Wooden limbs dragged along her coat and chill, damp leaves sighed in protest beneath her as Lyra crawled through the underbrush. Ahead, lying prone at the crest of a small rise in the forest, the human and his Royal Guard companion were staring intently through the thick foliage. Lyra inched beside them and slowly parted a few boughs, revealing a wide clearing below the small knoll from which they spied. Something about the clearing seemed wrong. Its brown vegetation rolled like an ocean of trees, roiling and turning in on itself in lurching waves. Lyra tried to make sense of the strange mass before she gasped sharply.

Nix’s hand muzzled her mouth in an instant. She brought her terrified eyes to meet his, but he merely stared back and shook his head slightly. He returned his gaze to the clearing.

“So, what are they?” he whispered.

“Timber wolves,” Ridge Dancer replied grimly.

Rainbow Dash had slowly crawled up on the other side of the group. A shivering ball of goldenrod and magenta trembled beneath her outstretched wing. Scootaloo’s pupils had shrunk to pinpricks at the sight. “But they only hunt in small packs,” the cyan pegasus said in a similarly hushed tone. “There are dozens...no, over a hundred here.”

“It’s a breeding horde,” the lime green unicorn replied. “They gather to mingle their chaotic energy and imbue dead wood with their combined life-force, creating new timber wolves in the process. It’d happen occasionally in the mountains where I grew up, but...”

“But what, Dancie?” Nix asked. There was something indescribable in his focused eyes that frightened Lyra, a hardness that oscillated between melancholy and predatory eagerness. From the side, she could barely see the glow that emanated from his furrowed brow. What she could see was the reflection of fire glancing across chilled sapphires. The musician shuddered.

“Every few years or so we’d hear of a remote town that just...disappeared. Hunters would happen across them occasionally. Towns they had bartered in just last year, almost gone. The only thing left of them were the metal tools, the clay roofing tiles, the food stores, things of that sort. Nothing made of wood to be found. Finally, one year a group of hunters happened across a town they’d left not a week before. Same thing. But there were tracks everywhere. Hundreds of them. Timber wolf tracks.” Ridge Dancer paused. “And corpses. What was left of them after the wolves had their fill...”

Scootaloo mewled, but Rainbow Dash shushed her gently, stroking her shoulder with her outstretched wing.

“Dancie, Scratchy, get these two back to Ponyville safely,” Nix whispered. Ridge Dancer’s gaze broke with the clearing and caught the tail-end of the human’s glance before he refocused on the horde.

“But-”

“No ‘buts’, Dancie, just do it. Warn the town, whatever, but you get to safety, now.” Lyra’s head recoiled slightly at the harshness of the human’s tone. “That means all of you, Lyra.” He pressed her gently back with the palm of one hand and turned to meet her gaze. Whatever lie in wait behind the coldly burning orbs that replaced Nix’s eyes had ceased to be the doddering, unsuccessful chick she had inelegantly forced her perceptions to erect as a metaphorical cage around a being that far exceeded her cognizance. Behind those eyes lie something darker, and far more dangerous than her tender sensibilities wanted her to realize. A hunger. An aching. A yawning emptiness. A despairing violence.

She wondered where the ashes of the childish, brash human she had met yesterday had blown, and what foolish winds might dare to come close enough to this portentous creature to carry them away. She backed down the hill through the bushes slowly, still staring into the being’s fearsome blue eyes.

Her hypnosis was shattered by a sudden, loud crack, and she jerked her head to the noise. Scootaloo stared in horror at the sundered branch beneath her hooves. A sharp intake of breath hissed through Rainbow Dash’s clenched teeth before silence took the Everfree Forest like rigor mortis falls upon a corpse. No sound escaped from the clearing beyond their small hill. Lyra held her breath, her eyes flicking every direction—everywhere but towards him—trying to detect motion. After a few moments, she quietly huffed out a sigh of relief.

