In the end, the problem was not finding a larger stone, but rather thinking of a way to get it to the middle of the lake.

"There's gotta be a better way," Baby Nightglow grumbled as his friend carefully wrapped his tail around a wave-smoothed rock.

"It was your idea," Baby Featherfall pointed out.

"But I didn't think we'd be using MY tail!"

"Yours is longer. Now stand up . . . slowly." She gripped her teeth around the end of Nightglow's blue tail.

Baby Nightglow obeyed, rising with care. With the rock bundled neatly in the tresses of his tail and Baby Featherfall holding the whole thing in place, they were ready to put their plan into action. "This'd better work," the purple pegasus muttered. "Or I'm going to feel really silly."

"Su'prised y' don' feel silly 'ready," Baby Featherfall said around a mouthful of blue hair. "'re y' ready?"

"Yeah . . . let's do it!" He opened his wings and began flapping, and Baby Featherfall did the same. Flying was awkward with the stone weighing down the colt and the pegasi occassionally colliding in midair, but after some tricky maneuvering and several false starts, they managed to make it to the middle of the lake with the stone.

Baby Nightglow's wings were pumping hard to keep him aloft with the extra weight. His tail felt like it might fall right off. He gazed down at the inky water stretching below him and repressed a shiver.

"I think this spot looks good, don't you?" He felt rather than saw Baby Featherfall's nod of agreement. He was just about to suggest dropping the stone drop on the count of three when abruptly the support on his tail was gone and the filly was wheeling away in a flurry of pink feathers.

The purple colt let out a yelp of surprise as the weight of the rock pulled him towards the lake . . . but each beat of his wings pulled him higher while simultaneously jerking another wrap of his tail from around the rock. At last it pulled free, pulling only a few tangled purple hairs with it. Baby Nightglow managed to turn himself around just in time to see the rock hit the water. The surface of the lake seemed to explode and both pegasi winced away as a spray of water washed over them.

"Well . . . now what?" Baby Featherfall asked, shaking beads of water from her wings. (Fortunately, they were not wet enough to hinder her flight.)

"We wait and see if it worked, I guess." Baby Nightglow looked down at the surface of the lake rippling in the moonlight.

They watched anxiously as the surface of the water slowly smoothed itself out, coaxing the concentric ripples down. Even then, Baby Nightglow didn't move; he just kept staring at the dark water swaying under the moonlight and hoping. Hoping against hope.

"Come on," Baby Featherfall said at last, getting up.

"But--" The purple colt looked from her to the lake and back again.

"Come on, Nightglow. No one's coming. We're on our own."

"I guess . . . I suppose you're right." He rose slowly to his hooves, not quite able to believe that they were on their own again, and turned silently to draw in one more view of the lake stretching in front of him. The last ripples from the plummeting stone were drifting slowly away, barely visible . . . or were they? He swung over the lake, hovering, and as he watched, the tiny waves seemed to grow stronger, larger, framing a rapidly darkening spot beneath the water . . .

Surfdancer broke the surface in a burst of spray, his wet stringy mane tossed around him all pale in the moonlight. "What you DOING, fry??" His voice was high and frantic. "Why you HERE?? Go! Go!"

Baby Nightglow flapped his wings twice, backing away in surprise and confusion. "But . . . what . . ."

"What do you mean why are we here?" broke in Baby Featherfall, who had flown over as soon as Surfdancer appeared. "We had a deal. You said if we took a message to your friend--which we did--you'd help us find our way home!"

"Silly, stupid fry!" Surfdancer hissed. "Already done!"

"What??" Baby Nightglow gasped, too excited to care about the insult. "You've found them already??" He looked at Featherfall. Her eyes were wide and she was trembling with hope.

"Of course not found them yet." Surfdancer snorted and ducked his head underwater briefly, rising with rivulets of water pouring over his gills. "Waverider talk to fish. Fish tell you when they find herd. Nothing more to do here. Go away!"

"How are we supposed to talk to fish? We can't understand them like you!" Baby Nightglow said, trying to hide his disappointment.

"Me not talk to fish either, fry," Surfdancer said in a martyred tone, speaking slowly as if that were the only way anyone so dense could possibly understand him. "Me not sea mage. Only Waverider talk to fish."

"But then . . ."

"Waverider talk to fish, send fish upriver, they find herd. Ponies need water, even land ponies. When fish find them, they find you. But for now, you GO!" He gestured with his fins, splashing water towards them.

"What's the hurry?" Baby Featherfall asked. "How will we know when the fish have found--"

"You know when time is here. Silly little fry, out in the open! We bury ourselves in mud, sleep long time--when land ponies not waking us," he said reproachfully. "And why, you think? Bad things." His voice lowered to a barely audible hiss. "Bad things come."

"B-bad things?" Baby Nightglow said querolously. "Like you talked about b-before?"

Before the water-pony could answer a terrific BOOM echoed across the western sky. The water trembled as the baby ponies leapt up a foot in midair, startled.

"Thunder," Baby Nightglow said. "Just thunder . . ."

"Baby Nightglow," the Rainbow pony said, "there aren't any clouds."

