A True True Friend Helps A Friend In Need

Picking up where I left off. Must document everything! I had fled in panic and I was suddenly in a gnarled, unkempt orchard that smelled of overripe apples and I was hungry even though I'd just eaten not long ago.

So I looked around for somewhere safe to stand or hide. Some high ground where I could see anything coming my way and that would have escape routes in all directions. All I could see were old, twisted apple trees. But no apples. I was really getting hungry. I was on sloping ground so I walked uphill, looking for a clearing. I reached the edge of the orchard, beyond that the ground continued to rise. At the top of the hill I could make out the shape of a tree, or trees, or a very large bush. A big bush at a top of a hill would make a good place to hide and see danger approach, so I moved toward it. The smell of apples was stronger here, the rising ground was littered with them.

I was stepping gingerly around the windfall of apples when a gentle creaking noise coming from the top of the hill brought me to a stop. I stared intently ahead. The tree at the top of the hill looked oddly familiar, like I'd seen it before, or something like it. I was sure it was some kind of willow. I stopped. It was moving, like in a breeze, except that there was no wind. Especially not enough wind to make it sway like that! It was a whipping willow! A really big one. As I turned to go back into the orchard I heard a hissing noise, I dug in my hooves to launch myself down the hill. I heard the crack and felt the lash across my back. A leafy tendril grabbed at my leg and sent me tumbling. I rolled, flailing and kicking down the hill as the tree sent more hissing branches after me. As I crashed back through the gnarled trees I felt a yank on my right wing and a flash of pain as the willow pulled away with half my flight feathers. A few dozen apples rolled past me and I followed them into a gully, out of reach, I hoped, of the willow. The pain was intense, but so was my hunger. So I ate an apple to distract myself from my bloodied wing. Suddenly it was day again and my wing was as good as new! I tried to get out of the book again, but to no avail. I was no longer hungry, but I was starting to feel the strain of maintaining a Haycartes' spell. I had to get out of this story.

By the light of day I could see long willowy branches feeling around among the trees in the orchard around me. That explained how the apples got up the hill. I didn't want to wait around until the willow found me again. I picked up a bunch of the apples that had rolled downhill with me and since I didn't have saddle bags, I tucked them under my wings. I went downhill. An orchard meant a farm, and there might be ponies with clues on what I should do. Hopefully fictional ponies, not trapped ponies. I wanted out. If I could figure out what this book was about, maybe I could make all the right decisions and get out.

I eventually found a farmhouse, or what was left of one. It was flickering in and out of sight, sometimes made of stone and peat, sometimes out of wood, sometimes looking like a smouldering ruin. I turned left and into a blinding fog. I was on a cobblestone road in a mountain pass and it was starting to rain. It was a dirty, stinging rain. I moved forward, hoping for shelter and a place to rest.

I'm not sure how time was passing in the real world or at what chapter of the trap I was in when Starlight Glimmer picked up my things and headed for Ponyville. If she hadn't, I shudder to think that I could have ended up as a line of smudged fading text in that book. "Here Lies Twilight Sparkle".

Moondancer came by today, all the way from Canterlot, just to visit me. She and Starlight Glimmer were waiting by my bedside around mid-morning with warm beet pulp soup and alfalfa crackers. Breakfast of champions. They told me their side of the search and rescue.

Back at Carerfilly, when Starlight Glimmer and the others were looking for me, she had looked first in the reading room that I had been using but did not find me in there. After wandering around the castle calling my name for a few hours, she came back and looked through the open books I had been reading for clues. She didn't see me in the book I was trapped in and she gave up on trying to read the faint text. When the search party was called off, she gathered up the books I had selected, put them in my saddlebags and carried them back to Ponyville.

Spike had sent a message to Celestia who sent Luna with a search party to the ruins to continue the search. That failed. Meanwhile, Starlight Glimmer felt that there had to be a clue to my disappearance in the books I was reading, perhaps some spell I might have found and tried. She opened them all in her room and spent all evening and a good part of the night looking for hidden writing, instructions, hidden pages, anything. That night she woke up with a start, fully expecting to see me standing by her bed. But nopony is there. Three more times she thought she heard my voice, but when she opened her eyes, there was only darkness and the stony silence of her castle room. What's worse, the voice is getting weaker.

The next morning Starlight Glimmer tried again to read the faint, smudged text. Even by the light of day it was hard on her eyes, the letters writhed across the page like they had been written by a pony who had been fighting to stay awake. The text kept changing so that flipping back and forth from the same two pages gave unlimited options. Forty pages in she saw my name in the wavering script, something about panting from exhaustion in a ruined underground maze. Starlight Glimmer realized that this book was key to getting me back. Either I had found a spell in the book that had sent me somewhere, or I somehow I had become trapped in the book, and since turning the page changed the text, she took the precaution to keep that page open and to not read further.

News of my disappearance in a ruined library had reached Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns and the ears of Moondancer. She had caught the first train to Ponyville and galloped to the Friendship Castle to get the details from Spike's mouth. Instead she found Starlight packing her saddlebags with the intention of consulting with Sunburst in the Crystal Empire. If any pony could find out what it was about this book that caused Twilight to vanish, she was sure it would be Sunburst. Moondancer went with her and carefully read through the legible books I had picked out at Carerfilly on the train ride there. At Sunburst's house Moondancer and Sunburst puzzled through the first few pages of the book while Starlight stared at the page where my name appeared. Sunburst recognized the writing style as a classic "Find Your Fate" storybook. Once you knew that, you could see that "Find Your Fate" was written on the spine. But this volume was special. It had been modified into a magical Find Your Fate book. Instead of having the reader skip ahead to a certain page number corresponding to a choice they made, the book changed to fit their mood and desires. It rewrote itself, page by page. Fortunately, every pony up to now wanted to find me. Unfortunately, they didn't expect it would be easy and they thought I was lost, or trapped, or both. So, I was. My expectation was that the book was hard to read and everything would be murky, so I got stuck in the murk.

Moondancer and Sunburst skipped ahead to the open page where Starlight had found me, and since that was what they wanted, I was still there, but sinking up to my belly in muck. They kept that page open and hoped I wouldn't go anywhere while the three of them came up with a plan. Moondancer guessed right in that the Haycartes' spell is what put me into this mess. Sunburst put forward that we'd better pull me out before I reached one of the messy ends that are possible outcomes in the Find Your Fate story genre. Starlight suggested we continue reading while wishing the book-trapped me found herself refreshed and at an exit. Moondancer thought that was risky. The reason I was tired was because I was also trapped in a Haycartes' spell. The only way to fix that was to get me out of the book.

I'll finish telling this story, both stories, later.