Ow. I have a splitting headache. I'd better finish this entry before nightfall so the light from my horn won't give away my position.

Let's pick up right where I left off (for reference, this was Day 44). I was sitting with my back to an apple tree, finishing up the last journal entry, when something struck the other side of the tree. When I write "struck", I mean slammed. Like, incredibly hard: hard enough to physically propel me away from the tree. I tumbled forward out of the bushes, completely disoriented. Fortunately, my ink was resting safely on the ground, and I dropped the journal before I came flying out. My supplies remained hidden by the bushes.

Science time! The occipital lobe of the pony brain (located on the posterior, or "back" side of the brain) processes visual stimuli after signals are filtered through particular striata of the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus. Getting hit in the back of the head will cause visual anomalies like temporary blindness or "seeing stars" because that's the part of the brain where visual images are finally processed. A contrecoup injury from a smack to the front of the skull (i.e., when the brain gets smacked so hard it bounces off the other side) will do that too, of course. Every unicorn is well-aware of this: we were all young and stupid once, and it's pretty easy to smash hornlong into things until you learn to pay close attention to your surroundings.

In my case, it was the back of my skull which took the brunt of the hit when Big Macintosh bucked the opposite side of the apple tree. I distinctly remember a loud cracking sound. For a moment, I was so jarred by the collision that I thought my skull had cracked (which would have been very bad). I later discovered that Mac kicked the tree so hard that the blow caused a large, vertical, tensile-stress fracture of the Mode I type. That apple tree might look like it's still in one piece from a distance, but it won't live to see Autumn. Disturbingly, this means Big Macintosh intentionally killed one of his fully-grown apple trees just to stun me! I was lucky I didn't end up with a concussion.

With that in mind, it should be no surprise that I was lying face-down on the ground, very confused, and trying to make heads or tails of what had just happened to me. I flipped over and blinked for a while until my vision unfogged, and eventually I was able to make out Big Macintosh's shape.

"Big... Big Macintosh?" I said, squinting as his looming image became clearer. He stood right over me, blotting out the hazy light from the setting Sun. But when I say standing over me, I should be more specific: he wasn't standing like a normal pony. He stood fully upright, rearing up on his back legs, just the way my brother had when I confronted him. After patiently waiting for me to recognize him, he crouched down in an odd way. He had amazing balance, or perhaps just a lot of practice standing on two legs.

"Sorry 'bout that, Twilight," he replied, smiling faintly. "I guess I don't know my own strength."

"Oh, my head... I, um, thanks, Big Mac," I said, still dizzy and in pain.

Now, something very odd had just happened, but it took a moment for my scrambled brain to notice. Big Macintosh just spoke. Given the circumstances, I wouldn't have blinked at, "Y'okay?" or, "Sorry." But for Mac to speak two whole sentences? To me of all ponies, a Princess? Apart from answering "eeyup" or "nnope" to a simple question (or singing in the Ponytones: he can really fry those low notes), this was the first time in my life I'd heard the stallion say anything at all. Now, obviously I know Big Macintosh can talk just like anypony else. But he's at least twice as shy as Fluttershy, which is a crazy amount of shyness (I mean Fluttershy has it in her name, for Sun sake). Under normal circumstances, Big Macintosh only speaks freely around his family, and possibly Fluttershy. So this was highly unusual.

By the time my mind was able to process the extremely relevant context that "unusual equals bad", I found myself hanging there in midair in front of Mac's big, red, freckled face. He had reared upright again, and he held me by my horn, which was a painful experience given the injury I was suffering from. Then again, nopony's ever tried to grab me by the horn before, since that's just about as rude as you can possibly be to a unicorn (I've never seen it happen; it just isn't done). Being face to face with Mac at his reared-up height put me at least twice my normal standing height from the ground, so even dangling free I had no hope of reaching terra firma. This is the first time I truly realized just how BIG Big Macintosh is, and it almost (quite literally) scared the piss out of me. He looked into my eyes very carefully, as though checking for something or making a decision. I tried to teleport, of course, and my magic fizzled helplessly. It must have been because I'd been stunned so badly by the collision, but I'm still not entirely certain why I wasn't able to cast.

"Please l-let go," I begged horsely. Big Macintosh smiled widely.

"Nnope," he responded. "But it's awfully nice to see ya, Princess Twilight Sparkle." Oh no. The "princess" part sounded sarcastic. I can't imagine Big Mac being sarcastic, but that's exactly what it was.