The deep growl to her immediate right was interrupted by a flash of light and a thundering boom. She screamed as she was showered in a cataract of smoldering splinters, leaves, and twigs. The ensuing, mortally brief calm afterward was interrupted by several more guttural growls, and then a vicious roar.

“Go, now!” Nix shouted, his eyes two flaming blue suns and his charcoal duster dissolving into twisting, liquid shadows around him.

Lyra sprinted through the forest, gasping for air. Why did she ever agree to come to the Everfree Forest, of all the accursed places in Equestria? What was he?

A stomach that lurched with nausea. A dry tongue caked to the roof of an arid cavern of a mouth. Cold sweat a slick sheen over feverishly hot skin. Eyes that winced and retreated from the morning light behind the inadequate blinds of sleep-caked eyelids. The worst, though, was aching pain that hammered through the depths of the mare’s mint-colored head. Lyra groaned in agony, trying hard to pretend the pained lamentation might dispel her egregious discomfort by some undiscovered miracle of guttural vocal magic.

When her massive hangover persisted against her vain hopes for divine intervention, Lyra groaned louder and put a hoof to her forehead. Through her misery, she sensed a beacon of salvation, a celestial aroma wafting up from somewhere downstairs. Her eyes forced themselves to brave the mocking brightness of the sun filtering in through her bedroom window, and she sluggishly rolled off her bed onto her four hooves before trudging carefully downstairs. The blissful aroma led her to the kitchen, where her roommate was cooking breakfast and, most importantly, brewing coffee.

“Raaaagh,” Lyra grunted out artfully, stumbling towards the pot of caffeinated nectar as her horn sputtered to draw a cup from the cupboard. Her cream-colored roommate turned and smiled.

“Well, looks like someone had a lot of fun last night,” she said with a knowing chuckle. Lyra grunted again and began spilling coffee into the cup, her bloodshot eyes staring emptily into its growing black depths. “Whoa, no, no, no, Lyra.” A look of mild dissatisfaction flicked across the unicorn’s golden eyes as the cup was snatched out of her hooves and replaced with a frosted glass of ice water. “Drink this first,” her friend commanded. “It’ll do you a lot more good. Rehydration, then caffeine.”

“You seem to know a lot about this, Bon Bon,” Lyra grumbled.

“Well, if you hadn’t spent college with your nose buried in music sheets and had actually gotten out a bit...” The unicorn ignored her roommate’s implied jibe as she chugged the glass of ice water.

“So, how was it?” Bon Bon asked with a mischievous smile. One of Lyra’s eyebrows raised questioningly as she grabbed the mug of coffee from beside her friend with her telekinesis. She took a measured sip from the sienna cup. “Oh, don’t be coy. We were at the largest party this town has seen since the Summer Sun Celebration two years ago. Surely you found some stallion to keep you company?”

“That another thing you know a lot about from your college years?” the unicorn asked wryly. Bon Bon swatted her on the shoulder.

“Well, I certainly didn’t spend the night alone,” the mare finally admitted, half-heartedly flicking a lock of her hair’s pink streak out of her eyes. “But enough about me.” Bon Bon flashed a toothy grin. “Who’s the lucky stallion that finally dragged your attention away from those music sheets?”

“I didn’t spend last night with a stallion, I spent it with Nix,” Lyra replied, gulping down the coffee as quickly as her pain threshold could tolerate the heat.

“‘Nix’? Ooh, those one-syllable names get to me, even if most of ‘em are fake. So mysterious! So deep! So—” Bon Bon’s pleasant face was momentarily twisted by mock revulsion, “—please tell me he wasn’t wearing a fedora. Just how drunk were you?” Bon Bon bit her tongue with a smirk and playfully prodded her friend’s shoulder.

Lyra smiled and rolled her eyes. The ocular acrobatics sent a muddled jolt of pain through her forehead. ’Too much hard cider,’ she thought. ’Never again,’ she promised herself insincerely. After the pain subsided, she winced and shook her head. “No, his name is actually ‘Phoenix’, he’s just a bit slow and insists on nicknames for some reason.”

