An Existential Nightmare in Equestria

Chapter 5: One Flew Over the Scootaloo’s Nest

Music:

http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=7IzOprKaXQ0 or http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=m2WxgKw0kXk

(choose one)

Flynn merely blinked as my last statement slid off his face like an egg from a teflon pan. His stony, authoritative visage didn’t so much as curl a lip as several more guards approached from the surrounding area, finally cementing in my mind that there would be no more possibility of escape. I couldn’t run… I just couldn’t. I was exhausted; an insecure emotional mess with no idea what to do or to say. “Is there still a fight in me? Should I even bother?” I fruitlessly asked of my own subconscious. Unaware of the racket inside my head, Flynn spoke. He had more to get off his chest and I daresay his previously stony disposition boiled with a smug, acidic sense of superiority.

“You have the right to remain silent…” he sneered.

“Buh-“ I started, but Flynn put his hoof to my mouth like the cork on a wine bottle.

“For Celestia’s sake, please take advantage of your rights. Just this once, don’t say anything and don’t do anything and let me revel in the fact that on this day justice will finally be served!”

What a melodramatic outburst… My muzzle opened and closed a few times in shock before I decided to speak again.

“…but you don’t even know the whole story.” I whimpered. “Why me? Oh, but you wouldn’t even believe me if I told you what’s been going on…”

At the very moment I finished that last sentence, the oddest thing happened. I swear Flynn’s composure broke by just the tiniest bit. I swear a single bead of sweat slipped down from under his helmet. It was almost an intangible sign, though. The gears inside my head lurched and stuck fast.

He turned away and pompously grunted. “Then spare us…”

I was out of the energy required to be livid, and spoke after a drawn-out sniffle. “So… So that’s justice, huh? There’s been zero interest in hearing my side of the story all along?” More sniffling followed.

“There was a trial… and your story was incomprehensible.” he groaned. I didn’t even want to try and think back to the fiasco which had constituted my ‘trial’, nor the cackling, babbling mess I’d helped to make of it. If I hadn’t been in such danger, it would have struck me as utterly hilarious. That nearly summed up the Equestrian legal system: worse than bad, a joke. It had been a very insult to the civilized mindset! Everything which had happened to me so far was plain wrong.

Surprisingly, Twilight still stood next to me. She hadn’t gone crazy and showed no sign of imminent fainting, but I still couldn’t even bring myself to describe the expression that she bore. Her mane hadn’t yet managed to stay completely flat in my presence. She spoke with a frog in her throat, as though I’d managed to hurt her straight to the core.

“Is this all true?” she whispered, with a piercing stare.

“It’s, well, this looks really bad, a-” I started.

“I let you stay in my home!” she scratched through her tears. “Who are you?”

I teetered back and forth for a moment, not knowing if I even had the power to improve my own situation. I felt like the victim of some cruel joke. For the first time since my utterly random, arguably ironic incident, I just wanted to wake up, strap on my BlackBerry, and show up in the server room at my usual time. The shackles on my rear legs clinked audibly. A little fiber in my mind snapped and said: “to hell with it!!!”

“OK…” I started wheezily, with a long pause. “I promised before all this happened that I’d tell you the truth, no matter how stupid it sounds, so I’m just going to get it over with. If you don’t believe me, well, then it’s not my fault!”

Twilight blinked and Flynn glared.

“I used to be an, er, stallion from a technologically superior parallel universe. My name is really Al.” I blurted. Twilight’s expression had taken a turn for the worst, while Flynn just appeared to be dumbfounded.

“Well, I wasn’t really a stallion, per se… uh…” I stuttered. “I guess I’m sort of like an alien. …so, I went to work in the middle of a thunderstorm one night and had an inexplicable, well, particle-related incident… Actually, I’m not entirely sure what happened or why…” My speech was deteriorating to nothing more than a low mumble as Twilight filled up with tears.

“I look like this because… Query was… is… isn’t… a….. cartoon character I had on my shirt… at the time?” I mumbled. Twilight backed away slowly, and Flynn… Flynn was smiling?!? My face flushed red.

“Look!” I strained desperately. “As far as I knew a week ago, Equestria was just work of fiction! I ended up busting through the roof of the castle purely by accident! I didn’t mean to hurt anypony! I didn’t ask for any of this! Well, I sort of did, but in a cosmically karmic way that just isn’t funny anymore… I just want to go home!!!”

There was a long, deadly silence.

“Let me go? I swear I’ll never bother you again… I can-” I asked pathetically of Flynn. Now that must have signaled the absolute peak of desperation… They all thought I was barking mad. I, well, I wasn’t really surprised. I had managed to somehow put myself even more-so out of options than I had been moments before. Just as I had briefly managed my temper; just as things had almost looked up and I may not have appeared like a complete deceiver or nutjob or whatever, I, I pulled a Query. I had stopped thinking, and started acting. It hadn’t constituted the first occurrence.

“Query?” Flynn sighed. “I would sooner arrest my own mother than take a bribe from you, and I can honestly say that I’d feel better to have you off the streets at this point.”

I’m not really sure just how much time I spent looking at my hooves. Liquid pride continued to splatter and run off of them.

“Enough!” he added as he raised his voice and marched in the direction of the library. “This has gone on for far too long! I’m very sorry, Miss Sparkle, for what you’ve just been through, but we must summon the Princess at once! I ha-”

*SMACK*

No part of me could even register the humor, but the door of the library had struck him directly in the face. A tiny purple dragon rushed out and asked “Hey, what’s going on?” in a notably worried tone. He looked at me for just a second, baffled, and upon noticing the fainted Rarity in our midst he promptly forgot everything else and rushed to her side. She looked oddly peaceful; an unnaturally graceful, white body lying across a rustic, stone-paved path in the rapidly diminishing light, as if she didn’t belong with her surroundings.

Flynn just grunted, brushed himself off, and withdrew a tiny, bundled scroll from beneath his scarce armor. After an unceremonious trot to the side of the purple dragon, he picked him up in his hooves and toggled his head back just like a zippo lighter. The scroll disappeared in a green flash.

“Any second now…” he mumbled, looking up at the sky with an expectant stare. Spike seemed totally un-perturbed, as if he had grown accustomed to that sort of treatment.

I just slumped down on the ground with the knowledge that I’d finally blown it. I hadn’t weighed the wisdom of simply blurting out my story, and I hadn’t exactly delivered it with (even feigned) eloquence, either. A chilly breeze rolled across the town, ruffling my wings and making me shiver in place. I thought that all the fur would have kept me better insulated, honestly. The afternoon sun began to dim as it signaled the approach of late afternoon.

“What was I supposed to have said?” I asked myself. The snarkier half of my subconscious informed me that I should have tried to say something believable. I should have at least tried to appear rational. I felt like I had been set up, or as if the cruel, er, hooves of fate had chosen to wrap around me one way or another. Could there possibly have been anything I might have said to have made them believe me? Could I have woven a brilliant and believable story right from the start which would have freed me from any such injustice? It was a true case of fact being stranger than fiction. Upon waking up in Equestria I had first reacted with fright, followed by complete, passive refusal to take anything seriously, followed by denial and a nearly bipolar outburst to accommodate every situation. I’d gone from wanting to be Query in the worst way, to crawling in my skin with discomfort, to feeling that it was my duty to ‘live up’ to my own creation. I had a bit of an identity crisis in the works. The gender crisis seemed willing to wait just a little bit longer, but not much so. It felt… secondary to my circumstances.

I searched around the inside of my head, blindly hoping that the real Query would be in there somewhere. Perhaps she could take over and tell everyone that there had been a massive misunderstanding. Quickly, though, I came to terms with the reality that my head served as residence only to one.

*CRACK*

A blinding flash came from several yards away. I knew what it was. I resigned myself to just accept whatever was going to happen. The chatter of guards picked up and a collective gasp sounded as ponies from around the town gathered. The crowd grew, and I glimpsed the unmistakable, flowing, multicolored mane of a certain princess. It towered above the rest of the crowd, flanked by rows of newly summoned royal guards.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn I saw an aged unicorn slip amongst their ranks.

“Your majesty!” Flynn shouted above the din. “Please, I must speak with you privately for a moment!” He plowed through the crowd, headfirst, until he bumped into a familiar new arrival.

“BLIMEY!” Niles bellowed. “I knew yew could catch ‘er, mate! That’s roight good work, mate! AMAZING, really!” He clapped his hooves and beamed his usual goofy, trusting grin at Flynn. I almost felt sorry for him when Flynn cleared his throat and tried to slip by without even pretending to notice. Niles continued to speak, as if being clued-in by Flynn’s body language would have been totally alien to him.

My captor disappeared into the crowd as the wall of guards kept a diligent watch over me. It wasn’t long before the Princess and her entourage seemed to wander out of sight and I felt a bitter tension as the helmeted protectors shifted from hoof to hoof, boxing me in even more tightly. There was no intrinsic hope left hanging upon my delicate pony frame, so imagine my complete and utter disbelief when the next face I met practically lit me up with encouragement.

“Goodness! You’ve been straight through the ringer, haven’t you?” asked a soothing voice. I suppose it was a rhetorical question… A unicorn more or less plowed himself through between two of the skinnier guards. I was lifted by the shoulders into a sitting position as I came face to face with Doctor Willcrest from the castle hospital/infirmary. I think my mouth was hanging open before I spoke.

“Bu-ho-wh-how?” I whispered, wiping my face with the fur on my foreleg. The guards hadn’t even tried to pull him away.

The Doc just flashed a warm smirk.

“Didn’t they throw you in a dungeon forever or something? I thought you were a goner after what you did-“ I asked under my breath. Our conversation certainly wasn’t audible above the din of the crowd, but he leaned in and spoke with the same whisper, nonetheless.