Horseshit.

I don't know why I tried to punch and buck right then, I honestly don't. I guess it was some kind of automatic desperation measure that kicked in subconsciously when all other options had failed. But that's basically what I did. I thrashed in place, even though it hurt my head even more. I could see a twinge of magic aura above me, but it wasn't my color, and I knew right away it was Mac's. Earth ponies have excellent manumantic prowess, but few have manumancy so strong that you can actually see the faint aura when they try to do something super-dextrous. Right now, this enormous red earth pony was grasping all the way around my horn with a single hoof, and that's a pretty amazing feat given how slippery a properly-maintained horn is (and yes, mine is, of course).

"Now Twilight," Big Mac continued, "calm down. It's gonna be okay, but only if you don't keep fussin'. Nopony wants that, y'hear?"

"Please LET ME GO!!!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, still blindly kicking and squirming. This didn't seem to sit well with him. His kind smile vanished. I was starting to realize that this pony, whoever he was, could not possibly be the same sweet, sensitive, shy Big Macintosh I knew. It just couldn't!

"Welcome to Sweet Apple Acres, bitch."

I stopped struggling long enough for my jaw to drop in amazement. And that's when I took a hoof the size of my head directly to the face.

I woke up on some blankets on a dirt floor. My forehooves were secured in front of me in a pair of thick metal cuffs, probably iron with a lead core. They were too heavy for me to lift for more than a second or two. Without earth pony strength and mass, these things were highly disabling. My head was throbbing in pain, much worse than before. My face felt tender and bruised. I immediately attempted telekinesis, of course, but my magic fizzled, so I prioritized orienting myself to time and place.

I was in a stall in the barn. Judging by the bright light, it must have been around noontime. This was a bad sign: I'd been unconscious for almost a day. Longer than this would have been very unlikely without specialty medical care, so I was highly certain this was Day 45. I felt around in my mouth with my tongue and detected no broken or cracked teeth, and I detected no aftertaste of stomach acid (so no emesis had occurred). Very careful tests performed by pressing my face and head against the blankets at various angles suggested I had sustained no jaw or skull fractures from either head injury. These data, plus clear vision and thought, proved I was not currently suffering from a concussion. Furthermore, while it was very likely I had received at least a minor concussion from the blow to the face, it was not likely that it had been a major one. Big Macintosh had gifted me a rather "friendly" strike right between the eyes, just barely enough to send me down for the count. I have no doubt he could have murdered me right there and then, had that been his aim. But I'll bet big bits to biting bugs that Mac believes he was doing this "for my own good", much like my insane brother.

Satisfied I was going to continue breathing for a while, I began to take a closer inventory of my surroundings. The cuffs were slightly painful, but more annoying than anything. The stall gate was shut and latched, but had no lock. The sides were just a little too tall for me to be able to see the rest of the barn while standing up.

I experimented a little more with magic, to no avail: it had been completely suppressed. I could feel there was something odd about my horn, like my bangs were bumping off of it weirdly, and I suspected I was wearing an ounckse. At first I felt pretty embarrassed that I might have one on. They're supposed to be horribly embarrassing, after all. Then I realized that embarrassment was a pretty stupid thing to feel when you've just been ponynapped, so I stopped caring about it.

Next to me there were two dog bowls. One was filled with what looked and smelled like high-quality cider. The other one contained two small white pills. Now I'm not an idiot, but I inspected them closely. I'm very familiar with Ponyville Hospital's supply of medication. There's no way Big Mac could manufacture stamped pills like these. I tasted one for a fraction of a second and spit it back out. I know paracetamol when I taste it, which meant I was 92% certain they were paracetamol. The 8% uncertainty was the off-chance of a more severe pain relief medication commonly combined with a low-efficacy compound, or (even less likely) paracetamol combined with caffeine. If I hadn't been in blinding pain I wouldn't have done this, but I was, so I did: I took both pills, and I washed them down with the whole bowl of cider. I didn't stop to think if the cider had been drugged, mind you. I was so thirsty I had no option but to refresh myself with the only liquid available.