“Wait, like the bird? Like Princess Celestia’s pet?” Bon Bon giggled. The name did sound a bit familiar to her, though.

“Something like that.” Lyra’s lips twitched upwards momentarily at the thought of the human, collared and put on display in the Canterlot zoo. “Although I don’t think he’d be too keen on the idea of being kept as a pet, alien or not.”

Bon Bon gawked at her friend as the familiarity of the name collided roughly with revelation. How could she have already forgotten the being’s brazen introduction at the train station? “W-wait. Last night, you-?! With the- with the alien?” she exclaimed. The mare’s eyelid twitched slightly. “Is that even, err, anatomically possible?!”

Lyra groaned. “Ugh, no. Not like that. I just hung out with him at his welcome party. Nopony else really seemed too intent on actually welcoming him.”

“Well, I doubt they would after his display at the train station.” Bon Bon continued giving her mint-colored roommate a weird look. “I was there. He threatened the mayor. Lyra, he’s, uh...kinda scary.”

The mint-colored unicorn chuckled before meeting her friend’s eyes. “Please, Bon Bon. He’s a big baby. A tantrum here or there, but harmless and kind of adorable.”

“He didn’t look so adorable,” the earth mare said flatly.

“Neither do newborn chicks.” Lyra laughed. “Ugly as sin and bumbling about so awkwardly you can’t help but feel bad for them.”

“If you say so,” Bon Bon said doubtfully before deciding to steer the discussion to more pleasant avenues. “Well! I was just about to head to town on a few errands,” she said cheerfully. “Wanna come with?”

“Ugh, Goddess, no. I’m gonna need another hour at least to kill this hangover, and I really should get started on those music sheets Cheerilee wanted for the school’s talent show.”

“Your loss, Heartstrings,” her friend teased. “But, since you’ll be here anyway, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind cleaning up the breakfast dishes.”

Lyra levitated a sopping dishrag and chased a giggling Bon Bon out the front door with it. The mint unicorn sighed, but smiled to herself before shutting the front door and attacking the morning’s dishes with the soaking weapon of not-so-mass purification.

Lyra scooted her chair closer to her dark wooden desk. She carefully arranged the blank music sheets in front of her, aligning them in the center of a quill-filled cup, a blotter of ink, a paperweight, and various trinkets that were haphazardly spread across the desk's surface. She took a deep breath and snagged a quill from the cup with one hoof.

She was a classically trained musician. She had attended the prestigious Canterlot Royal Academy of Arts—alongside the renowned Octavia Philharmonia, no less. Her innovation and brilliance with stringed instruments of many varieties, be they lyres, harps, guitars, and even a banjo once, were lauded by her professors as sublime. Iconoclastic, even. Composing a few simple ditties for a simple school show should be foal’s play. She took another deep breath, exhaled slowly through pursed lips, and smiled to herself. She could do this.

She dipped the tip of the quill into the ink well, and pressed the tip of the feather to the top of the page. And waited. An instant turned into seconds. The seconds turned into a minute. The quill stubbornly refused to dance across the page; its point remained firmly planted at the start of the composition, a growing black pool of nothing emanating from its tip across the lines of the music sheet in place of the notes that should have sung from her mind onto the paper. She stared into the blot, willing it to transform into melody. The stain met her gaze apathetically, no longer growing across the page as the ink that gave it life was exhausted from the tip of the quill.

With an angry snarl, her hooves swept violently across the wooden surface, scattering the numerous items on the desk through the air. They pelted the various musical instruments laid to rest against the room’s wall, a shrapnel hail of ink, feathers, and curios kicking up a small cloud of dust as they struck their targets. Lyra buried her face in her hooves before tiredly peeking over them at her lyre. The disturbed dust was a constellation of gently dancing stars in the single ray of light that snuck through the room’s slatted blinds, pirouetting softly through the thick silence before coming to rest again on the golden threads of her namesake. She pressed her eyes back into her hooves, relishing the dark veil of blindness that rushed over her. She tried to ignore the moisture that grew from her closed lids.

