Ocellus didn’t want to think about her friends’ odds if they’d been in this same situation without her. Most other creatures, and certainly ponies, just weren’t exposed to enough danger in their lives to appreciate the need to hide sometimes.

The creatures that they were running from were determined hunters, more so than most Ocellus had ever heard of. They weren’t distracted by Smolder’s little demonstration for long.

But they had a head start, and a thick enough forest to hide in that they could stay hidden even from the air. Ocellus hadn’t been willing to take any chances—even if she hadn’t seen any of the creatures flying so far. That didn’t mean they didn’t have some kind of tribes like ponies did, and that they wouldn’t send their winged cousins hunting the intruders.

So when she heard a persistent buzzing overhead, and an occasional mechanical roar, she found herself grateful that she’d picked the densest forest for their route.

“Wait here,” she said, changing into a large crow to scout the land ahead.

And sure enough, the tiny bipedal creatures did have flying cousins—or maybe another kind of creature they’d befriended. Huge metal shapes that roared through the air, with rapidly-spinning blades over them that kept them flying and probably protected them from attack.

They were huge and sent air blasting around her, but they were also the wrong creatures to be searching for fugitives in dense forest. They were just too big to go low enough to find anything. So all her and her friends had to do was hide in place until they passed, then continue on.

But they couldn’t keep at it forever. Silverstream was polite about it—she started slowing down, her voice becoming distant and tired. “Can we… find a stream to sleep in for the night?” she asked, though the sun was still high in the sky. “Please?”

“Shelter would be good,” Gallus said. “Not because I’m tired. I could keep going… as long as Sandbar, for sure. But it would be nice to have our backs to something solid if we need to fight.”

“It would be nice if you all made yourselves easier to find,” said a voice from behind them.

Ocellus spun around, but her panic turned quickly to joy as she saw the one standing there. “Smolder, you’re okay!”

The dragon landed on the worn path beside her, grinning proudly at them. “Okay… yeah,” she said. “But not happy about it.” She pointed at her shoulder, to one of the largest scales there.

Yona was already in front of Ocellus, and she was the one whose voice carried the loudest. “You broke a scale! Yona didn’t know dragon scales could break.”

“It’s only a crack,” Smolder said, though her voice lost some of its confidence. “But… it did catch me off-guard. I guess the little squishy guys didn’t like the show I put on. They…” She reached up, running a claw near the broken scale. “At first I thought they were throwing rocks or something, and their aim wasn’t very good. But then one of them…” She winced.

Ocellus could see it now, a tiny drop of green blood emerging from the gap between two scales. It had already dried, and would probably harden soon. Dragons required far worse to bring them down. “I told you not to try to fight,” Ocellus said. “It’s a good thing all you did was show off. If they can do that to a dragon, what would they do to the rest of us?”

“We need to send a message back,” Sandbar said. “Equestria will come for us. They’ll… help us out of this. But they can’t do that if we don’t tell them where we are. They won’t be able to follow the ship anymore if we aren’t on it.”

I could’ve put a message telling them the direction we went on the ship, Ocellus thought. But the creatures spoke our language. They’d find us first.

“So we send a letter back.” Smolder’s eyes settled on Ocellus. “Go on, be a unicorn. Cast a… teleport or whatever. We really should’ve done that when we were still on the Solidarity. Saved a lot of running.”

Ocellus whimpered, ears flattening. She could feel their eyes all on her—even Sandbar, who should’ve known pony magic better than that.

She changed easily—it had been long enough between her last session of spying, and unicorns were simple. “Being a unicorn I can do no problem,” she said, lifting a rock off the ground in her new greenish magic. “Levitating things around is something I do every day. Or glowing so we can see our way around. But… I don’t know how to send messages, or teleport, or…” She whined, changing back into herself. “Or anything else useful.”

She expected Smolder to yell, or maybe Gallus. But that expectation came from months ago. They were better friends now. Better at coping with the stress of surviving in this strange place, apparently.

“We need to do something,” Sandbar said, nodding back at the saddlebags he was wearing. They’d been getting lighter today, as they ate through what remained of their emergency rations. They would last for another day, but after that… “I’m sure Twilight would’ve given us an emergency scroll. And we’ve got a dragon who can send it.”

Silverstream flopped forward into the mud, spraying them all and starting to snore.

“Ugh!” Yona jumped back, stomping and yowling in surprise. “Yona does not like that.”

“We need to rest,” Ocellus said, a little louder. “I think I saw a cave up ahead the last time I scouted. We should shelter somewhere out of sight, in case more of those creatures come looking for us.”

“Sure.” Smolder bent down, scooping Silverstream up out of the mud. “Hey, fish, you can’t sleep in the mud. We’re going somewhere safer.”

Silverstream blinked, yawned, then started snoring again.

“Gallus, can you carry her?”

The griffin looked away, and Ocellus could sense what he wasn’t sharing with them. But it wasn’t her place to say. “Sure,” he said. “I’m strong enough. Sandbar has our supplies, so it’s only fair.”

