The Magic World

Chapters

The Visitors
The Small Step
The Storm
Paradise
Bottled Message
Golden Mistake
Spoilers
The Migration
The Long Road
Moonlit
A Warm Place
Disorderly
The Setback
Sisters And Footnotes
1008 A.N.M.
Between Day And Night
The Bookmobile
Closing The Circle
Loopless

The Visitors

Chapter One

March of twenty-eighteen. The world ends in about two months, and none are any the wiser.

This is not the important thing, however.

A single, redheaded figure huddled sleepily under the covers. On the one hand, I had the day off, and thus didn't have to get up for anything up to and including air raid sirens. On the other, slipping off into sleep again and getting more than six hours of rest felt downright unnatural to me. Thankfully, procrastination won again and I found that the choice was taken away from me.

A solid, heavy object struck my head. I gave a screech, rolled, and came up from the far side of my bed with an alarm clock held threateningly in one hand. I groped blindly until I found my glasses, slipping them on to find that... I was completely alone in the room.

"What new form of sleep madness is this?" I asked, thinking that the burglar/assassin in hiding would be stupid enough to answer. No such luck. All I found was a book, resting half under the twisted bedspread that was fast losing my precious body heat.

'Oh,' I thought. 'A book just fell off of my shelf. That sounds much more reasonable. Even if I don't own any such shelf over my bed, and I don't own any spooky tomes. And... well. Who the fuck tries to assassinate me with a book? Points for irony, I guess...'

Aiming to be as scientific about this as I could, I ducked to check under my bed -empty, minus some old socks- before coming back up and poking at the tome with my alarm clock. The book, predictably, continued to lie there. As books tend to do.

"Fuck it," I said. I was a brave, independent woman and no book would get the best of me. I was going to solve this mystery, read the shit out of this thing, and celebrate with ice cream. My weekend plans affirmed, I nodded sternly and opened the funny, arcane-themed tome.

Only to find nothing. Blank paper, rough, like drawing stock. Gilded edges. A red ribbon place holder. It was probably the most beautiful book I had ever laid my hands upon, and it was utterly empty of anything. I flipped back to the cover again. A six-pointed star, embossed in gold leaf on the funny leather surface, with little symbols written inside each point. My assassin was, apparently, a satanist. Or something.

"You don't make sense," I told the book, glaring. It decided not to answer. I turned and made to walk away, before unconsciously turning back, grabbing up the book, and hugging it. "You might not make sense," I told the tome. Tom? Tom. "But you're alright, in my book."

I chuckled, briefly, before realizing I'd just made a pun.

I sighed. "Another quarter in the jar." I'd have enough for a new computer, at this rate.

The coffee shop, half bookstore and all awesome, was as warm and inviting as ever. I wandered up to the counter, continually checking to see that Tom was still in my messenger bag. I smiled at Jill, who was actually working out front for once.

"How goes business?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes. "Same as it was yesterday when you asked at game group. Had to fire Danny- he showed up high to work again." To my surprise and delight, she already had my special, specifically-for-yours-truly coffee all made up. "On the house! Any dame who happens to leave a Wishing Necklace of the Raven Queen for my elven bard to pick up deserves it."

I glared and puffed out my chest. "I am scrupulously fair, and that was not special treatment," I told her.

"Want me to take the coffee back?" she asked.

"Sweet Gandalf, no! This thing is half chocolate syrup!" I exclaimed, grabbing the cup and marching for the quiet room in back of the shop. Jill rented me the room as the closest thing I had to an office. Really, it was a glorified closet, and I 'payed' for it by cleaning the shop after hours. And any of the three or so fans I had in the area of downtown Seattle were welcome to come in, buy a coffee from Jill, and chat. Everybody won!

I pulled out my computer, drawing tablet, and on second thought settled Tom on my lap for inspiration and got to work. Only maybe an hour had passed, half of which was trying out different color palettes for adorable, fuzzy aliens, before there was a knock at the door.

"Come in?" I tried.

Lo and behold, it was Crazy Dan.