’Buck this,’ she thought, pushing herself away from her desk and ignoring the mess around her room. ’I’m going for a walk.’ Lyra trudged out of her room and down the stairs for the second time that morning. The front door to the house slammed shut behind her as she headed into town.

Back in her room, the overturned inkwell gravely submitted its contents to the floor, another blotch uniting with the countless other stains that had been born across the wooden surface the last few months. The dust had already comfortably settled again on the numerous instruments laying quietly against the wall.

Lyra trotted through town at random, letting her hooves lead her where they may and lost in the thought of trying not to think. She knew it was only a matter of time before she ended up in the park, sitting on a bench—the bench—which is where she would waste most of her day, both remembering and trying to forget the stallion she had met there a year ago. So she trotted, a blank smile painted across her face’s mask, and she tried not to think. To her surprise, her hooves stopped moving at a plaza near the center of town. She ignored the group of ponies diligently cleaning up the blackened husks of wood that had fed the bonfire the night before and instead took in the massive tree that served as Ponyville’s library.

’Huh, that’s odd. Well, I just take a right at the next road and the park should be-’

There are few interruptions so rude as buildings being demolished without warning, cacophonous explosions without warning, and airborne aliens without warning. Needless to say, the interruption of Lyra’s thoughts was terribly rude as a certain alien exploded through the side of a room high on the tree and sailed through the air towards her, the airborne vanguard to a great many wooden chunks that also escaped the structure of the town library. Nix slammed roughly into the ground a few dozen yards before the golden-eyed unicorn and rolled rapidly across the ground, his charcoal duster flailing around his tumbling body, before coming to rest at her hooves, his face buried in the hard-packed earth.

Lyra looked from the alien to the gaping hole in the side of the library’s trunk. A light green unicorn with deep red hair scowled down at the human from the newly aerated room, before huffing angrily and retreating back to the deeper recesses of the tree. Ridge Dancer, was it? She returned her attention to the alien at her feet. He groaned and lifted his head.

“Ugh pffft pffaaaght!” Nix spat out a considerable amount of dirt, grimacing as chunks of soil spilled out over his chin while his tongue worked to expel the earth from between his vacillating lips. Coughing up the last of the earth, he slowly propped himself up on his elbows. His eyes traced up the mint-colored limbs of the pony before him, finally meeting a pair of amused, golden eyes.

“Problems on the home front?” Lyra asked nonchalantly.

“Nah,” the human responded gruffly. “Just a bit of a disagreement on interior design.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I seem to think two beds are fine. Apparently she decided one would suffice.” Nix scowled at the hole in the tree.

Lyra giggled. “That’s...not a bad problem for a stallion to have.”

Nix glared at her. “I’m not a stallion,” he said harshly, pushing himself slowly off the ground. “Besides, my kind have a storied history of intense interior decoration via putting our faces through walls,” he intoned solemnly.

“Right,” the unicorn lilted sarcastically.

“You would dare mock my p-people’s hallowed traditions of renovating fucking walls with our faces? Your world will lie in ashes at my feet for your insolence, Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy.” Nix managed to push himself into a kneeling position.

“Or just ‘Lyra’- OH MY GODDESS WE HAVE TO GET YOU TO THE HOSPITAL!” She immediately rushed over to the human and tried to help him to his feet. A large chunk of wood jutted out from the right side of his chest, and blood dripped down his dark trenchcoat in laconic rivulets. He frowned at her and pushed her back before looking down at the wound.

“Tch, no need, ‘Lyra-Oh-My-Goddess-We-Have-To-Get-You-To-The-Hospital’. Splinters are so annoying.”

