The door of the Golden Oaks (never knowingly locked before seven in the evening, please come and read something!) clattered against the wall just as Spike was returning from the kitchen. He wiped the last of the grime from his hands and, without looking up, gave the door a wave.

“Hi Twilight, didn’t expect you back so...”

No purple unicorn stood in the door. Instead a pegasus, wings raised, was framed by the bright sunlight. Spike’s eyes widened as he recognised the visitor, someone who normally only came when she was sure Twilight would be around.

“Fluttershy?”

“Spike, you’re okay? Tell me you’re okay! Um... I mean, if that’s okay...”

“Sure,” Spike said. He tossed the cloth to one side and gave Fluttershy a quick grin. “I just finished cleaning under the sink. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

Fluttershy’s face fell, and the sky seemed to fall with it. “Spike... oh... I don’t know how to say it. Rarity...”

She walked closer to him, putting on a brave face that Spike tried to match with his own but the sinking feeling in his heart was hard to disguise. “What’s happened?”

“She’s missing, Spike. She might have been... she...” Fluttershy shook her pale pink mane and let out an uncharacteristic, frustrated growl. “We don’t know where she’s gone!”

“Maybe she just went out for a walk?” Spike looked into Fluttershy’s big, shimmering eyes for a sign that it might be true. Nothing. Instead she closed them and looked away.

“Rainbow has gone to the station to see if she took a train somewhere but, it seems like she’s just... gone.”

Spike sat down. There really wasn’t much else to do except maybe curl up in his basket and cry his eyes out, but that didn’t seem like a good idea just yet because she might-

A window crashed open, fortunately without shattering, admitting a streak of rainbow fury that bounced off the far wall and tumbled to a halt between Fluttershy and Spike. Rainbow Dash stood up, shook her mane and pawed the ground with an angry glint in her eye.

“She didn’t take the train! Not that those idiots at the station would tell me anything, I had to- oh... hey Spike, I didn’t see you there.”

Rainbow shuffled awkwardly out from between the pair and tucked her wings away. She gently rubbed her muzzle against Spike’s head. “Don’t worry, kid, we’ll find her.”

Spike wasn’t worried. He knew he should be at some level, but he wasn’t, and that scared him a little. He looked up at his two friends and tried to muster some sort of response, but anything he thought to say died in his throat. He swallowed, as if that would somehow get rid of the lump his aborted thoughts were forming there.

“Hey, well, it’s only like that time Applejack disappeared,” he found himself saying. The words had come unbidden. Misplaced hope? The door, open all this time, clicked shut after admitting another pony. It was Applejack. She looked at Spike with blank eyes and shook her head.

“Ah gotta admit the thought crossed my mind, Spike, but this ain’t no simple run-away, not aless y’all think cuttin’ off your hair first is normal for this sorta thing.” Applejack scuffed at the floor and hung her head. “Twilight said there were some weird old curse floatin’ around Rarity’s place. That might have done somethin’.”

“Oh.”

That was all there was to be said. A curse. Magic. Sometimes he wished the stuff never existed – though it would mean he wouldn’t exist either. If magic was involved then of course she hadn’t just run away, she’d been forced out or turned invisible, or teleported not even Celestia could know where. Besides, Spike couldn’t quite think of any normal circumstances where Rarity would just leave without telling anypony where she was going, which meant his vague hopes had been vain to the last. Wasn’t vanity a dragonish trait? Or was it just that they didn’t think things through?

Spike glanced up at Rainbow Dash, who had wandered over to the shelves and was pulling books to the floor, muttering about a temple and a crystal skull. Perhaps that last one is universal, he thought.

“So I guess...” he sniffed. “I guess you’ve got a plan to find her?”

Applejack half nodded. “Twilight said she’d meet us here to talk about it. I gotta tell ya, that curse thingamajig was weird. It felt like mah head wuz turnin’ inside out an’ tyin knots in my ears just standin’ near it.”

“Oh... so that’s what I felt when I went to visit?” Fluttershy’s relief was almost palpable. “I knew I couldn’t just be afraid of disturbing her, it must have been the magic.”

“I difn’t feef anyfinf,” Rainbow said, or tried to say around a mouthful of reference book. She spat the book out.

“You didn’t go to the door. I actually looked inside.”

Rainbow seemed to consider this for a moment, then shrugged and turned to the pile of books at her feet. She stared at it with bewildered eyes before cantering off to the other side of the library.