Now, Crazy Dan wasn't, in fact, crazy. Nor was his name actually Dan. He'd once privately admitted to hating his first name just enough that he'd purposely started spreading the misnomer over a decade ago. That was cool with me- I was the last girl to go around bothering some dude about his naming choices.

What Crazy Dan was, though, was odd. He was utterly obsessed with the occult. Not because he believed in it, mind- he just thought it was nifty. Seeing a tall, dark man dressed like an affluent hobo interviewing Wiccans was a sight for the ages. More than that, he was my best consultant for the short fantasy novellas I wrote and published, from time to time.

"Hey, Tamara," he said, grinning wide and shuffling into the room's second of two chairs. "Anything new and exciting?"

"Yup," I said. "Magically appearing book hit me on the head in my room this morning. Mysterious- and totally blank."

He eyed the thing with interest. "Nice. Can I do a tracing of the cover? And did you check for invisible ink?"

"Of course I did," I said, having done no such thing. I wasn't crazy. But I would do it, later. "Trace away."

I actually only handed the thing over reluctantly, but I didn't let Crazy Dan see that. I simply went back to drawing my comic as he borrowed some tracing paper from my stock and got to work.

"Six symbols... unknown. Pictographic or gibberish. Star is the wrong proportions for the Star of David... Huh. I'll get back to you on this. Four of these symbols are three repeating squiggles, and that might be significant."

"Good to know," I said, hauling Tom back into my lap. "What did you think of chapter five?" I asked.

"Needs more wizards," the man told me.

"It's science fiction."

"Then make them science wizards," Crazy Dan stressed.

"Mm... I just figured out chapter seven then," I thought out loud. Crazy Dan looked pleased, and made his excuses to go out and bother Jill about the religious accuracy of her tattoos. Alone, I gazed down at Tom and asked it, "Why are you so darn huggable?"

Tom didn't answer. The tease.

The park is quiet. The sky has decided to... not shine, really, but not rain either. Fucking Seattle- I loved it. Really, I was only here because my daily planner had told me, in my own handwriting, that I hadn't gotten fresh air in a month. Past-me took herself too seriously, I think, and had eerie predictive powers.

I doodled in a ragged notebook. I did some math, figuring that I wasn't quite well-off enough to quit my day job, then resigned myself to doodling some more. Then I heard the voices.

"Codename, Purplesmart. Come in, Purplesmart! This is Pink Panther, over!"

"First off, you don't have to say 'codename'. Secondly, using actual aliases, the ones we established beforehoof, would be preferable to making up new ones every single time."

"Aw, just give it a break. Ain't no way she's gonna stop, anyways. Might as well go along with it and let her have her fun."

"Rainbow! Stay on the ground, for goodness sake!"

I frowned. Was it convention season already? I hadn't even finished my steampunk pirate outfit yet. That is to say, I hadn't gotten Linda to finish my steampunk outfit for me, yet.

Thoughts of any cosplay flew out of my head completely once I actually bothered to look up, and saw... ponies. Real, not rendered as vectors, wandering, talking ponies. I rapped my knuckles along Tom's binding.

'This is somehow your fault, book,' I thought, assuming something without ears could hear me just as well that way as it could if I had said it out loud.

While my mind was awash with great, overwhelming thoughts such as 'this challenges everything that mankind knows', or, 'this might be a legitimate first contact scenario that doesn't have to end in the aliens eating us for our delicious, delicious nutrients,' my first response was much different:

"Excuse me, magic talking ponies? Are you an hallucination?" I called.

Then I resisted the urge to slap my own forehead. 'Way to go, Einstein.'

Four ponies, with distinctly alien biology, froze in place in the middle of the lawn. I scoffed- did they expect nobody to see them, or something?

"We're not magic talking ponies!" said Twilight Sparkle, assuming the show's details were accurate, after quietly panicking for about a minute.

"And even if we were, you wouldn't be able to tell, because of magic!" said Pinkie, nodding certainly. Rainbow Dash began rubbing at her own temples with her wings' primaries, probably to stave off a headache.

"Okay," I said. "Because you totally look like ponies, not to be insensitive or anything." Because it was important to respect differences, even if they were really confusing ones. "Specifically, like really famous ones from a show."