The mare watched in shock as the human jerked the wood from his chest and lazily tossed it aside. The flesh underneath was consumed by a white fire for a few seconds before its final wisps evaporated into the early morning air, leaving behind a patch of pale, unblemished flesh. She watched in further amazement as the rent hole in the duster began knitting itself back together until it, too, was whole again. The human drew the coat’s lapel to the side for a moment and prodded the gaping hole in his black shirt before sighing. He grabbed a cigarette from an inside pocket and flicked his thumb against his index finger, summoning a small flame from it.

Lyra’s thoughts refused to fit together logically after what she just observed, and so she just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “That’s a pretty handy thing to have,” she said with a small, distant grin. She shook her head quickly and tried to salvage the conversation. Her smirk abandoned the fugue afforded by distance as she adopted a familiar, warm sarcasm in its stead. “Probably saves you hundreds of bits a month on tailoring bills.”

“Oh, you have no idea. This coat can do a lot more than just that,” he replied.

“Do tell.” They were walking slowly back towards the library.

“Nah. If you find out what else this coat is capable of, then something’s already gone wrong.” The human leaned against the door to the tree, drawing deeply on his cigarette. The glow in his eyes flickered briefly as he smiled. “I’m just glad Tia didn’t get all of my weapons.”

Lyra cocked her head to the side in confusion, but shook it off and sat down in front of the blue-eyed alien. She denied an awkward silence by quickly changing the topic of conversation.

“So, you can-”

The human momentarily disappeared with an unceremonious thump as the door he leaned on opened inward, sending him crashing to the floor. The human’s head came to rest between two purple hooves. He smiled cheerfully.

“Mornin’, Sparky!” The tip of his smoke danced on his lips as he greeted the librarian. She scowled down at him.

“Nix, there is a hole in my library. A large hole.” The lavender unicorn paused, breathing evenly in an effort to calm herself. “Why is there a hole in my library?!” she shouted loudly, her eyes clamping shut in a wince and her hooves leaping a few inches off the ground. Lyra saw the human stifle, as best he could, his mild amusement at her expression.

“Sheesh, Sparky-”

“Twilight! My name is Twilight Sparkle!” she continued shouting.

“Twily?” the human offered meekly at the outburst, flicking his cigarette out the open door as he stared up into her furious glare.

“Ugh!” she grunted in exasperation, turning on the human and heading back into the recesses of the tree. “At this rate, even the stipend Princess Celestia is sending me to cover, uh, you, will be exhausted in days. There’s no way I can possibly-”

“Do you ever, you know, have fun?” the human interrupted dully. Twilight whipped around. “Or, maybe just stop bitching every now and then?”

“I was not bit- I was not complaining, Nix!” she said sharply.

“Phoenix! My name is Phoenix McAshyflames!” Nix whined mockingly.

“You just- you’re- agh!” The purple unicorn released an angry hiss between her teeth before turning away from the human and retreating to her library.

“Well, aren’t you just the little charmer,” Lyra uttered disapprovingly after a few moments of silence.

“Oh, I’m quite the motherfuckin’ gentleman,” Nix responded in an annoyed tone, hopping to his feet and extending one arm to the door frame. “But at least I don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill.” He closed his eyes, and Lyra saw a faint white glow surround him before the light gathered at his shoulder and shot through his arm, into the tree. Lyra heard a loud, dry groaning and various cracks above her. She leaned back and looked up at the wound on the tree, only to find it quickly growing over with new bark.

“Tree’s still alive,” Nix explained. “Which means I can just ‘heal’ the tree.”

“That’s convenient. There’s a lot of living things in Ponyville’s hospital, while you’re at it.”

Nix opened his eyes and met her own level, golden stare. Something dark flitted behind the ice-blue depths of his regard. “Maybe later,” he said ambiguously. He looked away, refocused on pulsing his healing magic through the tree.

“You know-” Lyra started.