Spike sighed and levered himself to his feet to resume the never-ending task of re-shelving. He paused with the first book half way to its home. “Hey where is Twilight anyway?”

“She was meant to be here,” Applejack replied. She looked at the others. “Well she said she was going to meet us here.”

Fluttershy’s eyes widened with sudden realisation. “Oh no, oh no no no! Twilight said, after she was done at the boutique, she was going to the Everfree Forest! I thought she’d take one of us with her...”

“You mean she... she went alone? Is she crazy? Rainbow,” Applejack yelled, turning to the pegasus, already fluttering half way up another stack as she sought a book only she knew. “You stay here and make sure Spike doesn’t get in trouble, me an’ Fluttershy will go find Twilight before she gets in trouble.”

“But-”

“But me no buts, either of you!” Applejack butted her head against Fluttershy’s rump, forcing her out the door to great protest. “We ain’t got time to argue girl, now git!”

The door slammed. Spike glared at the pile of books before him, then at Rainbow Dash and finally at the ceiling. “Ponies.”

He tossed the book down on the floor and stomped off upstairs to his and Twilight’s room. He’d always thought it a little odd that he shared a room with Twilight until the idea that he might want to share a room with somepony had suddenly popped into his head, coincidentally around the same time Rarity had given him a new blanket for his basket. He liked to think it still smelled of her, though that was a lie; it smelled of soap and fabric conditioner and the late-night snack he’d taken to bed a few days ago.

But it was comfort. The only place he’d find it for a little while, unless Rainbow suddenly grew purple hair, a horn and the ability to smother him with love, which was unlikely. Spike curled up on the basket and lay his head down, not to sleep, because then he’d have to wake up. He focussed his eyes on some distant point and just stopped thinking for a while.

Despite Fluttershy’s earlier worries the Everfree Forest seemed unusually quiescent as Twilight travelled through it. She walked slowly, taking in the little patches of meadowgrass that grew beneath occasional breaks in the forest’s otherwise grim, unending canopy and enjoying the free time as much as she could, given the circumstances.

The sun was already lowering itself towards the horizon yet the forest was unusually quiet. Any other day this would have worried Twilight. Such quiet usually meant that some dread creature was about to attack but, today, it felt as if they were keeping their distance, leaving her to herself and the peaceful absence of sound. Twilight walked on in silence, thinking hard on the spell she had found, letting her mind roam in the silent woods.

It seemed as if she was still missing something, some huge part of the puzzle. The curse she had found – it could be nothing else – was intimately linked to Rarity’s disappearance, but she couldn’t understand why, or what it had done. She could feel the shape of it, the solution tantalisingly out of reach, but whenever she tried to focus, she lost sight of it in the murk of her own troubled thoughts. It was as if there was a hole in the centre, an idea she couldn’t seem to bring to mind.

Her contemplation was interrupted by the sound of hoofbeats thrashing through the undergrowth. Twilight turned just as Applejack and Fluttershy rounded a corner on the path at a brisk canter. She waited for them to catch up.

“What’s the rush?”

Applejack panted as she drew to a halt beside Twilight. “You never said you were goin’ to the Everfree forest! I thought you were just goin’ back to the library!”

“Spike is really worried about you,” Fluttershy added. “You should have told them.”

Twilight bridled at the rebuke, as if she had to worry about the feelings of everypony all the time! She pawed at the ground and grit her teeth; the ugly feeling from the Boutique was back, tickling at the edge of her mind and giving her another headache. With great care, Twilight lowered her head and tried to banish the tension she felt. “I wasn’t going to be very long.”

“Well it-”

Applejack’s retort died in her mouth and her eyes widened in shock. Twilight’s gaze was drawn to the far side of the path. A pair of eyes, seeming to glow in reflected light, watched them from within the shade of a particularly large tree.

“Zecora?”

The strange zebra stepped out into the light, peering carefully at the three. “Twilight, you have come to me? I thought I travelled you to see.”

“Ah... yes,” Twilight responded. She was never sure how to reply to Zecora’s constant rhyming and always had to fight the urge to try and match it. Zecora gave her an odd smile and beckoned for the trio to follow. She began walking towards the town.

“Twi, are you sure about this?”

Twilight glanced over at Applejack and shook her mane. “I was until a moment ago. Zecora, why were you coming to see me?”