"It comes," Surfdancer said sharply. "Flee." And he dove backwards, disappearing beneath the water with a flip of his eel-like tail.

Baby Nightglow and Baby Featherfall hovered for a moment, frozen except for their flapping wings, before exchanging a glance of pure terror and lighting towards the shore as fast as their small wings could carry them.

BOOM! Behind and above them. BOOM! The lake trembled. And they flew. They flew.

Baby Nightglow broke through the first scraggle of weak-limbed trees, pushing his way to the interior of the forest as branches slapped at him. Featherfall was on his heels, no longer flying but leaping over rock and log, hooves moving together so swiftly, so neatly that only her eyes spoke of fear.

BOOM!

"We can't outrun it," she said as she pulled up to the purple colt, matching his mid-air stride.

"We have to!" Baby Nightglow cried, redoubling the sweeps of his immature wings. The ground rose suddenly in a hill of lichen and loose rock, and he found himself running and flying at the same time.

BOOM!

"Nightglow, no! Wait!" She snatched at his tail but missed. But the next instant, the world around him slowed as he pushed through air that thickened and jelled around him. In quarter-time, he saw his hoof slip, and a moment later time relaxed as he tripped and sprawled.

"That was . . . was that you?" he demanded, half amazed, half angry.

"Yes . . . I've never used my power that way before, but . . . yes. Nightglow, we can't outrun it."

"Then what?" He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. They were going to die here, on this hill, and they wouldn't even know what did it. Where were his parents?

"I don't know," Baby Featherfall said, sounding close to tears herself. Then she stared at the sky and whispered, "Look."

Baby Nightglow half-reared, his forehooves pawing heavenward. The stars gleamed down, clear and careless, casting their cold light over the shuddering forest. Only . . . a strange darkness engulfed a third of the heavenly bodies, which flashed and disappeared before his eyes in great patches of void before wheeling into view again. Clouds? But clouds never fleeted so swiftly as that.

A sudden flare of green light spewed from the sky, a torrent that poured forth too viscous to be flame, too liquid to be solid. Across the lake, across the shore, the land sizzled and hissed beneath it, trees wavering and melting in the emerald glow as they toppled. As they died.

Then with a sudden flicker, there was only darkness. Silence fell, broken only by the sky cracking with cloudless thunder. The stars came and went, matching the steady tattoo, but Baby Nightglow could hardly see them with the green afterimage still flaring in his eyes.

We should run. We need to run, he thought, but the two foals stood gazing stupidly across the lake, waiting.

BOOM! The stars flashed. BOOM! The rhythm reminded him of something, but he couldn't think what.

Something was moving. Baby Nightglow's throat clenched. Something in front of them, on the shore, was moving towards them, running towards them. His feathers quivered as he prepared to leap away from whatever was charging out of the night--

"Deer," Baby Featherfall whispered. "It's just a deer."

The colt almost sank to his knees in relief. Yes, the Rainbow pony was right, it was just a doe leaping along the shore, spooked out of the woods by the fire and the thunder. He could just make out her wide, wild eyes as she leapt along the stony shore, her cloven hooves moving together two-on-two and her tail raised and brushed in fear. She wasn't far away now, maybe thirty feet, and in a few seconds she would be racing past them, into the woods--

This time he heard a soft hiss and smelled a strange, acrid scent before the sky spewed forth the river of green, flameless fire. It bit into the lake, separating the water into rolling walls on either side, lit by a sickly green glow. But it was beautiful, in a way, when it hit the shore, leaping and rolling across the wave-lapped stones faster than thought. The rush of green fire flared no more than ten feet from the colt, and though his eyes burned he didn't feel the faintest flash of heat as the afterglow highlighted his wings. The doe saw the flood of fire coming and twisted to leap away. She did not make a sound when it engulfed her. Through licks of verdant, her body reared and jerked in a strange, ungainly dance, sizzling as her skin fell away layer on layer until there was only a dancing skeleton topped by skull with flaring eyesockets cavorting in her impromptu pyre. And then even those were gone.

The light abruptly died. Darkness once more.

Baby Nightglow stared at the place where the deer's body wasn't and the rocks that had melted into a solid, stretching mass and he finally remembered what the booming rhythm reminded him of, as it ate at the stars.

Beating wings.

He didn't look up. He didn't look at Baby Featherfall. He stared straight down, not daring to twitch a feather, as he listened the sky shudder. With each beat of cloudless thunder, his mane stirred.

BOOM! BOOM!

Echoing, hovering.

BOOM! BOOM!

Like it was waiting.

BOOM! BOOM!

But now it was fainter.

boom! boom!

And still he dared not look.

A sound filled the air, not quite a roar, not quite a cry. Not a howl of rage, nor of anger, but scream of triumph as something vast and dark swept over the lake. From the corner of his eye, Baby Nightglow had a fleeting impression of massive claws tearing at the tumultuous lake as the Something swung by. Then with a snap that tore the air, it spiraled towards the stars.

The foals stood stockstill for a long time, barely breathing, until the last flashes of green lightning faded from the western sky.

At last Baby Nightglow faltered, "What . . . what was--?"

"I hope we never find out," Baby Featherfall whispered.

And shivering, they ran.