A bright rainbow of color slammed into the slowly healing hole, sending splinters in every direction in a loud explosion. Nix sighed and redoubled his efforts to heal Twilight Sparkle’s home.

“Nix!” a mare’s voice cried angrily from within the library.

“That wasn’t me!” he yelled back. “Not this time, anyway,” he muttered He met the mint-colored unicorn’s eyes. “You see the shit I have to deal with, Lyre-Thingy?”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Lyra said flatly, her eyes threatening to roll out of their sockets. She turned her head towards the crash site in the tree again, a look of mild concern on her face. “Maybe we should-”

“Yeah, yeah,” the human cut her off. “I’ll be there in a second. Tell Scratchy not to bleed to death before I get there.”

’Scratchy?’ Lyra shook her head and ducked through the door. Nix returned his attention to the tree, wondering just what in Tartarus he was doing with his overlong life that he had suddenly become a glorified gardener.

Nix completed healing the annoying librarian’s tree and entered the door with a slight hunch. He mentally thanked his good fortune that the ponies’ furniture wasn’t quite as scaled down as the entrances to their garish abodes, recalling the decently sized bed he’d slept in last night. He then remembered the beds were large enough that he woke up to a lime green unicorn snoring and drooling slightly onto his chest, and revoked his thanks.

He walked listlessly towards the stairs leading to the upper level of the library, his pace picking up slightly as he began to wonder if the cyan pegasus that slammed into the tree was actually injured. He was distracted from his concern, and his annoyed attempts to convince himself that he wasn’t concerned, by the sing-song humming of a youth coming from the kitchen.

Nix stopped and looked at the door as the humming increased in volume. The door flung open and a purple reptile with green frills atop his head burst into the library proper, carrying a tray filled with steaming foodstuffs and assorted beverages. It wore a white apron with frilly pink lace around the edges, the words ‘Stallion of the House’ printed in delicate, purple cursive across the front. The thing’s merry humming ceased immediately at the sight of the human, who he greeted with an alarmed stare. The purple lizard’s pupils slowly widened in tune with its eyes as Nix matched its stare. The creature quickly and awkwardly set the tray of goods aside and ran up to the human with a graceless waddle, stopping a few feet before the human and extending a splayed claw upwards with a cheerful look on his face.

“Hi! My name’s Spike! You must be Nix. Pleased to meet you!” Nix just stared silently, ignoring the greeting. The thing’s bulbous head barely reached his waist. As the silence wore on, the enthusiastic twinkle in the lizard’s eyes became slightly muted, even as his arm stretched slightly forward and his fingers spread open in a more exaggerated welcome.

Nix planted his hands on his hips as his mouth aimed an annoyed sigh at the ceiling. “First talking ponies, and now talking chubby iguanas. I think I liked this dimension-jumping gig better when the denizens were mostly humanoid.” The human glanced downward at the purple reptile. He immediately felt bad as he saw the thing deflate with a sad sigh, its arm flopping back to its side.

“I’m not an iguana, I’m a dragon,” he muttered inconsolably.

“Oh. Well, in that case, I should probably just kill you.”

The dragon’s head shot up from its cursory examination of the floorboards and his eyes shrunk to pinpricks. He gulped loudly.

“Nix, stop it!” Twilight descended from the top level of the library next to a still clearly angered Ridge Dancer, a slightly dazed Rainbow Dash bringing up the rear as she leaned against Lyra. “He’s just a baby dragon,” she explained.

“Just a baby?” Nix asked, his eyes settling on Spike. The dragon’s brow creased at the title.

“I am not a baby!” he insisted, crossing his arms as he tipped his nose upward arrogantly and closed his eyes. “I am an adolescent dragon,” he said with a harrumph.

“Alright, Mr. Adolescent,” Nix said with a bemused grin on his face, “tell me, do dragons in this place grow up to burn villages and consume maidens and do all sorts of terrible things? Because that’s been my experience...”