Zecora walked a few steps ahead of them, humming a tune they hadn’t heard before, and then suddenly whirled to face them, eyes still seeming to glow in the never-ending twilight of the forest. She swayed slightly. “You form a link to that I sought, it was near you, or so I thought.”

The zebra turned and kept walking, looking neither left nor right as she continued along the path with the others in tow. She seemed deep in thought.

“Your friend is gone, so much is clear,” the still-strange zebra said after a long silence. Twilight opened her mouth to speak but quailed under a powerful glare from Zecora. “This you must know, or why seek me here?”

“I... I’d hoped she had come through here.” Twilight looked about, at the ground, at the trees, at her friends, as if that would suddenly reveal Rarity’s snow-white form. “There’s a remnant of a curse in her home. I thought maybe she had been driven into the forest.”

Again Zecora laughed and again her eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. She shook her short, shaggy mane. “Your Rarity has not been here at all, or I would have heard her plaintive call. But let me come along with you,” she continued, before Twilight could get out an answer. “Three heads are better than two.”

“Well, I guess we can’t stop you anyway...”

They continued in silence until they reached the edge of the forest, near Fluttershy’s cottage. Fluttershy looked longingly at her home but refused to leave the others when Applejack suggested she go home and rest.

The sun was low, the evening star already visible above it when they reached the boutique. The shop stood empty and forlorn, apart from the prostrate form of Opalescence in one of the upstairs windows, where she had apparently dragged a sizeable scrap of cloth and was contently snoozing the evening away. Zecora halted in the road. “Here is where we find the door that hides the thing we’re looking for.”

“Oh, um, I don’t see any door other than the one to Rarity’s home,” Fluttershy offered. She made an effort of looking around again just to be certain. “Is that what you’re after? Of course, it’s okay if you’re not...”

“It’s a metaphor, Fluttershy,” Twilight said. She frowned at Zecora. “What do you want? What is it you’re trying to tell us?”

Zecora closed her eyes. “Curse speaks to curse dear child. To speak plainly of it...” she gasped and her back legs seemed ready to gave way. Her voice suddenly seemed to come from a great distance. “Hurts.”

“You’re cursed too?”

“A curse I have, but not so bad compared to those others have had.” The return to rhyming seemed to relieve whatever pain Zecora was feeling. Her body, for a moment so frail and fallen, seemed to grow in stature. “I can speak in great detail of many things in song and verse, but great pain awaits me should I fail to make the rhyme, so goes my curse.”

“That’s horrible! Zecora, can’t we do something to-”

“I wish not to speak of it this night! Please, let it go my dear Twilight.” Zecora sat down with a certain finality and fixed her eyes on the door of the Boutique. “This curse is strong and old, I sense. I must stay a while, and ponder whence your friend Rarity did stray, and whether it drove her away. And think...” Her eyelids drifted down until she looked as if she were asleep. “And think.”

“Zecora?”

Silence. Zecora’s only response was a deep breath and a muttered string of syllables in some tongue Twilight had never heard before. The unicorn glanced at her friends, standing in the long shade cast by nearby buildings. Applejack’s shrug seemed to say it all.

Twilight backed away as quietly as she could, motioning her friends to join her a short distance from the Boutique.

“That was very odd,” Fluttershy said, her voice low.

“I’ll say. Rhyming think with think is hardly even a rhyme at all.”

“No, Twilight, I meant-”

“If only I could understand what she’s doing. I think she wanted to tell me something but now she’s just...” Twilight motioned vaguely in Zecora’s direction. “I suppose... I suppose she told me what I had asked about. I need to get back to the library and see what I can find about this curse. If it’s as old as she was implying...” Twilight’s eyes narrowed as she tried to follow the thought to its logical conclusion, but it faded away. She shook her head. “We’re all tired. You two should probably rest a while.”

“Ah might do that if it’s all the same, Twilight. Apple Bloom and those two fillyfriends of hers are probably runnin’ Big Mac and Granny Smith rabid by now. An’ they just don’t know when to lay down a firm hoof, if you see mah meanin’. G’night.”

Applejack tipped her hat, turned and cantered off into the burgeoning gloom, one flank shining bright in the evening light and casting a faint orange glow on the road. Twilight looked past her friend to the dark forests that surrounded Ponyville and wondered...

“Um, Twilight? Is it okay if I come back with you? I’d like to say goodnight to Spike.”