“To make a long story short…” he began. “You put your best doctor in jail, wait a while, somepony important sprains an ankle… Well, guess who comes up first on the list for parole?” There was almost an inspiring confidence audible beneath his tired voice as he let out a brief sigh.

“Why would you come looking for me? I mean, uh, thanks… in advance, I mean, but I think it’s just a smidge late for me…” I asked, trailing off. My eyes were welling up again.

“I was worried about you, and, well, I never even got to hear your whole story, to boot! It took some serious convincing, but I managed to teleport in with the royal guard just now. I can be a bit of a wizard with the ol’ medical vocabulary, you know.” he replied, raising his voice a bit towards the end. Then, Doctor Willcrest did something totally unexpected. He leaned against the barrel of my chest and raised a hoof to pat it on my back. His eyes darted left and right as his muzzle brushed by my right ear. He spoke so quietly that I could just barely make out the sounds.

“Something is very, very wrong here Query. I’m going to try to help you. Don’t do anything…. rash.” He whispered. The Doc slipped back as one of the guards eyed him leerily, and a bead of sweat ran down his neck before he cleared his throat.

“*ahem* Well, like I said, I’ll be sure to help you! It’s only reasonable, of course.” said Willcrest, raising his voice so that it would be audible.

“Hu-?” I began. He rustled my mane to shut me up.

“Wherever you’re banished to, I’ll be sure that we send over some pills to help you with those darned chronic migraines of yours! Not to worry…” he added, overly emphatic. The guard seemed to buy it as he plowed his way back out into the crowd, straining to keep up the overly chipper facade.

“I knew it!” I thought to myself, slumping again. Deep down inside, I’d known something just smelled wrong about Equestria ever since my arrival. In fact, I’d always lived with a sort of strange, background feeling that something horrible and dark and sinister was going on in the world, and that it was out to get me. Er, wait, perhaps that was just a case of typical, garden-variety paranoia? Did other ponies get that? I made a mental note to ask the doctor if he was often overwhelmed by a nebulous sense of dread emanating from nowhere, if I ever got the chance.

I think that my self-pity knew no bounds. Oh, man, if only I could have avoided following a missile trajectory into the throne room! Images of my pony-self landing in a grassy field, unharmed and chipper, flooded my mind. Was I-well, it seemed slightly weird to just quantify an individual’s nature with something as insipid and subjective as ‘goodness’, but was I a good pony? More specifically, was I any good at anything? Could I have landed peacefully in Equestria and made best friends with Twilight, and attended parties instead of jumping off of trains, and held down a stupid pony-job, and, and…? What if? What if? What if?

My worrying just sort of scrambled into a loop and burned itself out. There was suddenly, well, nothing… in my head, I mean. Well, I was still obviously in my head, but I just went kind of blank and serene. I stopped sweating, and I craned my neck up just in time for the wind to deposit a solitary, stray leaf on the base of my muzzle. It caught on the bridge of my stupid horse-glasses as I crossed my eyes to look at it. There was something so quizzically calming about the experience, but another wave of anxiety soon took its place.

What about home, and my family? Sweet ponyfeathers, my family! I hadn’t even been able to say goodbye to them! I missed them! Based on the helpfulness quotient of the ponies I’d met so far, it wasn’t realistic for me to imagine there’d be a way for me to get home. I never even imagined that I’d be capable of missing my boss or that bastard engineer, Mark. …and what about all the things I loved to do?!? Equestria’s living conditions would have seemed downright medieval were it not for all the magical stuff. I knew I’d never be able to pick up the guitar again in my new body, and that there’d be no computers to program, and I’d never get to finish my novel… Actually, well, maybe I would have enough time to write a novel with my mouth during banishment? Is it possible to be banished along with tons of paper? Ugh! What about the girlfriend back home that I’d almost had, save for my incorrigible bashfulness? Did I even, ahem, appreciate the ladies anymore? No, NO, brain! I thought I’d already decided that could wait!

I caught myself making a scrunchy-face. The leaf was back again.

Fear is a funny thing. Er, well, I don’t mean that it’s hilarious, per se, but it certainly always managed to do a job on me with the help of its cousin, anxiety. I was a woefully anxious person and I was already making Query into a woefully anxious pony. No, not just anxious, but absolutely, bloody unpredictable! My liquid pride succeeded in abolishing every trace of the dreaded pony-mascara. During the entire span of time since my appearance, I’d been feeling hurt by the dissonance between being mysteriously telegraphed into my pony form, and simultaneously having been denied the opportunity to start fresh.

Or was it a coincidence that the first thing I faced as Query was the only thing I could never seem to overcome as a human?

“That’s it!” I thought to myself. “What’s the point in letting myself be this miserable and scared? What’s the point?” I sighed and felt an unusual relief in my shoulder muscles as I sat up on my haunches once more. I took in a deep breath, surprised by how much Query’s diaphragm could move when I really wanted it to. I clenched my fists and-uh, er, never mind. I stomped my hooves. I stood up on all fours and steeled myself as the guards corralled me and lead me a short distance up the stony street. It wasn’t long before they deposited me into a clearing with Twilight, Willcrest, Flynn, and what must have seemed like every royal guard, ever.

Oh, and standing right in the middle of the row was Princess Celestia. My brilliant, well-thought-out stunt in Canterlot had bought me how long? …and already there I was sitting across from the one and only. I raised my head to meet the hoof-chilling stares of her entourage along with dozens of inhabitants of Ponyville who’d chosen to show up. Nopony spoke for a time.

“Now I’m not sure what to make of you…” said the Princess. Her voice wasn’t anything like before. It was strangely calm and low and… vaguely threatening. My resolve may have loosened just a tiny bit.

“Can I at least be banished with enough paper to finish my blockbuster novel? Please?” I asked. That wasn’t a wacky outburst. I swear it was genuinely the only thing I could think of to say at the time. The line was delivered so pitifully that if I could watch it back in retrospect I’m sure I’d find it positively chuckle-worthy.

I could feel the stares of all the ponies burning into me. Princess Celestia merely tensed and blinked at my statement. “My head of security has informed me that… you think you’re an alien?” she added in the same tone. A brief look to her right prompted a subtle nod from Flynn.

“Well… I am an alien, if that’s what you’re wondering.” I peeped.

She rolled her eyes a bit and took on slightly more condescension. “Then what sort of alien are you?”

“Aside from the sort with dismal taste in landing zones, well, possibly an individual from a universe that lies tangentially at the edge of this one, or… maybe the other way around. I’ve been working on a bunch of calculations. Do you want to see them? It seems-It’s just-I really love string theo-” I rambled, gaining more composure. Princess Celestia looked over at Flynn. She seemed to do that a lot.

“…and why should I even consider believing you, hmm?” she interrupted.

“I… wha… wait a minute. Why didn’t we have this conversation before?!?” I retorted. The sudden tensing of the ponies in the crowd informed me that it might not have been wise to answer royalty with a question.

“*ahem* Your majesty-” Flynn spoke up. “If you’re quite satisfied, I’ll be happy to carry out the banishment order just as you requested earlier!” The crowd let out a nerve-wracking gasp.

“Well, no…” Celestia said, sternly. She appeared to shrink ever so slightly from the crowd’s reaction. “I’m not finished.” She came closer to me and leaned over, making me cower even further. Just then, I finally saw what I’d been on the lookout for. Something was very wrong, after all! I swear that in the moment of her anger there was the faintest, briefest blue flash in her eyes. The very sight of it made my face twitch, and I found myself nearly praying that she hadn’t noticed my reaction.

“Did you have assistance breaking into the castle?” she asked.

“No.” I peeped. The Princess deadpanned.

“Are you answering to somepony you believe to be outside of my authority?”

“No.”

“I highly doubt you’re smart enough to do so, but was your intrusion made with the intent to engage in a rebellion against the crown?”

“I’m pretty sma-no! No, I swear.”

“And you’ll defend your story?”

“Certainly.”

The ‘Princess’ was scowling at this point. I just knew it couldn’t really be her. Up until that moment, every single character I’d met in Equestria had exactly conformed to my expectations from home, except for Celestia. She was downright tyrannical! I could even hear the crowd chattering more and more nervously. I think the only thing that really saved me was that I was far too intimidated by her presence to even let on that I had become suspicious. I began to wonder if ‘banishment’ could be construed to mean something even worse.

Oh, that good doctor… I’m not sure I ever really knew what to make of him. Like a polar opposite of me, he knew exactly when to open his mouth and when to put his chips on the table. Just as I thought my speech options were closing in around me, he spoke up.

“Please, I beg of your mercy, your highness!” he shouted, stepping forth. “I have been following Query since she first woke up in the castle infirmary. She was dazed at first, too dazed. She didn’t walk right. She was an emotional wreck. I’m not exaggerating when I say that she was genuinely surprised to give me her own name. After everything I’ve heard from her and from what I’ve seen and heard here tonight, it is my professional opinion that Miss Query is clinically insane. I’m convinced that she genuinely believes all that she’s been saying.”

Celestia turned and blinked at him, almost dumbfounded.

“Even if she was caught up in some sort of evil plot before, she’s no longer aware of it. Honestly, though, at this point all the medical factors are pointing to her being totally delusional. It could explain the irrational fear, running from the law, the unpredictable behavior, and so on and so forth! I have no choice but to recommend committal as a course of action.” he added.

I swear Flynn mouthed “We could commit her to a dungeon…” from the back.

All that the doctor was attempting to do hadn’t really clicked with me yet. In retrospect, my very lack of understanding probably contributed to my salvation. My mind was swimming with confusion and suspicion. Was he on her side? No, it couldn’t be! He wanted me locked up, too?!? Why, why had he deceived me with the whole ‘I’m going to help you’ gag? How was being publically declared as insane supposed to help me in the long run? Well, clearly something much more than met the eye was going on, but I just couldn’t process it at the time.

