ll take care of it. Come back in an hour to pick it up, or I can have him grab it himself. Miss, do you need help with something?”

“How much for the shell critter?” Pinkie asked, bouncing in place. “I’ve got no money on me!”

They walked back side by side, she humming to herself, and told Lumb that they had deposited his “shocking thing.” He thanked them with a courteous nod, saying he would retrieve it himself, and they walked back through the park, taking an indirect route to the hotel.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Big Mac asked. “Yer not the quiet type.”

“I can be quiet too!” Pinkie said. “Don’t you hear me with the other girls? I’m quiet a lot with them.”

“Yeah, but this is different. Least, Ah think it is. Yer not competin’ fer yer voice with me.”

“It’s not that different.”

“No?”

“They listen to me when I talk,” Pinkie said. “But… well, I guess it is different. I don’t know, they make me feel silly sometimes.”

“You like silly stuff.”

“No, not good silly.” She stopped suddenly and went to a tree. “Come on, let’s sit down. They’re not gonna miss us.”

“Ah don’t wanna impose nothin’,” he said. “Ah’m just curious. Ah’m used to callin’ a spade a spade, is all.”

“You’re fine, Big Mac, big boy. Sit next to Auntie Pinkie.” She chuckled half-heartedly. She waited for him to be seated before continuing. “I think they look down on me, a little.” She leaned back, as if looking into the branches. “Wooooow, I can’t believe how easy that was!”

“What’s goin’ on?”

“No, it’s just that I’ve been thinking about how to say that forever, and it turned out to be the easiest thing in the world!” She laughed, then sobered. “Yeah, they look at me different. Everyone has this sort of… thing they do for everyone, you know? Twilight’s the leader, Applejack’s the moral compass, Rarity’s the can-do girl, Dashie’s the wild card… you get it.”

“What am Ah?”

“You’re like the best friend in training! You’re like the pony everyone likes, and knows to rely on, but who isn’t scary or mean like Octy!” She giggled. “Oooh, she’s gonna kill me if she finds out I called her that! But me, no one acts like I have a thing.”

“Well, what is yer thing?”

“I’m the one who stands in the middle of the sigil, of course! And I try to lighten the mood a lot—I used to more, back then—but that doesn’t go over so well anymore.”

“Well, bein’ funny ‘round Octavia—”

“No, it’s more than her. I thought the same thing too, but it’s not her. Well, not all her, I mean. It’s everyone. They all look at me like I’m gonna do something stupid.” She frowned. “Can you promise you won’t tell anyone this?”

“Of course. Yer safe with me.”

“Okay.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back, nervous. It was not a side of Pinkie he even knew existed. “It’s the worst with Fluttershy. I think she’s mad.”

“Mad?”

“It’s been forever since we’ve gotten an Element, or really done anything.”

“Y’all got rid of that Thunderhead character.”

“I don’t think that counts. We had to do that. No, I think she’s impatient with us, mad that we’re taking our time, which, yeah, that’s kinda justifiable, but I think she thinks I’m a big cause of that or something.”

He only looked into the tree.

“I’m not stupid. I know what’s going on just as well as everypony else does, and I feel bad about how slow we’re going too. I don’t know what to do, though. There’s only so much time in the day, and when we’re all together, waiting on this, and that, and the other thing too, it adds up.”

“It does add up, that’s true.”

“But it’s not my fault, and sometimes I think they look at me like it is. She—Fluttershy—acts like… uh, this is still all off the record.”

“Ah’m listenin’.”

“Like she wants to be all high and mighty, and tell us how to do our jobs, and hurry us along or something, like we’re a bunch of dummies who don’t know that we’ve got an important job.”

“Ah don’t see how you can get that impression from such a quiet pony.”

“Have you seen the way she looks at me? Or the way she hangs back and watches our conversations? I feel like she’s judging us.”