Twilight tore her eyes away from the dark horizon, whatever thought she’d been entertaining lost to the empty sky. She glanced over her shoulder at Zecora’s silent form.

“Sure. She’ll be all right here by herself, I guess.”

The pair set off at a slow walk towards the Golden Oaks, each lost in their own thoughts. There was little to say, except to commiserate over their possible loss, and what could they add to that which had been said before? All Twilight wanted to do was crawl into bed and never get up again, yet her eyes kept dragging to the horizon, with a sense of urgency that faded as soon as it had arrived.

Had she thought about it, Twilight would have recognised the magical influence at work, but her mind was clouded, her thoughts were trapped in a grief that couldn’t allow itself to be expressed.

Zecora watched the three ponies go their separate ways, not with her eyes, which were still closed, but with what Twilight called allsight. Zebra magic was little known in these green, wet, cold lands that Zecora had come to call home, which sometimes gave her little advantages in dealing with the magic users here. Their skill in the manipulation of the hidden realms was learned; Zecora’s was innate which was both a blessing and... she laughed inside at the word “curse”, but it was true. To see the weft and weave of magic in everything, to be intimately aware of the power flowing though all creation, through every rock and tree, every living creature, was inspirational, yet it let her see more, far more than she would ever want. She saw the souls of those around her, saw their loves and aspirations, their anguish and fear as nebulous clouds of light and colour and lurid darkness roiling around the magical force meshed into the very fabric of their bodies.

Minds were something else, of course. Glowing bright as a flare, bright as the core of the brightest forge and yet still dulled in comparison to the minds of old as they must have been. To read one would be like trying to read the sun.

Her friends were gone. Now little more than distant fireflies glowing in the dark-but-never-dark shadows of the town, yet tethered to the form before her by a link so tenuous that even Zecora had trouble perceiving it. Zecora turned her full attention to the curse that had called to her, called to the very bones of her body, and spoke.

Magic was alive. Everypony knew the mantra, every conscious user of magic understood that magic lived, and flowed, and even acted on ineffable wishes of its own from time to time. Some magic, though, was more than merely alive. Some magic remembered.

So she spoke, and listened, and waited.

The road to Sweet Apple Acres seemed longer in the twilight than at any other time of day, with twists and turns that, for most town-dwelling ponies, might be enough to hide any number of marauding monsters and crouching dragons. Applejack had no such illusions. At worst she’d stumble across a grumpy rattler or an annoyed spider, the former being easy enough to avoid and the latter a useful recruit for keeping blackfly off her apple crop.

At least, any other night, that would be the case. Tonight Applejack couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched, maybe even followed. The urge to look over her shoulder was enormous but she refused, knowing that there was nobody out there. Certain. Mostly certain anyway.

Quite sure.

Applejack realised she’d stopped walking and found herself giving a death glare to a small shrub at the side of the road. She snorted, flicked her tail and forced a hoof forward to continue her journey. A twig snapped. Applejack bolted across the road and into a bush without even thinking, so fast that her hat was left twirling around the tip of a protruding branch.

Seconds passed like hours as Applejack waited, holding her breath, until she finally realised that there was no terrible monster lurking in the fading light. She let out a sigh of relief and stepped back onto the road.

“Well that-”

A horrendous screech echoed across the darkened fields and orchards, rolling across the sky like living thunder. Applejack ducked back into the bush before she’d even taken the breath to yell in fright and had to stuff her hoof in her mouth to keep from making a noise, lest whatever it was hear her.

Except... the sound was wrong. Loud, yes, and terrifying, but it was obviously a long distance away. Applejack carefully peeped out of the bush again and looked around, then up at the sky; no firey flying lizards looked back at her, just the early evening stars. With great care, Applejack eased out of her hiding place and looked around the horizon, failing to see any sign of a dragon. Another plaintive, fainter roar told her it was still there, way off to the north-east in the deep forest.

“So there is a dragon,” she whispered. “Oh, Rarity...”

She retrieved her hat and tucked it firmly on her head as she set off at a gallop back to Ponyville. Big Mac and the girls would have to wait.

Twilight and Fluttershy cantered into the library just as the first stars were beginning to peek through the deep evening sky. The bright warmth of the main reading room was almost luxurious compared to the outdoors, the air having taken on an unseasonal chill as the sun fell below the horizon.

