>Tradewind gasped for air against the wickedness of the wind, choking as the herculean gusts robbed her lungs of its prize at every opportunity.
>A whistle of malediction coming from somewhere beyond the tree canopy cried out in fury - cried out for /her/. She shielded her ears with her waterlogged wings in retort, the caramel appendages strikingly ineffective.
>Even there, shrouded among the towering oaks of old, the rain reached them, battering their exhausted forms as its horizontal assault continued, unceasing.
>She grimaced against the downpour’s freezing grasp, driving herself further into her brother’s oaken side to find any sort of warmth she could co-opt.
“How much longer?” she cried out, only just breaking through the cacophony.
>The stout earth pony, her wall against the rabid elements, grunted as he lowered his center of gravity to avoid being thrown off of his hooves.
>“We’ve still got another few miles or so until we get there!” he shouted in response, doing his best to point a reassuring squint down at her. “Don’t stop, just lean on me! Come on!”
>As they trudged on, defiant of the howling wind, she found her thoughts falling back to four days prior…

—

>“…after that, it’s just a small path through that clearing to the south, straight past Ghastly Gorge, and you’ll be at the campsite. There should be some…”
>The conversation between her brother and father joined the endless noise of the light afternoon shower gently tapping on the living room window.
>She knew she probably should’ve been paying attention, the little eavesdropper, but it was simply too difficult for her to do, preoccupied as she was with her toys.
>She was sitting on the floor, back to the sofa as their masculine voices painted the soundscape in their baritone swells and troughs.
>In not being able to make out most of what they were saying, it was actually quite soothing - so much so that, eventually, she couldn’t help but lean her head back and close her eyes.
>As her favorite doll fell from her hoof with a gentle thud upon the ground, she found that their voices became clearer, almost as if they were just behind her as opposed to in the opposite room.
>“Now, I went ahead and checked the weather for ya,” her dad said. “It /should/ be clear all weekend, but bring the tarp, just in case. Out there, you’re gonna be gettin’ to where the edge of the Weather Patrol operates, so just be ready for the skies to be a bit wily, alright?”
>“Got it,” her brother replied. “Anything else I should know?”
>“Nothin’ I can think of. When your mom and I went a couple months ago, we heard some timberwolves howlin’ off in the distance, but where the campsite sits is far away from where they’ve been said to skulk about. I’ll still let ya take the foldin’ spear for protection, though.”
>“Really? Aw, cool!”
>She could hear the smile on her brother’s face.
>“But /only/ if ya promise me that if anything goes wrong, you’ll come right back home the first chance ya get,” her dad said.
>“I’m a senior now, dad. I’m not the same little-”
>“/Jet Stream/.”
>A brief silence followed, the tension suddenly malleable.
>“Alright, alright,” Jet reconciled. “You don’t have to stare me down like that, dad, sheesh.”
>“Good,” her dad said, his overbearing tone having receded. “I know you’d be fine on your own, but since Tradewind is going with you, ya need to be extra careful. Have ya told her yet?”
>Jet Stream had, in fact, /not/ told her yet.
>The moment her name wormed its way into her ears, her eyes darted wide, her prior exhaustion all but gone.
>Heart aflutter with excitement, she erupted from her seat, racing over to the kitchen where the two most important stallions in her life stared back at her in surprise.
“You’re taking me camping?!” she nearly yelled, catching them both off guard. 
>Her dad chuckled as he and her brother shared a knowing glance before turning to her.
>“You betcha,” her brother beamed at her. “It was supposed to be a surprise for doing well on your math test, but I guess the cat’s out of the bag now, huh?”
>The only response Tradewind could muster was a squeal as she launched herself at her brother, forehooves wrapping around him as tightly as they could. Her squealing continued as she buried her face in his side, the din of her brother’s laughter just barely rising above it.
>”Ya have to be on your best behavior or you’ll be coming right home, though, alright?” her dad said, ruffling his wings. “It’ll be fun, but it’s also serious business out there, little’un.”
>She nods as she slinks free of the embrace, all four hooves on the tile floor once more.
“I’ll be good, daddy,” she beamed, distraught at even the /thought/ of robbing herself of a weekend with her big brother. “I promise!”
>He ruffled her velvet locks, a booming chuckle lodged deep in his throat.
>“I know ya will.”

—

>The unending torrent of rainwater flooded her eyes, the very act of blinking it away an exercise in absolute futility.
>She wasn’t sure how long she’d been crying, or if she was still crying at all.
>Only ten yards in front of them, the deluge became a haze of bellicose grey, anything beyond obscured in totality.
>They had been trudging through the fury for what felt like hours. Even having used her brother as a bastion against the violent gale, her legs ached from struggling to stay upright.
“How much longer?” Tradewind cried out against the noise. 
>“Too long,” Jet shouted back. “The storm’s gonna throw us off of the trail. We need to find some kinda shelter until it passes!”
>Tradewind whimpered, her brother’s lack of reassurance having brought about a sense of alarm entirely alien to her.
>For what felt like hours, they crawled along, any sense of progress woefully absent. Eventually, though, the trees diminished. 
>Jutting out from the thick underbrush on their left rose a massive outcrop of rock that reached far above them into the rain, its true height unknown.
>Using it as a guidelight of sorts, her brother stuck close to it, Tradewind between himself and the endless wall of stone.
>Several hundred thousand tears and sniffles later, she just barely saw it - a recession in the rock face jutting out from the endless grey. 