“It ain’t a sin to judge ponies in yer mind, s’long as ya don’t get no rotten ideas from it.”

“And I don’t think she does, but just… I don’t like how she looks at all of us, especially me.”

“Yer feelin’ singled out.”

“You could say that, yeah.”

“Why you, though?”

“See, I don’t know! That’s what’s so weird! Am I supposed to do more stuff or something? What makes me so special?”

Big Mac frowned. “Ah seem to remember someone sayin’ that you’ve got some kind of major magic.”

“It’s not that much! Twilight knows more about magic than I ever could, so I don’t know how I could be expected to do more, or take more responsibility.” She sighed. “I’m just little old Pinkie, and sometimes I wonder if ponies forget that.”

“Yer not little, though. You’ve got a lot of power, an’ yer good at gettin’ stuff done, an’ you’ve got a great attitude.”

“Thanks, Big Mac.”

“Ah mean it.” He sighed. “Truth be told, Ah actually envy you a good deal.”

“Nuh-uh. Really?”

“Eeyup. Ah don’t let it show, but Ah ain’t always the happiest pony. Ah get homesick, as Ah imagine all of y’all do, an’ Ah get worried too. Ah got no magic, nor much experience with adventurin’. You’ve got both, an’ a lot of it.”

“I don’t want it.”

“No?”

“Why would I? Why would anyone want all the responsibility?” Her expression soured. “Look at Fluttershy, Big Mac. Who needs someone like that breathing down her neck all the time because of some stupid magic? Something I can’t do anything about?”

“Ah guess Ah see yer point.”

She hopped up and hugged him. “Thanks for sitting down and talking with me!”

“Huh?”

“C’mon, silly, we gotta get back to the hotel!” She disconnected. “I appreciate you, Big Mac.”

He nodded slowly, not sure how to respond.

Rainbow sat on a cloud over the hotel, looking at the grounds, not seeing. She went out at sunrise, and didn’t appear to her friends again. She was hungry, but the feeling was a minor distraction, as was the knowledge that her friends knew something was wrong, and would be worrying about her. She would have a long explanation ahead of her when she returned.

Worry. For a close to a month, she had been beset with a nameless worry, something that she was not familiar with. Fluttershy had said she empathized with it, one long, exhausting night on the ghost ship: the unremitting pulse and pound of impending doom, the tiring erosion of good cheer and, later, rationality, the belief that something was going to go terribly wrong, so deep-set that it bordered on prescience.

She thought it was them, at first. Everything else had happened to them, so one more disaster seemed fitting. She thought it was Thunderhead capturing them, and, then, when the feeling refused to subside, she thought it must be Spike’s death.

In that slow, binding moment the day before, when she saw Twilight’s conclusion on her face before hearing the words, the worry vanished. As it was when bad news came, all secondary problems shrunk, she reasoned, but, upon waking, the worry was still gone.

Only as she reached her first cloud did she realize her other emotion, one that turned to shame every time she focused on it: relief. Relief that the object of her anxiety had come and gone, relief that the disaster had struck and was complete. Relief, in her secret heart, sickening and self-conscious, that it had happened to someone other than them.

She had been waiting for tragedy to strike, and she had felt that it revolved around Trixie, but that was natural, she told herself. Ponies who cared about each other worried when one traveled, and the association of one negative thought to another was to be expected.

“She couldn’t. She said she was careful,” Rainbow thought. “Not careful enough,” she thought back, her mind’s second voice donning a perversely loud version of Pinkie. “Not careful enough for Discord, Dashie, and that’s the way it goes!”

“But why would he go after her? She’s nothing to him.”

“She’s a loved one, duh!”

Her thoughts stuttered and flipped away before converging again. “Did I love her?”

“Too late to matter.” The voice turned into Twilight’s, steady and distant. “At least we’re okay.”

“And now you won’t be making such a fuss about her,” Rarity added, her haughty tone making Rainbow close her eyes.