“No. NO! I’m not crazy. I’m telling the truth! I haven’t lied to anypony since I came here an- wait… Well, when I was lying it was because I thought you’d all think I was crazy, which you do now, so I was right about everything all along!” I shrieked in hysterics. Sensing my outburst, two of the nearby guards decided to flatten my wings and pin me. Apparently they had flared up on their own accord and without my notice. I didn’t struggle, rather, I just scanned the crowd with my gaze and wished for it all to end.

“I know for a fact that I’m not crazy…” I mumbled under my breath as I looked at the ground. Then, the absolutely terrifying notion of uncertainty struck me. How could I be sure? Had I imagined my entire life? Having travelled from another universe or quantum reality or whatever, was the truth of my own origin really as paper-thin as a story from a book? I let out a long sigh as I resigned not to go there. Whatever I was going to endure, I knew that introspective philosophy would only make me crazier. Then, I gulped as I realized I had reasoned all that aloud.

‘Princess Celestia’ blinked, looked at me, blinked, and looked at Doctor Willcrest again. She then frowned, and looked over to Flynn, and then at the crowd. The vividly colorful conglomeration eyed her anxiously and with great interest. Their innocent, appraising, compassionate glances most likely played a well-needed second or third part in my salvation.

“*ahem* Well…” the Princess began, carefully eyeing Willcrest. “You have been a great help to me as of late… and perhaps I shouldn’t have been so hard on you before… Your fervor for your line of work is… admirable.” She gave him… a funny look, and walked away. Upon reaching Flynn and his entourage of guards (only a few yards away) she knelt down with a lot of gesturing and whispering. Flynn raised a hoof in salute and nodded ‘I understand’. Afterwards, the Princess backed away and approached the center of the clearing, ready to make her announcement. As she drew closer to me, I couldn’t help but notice that I was shaking. It was just… criminy! She was so much bigger than me that it was practically comical (except it wasn’t).

“Very well.” She said, curtly, and with a gesture to the doc. “Take this pony and have her committed to the Ponyville Sanitarium. My head of security and his companions will accompany you to oversee the process. I’d like weekly updates on her treatment.”

“You!” she added, pointing a hoof at a nearby, nameless guard. He saluted in response. “Form a pair of teams and interview every pony this one has had contact with since arriving here. Report in two hours.” Immediately, several guards dispersed with mechanical obedience.

“And as for you all, my little ponies…” she added, peering about at the crowd with a newfound air of gentleness. “I know that recent events have been alarming, but I must urge you all not to credit every rumor you may hear. I have everything under control, and I can promise each and every one of you that everything is going to be all right.” She finished that last sentence with a convincing smile and a warm chuckle. Her speech had taken on an eerily-mothering tone. “Now off you go. I’d like to call this little, impromptu meeting to a close. Good night, everypony!”

Of course the ponies scuttled off complacently as they continued to chatter lightly amongst themselves. One of the still-functioning regions of my brain must have been dedicated to self preservation, because as badly as I wanted to, I found myself unable to scream: “That’s not Celestia!”. Would it have continued to hold, though? I’ll never know, because soon after I was looking up at the good doctor, Flynn, and… surprisingly Niles. From left to right, the doctor wore an expression of, well, I wasn’t really sure. Flynn’s brow was perfectly straight and he was not amused. Niles just sort of stared blankly with a tiny smile, advertising that he was just genuinely pleased to be standing in the middle of a town in uniform. He was an enigma, that one; a testament to ignorance as bliss. I wished that they could have sent him alone to apprehend me in the first place. Finally, I let out an exasperated, rattling sigh as the three escorted me down the road.

I had barely enough time to look back and see that Twilight was running up to Celestia and sobbing. Before long, they were in an awkward pony-embrace and the purple unicorn spewed out a string of phrases like “I missed you!” and “are you all right?” and “what happened?”. I was a bit too far away to make out what they were saying, but I’m sure I caught something to the effect of “blah blah… faithful student… blah blah”. It didn’t quite fill me with relief to realize that Twilight wasn’t even the tiniest bit suspicious. Despite being corralled up the street by three stallions with my rear legs in chains (an unpleasantly, weirdly intimate experience, by the way) I felt alone. Just alone. That was, until the loneliness turned to a simmering, confused anger as I squinted at the doctor.

“I trusted you… you said you were going to help me!” I barked at him, in a weird, wavering tone. I noticed that everything we said was being carefully scrutinized by Flynn.

“Query, I… This might be hard for you to understand, but I am helping you. Banishment is no fate for somepony who can’t even remember where she came from in the first place.” He cooed, pleadingly.

“After everything that’s been going on, you, you, think I’m crazy!?!” I pleaded in return. “You came searching for me all the way from Canterlot just to tell everyone I was crazy?!? You saw the princess, she w-” The doctor shot me a deathly glare and covered my mouth. I knew that he meant well, but I was just so hurt that nobody even thought to believe me.

“The princess has been through a terrible ordeal lately, and she just chose to show you mercy. Let’s leave it at that… and frankly, you need help.” He warned. I was so frustrated that my face must have been scrunched to the limit. I raised my right hoof into the air like I was planning to smack him one.

“Do it if you must.” He sighed. I couldn’t. I stomped on the ground and groaned as we continued our march. At least there was an intangible sense of ‘motion’ about Ponyville. That was definitely a funny feeling I remembered from my evening travels before spontaneous ponification. Perhaps it was the ambiance of the dimming sunlight, or the increasingly chilly breeze that ruffled my feathers, or the alien landscape, or the fact that I was being dragged to a mental institution, but there was definitely the sense that things were about to happen. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was all due to my blasted wings. I had never flown, but whenever I found myself really upset, my shoulders just ached like mad. I caught myself stretching them out for a bit of relief before a stare from Flynn had me slowly retracting them again. I was beginning to understand why Rainbow Dash could never stay still in the cartoon.

After about 20 minutes of travel, Flynn hailed a horse-drawn carriage and motioned for us to get in. He told the ponies who were hitched to it (and were also apparently driving, and were the owners) where we were going. I just… oh, help me! My brain stopped when I realized I was a horse riding in a horse-drawn carriage. I stared at the floor, unable to make eye contact with the ponies on either side of me. It was the conflict! It was just… I knew Doc Willcrest was trying to help. I mean, I knew he thought he was doing the right thing. He’d probably spared me a much nastier trip to who-knows-where, but I was just so frustrated with the whole situation. Would anypony ever believe me? It was just that some little part of me was outright mad at him for not believing my story. I knew that I sounded crazy, but the other ponies with their stares of incredulity were the very stuff of injustice. Well, most of them. Near the end of our silent carriage ride, Niles broke the silence.

“OK, so… I can’t quite put my ‘oof on it, but this is gonna bother me if I don’ ask…” he began, motioning a hoof. “I dunno if I’m missing something, but is she an actual space alien from Planet X or somethin’?”

Flynn groaned as if to say ‘I’m surrounded by idiots’ nonverbally as he massaged his temples with his hooves.

“Yes.” I deadpanned.

“Well ain’t that somethin’…” Niles mused, rubbing his chin. He made a thoughtful face which did nothing to mask that there was no further activity taking place behind his brow.

A minute later, Flynn mumbled “I wonder if the loony bin will take two…” a bit too audibly.

“Why? Who else are we puttin’ in there?” Niles asked quizzically. He was beyond innocent. Flynn’s face contorted with the most atrocious expression of pure contempt I had ever witnessed. No matter how frustrated he became, Niles was just too thick to even make fun of. All of Flynn’s negativity just bounced right off. It was, well, mildly endearing (for me). I reasoned that beyond all expectations, the markedly thick stallion had actually just been more open minded with me than a judge, a princess, a student of magic, and a prestigious a man of medicine, all combined. It was remarkable to think of, and I couldn’t help but smile and wink at him a bit. He just imitated the same gesture back at me, blankly, and shrugged. OK, I didn’t know how long Flynn and Niles had been stuck working together, but perhaps I was able to sympathize with the stoic leader just a little bit. Bah, never mind, he was a jerk! I bet he deserved every dose of Niles he received!

My panic returned after we arrived at our destination: an unassuming, unmarked building done up in the typical, colorful architectural style of Ponyville. As I was ushered inside, the door was closed and barred behind me. I could have sworn there was the sound of distant barking. My gaze shifted about a sterile but homey room decorated in various lavenders and greens as the shackles were finally removed from my legs. Then, the doctor and Flynn got into a long discussion with the receptionist: a disinterested-looking, candy pink mare who probably hadn’t expected such a big showing so late in the afternoon. The whole experience was a blur, but in short, I was admitted under the pretense of ‘long-term rehabilitation with review’, whatever that was supposed to entail.

Before I knew what hit me, I was pleading from the opposite side of a wooden door with a high, barred window which required me to stand up on two legs just to reach. The room was white-washed, with a single window on the far end (so narrow that it would be physically impossible to get more than a leg through). There was a small end-table in the corner with a few sheets of paper on it, and a set of narrow bunk-beds on the opposite wall. Aside from those features, it was completely Spartan and bland.

“Look, I’m feeling better already!” I whimpered out into the hall. Flynn, Niles, the doc, and two hospital-staffers were all gathered. “Maybe we should rethink this. Just, just go with me here for a second. What if I’m not actually crazy, eh?” Flynn rolled his eyes. Niles just… looked.

“You’ll be well taken care of, Query.” Willcrest deadpanned.

“What? Come on! I’m not kidding when I say I’m not from Equestria! I don’t belong here! Don’t you believe anything I’ve been telling you?” I pleaded.