>“There!” Jet exclaimed, his gaze dug into it like hooks. 
>He picked up his haggardly pace, nearly causing her to stumble in the process.
>As they bolted forward to the best of their ability, she was able to see it in more detail, albeit still constricted by the limited visibility.
>What looked like a natural alcove bore into the rocks, sloping downward and covered in moss. The brief path leading inward was shrouded in verdant overgrowth that shivered in the forceful winds, petals breaking off from common clovers as they drew closer.
>The cacophony adopted an unpleasant reverberation as they finally escaped into the opening, and she covered her ears with her wings as they retreated further into the alcove, the sound dissipating into a tolerable droning.
>Rogue moisture trickled underneath them in miniscule streams, each step they took accentuated by the pitter-patter of bare hooves.
>Tradewind stopped and stared deeper inward, into a void from which all light receded. Her brother slipped past her, notably more confident in the situation.
>“Well, aren’t we lucky,” he said as he allowed his supply pack to slide off of his withers. “I didn’t even know there were caves in this neck o’ the woods.”
>He began to sift through his bag, pulling out a pair of towels with his teeth.
>“‘Ere,” he mumbled, a mouthful of cloth as he tossed one over to Tradewind. “We might as well get dry while we wait the storm out.”
>She looked down at the towel in her hoof, then back up at him.
“How long is it gonna be…?”
>He shrugged as he sat on his haunches, toweling off his auburn mane with gusto.
>“I dunno, boog,” he said, the harrowingly awful nickname grating to her even then. “I was ready for a rainstorm or two, but this is /ridiculous/.”
>Her ears folded backward, eyes still welling with tears.
>Jet, mostly dry, draped his towel over the floor-bound bag to dry and moved to Tradewind’s side. He unfolded her towel between his hooves, and with gentle gusto, began to dry her off.
>“Hey, don’t worry,” he reassured her. “The storm isn’t gonna last forever. We’re here for the whole weekend, anyway, so even some nasty weather like this won’t keep us from having fun, alright?”
>Even with the torrent outside raging at full strength, she couldn’t help but believe him - her big brother always knew best, after all.
“…Mmkay,” she mumbled as the towel enveloped her head.
>Her world dizzied as he set about drying her hair, the frantic scrubbing a familiarly soothing monotony.
>“You want one of your juice boxes?” he asked as he finished and slung the towel over his withers with a smile on his face. “I know mom said you could only have two a day, but as long as you keep it a secret…”
>Just like that, Tradewind’s lips curled into an unsteady grin; her beloved beverage wouldn’t make all the rain disappear, sure, but the wonderful taste was a close second on her current hierarchy of needs.
“I promise!”
>Jet chuckled as he rummaged through his pack.
>“Comin’ right up, then.”
>In the haze of the overwhelming rainfall, the afternoon passed quickly.
>Jet had brought along homemade tinder, but in the face of being relegated to the cave mouth, he held off on setting a fire. Instead, they moved farther back into the relatively shallow dugout, blankets wrapped tightly around them as they huddled together.
>The hours flew by as they passed stories back and forth, of Jet’s collegiate life and Tradewind’s schoolhouse antics.
>All the while, the weather never relented, not even for a moment; not even as the light of the sun withered below the horizon, cloud cover chasing away the moon’s faint gleam.
>Though Tradewind could barely see, the world an ink blot, her elder brother’s steady warmth brought her comfort as she laid her head against his side.
“…Hey, Jet?”
>She felt his weight shift slightly, his eyes no doubt combing over the coiled blanket that housed her.
>“Yeah, boog?”
“What’re you gonna do after you’re done with cool… cull-”
>“College?”
“Yeah.”
>He wondered aloud for a moment.
>“Well, I was gonna wait to tell everypony until I knew for sure, but… I think I’ve got an internship lined up in Trottingham this summer. If it goes well, they might even offer me a job!”
>Tradewind squinted as the cogs in her mind turned.
“How far away is that?”
>Jet sighed.
>“It’s on the west coast of Equestria. So, uh… really far.”
>She sat upright, the brutal surprise twisting the calm into nil.
“B-but… Why are you gonna go so far? Can’t you do something in Ponyville?”
>“Tradewind…”
>He drew her against him, and she practically fell onto his side, tears streaming anew.
>“You’ve got dreams, right? Of what you wanna be when you grow up?”
>She nodded, head digging into his ribs.
>“And you’re gonna chase ‘em no matter what, right? Rain or shine?”
>Another frenetic bobbing, her neck strained.
>“That’s what this is like for me. If I don’t do this, I don’t know if another opportunity like it is ever gonna come up again.”
>He paused for a moment, the silence unbearable for her.
>“Sometimes, Tradewind, you just… gotta take a leap of faith, no matter what anypony else says. You’ll feel it too, one day - like there’s no other option. Like deep down, you /need/ it to feel like you’re really /alive/.”
>He cleared his throat, taken aback by his unfiltered sincerity.
>“Sorry. You get what I mean, I think. In any case, I don’t even know if they’re gonna take me, so…”
>Tradewind knew they /would/ take him; they would be stupid not to. Her brother was one of the brightest people she had ever known in her relatively short life, and she doubted that would ever change.
>Her mind sulked through the empty halls of a home removed from time, robbed of its warm light.
>Such a home was one she didn’t care to return to.
“Can I go with you?” she asked, her voice wavering.
>Jet shook his head.
>“I wish, boog. Maybe when you’re older, once you’ve finished all your schooling.”
>He paused for a moment, unwilling to trail off on a negative.