With a brief smile and a nod from Twilight, Fluttershy made her way through the reading room and up to where Spike was presumably sleeping, though Twilight would have been surprised if even the little dragon could sleep tonight. She knew she probably wouldn’t. Of course that didn’t apply to everypony; Twilight had spied Rainbow Dash curled up on a little pile of books the moment she’d entered, a copy of Daring Do and the Legendary Crystal Magnet propped open before her outstretched forelegs. It hadn’t been Daring Do’s most creative adventure.

Twilight envied Dash her rest, but didn’t think to shake her out of it. Instead she turned to the shelves, pulled several volumes of Starswirl’s Historia Magicae from the reference section and set them on a reading desk. She settled herself in front of the desk, took out a fresh quill and parchment and flipped open the first book.

The book was heavy going, even by Twilight’s standards, and within moments her eyes were watering with the effort to read and stay awake. Twilight shook her head and threw the quill down in frustration, to clatter noisily against the ground. And then she looked up.

“Something isn’t right,” she said. “I read one of these volumes last week, cover to cover! I shouldn’t be falling apart trying to read the...” she glanced at the open volume. “The contents page?”

“Maybe you’re just tired,” Rainbow Dash groused. She sat up with a loud yawn, stretched, and stared at the book before her. “Huh. Fridges don’t work that way.”

Twilight turned back to her books and tried to concentrate. The words swam under her gaze, and in moments she was slumped over the table, head nodding until her horn bounced against the parchment. The surprise woke her suddenly, causing her to momentarily lose control of her magic. A gasp tore from Twilight’s lips when the tiny magical bead suddenly split and buzzed off in several directions.

“Did you...” She turned to Rainbow Dash but the pegasus was already settled down and reading again.

Twilight’s eyes blazed with purple fire as she sought out the hidden paths her magic had taken. To her surprise she dimly perceived a clutch of tenuous magical links stretching out into the world, one in the direction of the boutique, one upstairs, two more out of town. She drove her mind along the shortest of the threads and found something, glowing bright as a storm lantern, flitting about like a butterfly. A mind and one she recognised somehow. Fluttershy.

Marvelling, she pushed herself along another thread. This one showed her a mind as solid as a hammer, aflame with determination. Applejack, she suddenly knew. It was Applejack. Twilight sent herself along a third path and then withdrew to herself, doubt suddenly pervading her mind. She should be searching for a solution, not playing with these magical toys. They were a distraction, she was losing time, she should-

Twilight crushed the thoughts in her mind, recognising the influence of another’s magic on her. She extended her mind out along the final path and found another mind, glowing like a dull fire, wrapped in a web of the same magic that had taken her there. Twilight probed clumsily, seeking some way to understand what she perceived, feeling the edges and shapes of ideas she had never conceived possible. The mind before her seemed to glow with recognition, but dulled by something and, without conscious thought, Twilight’s essence reached out-

“Rarity!”

The other unicorn faded from her perception, lost as Twilight’s mind hurtled back, back to herself, back again to the one place that had tried to block her passage. Back to the curse, she now knew, wound around everything like poison ivy. She saw it, saw the malevolent mind it had formed, perceived its intelligence if not its origin and the power within her suddenly leapt forth, knowing, understanding. Cut there...

Crack! It was a sound not unlike that made by the spine of a new book opened too fast by an eager reader. The vision receded, the links and minds lost to her. Twilight’s perception returned to her body such that her head recoiled, thudding against the floor she hadn’t even realised she was lying on.

A shadow crossed her vision, quickly resolving into the concerned, yet amused face of Rainbow Dash. “Dash? What...”

“That was some trick, Twilight! I never thought I’d see a unicorn pull a double backflip and a reverse meteor but, eheh, your landing could use a little work.”

Twilight’s groan was lost in the tramp of hooves and feet on the stairs and, moments later, Fluttershy’s and Spike’s faces hovered over her as well.

“Twilight, what happened? I heard you shout Rarity’s name, then it sounded like you snapped something, and then you were stomping all over the place!”

“Apparently I was somersaulting,” Twilight shot back, more viciously than she’d intended. She tried to push herself upright but quickly gave in; everything hurt. Even parts she didn’t know she had were telling her how much pain they could make her feel. She flopped back on the ground and looked up at the three standing over her. “Did you say I snapped something?”

“It... it sounded like... I mean, it’s possible it was just my imagination...”