“Nix,” Twilight said with an angry tone of warning. He silenced her with his hand, shooting her a small wink. Her features softened slightly, if only from momentary confusion over the human’s uncharacteristic behavior, before they both turned back to her assistant.

Spike looked rapidly between the human and Twilight, a look of horror playing across his features. “N-no! No way!” He paused, scratching his chin with a lavender claw. “Well, some dragons can be real jerks.” He shot a paranoid glance at the human. “But no way would they do something like that. Not unless...” His face hardened and he tried his very hardest to mold his child-like features into something resembling determination. “I would never allow my friends or other ponies to be harmed.” Nix did his best to ignore the slight pout on the dragon’s face.

“Very well, Sir Spike, protector of pastel equines and defender of the mildly annoying innocent.” Nix reached a hand towards the dragon. “I, Phoenix of...uh, a planet whose name I’ve temporarily forgotten-”

“Earth,” Twilight interjected, watching the two with a sudden interest.

“Right, I, Phoenix of Earth, extend my greeting to you and promise not to harm you so long as you don’t turn into a crazed, overgrown monstrosity that terrorizes villages and kidnaps maidens.”

“Heh, I think I can manage that,” the dragon said with a guilty glance to the side. One claw rubbed the back of his neck nervously before he forced it stiffly to his side. He used the other claw to grasp two of the human’s fingers and gave as firm a handshake as his stubby digits allowed him.

“Well, then, grand dragon,” Nix said, dropping the handshake first, “I do believe I’ve rudely interrupted a noble soul’s important tasks with my bumbling presumptions.” He placed one hand on his chest and bowed slightly. “Please excuse me, Ser Knight.”

Spike’s chest momentarily puffed with pride. The dragon even managed to hold his stature for a second before he wheezed out a fitful, perturbed breath. “Oh, no! I forgot about breakfast!” He ran over to the nearby tray, hefting it confidently and turning to the rest of the room. “Your breakfast,” he said with patrician reservation, “is in the kitchen!” he rushed out afterward. He hurriedly buried his face into the tray in his hands, slurping and gnawing noisily at its contents before sweeping his gaze across the ponies and the human in the room. “If’s rilly guhd,” he said with a grin, crumbs spilling out from his mouth.

Twilight’s jaw hung loosely as she tilted her head, one eyelid drooping lazily to counteract the arch twin's sky-high eyebrow. “Wha?” she mouthed soundlessly, the bewildered mass of her features temporarily ignoring her baby dragon’s table manners as she focused intently on the human.

“Just like a baby bird,” Lyra whispered to herself with a chortle. She nudged the light blue pegasus. Rainbow Dash’s glazed eyes focused and she wiped the grin off her face.

“Oh, yeah! Hey, tall, dark, and ugly?” Nix coughed out an annoyed grunt. “Pinkie took care of finding you a house yesterday, but she’s gotta watch the Cake’s squirts today-”

“I don’t even wanna know why your cakes squirt here, or why their pastry ejaculates need to be observed,” Nix interrupted. "Although that might explain why Tia likes cake as much as she does." An amused snort escaped Twilight before she caught herself.

“What? No. Mr. and Mrs. Cake have a coupla foals and Pinkie babysits ‘em.” The pegasus’s magenta eyes shot Twilight a searching look, but the purple unicorn just shook her head slightly, guiltily trying to conceal her grin. “Well, anyway, she showed me where it was, so I figured since I didn’t have anything better to do, I could show you and what’s-her-face over there where your new digs were.”

“Uh, Rainbow, weren’t you supposed to hang out with Scootaloo today?” Twilight pointed out, inwardly patting herself on the back for tactfully phrasing the statement as a question.

Rainbow’s eyes widened. “Oh, horseapples! I completely forgot! Stupid Pinkie, waking me up this early with her flying machine,” she grumbled. "Completely threw off my day." Her hoof pressed thoughtfully to her chin as she flapped her wings and floated in the center of the library. “Hmmm. The house is only a little ways into the Everfree. I guess I could take the little booger along for the ride.”