>“It’s not all bad, though! I mean, what’s stopping me from coming to visit everypony?”
>Tradewind pouted, unsatisfied.
“It’s not the same.”
>“...I guess,” Jet sighed. “Just… try not to think about it for now. You don’t wanna ruin your awesome weekend over something that’s not even set in stone, do ya?”
>She shook her head weakly against him, only a murmur escaping from her throat in response.
>“Are you getting tired?”
“Kinda,” she mumbled.
>Jet chuckled, shifting slightly so she had more room on his side to lay her head.
>“Get some rest, then, sleepyhead. We’ve still got a long way to go tomorrow.”
"Mmkay."
>As she sunk ever so slightly deeper into the velvety down padding his ribs, she heaved a weighty sigh through her nostrils, willing herself into whatever sort of calm would come to her.
“Love you, Jet.”
>“Love you too, boog.”
>What little light had found purchase in the cave soon faded into nothing more than the striations of a welcoming blackness playing against shut eyelids.

___

>Tradewind shuddered awake.
>A gasp of air passed over her parched throat, every square inch crawling in irritation.
>Her lips slammed shut, the sound of her own sharp inhale startling her into silence.
>The frigid ground below her wracked her side with wintry paralysis, a feeling muddied by her freshly awakened state.
>Senses dulled, she could scarcely understand what was happening, but as moment by noiseless moment crept by, conscious thought returned in an unusually dull haze.
>Struggling against a frightening disconnect between her thoughts and movements, she stirred upward until she was sitting and cast her gaze toward the cave mouth.
>The sky was empty.
>Devoid of the moon or stars, the overhead void was total in its shadowy depths. Gone, too, was the raging storm that had shackled them to their primitive hovel.
>There was just… /nothing/.
>Yet, against all logic and sense, the outside world was still dimly lit.
>The sterile glow silhouetted the branches of the trees surrounding the entrance, their shadows eerily stagnant against the craggy walls.
>The silence was deafening, the wind’s absence a dreadful loss; in fact, the only thing she /could/ hear was her own heartbeat, the blood coursing through her veins acting as a hushed backdrop.
>It all felt so frighteningly /wrong/. 
>Even as she wracked her mind for something to compare it to, she simply couldn’t - and that terrified her further.
>Perhaps most disconcerting of all, however, was the implication the cold stone underneath her offered.
>Her brother was gone.
>She wheeled around, the inner reaches of the alcove still as pitch black as ever.
“Jet!” she called out, voice wavering. “Jet…?”
>…
>An erratic heartbeat - her own - was the only reply afforded to her.
>She scrambled over to the bag laid against the wall and dug around until she procured the few glow stick necklaces that he had brought along. She snapped it between her hooves, exactly how he’d taught her, and vigorously shook it before passing it off to her wing.
>As she rose from her haunches, the neon green glow staggered to life, her immediate surroundings bathed in the eerie phosphorescence.
>She moved further into the alcove, lifting the glow stick high above her.
>Her eyes combed over every inch of the damp cave, the lack of her brother deepening her fears.
>As she panned the leftmost outcropping, though, fear spiraled into bewildered dread as she struggled to behold a staggering inconsistency with what she held as truth.
>…A hole.
>A hole in the wall.
>A little maw leading to a bleak nothing that, by all accounts, shouldn’t have been there.
>Just before she fell asleep, only a solid wall of rock stood in its place.
>Yet, there it was - an inky invitation just big enough for a pony of her size to walk through.
>No matter where she held the glow stick, the dark never fully disappeared, only receding further into the passageway.
>She didn’t dare move closer.
>She refused to believe that her brother, adventurous as he was, would have ever entertained the idea of marching headlong into something so unnerving.
>‘He probably went outside,’ she thought, dogmatic in her need to believe her own words.
>Unwilling to waste a single moment, she turned on her hoof, barrelling at once toward the suddenly welcoming empty canvas of sky.
>She had almost crossed the threshold of the mouth, when -
>“Tradewind.”
>A whisper.
>Barely discernible even against the shrill, ear-bound whine of utter silence, but to Tradewind, it felt akin to a guttural yell.
>It was her brother’s voice, no doubt - she recognized it from the many nights they had stayed up, scampering around in the dark of their rooms playing with toys.
>To her dismay, it came not from the odd world beyond the mouth, but from behind her.
>She didn’t need to look, didn’t need to investigate its source - in her feverishly beating heart, she already knew its origin.
>“Tradewind.”
>She turned, concern clouding her fear.
“Jet?” she asked, inching her way back toward the deeper alcove. “Where are you?”
>Abject silence took hold for another few moments before he spoke again.
>“I’m over here.”
>His monotone voice came from straight ahead, warbled from within the hole’s undulating geometry.
“Why’re you in /there/…?”
>“I dropped my light and it went out,” he explained. “I got stuck trying to find it. I need you to pull me out.”
>She frowned.
>As far as she was aware, all they had brought along for light were the glow sticks and the homemade tinder. If he had brought a lantern along, he hadn’t told her about it.
>She wouldn’t have put it past him - he’d been forgetful before - but it just seemed like such an odd thing to keep from her, given what they had planned.
>“I can’t feel my hooves, Tradewind. You have to hurry.”
>Her brother’s oddly soft tone in spite of the circumstances sent a violent shiver up her spine.
>‘How is he so calm?’ she thought.
>Nothing made sense. The light, his offputting neutrality about being stuck, the fact that he dove headlong into that dreadful chute at all - it felt /wrong/.