“No, I heard a sound too,” Twilight said. The pain was beginning to ebb a little. With a little help she was able to pull herself to a half-squat. “There was some link between us, something to do with that curse. I saw it... I think I did something to break it, but...”

“I heard a dragon call,” Spike suddenly chimed. He looked between Fluttershy and Twilight. “It’s true! It woke me up!”

“Oh poor little Spike, did you have a scary dream?” Fluttershy rubbed Spike’s scales with her snout, apparently in just the right place to set his leg twitching. “Don’t you worry, no big scary dragon is going to come and get you as long as your aunty Fluttershy is here...”

“No, I heard one, it was a long way- cut it out!” Spike swiped at Fluttershy, sending her leaping for the air with a terrified squeak. He folded his arms. “My hearing is better than yours. I know what I heard.”

Fluttershy fluttered over to the far side of the room, where she cowered behind Rainbow Dash. The blue pegasus crouched down, wings raised protectively in front of Fluttershy. “Spike, that was mean!”

Spike glared at the two but spoke to Twilight. “I heard you shout Rarity’s name as well. I thought maybe she’d come back.”

“That’s right! I...” The memories were already fading. She’d performed a feat of magic she’d never even heard of before and... some link between her and her friends had... but then... it was all disappearing like mist in the sunlight. “I saw her, somewhere. She was trapped and hurt. Angry, but... it’s all so distant now, I can barely remember.”

“She’s alive?” Spike practically crawled up Twilight’s leg, big eyes searching eagerly for some hope. “She’s alive, right?”

“I... Spike, I honestly don’t know. I’ve never seen magic like that before.”

“But... but you said...”

“I said I don’t know!”

Twilight turned to shake Spike from her legs. The motion caught the reading table and knocked it over, flinging its contents across the room. Books fluttered through the air, landing with a series of loud slaps on the floor, each causing Twilight almost tangible pain as she imagined the damage done to their bindings.

She turned to glare at Spike only to see his tail disappearing up the stairs.

“Dragons,” Twilight growled as she knelt down to examine her poor, battered collection but, apart from a little superficial damage, the books were unhurt. As she went to pick up the last, which had fallen on its back and flipped open, Twilight glanced at the chapter title.

“On Hidden Things,” she read. It seemed to be about spells like the Ossory’s Pocket. Not important. Possibly interesting. She made a mental note to read it after the day’s crisis was dealt with.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy had settled down in the comfy chairs Twilight kept in one corner of the reading room and were quietly discussing some minor plot-point of the Daring-Do books. Probably the crazy physics of Crystal Magnet, a topic on which Twilight could hold forth for hours. Any thought she’d had of joining the conversation, however, was blown away by a sudden pounding at the door and Applejack’s desperate cry to be let in. Twilight huffed in annoyance and unlatched the door.

“Applejack, I thought you were going home to rest,” she said, barely heard over Applejack’s clattering bolt to the far side of the room. The normally unflappable earth pony peered out of a window before crouching down on the floor.

“Ah was,” the forlorn farmer yelled, pulling her hat down with both forelegs in strange, muted panic. Her flanks were lathered with the sweat of exertion. Or fear. “Ah was nearly home when I heard this sound like somepony wuz followin’ me, next thing ah know this great big dragon is roarin’ across the hills and raisin’ a ruckus like I ain’t never heard!”

“There really is a dragon?” Twilight felt her legs buckle and give way; she flopped onto her rear, barely able to stay upright. “It must have taken Rarity! I spent so much time convincing myself that a dragon couldn’t have taken Rarity, I- she seemed to be in so much... it’s my fault!”

“T’ain’t nobody’s fault,” Applejack said, placing a comforting hoof on Twilight’s back. “It definitely ain’t yours! Blamin’ yourself would be like blamin’ Pinkie Pie for- say where’d that little party animal git to anyway?”

“Probably hiding away in a locked kitchen if she’s any sense,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Oh no, that wouldn’t be like her at all.” Fluttershy’s quiet voice seemed to carry well from her seat in the corner. “Though if she were to bake some sort of special treat, it might be a good way to try and help the dragon understand that we don’t want it to hurt our friend. If it sees that we’re trying to be kind it might... well...”

In the silence that followed, Twilight felt herself returning to some semblance of normality, the presence of her friends reminding her of all the problems they had overcome together. They’d find a way through this, somehow. She stood up, carefully, trying to avoid too many twinges, looked at each of her friends and tried to put on a brave face.