“This sucks,” she thought.

Twilight had tried sending the letter again that morning, when Rainbow was pretending to be asleep. It flapped uselessly to the bedside table, and Twilight sighed and swept it into a drawer. Rainbow turned in her sheet, hoping Twilight would only think she was tossing in her sleep.

“No, I suck. Trixie’s gone, and all I can think of is how relieved I am that my stupid… whatever is done. I’m not worried anymore, ‘cause it happened. Whoop-de-doo.” The last memory she had was a simple scene of Trixie standing in her apartment doorway, waving goodbye as they disappeared down the hall. That was the last time she had seen her.

“I wonder if she forgave me.” She put a hoof to her face, then buried her face in cloud. The vapor was cool, and gave her a moment of pleasure in the hot afternoon. “Like that matters now. Right. She’s dead, and all I can think about it myself. Typical Rainbow—same stuff that got me into this mess in the first place.”

“Don’t get so down on yourself, Dashie!” Pinkie screeched. The thought repeated, losing its significance, and she pushed her face deeper into the cloud, drowning out nothing. “So down, Dashie! Down, Dashie! Down, Dashie!”

And there she fell asleep, face wedged comfortably in a socket to the open sky beneath.

Rainbow and a vague form that she empirically knew was Trixie walked side by side down a snowy sidewalk in a location she knew was Manehattan, but more resembled Fillydelphia. Trees covered the walkway, and the world was washed out and gray, but not still. Flakes of snow mingled with slivers of ice in long snail trails off the tree branches, as if they were caught in a giant snow globe.

Trixie turned slowly around Rainbow’s front, forming a fuzzy C that brushed her chin. “Come on, mare,” she said, turning the other way and giving her tail a flick to tickle Rainbow’s nose.

They passed through a space between trees and stopped at a bench, Trixie sitting and Rainbow standing beside her, facing past, into the rest of the park. In the near distance, beside a vacant birdbath, stood an earth pony on long spindles of legs. Rainbow could only watch her, somehow transfixed.

The pony turned her head and met Rainbow’s eyes, her own small and uncolored, and Rainbow was suddenly hit with emotion. The stranger’s face was long and serious. Her name was Mrs. Gale—so Rainbow knew, in the same way she knew it was Trixie she was with—and she walked a few steps to a small object partially obscured in short, frosty grass. She knelt.

Rainbow watched as a smaller figure walked to Mrs. Gale. Rainbow did not know the filly, but felt compelled to watch as both forms, tall and short, stopped a distance from each other. Mrs. Gale nudged the ball in the direction of the filly, then bent her head and pushed it farther. The filly lifted it with her unicorn horn and trotted away, and Mrs. Gale looked back at Rainbow.

She woke up with tears in her eyes, and Fluttershy was on a cloud nearby, watching. She flew to Rainbow’s side.

Twilight had two books open on a cluttered table in Octavia’s incredible library. She had started that morning with four, and managed to condense the mystery of the sigil in the attic to just two tomes. One, A Complete History of Hoofington, had not been easy to sift through.

The mansion had started as a pet project for an earth pony named Golden Slumbers, who wanted to show that earth ponies could be just as prosperous and industrious as unicorns—who were, in turn, just beginning to assert their own dominance in a culture that had learned to disdain wanton use of magic just two decades earlier. A reaction to a reaction in the latter half of the Apologist Period, and it was the center of a grand controversy. Slumbers was the target of much hatred, saying he was giving the aspirational unicorns too little space to prove themselves worthy of respect in the larger socioeconomic sphere, just then a distant concept that was more thought experiment than reality. Intercity commerce was only taking tentative steps forward, hindered frequently by conflicts between unicorns and earth ponies.

When the house was complete, its photograph was published in an edition of the Glitterville Herald, and a copy of the page appeared on the cover of Twilight’s other book, A Macabre Act, a pulp novel supposedly inspired by true events. Slumbers employed mostly pegasi and earth ponies as servants, though three unicorns found jobs as well, two in the wine cellar and one in maintaining the tremendous windows overlooking the grounds.