“I can tell you’re upset, Query. I know this means a lot to you, but I just can’t. This behavior is unhealthy.” the doctor put, simply. I couldn’t even process it. I must have worn an expression of total anguish to state the fact that my only hero in this brave new world of horses just wasn’t quite willing to take me seriously. Looking sedately content with our altercation, Flynn seemed to ponder for a moment before turning to face the exit of the hallway.

The doctor had no choice but to follow him, though much to my surprise he lingered for a brief moment. He approached the door with a weak smile just before preparing to follow my least favorite guard out of the place.

“Well… thanks, Doc… you know, for everything.” I mumbled through the bars, finally out of adrenaline. As much as the situation hadn’t reflected what I’d hoped, well, I couldn’t exactly hate the only pony ever to stick up for me in earnest. Perhaps he’d really done all he could? The good doctor knew something was fishy about this whole thing, but what could he even do? What did he suspect?

Niles was the last to leave. He stood in the hallway, waving at me doofily until one of the female nurses, a white unicorn, nudged him out of the way. Actually, I think she meant to nudge him, but instead wound up, er, poking him? At least that’s what it sounded like from the “Yeowch!” he emitted before they both made their way out of the hallway, chuckling and apologizing.

“That must be one of those unwritten cons about being a unicorn: you can accidentally poke people with that thing, get it stuck in mattresses, and who knows what else…” I thought to myself as I realized I was quite firmly lodged in the bars protecting the window on my door. “It’s a good thing I’m not one of them…” I mumbled sarcastically, as I scraped my hooves higher up on the door. Before long, I was completely pinned against the doorframe, pushing with all four hooves. I launched free with a resounding *shoonk* as I fell backwards into the room, thankfully landing on something soft. I let out a tired sigh.

“Hi…” coughed the ‘something soft’.

I snapped back up onto four hooves faster than one would imagine feasible. The ‘something soft’ was very girly, and yellow, and winged. The ‘something soft’ had orange hair, and bright blue irises. The ‘something soft’ tilted her head and stared into my eyes with just the most terrifying expression of pure elation ever witnessed, as though she’d just been given a pegasus made of 100% pure milk chocolate.

“Eeeeeee!” she giggled, clapping her hooves. “I-I’m Serene! Are you my roommate? They’ve never , ever let me have a roommate before! I mean, practically nopony even talks to me these days, but here you are! I can’t believe it. I’m just-so-happy-and-anyway-what’s-your-name-can-we-p-”

“Uhhhhhhhh…” I droned in interruption, unable to make heads or tails of my own feelings. I imagine they were akin to the tired dumfoundedness one would experience after blowing up an entire city and then immediately having to meet the happiest person in the universe.

“Oh no… uh, are you sad?” she chirped, not losing one bit of the chipperness in her voice, which was very feminine and bursting with enthusiasm but surprisingly not much in volume. “That’s great! I bet I can help you feel better! Let’s talk about it! So, uh, I’m Serene. Who are you?” She beamed.

I guess I was finally just done with the situation, because I remained locked in that gaze long enough for her to see the bags under my eyes, then I sighed and bolted straight for the bottom bunk. Once I had finished hurtling, I unceremoniously stuffed my head under the pillow such that I could no longer see anything happening in the room. I half expected my new crazy companion to just come running over and blabbing any second, but surprisingly I think that nearly a full minute passed before I even heard her move again.  Alas, that long, blessed minute did eventually end and I was subjected to another verbal assault.

“OK, OK… um, don’t say anything, then. I’m gonna figure this out.” squeaked Serene. “Umm, OK, that cutie mark looks sort of like… and those wings… *gasp* …and that horn! Are you an alicorn? Do I call you ‘Princess’? You’re uh, I got this… the princess of, umm… well, that mark looks kind of strange, come on, Serene, the princess of… uhhhhhhhh… crazy? Are you Princess Crazy? I mean, that would explain why they’d put royalty in the nuthouse, an-”

“It’s just Query.” I droned, but I’m assuming she heard something like “Imph uph meeree.”

“Uhh… pardon?” Serene asked. “Is it fun in there under my pillow? Can I come in?”

I pulled my head out from under the orange-scented pillowcase, wearing an expression that was most likely far too tired and serious for a cartoon horse. “It’s Query.” I deadpanned.

“Princess Query!” she giggled. “It’s so nice to meet you!”

“No, just Query.”

“…but aren’t you an alicorn?”

“Well, no. Sort of. I don’t even really know what I am. Does it matter?”

“No, not at all! Is that why you’re in here… because you don’t know what you are? I know what I am, for sure… at least I think I do. That’s a tough question when you really think about it. I think it’s probably a good idea not to think about it too much, I think...”

“Yeah...” I sighed, before stuffing my head back under the pillow. I just laid there and thought quietly to myself for a while an-wait… silence, again? What was up with that pony? I pulled my head out just in time to see her start from my gaze. She pawed (hooved?) at the floor for a moment before continuing the barrage.

“So why are you here?” she asked. “I’m being assessed for new-row-logical damage!” She giggled.

“Uhh… you don’t wanna know…” I sighed again. I stood up and began to climb my way to the upper bunk by hooking my forelegs through an aluminum ladder bolted to the side of the stack. Once on top, I tossed myself into the familiar ‘prostrate with grief’ position yet again. I turned so that I would be facing the white, plastered wall.

*flapflapflap* *clop* *flapflapflap* “Hey, do you-” *clop* *flapflapflap* “-like games?” *clop* *flapflapflap* “Let’s do something together!” On her third flapping leap right up to the height of my second bunk, she paused in the air for a moment with a scrap of paper and a pencil in her muzzle, and her pupils were dilated to the size of Ferris wheels. I was completely burned out, yet the sight before me was so heartbreakingly adorable that my cardiopulmonary system nearly threatened to go on vacation.

“Yeah, OK…” I mumbled. It was the best I could do. I didn’t exactly sound like I was interested. She hooked the railing with her forelegs and scrambled inside before loudly spitting out both articles. My face screwed up briefly as I realized I’d probably have no choice but to pick the pencil up with my own mouth if I wanted to write something, so next, it was pleasantly surprising to see her unfold a wing, slip the pencil in between two of her comically-oversized (but typical for ponies) primary feathers and draw lines as if it were natural. I performed a baffled double-take whilst looking at my own back, though the last thing I wanted to say was: “I didn’t know you could do that?!?”

Sometime around her eighth consecutive victory at tic-tac-toe, I think Serene could see that I was fast becoming bored and frustrated. (Seriously, Equestria? Haven’t you ever heard of a cat’s game?) Despite burning me out, the yellow nutter had managed to calm me down just a little bit, and for that I was genuinely thankful. It was pitch black outside as indicated by the high window, and I laid with my eyes plastered open as Serene descended to the bottom bunk. Poor, patient Quote had managed to hide in my hair all afternoon and through the whole proceeding, so I needed to get quite a lot of apologizing out of the way before he forgave me for nearly sleeping on top of him. I let him eat the corner of my pillow as a peace offering. Back on the subject of Serene, I blinked and fidgeted and tried to understand the sort of pony who would sit in a holding pen all day, desperately wanting for a friend, and not even have the urge to complain after having been given a sarcastic, sputtering depress-o-mare such as myself. Sleep was not willing to come quietly, but in the wee hours it finally surrendered.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The dreams… I don’t think it’s prudent for me to describe them in great detail. They were in keeping with the pattern I’d established. Scenes from my life played back in my head and I had to progress through them as if on rails, always bursting out with wings at the last moment or the least-opportune time, and it was much to the joy of my heckling subconscious.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I awoke as little beams of light had begun to creep across the room and toward the well-fortified doorway. Quickly realizing that I was definitely not well-rested, I cursed Luna under my breath. I wondered if she was unable to calm my dreams since I wasn’t, you know, a real(?) pony, per se. That, or maybe I was just unpopular with the royal family. Perhaps, ironically so, it may have just been foolish for me to expect life to conform to the parameters of a cartoon.

“What is real, anyway?” I sighed from my reclining position, directing the speech at no one in particular. I think I sounded a lot like Marvin, the paranoid android…

“I know, right? It’s pretty deep when you think about it…” came a groggy reply from the lower bed. Serene had obviously just awoken. I supposed that she sounded… well… serene (sorry).

“But I’ll tell you what…” she continued, always speaking quietly and with truly monstrous speed. “you are most definitely real. I mean, we talked all afternoon yesterday! I mean, I know in your sleep you were shouting all like ‘This isn’t me!’ and ‘None of this is real!’, but that’s not actually true, you know?”

“Well, sure-“ I began, before realizing what had just been said to me. In a start, I flipped over the top bunk, holding on with my rear legs whilst hanging upside-down and shouted “Wait-what?!?” in a more-than-anxious tone.

“Uhh, it’s nothing. You just talk really loudly in your sleep. Well, it’s more like shouting… um, at yourself.”

“I’m still doing that?” I wondered aloud.

Serene laughed. “Um, I guess so. It’s OK. I had some earplugs left in the table over there.”

“Hold on a second… what exactly did you hear?”

“Um, well… not, noth- well, you just said that you’re not a pony and that you really, definitely didn’t try to kill any princesses!”

Hearing that must’ve snapped a few more of my neurons, because I leapt to the ground, stuttering and looking all nervous. I wasn’t met with the reaction I’d expected though, as Serene tried to prematurely stumble out of bed with a look of utmost concern.

“Wait, wait! We can talk about it! They’re just awful dreams, right? Is… is that why you’re here? You just have really awful dreams?” Serene asked. She was beginning to reclaim her freakishly-optimistic tone from the day before, but thankfully not so intensely. The mare I’d previously thought to be mind-numbingly, sugar-coatedly, brain-mashingly hyper may have just been legitimately cheerful, or perhaps my unsavory attitude from the previous day had colored my interpretation of her personality. She walked gingerly over to the corner of the room I was standing in (I was hunched over like I was ready to be fitted with a dunce cap) and placed a wing over me. I looked up from my self-pity in shock.