I lay down and rested my head, hoping the pain would lessen at least a little bit from the alcohol and pain relievers. About ten minutes in, I started to feel some relief, and about fifteen in I started feeling just a little too good. The rush was perfectly fine, to be honest. I had already predicted narcotics as a slim possibility, and I was in so much pain that the heavy pain medication was a blessing. I was more concerned about vomiting, but after a few minutes of dizziness I seemed to stabilize. I was actually kind of surprised that he (I presume it was Mac) had left them for me. The downside, of course, is that my attention was crap and I was having a hard time focusing; but I was still more functional after taking the pills. I knew I'd be able to use enough magic to be dangerous if I could get this thing off of my horn, and I wasn't delirious or overly nauseated, just a little high and woozy. I worried momentarily about the interaction between the drugs and the alcohol (those can be synergistic in a bad way, especially if you overwhelm your central nervous system's GABA receptors), but the cider's alcohol content wasn't very high (estimated by taste) and there had been less than a liter of it.

I started looking around for a way to scrape the suspected ounckse off of my horn. I tried pressing it between two boards, but the spaces weren't large enough. I knew it was there now, because I could feel it scraping when I tried to pull it over the lip near the bottom of the fence. But it wasn't coming off. This thing was on tight, and I'd need significantly more leverage to pull it free.

As the pain dulled, I became more aggressive with my approach. Time was a luxury I could not afford: the longer it took to regain my powers, the less likely I'd be to escape. I tried rearing up awkwardly on my hind legs to peek over the fence, but with the heavy cuffs on my forehooves I could only manage a small, quick bounce of less than a decimeter. I could see there was a cart near my stall, but nothing else of interest.

The inside of the stall's gate had a latch up high, and it wasn't locked. I tried to rear upright to smack it with my horn, but after several failed attempts I was becoming exhausted and dizzy. It was too high up and the cuffs too heavy. There was no way I could buck that high, either (I'm not nearly limber enough and everypony knows it). Finally, a novel idea came to me. It wasn't much easier than what I'd been trying, but it was much less tiring to attempt. I flipped one of the bowls over with my muzzle, grabbed it in my mouth, moved under the latch, and chucked it upwards as hard as I could. It came really close the first time. I tried several more times, and then I misfired: the bowl landed outside the gate.

Drat. I only had one bowl left. So what do I do, I thought? I could toss it gingerly and be likely to fail, or toss it hard and risk losing it. This was not a fun decision.

I tossed it hard, and it ricocheted right off the edge of the latch, bouncing over the fence.

"FFF—mnnngph!" (I barely managed to avoid screaming profanity, at the cost of a bloody tongue.)

Looking up, the latch was right underneath me. It was mocking me, I could feel it (okay, I'm sure the drugs weren't helping any). Then I started thinking how easy this would be with some good old-fashioned TK or even gravity spells, and the solution hit me. Why hadn't I thought of this earlier? Instead of trying to reach up to the latch, I laid on my back beneath it. With my weighted forelegs on the ground, it was easy to stand on my head while running up the gate with my rear legs. One kick to the latch did the trick: the gate was now open. Woe to the pony who tries to imprison a wizard of my caliber! (I probably had a really dorky smile on.)

I crawled into the open area of the barn, sliding my forehooves through the dirt as I went, and saw the cart. Somepony was hitched to it on the other side. Somepony with hooves of a very familiar deep magenta hue. Playing "guess the pony" here was a no-brainer, but that was fine by me: my brain had been through a lot recently.

I quietly inchwormed my way around the cart to take a closer look. Yes, it was Cheerilee. She didn't seem to notice me at first. She didn't look awful or anything, just a little worse for wear. She had on four large copper horseshoes and copper earrings. She was lying on the floor (which was very muddy right here), or at least she was trying to. The shoes made it tricky to lie down comfortably in the way she was positioned. Her mane had some clumps of mud in it, and I think she was idly trying to wipe a bit of mud off of her nose by pressing her muzzle to her shoulder. I suddenly realized that the shoes made it basically impossible for her to hold on to things. I can't believe I didn't pick up on that when Pinkie had them on, but it's so obvious: even if they weren't too heavy to lift easily, they were thick enough to block a pony's manumantic grip. Pinkie Pie must have taken hers off whenever she needed to hold something, but these shoes were sitting differently on Cheerilee's hooves. It took me a second to pick up on the fact that they were shifted sideways by a centimeter or two. I suspected they were "locked" in some fashion. As my drug-addled mind wandered off momentarily, Cheerilee turned and noticed me.