>Even so, it was /clearly/ her brother in there; she’d have time to tell him what for after she set him free.
“You’d better not be pranking me,” she warned him as she walked over to the miniscule entrance. “I’ll tell mom and dad.”
>“Hurry, Tradewind.”
>She paused as she stepped up to the gap in the wall.
>The entrance looked accommodating from afar, but now that she was closer, that feeling had all but disappeared.
>She drew a hearty breath, letting it fly after her anxious lungs were full up with life.
>As she climbed in, she hung the paracord attached to the glow stick off of her neck, freeing her wing for more leverage.
>With her four hooves finding purchase on the myriad uneven surfaces, she began her cramped walk forward.
>She drew her wings as tightly as she could to her body as she plunged into the deeper dark, the glow stick her only guidelight.
“How far did you go?” she asked, surprised by the sheer increase in volume that being boxed in provided.
>“Not far.”
>For all intents and purposes, she believed him - as she inched along, the damp passageway narrowed even further, twisting and contorting and dipping this way and that.
>She strained to make herself as small as possible, wings held tightly to her ribs as jagged stones and malicious rock formations dug into her side.
>Before long, every breath brought her chest against the cave wall, her legs bent at odd angles just to allow her further trespass.
>She stopped as the constriction reached criticality a few inches ahead of her, her ragged breath kicking up dust as she idled.
>“Just a little further, now. I can hear how close you are.”
>She sighed, already tired beyond belief.
“How did you even get through this…?”
>“Breathe out when you move forward,” he instructed, the ghost of eagerness playing on his otherwise subdued speech. “You will make it.”
>She frowned as she splayed out on her stomach.
“Why’re you talking all weird?”
>His silence irritates her further, but not enough to stall her approach.
>She removed the glow stick from her neck and held it between her teeth.
>The last thing she wanted was for her only light to break off and become stuck mid-crawl, making the suffocating task ahead effectively impossible.
>She shimmied on with her forehooves in front of her, every breath a chore as the cavern walls punished her for even the tiniest inhale.
>Her belly was gouged by razor-like pebbles with every micromovement, tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks from the pain.
>The inches felt like miles. Still, she trudged onward - in the verdant fluorescence, she could see the tunnel suddenly widen ahead.
“I’m almost there!” she grunted, speech muddied by the glow stick that was now riddled with teeth marks.
>The fervor of her forward charge spiked, knowing the end was in sight. She wondered what kind of position Jet was stuck in as she barrelled forward at a speed most turtles only ever dreamed of.
>At last, though, the exit hole was only a breath away.
>She shut her eyes in focus, and with one last exhale, she struggled with all her might to crawl free.
>Constriction became oh-so-saccharine freedom of movement, and she hooked her hooves around the edge of the hole to drag herself out.
>As her rear end became free, she slid forward, free of the squeeze at last.
>She held her front hooves out to catch herself…
>…only for most of her body to fall completely free of anything at all. 
>She opened her eyes and was greeted by nothing.
>She /knew/ her light was still shining - the neon glare was proof of that.
>But as her body careened haphazardly into a forward tilt, reality rose up from underneath her.
>She hung from a jagged precipice, its depth made apparent by the loose rocks plummeting into oblivion.
>Her rear hooves tried to hook themselves to whatever surface she could grasp at, but the opportunity had far surpassed its terminus.
>She shrieked, the glow stick falling freely into the abyss.
>In the pitch blackness, she was wrenched free of the earth by gravity, flipping forward uncontrollably.
>She shot her wings out in a desperate attempt at stabilization, but it was for naught; as young as she was, she hadn’t learned how to recover from a fall yet.
>A single name rang out as she descended.
“/Jet/!”
>But no one answered. 
>Tradewind, unable to grapple with the tragedy of what was surely her imminent death, lost consciousness thirty two seconds into the harrowing jaunt downward. 

___

>A woeful throbbing shrouded Tradewind’s skull.
>Laid on her side, she groaned aloud as she cradled her head in her hooves, a migraine brewing rapidly beneath her wildly filthy mane.
>A swirling congregation of exhaustion and apprehension kept her eyes firmly shut. 
>She would open them for nothing, she decided. If she were to survey her person and discover a life-altering injury, she might’ve died of fright.
>Such a thought, however, brought a more pressing matter into the fray.
>How was she alive at /all/?
>Reservations that it may have simply been the dream of a dying mind were succinctly squashed by a profane aching spread uniformly over her person.
>Every minute adjustment of her lying figure was torture, yes - but it reminded her that she was /still here/.
>Where ‘here’ was proved to be nebulous, however.
>As she squirmed around for relief, eyes still drilled shut, she haggardly brushed against the floor in desperation.
>Still hard, still freezing - but this time, the damp crag didn’t rise up to hurt her.
>A flittering of sorts played about her fur and the skin underneath, tickling the frog of her hoof as it ran parallel to her body.
>Even the smell made little sense; rather than the musty stillness of a cave, it was earthy, with a hint of dew.
>The longer the peculiar scent wafted about her nostrils, the more curious she became.
>While it was never enough to oust her fear entirely, the draw of knowledge became too much for her to resist.
>Her eyes flung wide, and she beheld stains of green shivering before her snout.
>Beyond the sashaying blades was a veritable ocean of towering trees, all swaying in tandem. The ghostly wind that commanded their dance graced her neither in sound nor sensation.