“Hey… tell me about your dream.” She whispered.

“You’ll just think I’m crazy…” I sighed.

“Well, yeah… I mean, dreams are always crazy, right? That’s why they’re dreams.” She giggled.

Honestly, I’m not sure if I was being flippant, hopeful, or if I just felt guilty for being a wholeheartedly-lame pony-friend to Serene, because I started to lead her along.

“Well, if you must know… In all my dreams, I’m, er, someone else.”

“Cool! That’s not so bad, right? I used to have this recurring dream where I was a seapony and there was this-uh, nevermind. Keep going.”

“It’s just… it’s like, this existential crisis dream I keep having over and over again.”

Serene blinked.

“In some abstract way, I suppose you could imagine it reflects my life situation. Let me put it this way… I mean, in the dream, I’m not me, and I come from somewhere really far away, and I’m lost,  so that would be all fine and good if anypony else actually believed the place existed, but they don’t, and so they think I’m crazy.”

“…and in that dream, do you really want to go home?”

Frankly, at that point I wasn’t sure whether I felt like I was in the presence of a childrens’ book character, or a practicing psychologist. “Uh, well, yeah. More than anything! –in the dream, I mean.”

“Which hurts more? Not being able to go home, or not having anypony believe in you?”

A rare state to encompass me was that of speechlessness.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If Serene had really deserved to be a mental patient, I would go so far as to say she was the most level-headed one in all of Equestria. Some ten minutes or so into our conversation, I learned the reason for her committal, and it certainly didn’t come about because she had wanted to let me know. It was more of an inevitable event.

“-and that’s why I always used t-” She sputtered in her usual, chipper way, and stopped mid-conversation. Serene just stopped. As if someone had come around and flicked the ‘off’ switch on the back of her head, or as if she were a wind-up toy in need of, well, winding, she stopped dead, eyes still focused on me. I spent the better part of a minute walking around her, waving a hoof about, and checking the clock to be sure I hadn’t been sucked into a time vortex or something (not as ridiculous of a proposition as the reader may be thinking at this moment). I was just about to start banging on the door for help when she started again as if nothing had even happened.

“-o go there when-Eeeeeep!” She had picked up the sentence from where she’d left off, but promptly whirled about and emitted a sound worthy of Fluttershy when she found me to be standing behind her, mouth agape.

After staring at the floor for a moment, we both had a good laugh about it, though frankly her story was nothing deserving of mirth. I learned that Serene had once been an ‘air-traffic controller’ of sorts for one of the busier transportation hubs in Las Pegasus. I mean, I called it an ‘air-traffic controller’ though she hardly even spoke about her former occupation, and I had to glean from little fragments of stories that it involved a busy city in the clouds and scheduling pegasus-drawn shipping-runs and all that. The only time Serene ever seemed sad was when asked about her former lifestyle…

Apparently, one day on her flight home from work, she struck a cider cart head-on at an intersection. Now, from what I’ve been told, cloud-architecture isn’t quite as resilient as good old brick and mortar, and though it’s safe for supporting pegasi, pretty much anything with enough momentum will simply punch right through it. …and Serene sure did. Careening out of control, poor, young Serene rammed headfirst into street after street of the multilevel Las Pegasus promenade, finally winding up on the ground itself. The local guard recorded the incident as one comprised of exactly fourteen distinct, sequential crashes by the same pegasus (a feat which Serene was sure to remind me had since been entered in at least three books of world records).

Apparently later she came to in a nearby hospital on the ground, seemingly coherent and unharmed, yet it wasn’t long before whatever obscure, freakish, prefrontal cortex damage she’d sustained reared its ugly head. She froze up as she’d just done near the end of her pre-discharge interview at the hospital. Months passed, and the best medical unicorns they could get were unable to glean the nature of the anomaly which seemingly stripped her awareness of the passing of time at random intervals. Funds ran low. She had no family nearby to take care of her. It was far too dangerous to live in the clouds (in flight more often than not) when she couldn’t get past the hour without an episode which could send her hurtling at the ground. So, finally, in a roundabout, bureaucratic way, they sent her to the only place that remained and was willing to provide her with care: a sanitarium.

It broke my heart to see that a saner pony than I had been condemned to that place, and frankly, there was no sadder sight than the dinner-plate eyes of a pegasus who’d been told never to fly above eight feet. It was a sadness I quickly tried to diffuse by admitting that I couldn’t, neigh, had never flown before, though I had managed to glide for a few seconds on the side of Canterlot Mountain before spiraling into the ground. Serene didn’t believe it at first, and she seemed nearly offended, but aside from the occasional, suspicious glance at my sides, she dropped the issue altogether.

With nothing much left to hide, and certainly nothing interesting to do, I confided further with her on the subject of my ‘dreams’. In this perpetual, ponified, gee-I-have-this-friend-with-this-problem-who-isn’t-me-but-could-really-use-your-advice sort of manner, I told her, in no clear terms, about the details of my arrival. She listened patiently, never judging. I always waited respectfully when she zoned out except for one occasion where I was right in the middle of trying to piece together what I remembered of Michio Kaku’s contributions to string field theory. Other than that, I was a saint, I swear it!

Despite her ever so depressing story, Serene insisted she was pretty darned happy with most of the things in her life (albeit she was bound to be lonely at times), and honestly, I believed her. That yellow nut taught me something about what it meant to be at peace with my life situation. She reminded me that just perhaps I wasn’t the only one in the whole world who was having a rough time. Though I’m not entirely sure if it was her intention, she inspired me, and as the chime for breakfast sounded in the halls and a gentle rapping was heard on the outside of our door, she turned to me and took me totally by surprise.

“Those dreams that keep you up at night… they’re more than just dreams, aren’t they?” She whispered.

I was dumbfounded for a moment, and chose to reply cautiously.

“What? I don’t seem like enough of a madmare to you?” I Queried. (Get it?)

“…you’re really weird, but I like you.” came the giggled response.

“Why are you trying so hard to cheer me up?” I asked warmly.

“Well, first of all we’re stuck in this room half of the time by ourselves, and second of all… well, sometimes you just need somepony else to believe in you! Come on, let’s go! Breakfast on Tuesday is always haycakes…” Serene replied, trailing off.

“Oh, er, my… favorite?” I mumbled.

A slightly more aggressive round of knocks, coupled with the swift opening of our door soon had us complacently walking down the corridor in the general direction of a cafeteria I had never laid eyes on before, but quickly vowed to ignore the arrangement of, as it turned out to be an insultingly boring use of rectangular space. That is, it was completely out of tune for the people, well, ponies which occupied it. That cafeteria… I suppose the best analogy I could possibly offer is that it was very much like storing a bar of gold in a shoebox, or trying to cup hot tea in your hooves, or… Does that make any sense?!? On second thought, perhaps I really did deserve to be stuck there.

Despite the bleak, for pony standards, appearance of the whitewashed room, my experience within it was anything but. The characters I witnessed as I passed the threshold would share a permanent place in my memory.

“Ahem!” spoke the nurse who had ushered us out into the cafeteria. I was just standing barely inside the entrance while Serene remained behind me.

“As most of you should know to be a long-standing tradition within our little family, I’d like to take this opportunity for everypony to welcome a new member.” She added, speaking clinically. About eighty percent of the patients looked up. It wasn’t a very large room, accommodating only five or so tables. The nurse turned her attention to me.

“It’s OK, dear. Just tell them your name and where you’re from and we’ll find you a place to sit.” She added.

“Well, er…” I stuttered. “You know what? Let’s just get this over with. I’m Query, and I’m a visitor from another planet.” I couldn’t tell if the nurse really rolled her eyes or not. Most of the patients just blinked and/or returned to what they had been doing previously. A few of them shrugged. One particularly striking stallion with far too many colors in his coat doubled over in a uniquely raucous fit of laughter, and then absent-mindedly continued to stuff a large chunk of bread into his mouth and choke on it. One of the sanitarium staffers had to run out and whack him on the back. A shy mare or two looked away, and a slightly intrigued-looking elder stallion at one of the nearby tables spoke up.

“Hey there!” he chuckled. “You know, I’m from another planet, too. Why not come and take a seat?” Having absolutely no idea what to do with myself, and scarcely caring at that point, I complied, taking a seat next to an orange mare with a carrot-and-trowel cutie mark who didn’t even bother to look up. Serene plonked down to my left, fluttering a bit and making the young mare next to her drop a fork, for which she apologized.

“So, where are you from?” continued the peculiar, pale stallion. I really must stress that he was OLD, and I mean balding, liver-spot-covered old.

“Uh… a little place called Earth.” Was my reply.

“Really?!? You don’t say? Me too! I‘m from Earth.”

“Wait… really?!?” I asked, perking up a bit.

“For sure, lass! Why one day, during my youth, I was just strolling around on good ol’ Earth when I-” he began, abruptly interrupted by one of the sanitarium staffers.

“Are you all done with that?” asked the stout, male unicorn, pointing to the crumb covered plate in front of him.

“No.” the old stallion deadpanned. The staffer blinked once at the empty plate and took it anyway.

“He’s a compulsive liar…” Serene whispered to me. I almost flustered a bit with embarrassment.

“Am not!” grumbled the old stallion. “I’m not one of those old folks who can’t hear, missy, by the way. The name’s Emerald Greens! I used to be the castle gardener for none other than Princess Celestia, herself!” ‘Emerald Greens’ extended a hoof with the intent to shake mine.

