Just Like Me

The still summer sky shuddered with pain as something tore it open from the other side and squeezed its way into the world, leaving a twisted black gash in the air. Had anyone been watching at the moment of the tear, they would have seen something bleed through, then rapidly descend with a gaseous slither.

It lingered when it reached the level of the grassy hillside, not occupying space but instead shunting space aside, like parting a curtain around itself. For a few moments, reality was an ocean, and it was a bubble. Then the void ruptured, and the world rushed in to engulf the presence within.

It touched the soft-coarse grass beneath. It was kissed by the rush of a breeze.

If it had lungs, it would have taken a deep breath. If it had eyes, it would have blinked them. And then, with its lungs and its eyes, it would have started to cry tears of joy, because the air was warm and sweet, and because creatures were chirping from where they hid within the tangles of lush green plants, and because he had arrived in a place that was alive and full of magic, just as he knew it would be.

…So. He was a He, no longer an It, which meant he was not alone. He rose to his hooves, because he had four hooved limbs, and he turned his head when his ears alerted him to something drawing near.

The word for what he saw came to him quickly, because he had seen something like her before: a lone unicorn making her way down a dirth path. She was hitched to a tall, oversized cart, and she was wearing a tall, oversized hat with a matching cape. The unicorn mare didn’t notice that someone had appeared next to her and was approaching from the grass, because her eyes were turned upward. She slowed, gradually, to a halt, and simply stood there with her head raised and her jaw hanging slack.

“Excuse me,” he said.

She responded by jumping so violently that she accidentally yanked at her harness and rattled whatever was inside her closed and decorated cart. The sound she made was a raspy, grating thing that fell somewhere between “Argh!” and “Eek!”

“Sorry,” he said.

“Who—who are you?” she demanded. “And what in Equestria is happening here? Th-the Great and Powerful Trixie must know!”

He met her narrowed gaze, and saw something that sent another spark of excitement through his heart: he saw Light. This being, this unicorn, she was what Harmony had created, and surely others like her would be nearby.

But… this little one was also troubled. She was resentful and closed-minded, and her exaggerated sense of self would manifest as outward force instead of inner strength.

“W-well? Trixie is waiting for an answer!” she snapped. Her eyes flicked upward to the gash on the sky, then back down again. “Do you know what… what that thing is?”

He wondered if he ought to comfort her—but what kind of answer could he possibly give? So, instead, he sent a breath of power out where he had opened the sky, so that he could quietly pull it shut it behind him.

Then he looked up at where it had been a moment ago. “What thing?”

Trixie snapped her head upward and huffed out a noise of mixed disbelief and frustration—but he felt relief from her as well. “A huge, crooked, black… thing! Hovering in the sky! It was enormous! Trixie saw it with her own eyes, mere moments ago!”

“Sorry,” he said.