>Further still, the same sky from before her tumble, infinite in its darkness. The preternatural light from the cave thinly coated the evergreen grove like a lake’s reflection in the early morning.
>She couldn’t see far, of course, but that was the last thing on her mind.
>Bewildered, she sat upright with a concise grunt. Her mind raced endlessly with questions she knew would have no answer.
>How could this be? Did her brother come unstuck and carry her out?
>No, no, that still wouldn’t explain the fall…
>How did her /brother/ not fall? Did he find leverage somehow, somewhere?
>…Why was he there at all?
>That one question, the lynchpin of her situation, unnerved her more than anything else.
>She stared into the gaps between the trees, her juvenile mind raging desperately against the senselessness of it all.
>…
>The forest, a silent watcher, called her forward.
>It was a quiet beckoning; the rustling of each branch, each leaf, each petal was pointed squarely toward a path she knew was there.
>She regarded the gesture with weighted curiosity, fear keeping her from doing anything more than standing on unsteady hooves.
>The ringing in her ears was replaced with a quiet rumbling, a spur of impulsivity.
>The way out, if there was one, was forward.
>One hoofstep.
>Another.
>Another.
>And another.
>Lightless, guideless, she drifted into a rhythm that carried her into the undulating thicket.
>She plodded along for an agonizing stretch of untold time before coming upon a clearing blanketed with redbuds, the pale glow stronger there than anywhere else her aching hooves had trodden.
>She stopped dead in her tracks, baffled.
>For in the rear of the field, sulking in the ill-omened light, rested the time-worn corpse of Ponyville’s schoolhouse.
>The apple-red paint and frilly decorative bits had long since peeled off, only spotty mildew imprints hanging on in their stead.
>The wood was largely rotted, hanging off of the frame in splintered shambles, and the crown of the roof had long since fallen away, debris firmly embedded into the perimeter around the building. 
>Eerily, the bell tower still stood, but with no bell to speak of.
>Yet it rang, a bellow out of time.
>Tradewind’s jaw hung agape as she surveyed the massive husk.
>She halfway expected it to disappear after she blinked, but alas - it persisted.
>She inwardly pleaded to whoever would listen that it would go away, that she would be left in peace, but no such mercy was afforded to her.
>The only way out was forward, after all.
>As she begrudgingly accepted her only choice, she was suddenly upon the stoop, the sea of flowers behind her.
>She hadn’t moved - hadn’t even lifted a hoof.
>Despite that, she stayed rooted in place, eyes glued to the shadowy doorway.
>Her sense of preservation had taken proper hold once again, and she wanted nothing more than to turn tail and put that dreaded place behind her; she could forge another path out, surely.
>But something was in the field behind her.
>She dared not face it; feeling its malign presence was more than enough to rattle her.
>It skulked around, flowers surely withering away beneath it. 
>If she looked, she would die. She knew this without a doubt to be true. 
>It /wanted/ her to look, to find it, to preoccupy the space behind her eyes with its clawed lack of remorse.
>She denied the beast its desires by stepping hurriedly into the schoolhouse, her head ram-rod straight the entire time.
>As she crossed the threshold, the rotten front door slammed shut behind her, a few of its splinters bouncing off of her furled wings.
>The light from outside, struggling as it was to snake its rays through the cracks in the walls, failed to illuminate the classroom in any meaningful way. Without a glowstick, Tradewind could only see a hoof or so in front of her, along with whatever the smatterings of outside light cared to drape themselves over.
>Mold and rot caked the floor of the entryway, the pungent smell all but unbearable.
>Dilapidation overran the empty desks and chairs she knew so well, ancient papers and journals scattered about the ruin.
>With great caution, she began to creep forward between the two middle rows, trembling as she moved an inch a lifetime.
>The classroom seemed far larger than she had remembered; she wasn’t sure why, but it frightened her.
>If she squinted hard enough, though, she could see the back door to the right of the whiteboard. 
>She thought briefly about bolting right through it, about suffering through the self-induced panic just to put this wretched hut far behind her.
>Her hooves, having come to a decision before her, gradually picked up speed.
>‘Just leave,’ she commanded herself, her nerves crumbling with every word. ‘You can do this.’
>Halfway across - not much more to go. The wood thundered underneath her as she broke into a trot.
>‘Just get out of-’
>She jolted to a halt, hind leg held captive, and fell squarely on her snout.
>The pain was secondary, even as a lone streak of red trickled down from her newly stuffy nostril.
>She wheeled around as best she could, eyes first glued to her arrested limb.
>A sickly tendril, curled taut up to her hock.
>She struggled to even call it a tendril; running along it were myriad lumps and pokey bits that looked and felt more like shattered bone than smooth tissue.
>The milky, gunge-smeared appendage pulsed in tandem with her racing heart as it sluggishly tugged her towards the obscenity it was attached to.
>In the desk chair it sat, twitching and gesticulating like mad.
>Alabaster like its limb, it, too, was caked in some kind of grey soot.
>It took the acutely crude shape of a hairless pony, its silhouette no more forthcoming than a foal’s self-portrait.
>The only defining feature the amalgam bore was a bit-sized hole where its eyes might have been.
>A low gurgling came from the orifice, trails of blackened pus leaking from the opening.
>Tradewind, struggling to make sense of the horrific amalgam, screamed.
>No sound escaped from her open mouth - she couldn’t even feel the breath leaving her lungs.
>She struggled with great fervor against the creature’s iron grasp, but to no avail - its bony spurs had already dug into her flesh.