“His name is Silver Justice, and he was the standby small-claims judge in Ponyville when I was a filly…” grumbled Serene. Silver just darted his eyes around and nervously bit his lip. I didn’t really know what to do so I shook his hoof anyway.

I actually laughed a little, and spoke. “I’m guessing the reason you had the job for so long is that legal-system employees rarely get called to work in Equestria.”

“Darned straight!” retorted Silver “I held that position for the better part of one-hundred and three years!”

“He’s in his early seventies, at worst...” grumbled Serene. It was odd to see her suddenly so serious. If I had known better, I would have said that she was mildly embarrassed.

“Is this… something that happens regularly?” I asked cautiously.

“Absolutely not. That was a one-of-a-kind occurrence.” deadpanned Silver.

Serene produced a combination of a sigh and a giggle before burying her face in her hooves.

After a short time, trays containing syrup-covered, round things, which could only be described as ‘haycakes’ were gently placed in front of us (and Silver insisted that he had never heard of them before). As I switched alternately between devouring the haycakes and allowing my eyes to dart about the room, I couldn’t help but be amazed by a certain quality shared by all my fellow, ponyish mental patients. Their various disorders and/or difficulties were frankly cartoonish and exaggerated. I watched as a similar plate of haycakes was placed in front of a very frazzled-looking, blue mare with a screw for a cutie mark. She managed to express her gratitude in a high-class, proper English accent right before degenerating into a fit of barking. The oddly multicolored stallion from before was still laughing, and still, almost desperately, trying to finish eating. One young donkey was even sitting under a table with his cafeteria tray, animatedly talking to the nothing seated at his right.

I let out a melancholy sigh as I looked down to see that my last haycake had vanished on its own initiative, and also that a familiar grey orb was frantically hiding itself in one of the tufts of my mane. Serene had frozen up again, this time with a fork carrying a neatly-portioned square of haycake positioned just centimeters from her open mouth. For a moment, the syrup continued to drip off of it like molasses, leaving a neat little spot on the fur of her barrel, just below her neck.

“You don’t see that every day…” mused Silver.

When she came to, she wrinkled her nose and found that even with the enormous effort she put forth, it was a spot her tongue just couldn’t reach. I surrendered my napkin without really thinking about it. Later, (napkin-less) when I decided to lick a hoof clean, the other ponies thought I was gross. Once I was able to taste the bleach used to clean the cafeteria floors, I had no choice but to admit they were right. Just as the cafeteria staff brought us some little mint cookies and were about to lead us out, I felt almost possessed to ask a particular question. I suppose I just wanted to prove I was still as fiendishly clever as always.

“Hey Silver, do you always lie about everything?” I asked, politely of course (with a bit of a sly grin). I knew I had him the very moment he started to nervously bite at his hoof. It was the perfect paradoxical question. There was no way he could-

“You know the answer to that…” he said, smugly, before excusing himself.

I turned red for a second before bursting into a fit of genuine laughter. Surprisingly, Serene joined in too, and it wasn’t long before we were leaning on each other with tears in our eyes.

“I love that guy… He’s even harder to believe than I am, but, you know, completely sinister with sharpness, too…” I heaved. “I hope his, uh, foals come to visit all the time just to hear what he says.”

“Heh…” was all I received in response. It wasn’t long before we were ushered down the hallway and brought to rest in our room once more. After the door was closed, we just stared at each other completely stone-faced before falling into yet another fit of laughter.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dinner at the Ponyville Sanitarium was more of the same, and I must admit that as the days flew by, time seemed to move faster and faster. I had arrived on a Tuesday, and by Thursday I’d already consumed far too many haycakes, watched puppy-dog-eyed as Serene was allowed to head out on a short field-trip, and even managed to put in a few requests for the book-cart which made its way down the hall every few days. Serene had a large collection of mystery novels floating around in her cupboard. When I found out that the books were borrowed from a local library on rotation, I made sure that they got me some vector calculus and a big ol’ tome of matrix math. In the evenings, Serene and I would sit and read together, and after having surrendered two days-worth of cookies to her, I finally managed to keep the yellow mare in place long enough to explain Gauss-Jordan substitution.

I wasn’t fooled when her condition seemed to flare up just a bit too often during those times. Eventually I gave up and read Daring Do and the Hoof-brayed Prance. This was also a mistake, as Serene proved more than capable of expanding on every story element after I read it… to the point of acting as a sleep aid during the wee hours. Bringing up the right novel would get her just as bouncy and hyper as she had been on the day we met.

By the end of the first week, I was feeling, well… uneasy. This was certainly not the fault of Serene, who I must press had become the best roommate ever, and I singlehandedly owed it to her for not letting me introspect myself into a black hole. I just felt kind of useless and homesick.

“For all I know, maybe I am crazy!” I groaned from the top bunk.

“Well, silly, I’m pretty sure it’s not normal for crazy ponies to actually think that they’re crazy.” Serene offered.

“But what if I’m so insane that I’m willing to believe that I’m insane just so that I’ll think I’m not?!?” I cried.

“That is kind of crazy…” Serene mumbled.

“Exactly!” I whimpered.

“No, no, nonono… that’s not what I meant.” She started. “I just think you’re being too hard on yourself. I’ve already said a million times that I’m willing to believe you!”

“Am I supposed to believe that you really accept I’m an extraterrestrial who spent a lifetime, possibly in a parallel universe, studying the mechanics behind super-advanced machines capable of performing billions of floating-point math operations per second… and that I just woke up in Equestria one day, completely bloody baffled?!? Are you even listening to yourself?!”

“No, I’m listening to you… and you seem to always have the same story. You also seem to be super smart and an even better friend, so excuse me for believing in you!”

I merely stopped and blinked when I realized our conversation had degenerated into a shouting match where I was arguing for my own insanity.

“Well, thanks Serene…” I said, meekly.

Over the course of the week I had let certain miscellaneous details about my life slip, and Serene was the only pony I’d met who didn’t immediately resort to judgment. She always just listened to my story and seemed to take it at face value. At first I suspected perhaps it was just that my ‘stories’ were so fanciful to her, a self-confessed fantasy-novel maniac, but as time passed I began to develop the feeling that it was something more than that. Whenever I mumbled that I just wanted to get out of the sanitarium, she looked at me like she wanted to give two different answers. She always told me that if I was lying, I should have admitted it, walked out the door, and put A.K. Yearling out of business.

Of course, I always tended to leave out the one small detail of having been a dude before my ponification incident. I mean, that would have been awkward, right? Actually, what was I saying? Why would not being a mare feel awkward?!? I had to quietly accept that my gender identity was like a watermelon caught in an industrial diamond press. I just felt kind of stagnant. I’d spent so much time caught up in a real tale of intrigue and madness and running-from-the-law that it just felt really odd to suddenly be living the peaceful life in a mental institution. I couldn’t stop dwelling on my encounters with Celestia, playing them over and over; reliving the escape over and over. I pictured the scenarios organized in a dozen different ways. I quietly wondered if I could have handled my whole adventure more properly and won. I wasn’t sure exactly what would have constituted ‘winning’, but I’m pretty sure it would have involved bringing the questionable princess to justice and not being a mental patient.

There were two little voices inside of me. One was more and more afraid of digging in the dark and uncovering truths which would quickly swallow me whole again. Another was increasingly brave and fidgety and told me to go ahead and send those doubts to hell because my spirit wanted another chance at things. Geez, my subconscious could really percolate up some dramatic stuff when it wanted to!

Whether I truly felt the spirit of high adventure or not, and certainly to my great surprise, things were about to get much more interesting…

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It was the morning of my eleventh day of benign captivity when I woke up to rapping on the door, nudged Serene from her sleep on the bottom bunk, and drowsily made my way down the hallway to the cafeteria, just like any other morning. I sat in the same place as always; that orange-colored mare never bothering to speak to me or anypony else. It was the sixth day in a row where Silver insisted that he’d never before seen a slice of toast at any point in his long life. I suppose the charm of that was going to last a while, as I still smirked every time, without fail.

Every now and then something wonderfully chaotic would happen during a meal, and that particular morning was no exception. About halfway through, the odd, blue pony with the screw on her flank got loose and wound up chasing a guy in a wheelchair (don’t ask me why ponies have wheelchairs) to and fro through the halls. About three of the sanitarium staffers joined in the chase, tripping over each other more than they were actually helping. The strange, multicolored stallion from before just had tears in his eyes and wouldn’t stop rapping on the table. Good ol’ Silver pretended not to notice and simply told an ‘anecdote’ from his young life which was most assuredly something he’d read in a book.

After things calmed down, I got off my haunches and prepared to walk back down the hallway as usual. I always took a moment to glance in the direction of the exit, but frankly I was too scared to draw attention to my interest in said door. The place was no prison, for sure, but they did have absolutely the biggest pegasus I’d ever seen (In a blue shirt, to boot) guarding the only exit. I suppose they really didn’t want the negative publicity associated with ponies like Miss Screwloose busting out on the town…

I was very surprised when one of the unicorn staffers stopped me in my tracks and informed me that I needed to see somepony, hustling me up the stairs of a wing I was unfamiliar with and leading me into the presence of a frosted-glass office door. It read ‘Evaluation’ plainly and simply, in gold lettering. Well, to be honest it said something more like ‘]\/LICIO>’, but my ability to read pony-writing had taken a sharp turn for the better after having been locked in a room with books for more than a week. Hopefully at this point in the narrative it’s clear that I was always something of an intellectual. If not, let me say it: I was a terrible, terrible intellectual, and I always had been.

I was slightly nervous about walking into a room labeled ‘Evaluation’, but with really no alternative, I just squinted a bit as the door creaked and folded away to reveal... a completely plain, green-painted office with a dark, wooden desk. It looked exactly like a setting straight out of the sixties, actually. I meekly stepped in, closed the door far too violently with a hind leg (on accident), and blushed. Imagine my surprise for the umpteenth time when a certain chocolate-brown unicorn spun about in the chair.