"Tw—!" she started, then lowered her voice to a whisper. "Princess Twilight Sparkle! I can't believe it's you! I thought I'd never see you again," she sighed, eyes misty and voice filled with relief. "Oh, holy Celestia. What an amazing stroke of luck."

I smiled, feeling relieved myself. For some reason Cheerilee reminds me of Princess Celestia, probably because they're both amazing teachers. "It's okay Cheerilee. I promise we'll get you out of this mess," I said, feeling determination set in. I started looking for a way to untie her.

"Twilight," she whispered. "I need you to come closer so I can help you with that, that thing," she said, gesturing with her face toward my horn.

"Oh! Right! Stupid me. Here," I said, getting it very close to her face. "I'm in pain and not feeling one-hundred percent at the moment, so forgive me if I do something dumb. But don't worry, once this thing is off we're both out of here."

Cheerilee rolled her eyes. "Twilight Sparkle. When have you ever done something dumb," she said with an odd giggle, inspecting the thing on my horn as we both stood up straight. I blushed at the flattery, I admit.

"All the time, Cheerilee. All the time," I said. "You'd be surprised how many times I screw up per day."

"Let's see. To do this safely, I need to get those cuffs off of you first. Can you place them by my hoof?" she asked.

I did as requested, and she pressed her shoe against the edge of the front of the cuffs. I hadn't seen any mechanism there, but this caused them to spring open. It seemed to take a lot of force, so it was unlikely I could have done it without her help. I felt surprising comfort from this. It wasn't the cuffs; they hadn't been so bad. It was the fact that Cheerilee was helping me, and I knew for the first time that somepony who had been targeted by the pod ponies was still on my side. (Yes, I know they're not pod ponies but I still think it's amusing, and anything to lighten my mood is good right now.)

"Okay, now for the ounckse," said Cheerilee, her voice still a whisper. I was surprised she knew the word, but secretly thrilled that my predicted pronunciation of it (OONK-say, that is) had been correct. Big Macintosh must have said it out loud in front of Cheerilee, I suppose, but that seemed a little weird because she was acting like she didn't know I was in the barn so when would that word have come up? As she talked to me, I threw the cuffs to the side. I hadn't realized at the time, but the emotional impact of being shackled like the worst kind of criminal was pretty strong. When my mind was in deep crisis mode, I'd apparently been able to suppress the feeling. Anger and fear and sadness were all swimming up to the surface now, so I took some deep breaths and tried to relax as I held my horn up to her face.

Cheerilee inspected the ounckse from all sides. "Hold up for a second," she said. "Can you bring your body alongside mine? I want to try something I think will help."

"Sure. Like this?" I said, sidling right next to her and leaning against her.

"Almost. Lie down, just like that," she instructed. I lay down flat in the mud right beside her (ick, but at least I'm not Rarity). Despite all of the emotion and the drugs and awfulness, I was extremely curious how lying down next to Cheerilee would provide her with the additional leverage to...

To my surprise, Cheerilee lifted her shoes, first the front right, then the rear right, and placed them around me. Then she kicked lightly inward with both shoes, flipping me into a face-up position beneath her. She smiled the gentlest smile I've ever seen on a pony, as she lay her massive earth pony weight directly atop me. It wasn't painful, but it was just a little hard to breathe, and my legs were pinned to the sides. I couldn't move anything but my neck and face.

"Wait, Cheerilee, I... I know you need to rest, but I think getting out of here is..." I said, between panting. She merely smiled, watching my face, her eyes slowly wandering all over it, as though admiring it. I started to feel a touch of panic twist at the muscles in my spine, because her actions didn't make any logical sense.

At least confirmation came quickly. I could smell that scent again, and it was very strong. This time it was mud and mare vulva and even a little perfume and possibly urine and several other smells that had to be sex or sex-related all mixed up together, and at that point I realized I had done a very, very dumb thing. It was perhaps one of the dumbest things I have done in my life. I seem to be breaking that record a lot lately.

The sun is setting, and it's too dark for me to safely continue writing. What happens next is much harder to write about, anyway. When dawn breaks I'll pick up with details of my escape. I'm tempted to skip all of the, um, "embarrassing" portions and just cut to the chase. Then again, it's not like I've been holding back so far, and maybe there's a clue somewhere in this madness. Ugh. I guess I'll decide how much detail to provide after I wake.