>She spun back around, looking for something, /anything/ that might get her out of there, when she saw it - a thick, dusty textbook, half of it hanging precariously off of the desk to her right.
>Without any thought further than self-preservation, she held herself steady with her left hoof and reached out with everything she had.
>A swipe - nothing.
>She fought against the being’s determined tugging for every inch, her leg threatening to break under the strain.
>Another swipe - nothing.
>The gurgling grew into bubbling, louder still.
>Whatever came next, Tradewind knew it would be over if she didn’t have the textbook in her hooves.
>With strength she didn’t know she had, she craned her body as hard as she could…
>…and found her grip, perilous as it was, on the very edge of the volume’s cover.
>A twist of her torso wrenched the book from its perch, and without pause, she swung it down on the object of her incarceration.
>Text met flesh with a sickening crunch, the diminutive bones dictating the tentacle all shattering underneath the weight of basic mathematics instructions.
>The limb retreated quicker than lightning, and the spurs that had dug into her leg snapped away with a series of fleshy, stomach-churning pops.
>Tradewind’s face contorted as she cried out in agony, but once again, no sound escaped from her lips.
>The same could not be said of the creature, whose gurgling turned shrill as it recoiled into its seat and threw its head skyward.
>The orifice widened, and its cries grew even louder.
>From its maw erupted a scalding black slush, steam billowing out into the open air both from the creature’s mouth and the sludge itself. 
>By the will of Celestia, none of it landed on Tradewind.
>She scurried away on her side as quickly as she could, all rational thought broken down and devolved into a single, primal directive.
>/Run/.
>She found her hoofing and bolted toward the back door. To either side of her, a great number of the seats were now full, each occupied by a spitting image of the horror she had just narrowly escaped.
>Their garbled mutterings rang out in tandem, subsuming all other noise into their twisted song.
>Tradewind made herself as small as she could and cleared the center aisle in a matter of seconds, dodging outstretched limbs all the way through.
>She slammed against the cold metal of the back door, forehoof already hunting for the knob as she regained her breath.
>A click, then a clunk - the heavy door came unseated.
>She shoved against it as hard as she could, distraught as the cacophony behind her grew louder still.
>Inch by inch, it swung inward until she could just /barely/ squeeze through, the sharp edges of the doorway leaving scrapes on her sides.
>Nevertheless, she barreled forward.
>Her hooves met stippled steel as they slaved away underneath her.
>Rust blew airborne with every hoofbeat, and senseless mechanisms stirred away behind the school's rotted wallpaper.
>The hallway of the abattoir stretched on, doors occasionally flying by on either side of her.
>All the while, the pack of maladies gave chase, their distorted howls never far behind.
>Tradewind’s legs decried every riotous gallop, merciful numbness snaking its way through each with every leap forward.
>What felt like years passed before the nil-horizon slowly faded into a comprehensible image - a lone door waiting slightly ajar at the end of the passageway.
>Quicker than she anticipated, she was upon it, and the full weight of her dead sprint crashed into the ageless metal.
>Smatterings of dust and metal shavings sprung from the door into open air as it swung inward, the decaying latch decimated by the sudden impact.
>Tradewind tumbled forth through the threshold, a splitting headache having taken root before she even hit the floor.
>Dazed, she desperately struck out behind her with her back leg, hoping to find the door and slam it shut.
>It never did, though.
>It took her a few moments of bathing in abject panic before she realized that the mechanical pandemonium had died out completely - so, too, had the screams of her aggressors.
>The only things she could hear were her own unsteady sobs and the occasional gasp for air.
>Stars in her vision made it almost impossible to see in the darkness.
>Though she wanted nothing more than to stand and resume her escape, the pure exhaustion that had overcome her legs had simply deemed it not to be.
>She let the weight of her fatigue roll her onto her side, and as her cheek found its way to the floor, it was met not with the cold metal she had expected.
>Instead, plush carpet softly caressed her from below - a plush carpet that she recognized.
>Having spent most of her life playing on it, how could she not?
>When the filaments of light in her eyes had finally cleared away, she was both bewildered and elated to find herself on the ground by her bed.
>Not the sleeping bag swaddled on the cave floor, no; the plush, dream-lined mattress she had been yearning for since everything had begun.
>Though she wanted nothing more, she couldn’t bring herself to believe she had been dreaming.
>The continued pain in her leg, the stinging, the screams…
>It was all far too real to discount.
>With no other recourse, she slowly sat herself up, groaning against the dull ache of her limbs.
>The glow from her bedside window cloaked the room in swathes of abyssal light that glittered against the dark, offering shrewd glimpses beyond an inch in front of her face.
>Her pink, decidedly frilly room was as she left it before the trip - a bit disheveled with most of her toys out of their bins, but mostly tidy otherwise.
>As she sat in the faux comfort of the grand imitation, her eyes came to rest on the open doorway leading out into the rest of her home.
>A single ray of light from the raised hallway window shone diagonally across, forming something of a stripe across the open frame. The contrast was such that the light made the surrounding darkness all-encompassing.
>Tradewind paid that otherwise interesting oddity no mind, however. She simply /couldn’t/.
>For there, sat in that precariously fragile beam of moonglow, was Jet Stream.
>She had half a mind to run to him, but something stayed her hoof.
>Only his body was visible - everything above his neck was subsumed by darkness. Even so, faced forward, she /knew/ he was looking at her.
>Despite everything that had brought them there, he was absolutely spotless - not a single scratch, smudge, or bruise shone out from underneath his fur.
