I could have sent her back...

Dear Diary,

I found another pony that looks like me.

About an hour ago, I came home from a late-night flying session, and tip-toed into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Problem was, we were completely out of toothpaste. I took that little tube to the task, I stomped on it with my hooves, I gnawed it with my teeth, I even tried sitting on it, but nothing worked. That toothpaste tube was empty. I could have just gone to bed right there, but I may have... kinda... stolen and eaten a few chocolate chip cookies from a bakery while I was out flying. Sorta. Dental health is its own reward.

I knew the big man keeps spares in his bedroom, but it was almost 2 in the morning, so waking him up was out of the question. Instead, I got sneaky. I cracked open his door and, not wanting to put any stress of the creaky floorboards, hovered inside with a few steady flaps of my wings. The room was completely pitch black, but I checked around anyway, hoping my eyes would adjust. After about five minutes of hoofing around dresser drawers and cabinets, I was more than able to make out what I was looking at, which made my search for toothpaste all the less painful.

But sadly, even after another 10 minutes of looking, I still was no closer to finding any. So, at last, I figured to check under his bed. If the big man keeps toothpaste anywhere in this apartment, that, by process of elimination, would have to be it.

Thankfully, I was still small enough to fit under there, even if I bumped my head on the frame while I was trying to wriggle my way through. I was scared that I might have woken him up, but perplexingly, he just started snoring. I could still see pretty well under there, and I'm sure that by then, my eyes had been fully adjusted. But instead of finding what I was looking for, I stumbled across something... else.

It was a book. Paperback, to be exact, but much thinner, and taller than the books I read. I pulled it closer to see what it was, thinking I might want to read it later, but could only stare in bewilderment when I got a good look at the cover.

I found another pony that looks like me. Or, similar, at least. She was a unicorn, with a bright, purple coat, and a mane to match. I was sure I had never seen her before in my life, but for some reason, she looked oddly familiar. I felt as if she was my sister somehow, even though I couldn't recall ever meeting her. If the oddness about this book ended there, I would have not complained, but it didn't. No, this pony that I recognized, she was posed rather awkwardly. Her head faced forward, and her eyes looked straight into the camera, but it positioned very low to the ground in comparison to the rest of her body. The rest of her body, while anatomically correct, was positioned in such a way that her flanks were raised up higher than any other part, and her forelegs bent at the knee to accommodate the position naturally. Her face looked... odd. She had a very playful grin on her face, and eyes that just seemed to... beckon.

In the background, standing maybe 10 feet behind her was another pony. A stallion this time, but he was still a unicorn. He also looked familiar, but not as much as the mare did. His face conveyed a look of shock, but his face wasn't the important part.

Don't ask me how I know, but he certainly looked like he was glad to see her.

The book had far more pictures than I was used to in my books, but that wasn't too jarring. I was able to follow the story just fine.

For the first few pages, the book looked normal, but when I turned to the page after that, it took a rather jarring turn. My eyes couldn't even be forced to focus on the beginning panels, because they had been inexplicably drawn to the middle.

I recalled my dilemma from a few months ago. I was right. Friendship is not the only thing I'm missing in my life. The urges I've been having are far more primal, and it was about time that I acted on them. But as I did, the big man was still asleep, and snoring loudly, a mere foot above my head. I was closer to getting caught than I had been at any other point in my life, and I liked it.

I had seen dogs do this before while I was out flying, but they most likely did it solely out of hygiene concerns. One thing was for sure: toothpaste was no longer optional.

Via clever positioning, I was able to flip through the pages and keep my eyes focused on the book. The purple one wasn't the only pony I seemed to recognize in here. As I flipped through, I also saw similar depictions of a white one, a pink one, and an orange one. Each one of them looked incredibly familiar, but I was still sure that I had never seen a single one of them in my life.

But as I flipped to the final page, that stopped. The two ponies on this page, I knew for sure, and I knew from where. The one on the left was Daring Do. She was my favorite literary character, even though I just realized that I can't remember a single one of her books. I had had my suspicions before, but now I knew for sure. There is something horribly wrong with my memory. Little bits and pieces of who I am are always floating to the top, but the majority of Rainbow Dash is trapped; buried under goddesses-know how many false and suppressed memories.

But that wasn't the worst part.

The worst part was that I recognized the pony on the right even more than I did the pony on the left.

The pony on the right was me.

This... is how "daddy" looks at me.