Chapter 9 of 13·6 min read·The next morning through three days later
The Shape of a Safe Road
The answer from the regional office arrived before breakfast, carried in a gray satchel by a mare who looked as though she had personally delivered bad news to every village between here and the moon.
She stood in the library doorway with rain darkening her coat and a sealed envelope balanced in her magic. “Twilight Sparkle?”
“That’s me.” Twilight hurried forward. “You have a response?”
“I have a response, three forms, and an inventory request.” The mare glanced at me. Her eyes paused on my horn, my blank flank, and the fact that I was sitting on the floor because the library’s chairs continued to regard me as a design challenge. “Is this the displaced individual?”
“David Silver,” I said. “Displaced individual is fine for official documents, but I answer to David.”
She looked mildly relieved that I could speak. “Deputy Registrar Pell. Regional Office of Arcane Surveys.”
“Do you have a first name?”
“Of course.”
She did not offer it.
Twilight broke the silence by accepting the envelope. The wax seal bore a stylized eye crossed by a measuring line. That seemed like a poor logo for an office responsible for not making mysterious things worse, but perhaps the design department had been overruled by a committee.
Twilight opened the letter. Her eyes moved rapidly down the page. Then they stopped.
“Is it a refusal?” I asked.
“No.”
“That was not the tone of someone reading good news.”
“It’s a conditional authorization.” She turned the letter around so we could see the official stamp. “The office will permit a preliminary investigation of the western seam near Needleback ridge, provided the expedition remains observational. No entry, no magical provocation, and no attempt to widen or communicate with the phenomenon.”
Spike leaned over the table. “What counts as communicating?”
Deputy Registrar Pell looked at him. “Speaking to it. Answering it. Describing personal memories within audible range. Offering objects. Touching the boundary. Singing, if the song is personally meaningful.”
I raised a hoof. “What if I’m terrible at singing?”
“Then it remains prohibited.”
That was the first official ruling in Equestria I had encountered that felt specifically designed to ruin my future career as a musical villain.
Twilight continued. “The expedition leader is named here.”
Next
In three days David will leave Ponyville under Senior Surveyor Nettle Vey’s authority, carrying sealed memories and a rope line toward the seam that may already know his name.
“Senior Surveyor Nettle Vey,” Pell said. “She has authority to suspend the investigation if conditions change. The regional office will provide communication crystals, climbing supplies, and two field assistants. Shining Shield is approved as the guard escort, subject to his captain’s confirmation.”
“Field assistants?” I asked.
“One will carry the equipment. The other will document observations and maintain the return route.”
“So we’re not just walking into the mountain with a rope and optimism.”
Pell’s expression suggested optimism had already been listed as a prohibited substance. “That is not the recommended method.”
Twilight read farther. “They want a written hazard plan by sundown.”
“Correct.”
“And a statement from David regarding his involvement.”
My stomach tightened. “What kind of statement?”
“Whether you intend to approach the seam, whether you have any knowledge that may increase the risk, and whether you understand that the office cannot guarantee the phenomenon will return you to your place of origin.”
The room became very quiet.
There it was. The question underneath every question. If the seam opened, would I go through?
For weeks, I had treated returning home as the obvious objective. It was written in the margins of every thought, even the ones about breakfast and learning to walk without colliding with furniture. But obvious did not mean simple. Home was not only a city, an apartment, and a body I had lost. It was also hospitals, fatigue, careful calculations about stairs, and a life that had often felt like something I was borrowing by the hour.
It was my life. That mattered. So did the one I was building here, despite the fact that my current body still had the grace of an unfamiliar shopping cart.
Twilight watched me without pushing. That helped more than any spell could have.
“Give me a die,” I said.
Spike blinked. “A die?”
“From last night.”
He rummaged through the wooden box and passed me the six-sided cube. I set it on the table between us. My horn caught it on the second attempt. The first attempt lifted a pencil instead, which felt like my magic making a principled objection.
I rolled.
The die bounced once and landed on four.
“I should note,” I said, “that I don’t plan to go back. We’re going to see what’s there, what’s going on, sure, but if a portal yawns open, I’m taking pony life over a broken humanity. Easy pick, really.”
Spike’s face changed first. Surprise, then something softer.
Twilight’s expression was harder to read. “You’re certain?”
“No.” I nudged the die with my hoof. “But I’m certain enough to put it in writing. If the choice is a guaranteed return to the exact moment I left, with no way to bring anyone with me, versus staying here with people who know my name now…” I shrugged. “That’s not much of a contest.”
Pell’s quill hovered over her form. “You understand that a declaration made today may not bind you under different circumstances.”
“Thank goodness. I reserve the right to panic intelligently.”
She wrote something down. “That is acceptable wording.”
Twilight immediately pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward herself. “We still need the plan.”
This was how apparently epochal emotional decisions worked in a research library. You said you might permanently abandon your original world, and then someone asked whether the rope inventory included spare knots.
We built the expedition around the rules from the game, but stripped away the dramatic language and replaced it with procedures.
First: nobody approached the seam alone. The group would remain within sight of one another, with a rope line between the lead observer and the rear guard once they entered the abandoned valley.
Second: nobody answered a familiar voice. Not a parent, sibling, friend, former employer, or deeply convincing imitation of a former employer.
Third: no one would describe home near the seam. Personal memories would be recorded in advance, sealed, and consulted only if the survey required comparison. Twilight objected that this might conceal useful information. I pointed out that the last expedition had widened the seam by talking about home, and that “useful information” was not worth giving a hungry hole more to listen to.
She considered that, then added the restriction herself.
Fourth: the team would establish a verbal check before entering the valley. If someone heard a voice, they would state it aloud. If they could not state it aloud, the nearest companion would pull them back by the rope.
“Even if they resist?” Shining asked when he arrived near noon, wearing his uniform and an expression that suggested he had already begun planning how to pull several people at once.
“Especially then,” I said.
He nodded. “Good.”
The fifth rule belonged to Twilight: no spell cast on another team member without warning and consent, unless immediate rescue required it. She wrote that one in darker ink.
By afternoon, the library table had disappeared beneath maps, checklists, food estimates, weather reports, and a truly insulting number of socks. Spike packed emergency rations into labeled bags. Twilight calculated the distance to Brindlehook twice, then a third time after discovering that one of the old maps had been drawn by someone who considered scale a personal opinion.
I took responsibility for the voice protocol and the daily log. It was not glamorous. I would watch for changes in how people spoke, note anything that seemed to imitate a memory, and say when I needed a break. The last part felt more dangerous than the mountain. I had spent years making exhaustion invisible until it became impossible to hide.
Shining tapped the map. “We leave in three days if the weather holds.”
Three days. The number settled into me with the weight of a stone.
Twilight rolled the map closed. “David, you can still withdraw.”
“I know.”
“And you can change your statement.”
“I know that too.” I looked toward the window. Ponyville moved beyond the glass: carts, voices, sunlight catching on roofs. Strange, impossible, real. “But I’m going.”
Spike lifted a supply bag. “Together.”
“Together,” I agreed.
Outside, rain began ticking against the windows. Somewhere west, beyond the roads and the abandoned valley, a seam waited in the mountain like an ear pressed to the world.
This time, we would arrive with a plan.
And if it called me by name, it would have to get through all of us.