>Perhaps worst of all, he didn’t run to her, or call her name, or tell her that he was glad to see her.
>He didn’t tell her that she was dreaming, or that everything was just a prank to scare her, or that she was just having a nervous breakdown and that everything would be over soon - nothing like that, nothing that would have let her know that everything was going to be okay.
>He didn’t speak at all.
>He just sat there, unseen eyes boring a hole into her skull.
>After untold years of brittle silence, Tradewind began to whisper.
“Jet…?”
>Nothing, for a time.
>Tradewind pressed herself against her bed in an attempt to make herself scarce.
>“New…”
>The foreign, booming voice was fathoms deep. It shook her to the core, her very bones vibrating in resonance. She covered her ears with firm hooves, but it was in vain - no amount of buffeting would quiet her mind.
>Before her eyes, her bedroom in its entirety began falling away, fragments of wood and stone steadily chipping off and ascending into obscurity. 
>The cacophony, the violence, the obscenity - the sensory assault was all too much for her, and she held her eyes shut as she shrieked in terror.
>When all eventually became still again, she laid there huddled against the ground for a time, motionless.
>The sudden silence, something she had come to dread, frightened her far more than any unearthly disorder.
>Soon, she opened her eyes once more.
>As she did, she began to glimpse the framework upon which the facade sat.
>She was confined to a cave again, but not the one she had come to know.
>She sat upon branch-like, interlaced stone, which pulsed rhythmically with her own heartbeat.
>Space had no concept - the walls and ceiling of the cave were so incomprehensibly distant that it seemed as if she were crouched at the center of a great field.
>Massive metal spikes coiled and rose out of the ground all around her, aberrant thorns pointing skyward at various angles. Their smooth surfaces were laden with vague impressions of wailing faces, contorting in misery.
>Recognition of who they belonged to was nebulous; familiarity came and went against her will.
>Foul, sulfurous air invaded her nostrils. It stung to breathe.
>The only sound she could hear was the slow convulsing of the rock beneath her.
>As she struggled to her hooves, whispered murmurs gave way to disjointed speech.
>“You are new/contemporary/freshborn.”
>The voice, now chained to the tangible world around her, brought with it a shuddering headache. She wheeled around and, in suffocating darkness, came face to face with its source.
>An oblong, vaguely pear shaped mass of pus-yellow resin sat nestled into the earth, the latticework ground underneath rising to coil around its base.
>Wild cracks and fissures raced down the length of the abstraction, originating from two heavily splintered hunks of wood crudely jammed into its left and right sides, akin to a capital T.
>At the very apex of the monolith, the resin smoothed out into a rounded nub that was shrouded by a tattered, milky cloth, which was inscribed with archaic ideograms that she couldn’t make sense of.
>The longer Tradewind stared, the further her horror grew.
>“I understand,” it croaked, whispers cascading into stilted murmurs. “Your roots are incongruent/incomplete/extraordinary. A stun-ted bloom.”
“Where’s my brother!?” Tradewind cried, surprised she could even muster a word in the face of that… /thing/.
>“Jet,” it articulated, obsessed with his name’s phonetics. “J-e-t.”
>Tears ran anew down Tradewind’s cheeks, and her legs bade her run.
>And yet, in spite of everything, she remained.
>“He/brother/hero is elsewhere,” it whispered contentedly. “Homebound.”
>Tradewind’s eyes widened.
“He… He got out?”
>“I… a-aid-ed him-m,” it groaned with great effort. “I will aid/displace/uproot you, as well.”
>The cloth on its head began to glow, and before Tradewind could voice her concerns, her head began to feel as if it were splitting in two.
>The agony sent her earthbound, where she cradled her weeping eyes in gravel-dusted hooves.
>A terrible droning swarmed both mind and body as the thing from deepest dark spoke once more.
>“Tell all/the world/the disparate of your… ex-peri-ence here.”
>Pain fell away, and exhaustion settled thusly.
>As the last of Tradewind’s consciousness slipped from her mind, it spoke one final time.
>“Compel them to return home/refuge/divine birthright.”
>Its edict, however, fell on absconded ears.

—

>Birdsong.
>Warmth.
>Spring air.
>Tradewind shuddered awake and scrambled to her hooves, aches and pains muted beyond the threshold of adrenaline.
>In disbelief, she blinked away the crust in her eyes.
>She was in the mouth of the cave again.
>She rose quickly, eyes poring over every inch of the rearmost alcove.
>Her brother was absent.
>The hole was gone.
>Tradewind backpedaled, hyperventilating.
>She spun around and set off into a sprint, wailing as she left the cave behind.
>A thin forest welcomed her, cloaked in the gentle throes of night. Equine figures combed the treeline, lanterns in the dozens.
>If she squinted, she could just barely make out uniforms in the scant lighting.
>She started toward them - one step, then two, then three, until she broke into a full gallop, pain be damned.
“/Somepony help me/!”

—

>Princess Luna narrowed her eyes at the final passage of the written report, sat dominantly in the dead center of her storied desk.
>She read it again - a third time, a fourth, a fifth. 
>She could scarcely conceal her nerves upon the sixth retread.
“Was there anything that wasn’t included in the transcription?” she asked the straight-laced pegasus across from her, eyes still glued to the scroll.
>“That’s everything she told our personnel, Your Highness,” the mare replied. “Per your request, we also obtained a copy of her intake form and patient documentation when she was transferred from the local hospital to Ponyville General about an hour ago.”