Having no direct kin, he allowed the house to pass to a wealthy pegasus by the name of Bellflower, who had been one of the driving forces behind setting down a bridge over the bay that surrounded what would later become Manehattan. The bridge was named in her honor.

It was then that events turned strange. The Apologist Period was marked by its high number of unicorns taking on tasks and positions that did not require magic, and, in large residences across the country, unicorns were almost universally selected as servants. In Slumbers’ house, however, no unicorns served. A passage in A Macabre Act, cross-referenced, had brought her to a footnote in A Complete History of Hoofington, which simply read, “Unicorns were seldom turned away from Golden Slumbers’ mansion.”

The conclusion was clear: if they weren’t rejected, and they never worked there, then something about the house had repelled unicorns on its own. She was stuck for an hour before finding the next link in the chain.

Originally only two stories, the mansion was frequently subjected to leaks, a problem with the roofing that a team of pegasi attributed to continuous shingle damage, perpetrated by the minor magical warping effects of a pinhole opening to Tartarus. It was far too small to allow anything more than ambient magic through, and even then in a trickle, but it was enough to distend and damage the shingles that nearly brushed its underside, as well as bother any magical ponies that got close enough. The opening was discovered shortly after the fourth owner took the mansion, a cousin of Bellflower’s daughter, a dark-coated and willowy pegasus whose heavy eyes stared dolefully out of an oval picture in A Complete History of Hoofington. Her name was Seashell.

Seashell ordered the construction of a third floor, and refused to address laborer concerns that such a project would not be successful with the Tartarus portal nearby. She insisted and put in a quarter of her prodigious wealth, and, three tiring years later, the mansion had been given a third story, its massive attic containing the opening. Her measurement specifications had been the object of some curiosity, but their intent became clear upon completion: she had designed the attic to be large enough that no Tartarus magic could harm the walls, floor, or ceiling.

Chapter three of A Macabre Act, entitled "The Pull," detailed Seashell’s residency. She took no visitors and was never seen in the company of anyone more serious than a casual acquaintance or a servant, but her lights were always on. While Trottingham was growing on agriculture and easy access for those who had set up villages in the surrounding mountains, Seashell began to grow her wealth by selling off treasures found in the house. By the time she had three million bits to her name, ponies were beginning to experiment with locomotive technology in the distant west.

At three million five hundred-thousand bits, she discharged every servant in the mansion and hired a skeleton crew of earth ponies, all of them blind. Her one charitable act, the book said, giving jobs to ponies who could have no hope of good employment elsewhere. The thought of it had given Twilight chills.

Seashell appeared in public less and less, never speaking, never smiling, and thinner with each successive sighting. The mansion fell into disrepair, and the only known comment its owner made had a paragraph to itself in A Macabre Act. When asked by a local public meeting official what was going on at the estate near the river, Seashell said: “The task I appointed myself is harder than I expected.” The quote appeared opposite a small picture of her beside a fence post near a small store, her ribs standing out and her gentle, tapering wings resembling arrow tips.

After that, she vanished. Her house was locked and left in the care of the blind servants, and she reappeared five months later on the other side of town with what the book described as “skeletal pallor.” She stayed home for a week before disappearing again, and, somewhere in the wilderness, ownership passed to the only other unicorn who would set hoof in the mansion until decades later. His name was Sweet Tea, and he admitted no relation to Seashell, though he had everything he needed to legally take the house as his own. His first act was to purge the mansion of clutter and servants. His appearance caused a significant stir in town, which had been renamed Hoofington, but the fact that he had magic did not.