“I think we should all get some rest. If Rarity truly has been coltnapped by a dragon, there’s nothing we can do about it tonight.”

“Um, maybe I should pass by Zecora just to be sure she’s okay, if that’s all right...”

“I’ll go with you,” Rainbow Dash said, thumping her chest. “Gotta look after my friends right?”

“Well... I mean, if you don’t mind...”

Applejack glanced at the door and then at Twilight. “Ah’d better get back to the farm and batten down the hatches fer real this time, an’ ah could use a shower too ah reckon.” Applejack touched a hoof to her hat brim and nodded at Twilight. “Ah’ll see you tomorrow Twilight, bright an’ early, an’ we can kick this dragon’s beehind all the way to the mountains oursel’s!”

“Of course! How... graphic.” Twilight smiled at the thought, though she knew it wouldn’t be anything like that easy if the dragon were fully awake. “And I’d enjoy it as much as the next pony but, first, we should visit the Mayor to let her know what’s going on and then I’ll write a letter to the Princess to ask for any help she can spare.”

There were general sounds of agreement and the others shuffled out of the door and into the brisk night air.

Twilight stood in the now-deserted library, suddenly feeling very alone as she looked at the books stacked high around her. She’d never find anything to do with the curse here and, anyway, hadn’t she broken it now? But no, a tiny thought at the back of her mind said. All she’d done was break its hold over Rarity, and she was still presumably in the clutches of a dragon.

“Spike, could you bring me those new dragon references we had shipped from Canterlot?” Twilight hefted a few volumes of the Historia and started re-shelving them. It was a few moments before she realised Spike hadn’t responded.

“Spike?”

No answer. Twilight climbed the stairs to her room, strange worries floating through her head. Spike had a habit of retreating to some lonely place when he was annoyed or sad. She hoped he hadn’t done it tonight.

Twilight nosed open the door to her and Spike’s room and sighed with relief. Spike was curled up in his basket, chest rising and falling slowly as he slept, probably exhausted by a grief he had managed to hide all too well.

“Oh Spike...” Twilight cantered over to him and put a gentle hoof on his head. “You’ve been so brave tonight, anypony else would have fallen apart at the news. I...”

Twilight swallowed, unable to voice her thoughts now that she was finally facing them. She closed her eyes and wrinkled her snout; sometimes it helped to stop the tears when she did that. Twilight knelt down beside the basket and put her head close to Spike’s face. The little dragon twisted around, stretched and let out a contented sigh.

His eyes opened just a crack. “Twilight?”

“Spike...” Twilight closed her eyes again and let out a long, slow breath. She nuzzled a little closer to the dragon’s all-too-warm face. “I should let you rest. I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m the one who should be sorry,” Spike responded with a theatrical sigh. He put his head up on one elbow and stared past Twilight, looking at nothing in particular. Once or twice he took a breath as if to speak but then let it flow out again between barely parted lips. On the third time, a wisp of smoke followed. Twilight felt an unusual heat against her flesh that persisted a little longer than Spike’s normal flame, Perhaps a dragonish hint of anguish or anger.

His eye’s suddenly swivelled toward her. “Twilight, I’m scared that I’ll never see her again.”

“We’re all scared, Spike, but Rarity’s strong and brave, she’ll be able to take care of herself.” Twilight felt like she was lying, though she knew Rarity was somewhere, but plunged on regardless. “We’ll probably find she’s knocked this dragon into shape and got him trying out a new hat before we even get there.”

Spike seemed to accept this, probably because he was so tired. In truth so was Twilight, but she knew she wouldn’t get any sleep tonight, not while she as still plagued by the nagging worry that she might have delayed her friend’s rescue even by a few hours. Rarity deserves a better friend, she thought. On the other hand, I’m the only me around, so I’d better get to work.

The little dragon was asleep again, arm wrapped around his head like a shield which, in truth, it might have been. Twilight eased herself from the basket and crept out of the room, pausing only to cast dim the candles with a wave of her hoof. She returned to the reading room and her stack of books, those covering the earliest records of Starswirl’s life and research, laid out neatly on the table. Twilight moved the books to one side and laid down a fresh sheet of parchment, before returning to the shelves for anything that might help defeat a dragon. It was going to be a long night.