>Luna, rousing herself from her troubled concentration, tensed her jaw as she finally made eye contact with her.
“Has she told anypony else?”
>“Not to our knowledge. We inquired with the squadron of Lunar Guardsponies that found her, but they said she couldn’t do much other than cry when they were taking her to the hospital. We stepped in to handle questioning not long after she was admitted.”
“They informed me of much the same. What of her parents?” 
>“Sleeping as we speak. The hospital’s going to send a staff member to their home tomorrow to let them know she’s been found.”
>Luna nodded, her eyes trailing out of the window to her left and settling somewhere in the star-speckled night sky.
>Her long and heavy sigh was brimming with relief, however momentary. The less of her citizens that had to ingest those contemptible amnestic drugs, the better.
“And her brother?”
>The pegasus grimaced.
>“All we found regarding him was a small tissue sample in the back of the cave, where that hole was supposed to be. DNA was a match with what we swabbed at his house two weeks ago.”
>Luna’s eyes fell shut, head lowered in pity as she sighed for what must have been the eightieth time since the report landed on her desk.
“I assume the filly’s story was substantiated, then? Given that /you’re/ delivering the news, as opposed to my Lunar Guard.”
>“We’re still conducting our investigation, but so far, it’s highly probable,” the mare explained. “We’ve cordoned off the square kilometer surrounding the area for the general public’s safety while we organize a method of approach. The Director will disclose the full breadth of information during your next meeting.”
>Luna nodded, an aficionado at concealing her distress. Despite this, she was genuinely impressed with the department’s efficiency - it had only been two and a half hours since the filly was found.
“Excellent. Have you anything else to add?”
>“Not at this time, Your Highness.”
“In that case, you are dismissed,” Luna dictated. “Have a pleasant evening.”
>“Likewise, Your Highness,” the pegasus replied as she sunk briefly into a deep bow.
>Without a word further, she promptly turned and left.
>Before the ornate door could even close behind her, Luna had already wrenched a bottle of thoroughly-aged ale from the armoire behind her desk.
>She relocated to the plush couch over by the grand window overlooking Canterlot proper and retrieved a scarcely-used goblet from the end table beside it.
>She had never taken to drinking beyond the occasional celebration, much less while she was attending to her duties, but after reading that harrowing account, she surmised no better course of action than to indulge.
>As the frigid metal of the cup touched her lips, she shivered.
>The totem was exactly how the Director described it, even down to its duplicitous manner of speech.
>Even if the physicality of Tradewind’s journey into the earth was proved to be false - and she /sincerely/ hoped it would be - it mattered little. Outside of herself, Celestia, and the Anomalous Research Division, nopony was aware of the Director, and fewer still knew of the circumstances behind his existence.
>Which meant that-
>“I was under the impression that imbibing during work is traditionally seen as taboo.”
>Luna nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden intrusion, her beverage floorbound.
>As she rose to her hooves, coughing up a storm, she glared up at her intruder.
“Director Anonymous,” she glowered. “Have my sister and I not properly stressed to you the importance of /using/ the doors that you find in the castle?”
>The verdant green biped, utterly featureless aside from his sharp suit, bowed his head in an attempt to express what he considered regret.
>“I apologize, Princess,” he replied flatly. “Did my chief of operations not inform you of my intent to speak with you?”
>Were it anypony else, Luna might have mistook such a question for disrespect.
“She did. Had I not grown used to your spontaneous appearances by now, I might have turned everything in your general direction to ash.”
>“If the situation were any less pressing, I would have abided by your request. I trust you have read through the victim’s recollection of events?”
>Luna nodded, nerves returning in force.
“I have.”
>The director offered a nod of his own, crossing his arms behind his back as he paced soundlessly toward the window.
>“It seems we have less time than I previously theorized. Once we devise a method to safely contain that effigy, the rate and size of thaumaturgical phenomena in Equestria will begin to increase exponentially. You are aware of the danger this poses, should public perception reach a level that we cannot control.”
>He stopped, at last face-to-blank slate with the darkened horizon.
>“As always, the ARD will do what is necessary to ensure public cognition remains at zero. However, we require the crown’s blessing before we begin to expand our capabilities. Until now, we have been able to maintain the secrecy of our existence on our own, but moving forward, we may need further assistance to remain confidential.”
>He faced her fully, hands now clasped together in front of him.
>“I am aware that you and Princess Celestia are especially averse to deception where your citizens are concerned, but their ignorance is what keeps them safe from that which writhes just beyond their sight. I would not ask this of either of you if it were not absolutely necessary.”
>Luna’s brow furrowed as she wrestled with the notion of lying to her subjects.
>No, not just lying - obfuscation, misdirection, manipulation…
>It sat poorly on her conscience, in spite of her lack of a choice.
>She shut her eyes in frustration.
“Have you spoken with my sister yet? She sleeps poorly as of late.”
>“I have - she was in agreement. If you wish to speak with her first, though, I understand. I will be in my office whenever you have your answer.”
>He began to walk back toward the door, but stopped just as his hand grasped the knob.
>“That child might be useful to us,” he proposed. “If the words of that entity are to be believed, then I suspect her survival is not owed to mere happenstance.”
>Luna opened her mouth, ready to demand an explanation, but in the blink of her eye, her office was once again empty.
>She'd have to berate him for that ridiculous line of thought later.
>As she roused herself from the comforting grasp of her lounge and made for her sister's chamber, she couldn't assuage the pit deepening in her stomach.
>An ill wind bore down on the world she so loved.