And then, for a long time, nothing. Twilight dug through half a shelf of books before finally finding answers in the pulp novel she had set aside as tawdry garbage. Years after the unicorn’s arrival, and a month after a minor construction project on the third floor, he disappeared on business. The first trains were moving short distances between towns, not efficient or safe enough for long travel, and he had no means of swift movement. Yet, only a month after his departure from Hoofington, a small village near Bellflower Bridge, the passage to what would become Manehattan, was consumed in an unspecific panic. A Macabre Act said only that the town suffered a dark shape prowling its alleys and borders, and that no ponies were harmed.

The only evidence that Sweet Tea had been there was his name credited in a list of ponies who donated to the construction of a small chapel—a building that would not survive to see Nightmare Moon’s return.

Twilight followed the thread of mysteries in A Macabre Act, verifying the first three in ancient censuses and dusty newspapers, before trusting the book and reading along without worry.

Sweet Tea traveled south, stopping only in towns that were more than five miles from natural bodies of water—something Twilight noticed, and the book’s author had not—and dragging the same vague terror with him. In most accounts, ponies were not hurt. He made it into the desert, near the old border between ponies and minotaurs, close to forty miles northwest of where Applewood would be built, before disappearing entirely.

His sudden absence was felt for miles around, though no one would make the connection for close to sixty years later. The nameless fear blossomed and grew, and, in the space of a fortnight, two neighboring villages on opposite sides of a mile-long river were reduced to bleached ruins. Scattered remnants of buildings were as white as the pony skeletons that were found, and even the ground had been leeched of color and vitality, except on the riverbanks, where water seemed to seep in and return life.

The anomalies were called “ice plates,” so named for the startling white and utter lack of softness in the ground’s textures. Ten ice plates appeared before a strange creature was captured on a small island in a lake. It took a team of fifteen ponies, which the book said were under orders from Celestia herself, led by a mute, sunken-eyed, parchment-skinned pegasus. One paragraph, which Twilight resisted the urge to underline and circle, said that she was able to calm the creature with a touch, while no one else could even approach it without risking their lives. They called her simply “Lake Witch,” but A Macabre Act opined that she was Seashell, the creature’s alleged master.

An artist’s depiction showed the scene. A knobby sphere of flesh stood on four equally spaced legs, double-jointed, while four arms, two in the front and two in the back, hung loosely to its second knees, decorated with wide, crescent claws. No facial features were apparent, and chains hung off it while an emaciated pegasus reached a hoof to its leg. The caption read: “The Lake Witch Taming the White Demon.”

There were no more ice plates, and the creature was never seen again. The Lake Witch became a scary story, made all the stranger because her death was never confirmed.

The mansion, meanwhile, went on to experience several decades of peace and quiet, with only a final tiny construction project in the attic some thirty years before its latest owner, a young, upstart musician by the name of Octavia Melody, bought it. She, too, A Complete History of Hoofington noted, was no unicorn.

Twilight crunched the numbers. The white devil had been captured one hundred eighteen years ago, and the attic, she suspected, was walled off fifty years ago. The containment sigil’s purpose was still unconfirmed, but she imagined that it held one of three things: either the White Demon, to keep it close to the opening from which she suspected it had been magically siphoned; the body of the Lake Witch, returned to the house she had once owned; or nothing at all.

She looked up at heavy hoofsteps, and moved her books aside to allow Lumb a spot to sit. He had known to wait to come to her intuitively, he said, and she explained all that she had found.

“I was not aware that a monster could be summoned piecemeal from an opening,” Lumb said after a lengthy extent of thoughtful silence.

“It’s not easy, unless it’s a really simple creature. Either that, or it’s more magic than flesh. There’s not much research on the process; not many ponies are interested in experimenting with that application of magic.”

“Understandable.” He pointed to the end of the library. “Outside, there rests a statue that I have oft found very strange. It resembles your White Demon.”

Twilight thought, chewing her lip. “Yes, I remember seeing it. Huh. I thought it was just some abstract art.”

“What will be done?”

“I need to talk to the girls.”