“Doc?!? I-but-wh-” I sputtered. I sort of fell on my haunches.

“It’s nice to see you again, too.” said Doctor Willcrest, placing both his front hooves on the desk with a wry smile.

“I thought you only worked at the castle infirmary as some kind of big-wig physician/counselor!” I spouted.

“I do, but I’m now required to visit here every week and evaluate your mental health, for reasons you’re well aware of.” He said, calmly.

“Excellent! My mental health, I mean. My mental health is excellent! I think you should just tell everypony I’m OK and let me be on my way. The other nutters-I mean not like me-I’m not a nutter-are nice, but I really think I’ve gotten all the health I’m going to get out of this situation.” I pleaded.

The doctor sighed. “There are various categories of committal, Query, and yours, I’m afraid, is not of the step-out-and-do-as-you-please variety…”

I blinked, perhaps showing just a bit more irritation than was called for. “Oh, come on! You were all about standing up for me at the castle! You were fine with sticking your neck out for me then and look where it got us… Why did you take all those risks if you just wanted me locked up anyway? I’ve been sitting around eating haycakes all week and now you’re just going to show up and smile at me?”

“Haycakes are rich in several grains and very good for your heart. I happen to like them.” He mused.

“Yeah, yeah, I do too, but seriously what are you even up to?!?” I asked.

The doc took on a pleading expression before continuing. “Really, Query.. I didn’t want you to get hurt. That’s why I pulled all those stunts. Things have been very, er, unusual at the castle as of late, and-”

“-and if you’re not clueless you could probably tell that the Princess wa-” I interrupted.

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!” he hissed, bringing his left hoof to his mouth. “The walls in here are paper-thin…”

“Sorry…” I added. “Just please tell me you have a plan. I can’t help but feel like I should be doing someth-”

“Query…” he began, nearly tearing up. “I don’t think that now is the time for that. I’m, shall we say, in over my head…”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I’m not exactly in this alone, Query. I have other ponies to be worried about.” His voice dropped to a low whisper. “Of course things aren’t as they seem, but I have a family to worry about, Query. I don’t much fancy ending up dead and having them dragged into this!”

“So don’t get involved. Just help me be on my way so I can do what I have to do.” I pleaded.

“And what exactly is it that you ‘have to do’?” he replied, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, I’m not- I haven’t- Don’t you trust me?” I sputtered.

“Another escape would just put us both in danger!” He said, slapping a crumpled, muddied sheet of paper on the desk. “This got stuck to my hoof as I was walking in the front door, by the way.”

I was immediately able to recognize my own wanted poster. “Please tell me these were only in Ponyville?”

“They were focused around the general area, I think, maybe a bit more. I don’t know! I’m not the royal guard. All I know is that we’d both be better off if you’d just calm down now and let me do my job. I need to have this formal evaluation in the mail by sundown…” he sighed.

“So you just expect me to sit here while you show me ink blots?!?” I asked incredulously.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d show me some thanks for keeping you out of the dungeon by not making this situation any more dangerous.” He said.

I could tell that my old friend was fast becoming more tired and flustered than ever. It seemed like he’d been under a constant torrent of stress which had worked to erode his patience, or his patience with his patients, or something. I spent the longest time staring at my hooves, just trying to come up with a plan. If my adventurous side was going to take over, I was going to have to start making my own path, solving my own problems, covering my own tracks. I knew that the only thing I really wouldn’t look forward to was saying goodbye to Serene. Eventually, I worked up the courage to speak again.

“Just… just what would it take for you to believe I’m not really nuts? Would you trust me again? You could just let me out the back door some night. I’d be gone.” I pleaded.

“You were committed indefinitely by royal decree. I can’t just release you! It’s mad, and short of anything but the agreement of multiple doctors on your condition, I wouldn’t even think about doing anything. You know, you could start by telling me the truth about who you are, where you really come from… You were incoherent when I met you, then you were delusional in front of the Princess. I’m not exactly convinced that you’re in your right mind, to put it bluntly. I take my job seriously, Query, and I am genuinely concerned for you.”

“But… who runs this place? Can’t you just tell the Ponyville Sanitarium I’m being transferred?”

The Doctor pulled on his face with exasperation. “Do you not remember what you are accused of? My psychological evaluations are supposed to go directly to the royal chambers!”

“…and are those royal-types ever going to think anything is up if those reports keep coming no matter what’s actually going on in the meantime?”

“Well, I… Query, if anypony found out… No. Just no… Perhaps we should start with the Horschach test…”

I felt my adrenaline running out. Nothing I had said was working, and I really didn’t want to have to bother and tell Willcrest the ink-smear he was holding up really looked like a rotating hypercube to me. Perhaps it sort of looked like a stand mixer? No? A ferris wheel being ridden by a T-Rex? Ugh, I had to focus. Finally, a lightbulb went off in my head. It was a fabulous, clever, gleaming, super-ultra-guilt-riddling plan of such total, pure brilliance that everything going on outside my head seemed to freeze for a moment. If I didn’t go through with it, though, would I ever get out of the nut-house? Oh man, would I even be able to live with myself after working this evil plan on the pony who once saved my life?

“Query? You seem a little spacey...” Willcrest cooed.

“Um, uh… wait a minute, Doc. You said that you’d take the opinion of another doctor into consideration with regard to my condition, right?” I asked.

“Well, I suppose. That is what I said. Why? Have you been seeing someone else at the sanitarium here?” he said.

“Just, um… I have somepony you should probably meet. Just give me a moment to get him!” I yelped, bolting for the office door.

“Query, I-”

“I swear it’ll only be a moment, just stick here and let me go get him! Please!”

“Well-”

I slipped out into the hallway and slammed the door behind me. Thankfully, there were no staff members patrolling about on the upper level, so nopony actually saw me leave the office. I knew that if my plan was going to work, I’d have to be completely stealthy. This would be an in-and-out kind of deal, and I’d need some very important preparation to be done. I started ducking into the hallways that spanned off from the primary one on the upper wing, and quietly unlatched the closets I found hidden in certain corners. As I checked each one, I became more and more crestfallen as I found nothing but brooms and mops and various walking aids and whatnot (pony-canes were pretty strange). It wasn’t until I reached a tiny linen closet by the stairwell that I really thought my plan could work.

I grabbed a white lab coat and a stethoscope and stuffed them under my right wing so they would be concealed from anypony who saw me scuttle by. There was only one ‘thing’ left to find. I gingerly began to make my way down the multi-landing industrial stairwells, taking extra care to peer around the corners, as I searched for one of the residence wings. I had generally been escorted everywhere for over a week, so I wasn’t totally sure which part of the sanitarium I wanted to find myself in. To put it mildly, I wasn’t exactly feeling confident. I had always been a gamer back home, and I was the running-and-gunning type through and through, but that just wasn’t going to work here. I thought I was nearly home-free until I whirled around a corner and smacked my muzzle straight into the barrel of a mint-blue staff unicorn.

“Uh…” I mouthed.

“Hi Query…” she said, seemingly unperturbed. “Did you have a nice visit with the Doctor? Shouldn’t somepony be walking with you?”

“Uhh… yyyyyyeah! It was a great visit. Doc Willcrest said I was done and I could just go back to my room.”

“He did, huh? He’s not exactly a trained staff member. I should have a talk with him about that…”

She stared for just a moment at how bulged-out my right wing was. I had to use some serious muscle to compress it up against my body.

“Well… I’ll just go get some rest, I suppose.” I fake-chimed as I started to ‘tiptoe’ away.

“Query?” asked the unicorn. I froze in my tracks.

“Yyyyyeah?” I nearly whined.

“Your room is down that hall. Third on the left.”

“Oh, duh… of course! Heh. Well, that’s why you’re the sane one, I suppose.” I said, forcing a chuckle. I briskly headed down the appointed hallway and sidled up against the wall near a water fountain. I could hear the sound of her hooves approaching. It must have taken all the willpower in the world for me not to breathe like a vacuum cleaner, but somehow I managed to plaster myself flat against the wall and remain semi-calm. One can only imagine my relief when the staff unicorn from just seconds before turned another corner and headed for the stairs to one of the upper wings. I made haste in bolting out into the hallway, across a T-junction, and back to my original destination.

As I passed the dormitory doors one-by-one, I carefully made out the names on each. “Screwloose”, “Mad Horseshoe”, “Nutter Butter”, really?!? I mean, had their mothers all wanted them to wind up crazy? Who in their right mind would actually name their foal ‘Mad’ in a world where the name ‘Golden Trowel’ most likely meant you were going to wind up farming for a living?!? It was a funny thought, but also one that I swiftly put out of my mind when I encountered the name tag I’d been hoping for: “Silver Justice”. The plaque on the door was slightly more tarnished than most of the others, and it sported a slightly different font, suggesting that perhaps old Silver hadn’t exactly shown up yesterday. I was almost tempted to cry with gratitude when I found that they key to the room was tacked to the wall inside a paper envelope. I wasted no time in frantically opening the lock and barging in. As it turned out, Silver was just calmly sitting on the edge of his green bed with a little notebook in hoof, writing with a melancholy look on his face. He sported a pair of reading glasses I’d never seen before.

“Silver!” I exclaimed in a normal tone.

“Who?” he asked.

“You like lying about things and telling farfetched stories, right?” I asked, much more sweetly.

“No.” he deadpanned.

“Excellent! Wanna come meet somepony with me?” I added.

“…not particularly.”

“Great, let’s go!”