It wasn’t that much further to the cave. Ocellus stopped them as they got closer, leading them in, erasing their own tracks as they went. Not easy when they had a massive yak to hide, but changelings sometimes had to stay concealed while impersonating large creatures. She had hidden worse.

The cave was hardly what they’d been hoping for—the entrance was small enough that they had to get low and crawl to fit, and the inside had filled with an inch or so of moisture. Ocellus led the way, her horn glowing pink ahead of her. Not all of their group were comfortable with dark, damp spaces.

“Looks like it opens up in here!” she called back. “There’s plenty of room! Just walk through the water until it dries off!”

“You heard her!” came the dragon’s voice a moment later. “Get in. I think I can hear the metal birds coming back.”

Ocellus traced the edge of the cave, where stalagmites and organ pipes gradually closed off passage to all but the smallest creatures. They wouldn’t be going any further.

She stopped as she reached the far wall, where a little sliver of light emerged from the sky above. It looked like previous explorers had taken advantage of the spot for a campfire, because the ground was ashy white and the ceiling had been stained with soot. Is that opening enough ventilation for a fire in here?

Not that it mattered for them. A group of hiding creatures surrounded by unknown strangers didn’t make campfires, they made do with magic.

“Don’t you sleep yet, Sandbar,” Smolder said. “Give us that scroll. Ocellus, you’re going to write it, then I send it.”

Her friends emerged dripping wet with cave water, spreading out along the ground. Gallus and Silverstream fell asleep almost immediately, with Yona soon joining them. For all her complaints about the mud, she hadn’t even taken the time to clean it off.

Sandbar dropped the massive emergency saddlebag onto the ground in front of her.

Ocellus giggled as she saw the huge raft emerging from one half of it, and she yanked it to the side. “Won’t be needing this,” she said, tossing it to a corner of the cave. Just below it was a wax tube, with Twilight’s cutie mark stamped on the end.

“You take care of it,” Sandbar said. “I’m… up all night…” He wandered off to join the others.

Only Smolder joined her as she opened the scroll, unrolling the enchanted paper. Ocellus could feel the buzz of magic from around it, and if she’d run her hooves along its surface she could’ve felt the tiny indentations of the runes stamped inside. They would only be activated by dragonfire.

“To be sent in case of an emergency,” Twilight had scrolled across the page, in her perfect elegant penmanship. “This doesn’t mean an argument or a minor technical problem. My friends and I need your help because…”

A stick of charcoal rolled out from the inside, cracking into two pieces as it hit the ground. Ocellus lifted one in her magic, glancing to the side. “What should I say?”

The dragon yawned. Ocellus had been a dragon enough times to recognize what she was probably feeling—this cave was damp, sunless, and cool. A welcome relief from the summer heat for her, but for a dragon… where Smolder had been fine before, she’d feel the need to rest now. “Whatever. I trust you. How about you ask the ponies to deal with making friends with these weird creatures, so that they don’t try and break any more of my scales.”

Hardly the most important information. Ocellus took nearly five minutes to think of how to start, then started scribbling. There was limited space, and the charcoal would smear if she wasn’t careful.

“The six of us were shipwrecked by a huge storm that came from out of nowhere. I think we were just east of Baltimare at the time, don’t know for sure. Woke up on a beach with a pier and lots of white and gray buildings in the distance. Not an uninhabited island, but with many, many creatures living here we’ve never seen before, with two legs, little fur, and lots of machines. They saw us, but we haven’t tried to make friends with any of them yet. Smolder may’ve scared them with fire.

Head north for about three hours from the shipwreck, and we’re hiding in a cave. If we leave, we’ll leave a message behind saying where we went.”

It was less than she would’ve liked to say, but she was out of space, and the reverse side was so covered with runes that she didn’t dare trying to write there.

Twilight is smart, and her friends are the Elements of Harmony. They’ll figure out how to make friends with these new creatures and get us home.

Unless this really was part of their exam, like Sandbar had thought. But that didn’t seem likely—not when the storm easily could’ve killed them. Twilight’s tests were better planned than that.

“Here,” she said, offering the rolled-up scroll to Smolder. “You can read it first if you—”

But the dragon didn’t even glance at the text, just leaned back and blasted it with flames. They tinged green the instant they touched the paper, which was consumed in a bright flash of magic and disappeared.

“There,” Smolder said, turning away and curling up on the rock. “This is the ponies’ dumb friendship test, so they can be the ones to give us a dumb rescue. Wake me when they get here.”

We were the ones who decided to go on a sea voyage. We could’ve just renovated a park or invented a new cake like the other groups.

But instead of saying that, Ocellus wandered to the front area of the cave, the furthest towards the entrance she could be and stay dry. She yawned, stretched, and closed her eyes. She was the lightest sleeper—if anyone found them, at least she’d be the first one to wake up. Maybe she could scare them off or something.