“Sure, take a small filly to the Everfree,” Twilight stated bluntly, her lids flat and wooden across her eyes. “That seems like a good idea.”

“Hey, it’ll be with some alien that has saved entire worlds and one of Celestia’s personal guards! And Applebloom visits Zecora all the time. She’ll be fine!”

“Uh-huh.” Twilight’s tone ushered in a new pony paradigm of cool verbal dubiousness.

“Twi, I’m the fastest flier in Equestria, and I can carry four full-grown ponies in flight. Worse comes to worst, I’ll get her out of there.” Rainbow rested a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder, her visage abandoning her normal brashness as she stared soberly into her friend’s eyes. “Trust me. She might be a squirt, but she’s like the little sister that I was too awesome to have. No way in Tartarus would I ever let the filly get hurt, on my honor.”

Twilight gazed at her hooves. “Well, I still don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said dubiously.

“Snkkt-heheh, that’s how I know it’ll be fun!” She zipped towards a nearby window before turning. “Hey, tall, dark’n’ugly, I’ll meet you at the edge of Ponyville after fetching the squirt. Probably best if Scoot's parents don’t see you, anyway,” she muttered this last bit before zipping out the window.

Twilight reinforced her sober examination of her hooves, biting her lip in deep thought. She was snapped out of her revery by a rude finger jabbing into her shoulder.

“Relax, Sparky. I’ll take care of things,” Nix said in the closest tone to ‘comforting’ he could muster.

Twilight's eyes narrowed. "That doesn't sound very comforting..."

“Hey, like Scratchy said, I’ll be there, the socially awkward unicorn that’s kicked my ass seven ways from Sunday numerous times since I arrived will be there, and, most importantly,” Nix paused, “we’ll have a bard, just in case.” He pointed at Lyra.

Lyra smiled. “Right, you’ll have a bardeeergh what?! I’m not going to the Everfree!” she blurted out.

“Why not?” the human asked.

“It’s dangerous!”

“I’m more dangerous.”

“Yeah, but, it’s just- it’s- it’s the Everfree Forest,” Lyra concluded unconvincingly.

Nix frowned at the mare before shrugging. “Look, Lyre-Thingy, you wanna post up on your boring little park bench in your boring little park-”

“It’s not boring,” she interrupted icily, leveling a cold glare at the human.

“I...right.” Nix waved his hand dismissively. “I’m sure you have your reasons.” He bit his tongue and smirked slightly. “I’m also sure that doing the same thing day in and day out wears on you, and that a bit of change does everypony some good.”

“And how are you so sure of that?” The mare attempted to swallow her frozen fury over the human’s presumptuousness, but continued glaring. That bench was not boring.

Nix blinked at the mint-colored unicorn before plucking a cigarette from one of his duster’s pockets. He planted the smoke in his mouth and met her frigid gaze. His eyes flared dimly for a moment before the tip of his cigarette puffed to life with an orange glow. Light blue tendrils of smoke began a laconic dance from the smoldering tip, twirling and swaying between the human’s pale, sapphire eyes and Lyra’s own hurt, gilded stare. The cigarette twitched slightly between his lips as his mouth grew slowly into a sad smile.

“Because I’m old, Lyra.”

He turned quietly and walked out the door. She looked numbly after him before trading gazes with Twilight and Ridge Dancer. She exhaled softly before following the human at a distance; the fiery-haired guardpony matched her gait as they followed behind the human's lithe saunter towards the edge of town.

Author's Notes:

Had to split the chapter again. I'm just gonna stop telling you all when I split chapters and try and make you guess. Having said that, as for next chapter: A while back, in a comment or an author's note or something or other, I said Nix was done blowing things up for a while.

It's been a while. C'ya next time!