I wasted no time in stuffing the poor guy into the lab coat I’d hidden under my wing. As I placed the stethoscope around his neck, I noticed that the coat had been wrinkled a bit more than I’d have liked, but there was no going back now... I stuck my head out the dormitory entrance cautiously, and waited until there were no staff members in sight. As I tried to usher Silver along, I began to worry again. There was just no getting this guy to go anywhere in a hurry. As soon as we reached the top of the stairs, I heard the sound of hoofsteps again and had to frantically drag the both of us around a corner.

It was another staffer, this time: a white, male unicorn. For a moment, Silver looked as if he was about to say something to me, and I nervously stuffed a hoof in his muzzle for nearly half a minute. When I was completely sure that we were alone again, I let go of him, and he scrunched his face up.

“Eugh, whippersnapper, your hooves taste like bleach…” he grumbled.

“I-” I just blinked for a second and licked another one. “Bleaaaaaagh, you’re right.” I sighed.

Silver just chuckled at me and gave a warm smile. “Now, what’cha do that for?”

I paused briefly. “I… I thought you’d be lying.” I said, blushing.

Mere moments later, we had reached the outside of Doctor Willcrest’s temporary office.

“Look, Silver, just be yourself in there… please!” I whispered, before pulling the handle.

“Hey, Doc! Sorry I took so long. Here’s the pony I wanted you to meet…” I chimed, intentionally putting up a chipper facade. As we all came to meet in the center of the room, Willcrest came face to face with the one and only Silver Justice. He eyed him up and down for a moment.

“So… May I presume that you’re the doctor Query has been seeing while in the care of this establishment?” asked Willcrest.

I bit my bottom lip so hard that it nearly bled. Silver seemed to think for just a moment before a wry smile flashed on his face.

“Why yes, good sir! I’m Dr. Beating Heart. I’ve been a psychoanalyst at this institution for the past several years…” he offered. Good, good… I could work with this. I was prepared to chime in with laser precision.

“Well…” Willcrest began. He looked genuinely surprised that I’d managed to produce a ‘doctor’. “Then, what has you analysis of the patient been so far?”

“On what, exactly?”

“Well, specifically, on the topic of her mental health…”

“Oh, yes…” Silver mused. He looked over to me for a moment. “It is in my opinion that she’s very healthy, yes, the very picture of sanity, more or less. You won’t catch her up to anything fishy.”

“Really…? I’ve already made notes about her supposed delusions, detachment from reality….” Willcrest nosed through some papers he held in his magical grasp. “Something about being a space alien from a storybook or something of the sort…”

Silver looked up at the ceiling like he was trying to remember our previous encounters.

“Oh yeah… she definitely gave that one up the first time I saw her.” he quipped. Yessss! I wanted to hoof-pump so badly.

“So… she opened up to you? Do you know anything about her past?” Willcrest asked, raising his eyebrow again. Aaaaaand, my heart turned to ice again.

“Why, yes, in fact. We’ve had the past week or so to make some nice conversation.” said Silver, without skipping a beat.

To my complete and utter surprise, Doctor Willcrest dropped his messy heap of notes and sat right back down at the desk, joined by my newfound savior. I watched, slack-jawed almost, as Silver expertly wove me a past. He was like an unstoppable machine! He invented me a hometown, and some parents, a couple of hobbies which were really emasculating and I would have loved to have kicked him for… I just could barely believe that my desperate, impossible plan was working. For nearly twenty minutes, they quipped back and forth without skipping a beat. Silver continued to pull university names and colleagues out of his proverbial hat! Only when Willcrest looked up at the wall and noticed the post office was about to close did he nearly turn white and politely excuse himself. As he scuttled to get out the door with his stack of papers (presumably to mail a report he was very nervous to be late with) I took the opportunity to speak up.

“So… so whadd’ya say, Doc?” I pleaded.

“Uh...pff...” Willcrest flustered. “Oh, I don’t know… Query, I need some time to think about what I’ve heard.” –and he was gone.

I wasn’t sure if I had been ultimately successful, but I was filled with the most immeasurable gratitude for Silver as we stood alone in the office. I was flabbergasted.

“Silver-buh-whuh-how?!?” I whispered. “How did you pull that off?!? I thought I was crazy. I thought you would spiral off on tangents like you always do and I’d be desperately interrupting! How??!”

He just smiled a wise old smile as he took the stethoscope off and tossed it in a nearby trash can.

“Let’s just say… that was my way of thanking you for being such a good friend to my daughter…” came his gravelly voice.

I just stared blankly.

“That, uh…” he sighed. “…wasn’t a lie…”

“Oh.” I mouthed. “Ohhhhhhhhhh.” Well, I supposed that made sense. Silver opened the door and began to exit before turning back.

“-and Query?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t ever put your hoof in my mouth again.”

We both slipped out of the room unnoticed, quietly chuckling to ourselves.

I very deftly made my way back to my room with Serene, clenching my teeth and praying not to arouse any more suspicion. I nearly collapsed with relief when I closed the door behind me and slid to the ground.

“I was wondering where you’d gotten to!” chimed Serene as she trotted over to me.

“Yeah?” I asked, nonchalantly. She narrowed her eyes.

“Did you have a visit with one of the doctors?” she asked.

“…yeah!” I parroted.

“So, um… how’d it go?”

I laughed out loud, before saying: “You’re not going to believe this…”

With nothing much left to do until lunchtime, we sat on the bed together and I recounted the tale of my nearly-brilliant escapade. Serene was a bit shocked with me at first, but then she wound up hanging onto the edge of her seat as I got to the grittier bits of the story. Funnily enough, Serene thought I would have long since figured out Silver Justice was her father, but I never really was too good at that sort of thing. After all was said and done, she asked me what I thought Willcrest was going to do, I replied that I wasn’t sure, and a pregnant silence descended between us.

“I don’t really want you to go… Is that selfish of me?” sobbed Serene.

I would like to take this opportunity to inform the reader that I did not cry, nor did I at any point hug and/or use the feathers of another being as tissue paper. As a complete and total man, and thusly being comprised of mostly baked beans, garden hoses, and drill bits, I saw it fit only to sit still, acting as a rock for the emotional turmoil in my immediate vicinity. I did not sob out loud that I was going to ‘miss her too’, nor did I do anything else which could possibly be construed to imply or suggest the showing of weakness. I give my word.

So, after much consoling, we headed out to lunch only to meet up with a very sly-looking Silver Justice, who had thankfully long since disposed of his lab coat. I could have sworn he looked younger immediately following our escapade. It wasn’t long before we were back to our usual routine of spilling food and listening to him tell more impossible tales. A little part of me felt like I was home… I felt as though I had a tiny surrogate family. Honestly, I wasn’t totally sure how to feel….

The rest of the day was quiet and routine. I fell asleep on my top bunk bed, right above a snoring Serene, after far too much time wasted looking into the patterns on the ceiling.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

*TAP*

…

*TAPTAP*

…

*TAPTAPTAP*

I was awoken in the wee hours of the morning by a suspicious rustling from the hallway. I bolted upright when the door simply swung open.

“Query?” came a nearly inaudible whisper. I cautiously slipped down the ladder and sidled around the corner of the bed frame. It was impossible to see what was happening in the near pitch blackness.

I blinked. I couldn’t see anything, even right in front of my muzzle. A faint light appeared, and I still couldn’t see anything. (That was when I remembered to retrieve my glasses from the table in the corner.) I was the thing which lit up when I laid eyes on Doctor Willcrest.

“You-!” I started. He shushed me fiercely and clamped my mouth shut.

“We need to move.” He said, barely audibly. He hefted a hooded cloak over my back, and shuffled us out the door, taking an absolute eternity to close it for fear of anypony hearing.

“So-” I started again, but a stern stare stopped me in my tracks. He didn’t speak until we’d both made it out one of the side entrances in the pitch blackness, as well as nestled around the back of the building a bit. I felt a fresh pang of guilt when I realized he was actually shaking from nervousness.

“As you may have deduced on your own, I’ve… reconsidered my position on some things.” He said.

“I know I shouldn’t, but, mind if I ask why? Did the doctor’s argument really put you at ease?” I asked, still in a whisper.

“Heh…” he chuckled quietly.

“You’re going to need these” he added, placing a small bag and a folded bit of paper into a pouch on the side of my cloak. “…and it takes a little more than the word of an old madman to change my mind, you know…”

“He’s not that mad ac-*gasp*” I began, my eyes alight. “You knew all along? How? Wha-wh-aren’t you furious?!?”

“No, I didn’t know at first, but a little suspicion and a look through the patient roster clued me in.” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Yes, I was upset at first, but then I got to thinking…” Willcrest trailed off.

“Look, you’re going to have to make some serious tracks…” he spoke, changing subjects. “The towns adjacent to this one, at least, were still probably clued in about you during the search. You should at least get past Hoofburg before you even speak to anypony. Start down that path, and keep out of the lights around Ponyville.”

“What, wait, wait, back up for a second. What were you thinking before?” I asked. Willcrest seemed to shift back and forth for a moment before responding.

“I was thinking that, crazy or not, a mare which could pull off a stunt like that just might be the right pony to get to the bottom of things, after all. Ultimately, I felt that perhaps I may have been right to place my trust in you all along when I first tripped that guard at the castle.” He said, winking, though he quickly started to seem nervous again. “We’re in a lot of danger, Query. I’ve chosen to trust you, just… Just please don’t do anything foolish.”

“I have friends in there, and I’m giving it all up because I want to be a hero and make things right!!!” I retorted, in my own defense. ”You can count on me. This time, you can count on me!” I added.

There was a long pause as we both stared at the cobblestone and grass beneath our hooves.

“You know what… don’t be so sure about that ‘giving up’ part, Query…” he whispered. “Your friends will still be around when you need them.”

I smiled at him, and disappeared into the night.