On the one hand, I could have played it more calmly. Not mentioned anything, or rationed out knowledge of everything. But if they already knew, or found out later and decided I was trying to lie? Or what if they already knew, and were testing me, or they were hallucinations and I was testing myself...

Honesty was probably the best option, if only for lack of options.

"Show, like a... play? Or like cinema?" asked Applejack. Twilight began desperately trying to shush her.

"Show as in television. This is the twenty-first century- are you saying ponies don't get cable?" I asked, feeling light-headed and possibly delirious. There was no way I wasn't having a bad reaction to... to something. Anything. But there was part of me, some little remainder of my once ten year-old self that had promised that, even when she was all grown up, she'd never be like the stupid adults that would dismiss magic just because it was unexpected or, worse, inconvenient.

Ironically, my willingness to suspend disbelief and observe probably made me a better amateur science than not.

I pointed at each one in turn. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but... Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack. Is that right? My name's Tamara Whittle. Is there any way I can be of any help?"

'Please don't need me help to invade Earth and create a crapsaccharine dystopia. Or be robots mimicking our cartoons to lure us to nutrient farms under false pretenses, or...'

I smiled as hard as I could, so as to look like I wasn't thinking that hard about the impending disaster.

Twilight, at least, looked like she were about to say something, possibly even just to interrogate me, but her horn chose that moment to pulse with a magenta glow. "Oh no," she said. "Time's up, girls!" To my shock and just the slightest bit of terror, she narrowed her eyes in my direction and cast a spell at me. A literal, magical, from a magic horn, spell.

There was a blinding flash of light, and when next I was able to look without spots in my eyes, I was alone in the park again. It took me a long, confused moment to calm my panicked breathing and to stave off the anxiety attack clawing at my chest -because what the hell just happened?!- before looking down to find myself holding Tom like a shield. The book was warm.

"What the hell?"

Tom had changed. The first page, at least, had the first few inches full of dense, incomprehensible scribbles and strange diagrams that might very well have been over-sized letters. It was beautiful and also very, very incomprehensible.

"Yeah, mom, I'm fine over here," I said into the phone, eyes tracing the page even as I held my end of the conversation. "It's been pretty intense. Did you see I just put up the teaser pages online?"

"No, ma, I don't expect you to have actually read it. I know you're busy with the garden. Say hi to Libby, alright? I've got to go. Yes, yes, I love you too." And thus ended my bi-yearly contact with family.

I shut the phone off, dropped it onto the rug, and kept on staring at the book. "I saw magic today," I said, perhaps to the book, but mostly to myself. Just the thought, the sentiment, soothed something in me that I hadn't ever been aware had ached. Idly, I brought my index finger up to touch the line of alien text-

-Unknown-
-Unknown-
-Variable path-
-Declining energy state-
-Designating symbol 'target'-
-Unknown-
-Point description-

I tucked and rolled backwards, over the arm of the couch. Seconds later, I desperately dove back onto the couch and huddled over Tom. The tome had, thankfully, fallen shut when I had dropped it. Of course, that didn't excuse dropping it in the first place.

"What was that, and why are you causing me trouble, Tom?" I asked. Furrowing my brow and chewing my nearly-raw lower lip, I opened it. There was probably a better way of going about this, but curiosity can be a terrible, compulsive thing. I slowly, ever-so-carefully, let my finger touch a single, solitary symbol. It was like a half-spiral, and it-

-Point description-

Okay, next symbol-

-designate as-

I reached into one of my many piles of notebooks and, flipping to a clear section not filled with practice anatomical drawings, began composing a list.

Two days after first spotting ponies in the park, I was in my kitchen making a veggie pizza. It was one of the easiest foods in the world to make, delicious, and the half I didn't eat would make for an awesome breakfast with scrambled eggs, tomorrow. There was a blinding flash somewhere behind me, and I checked to make sure Tom was hidden in my cutlery drawer.

I turned, confirmed what I had suspected, and said, "Hello Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash. I'll assume the spell doesn't let you 'knock', first. Would you like some pizza?"

The two mares in question shook themselves. I guessed that the trip from magic pony land -my best operating guess, that- was a bit of a doozy.

"You!" said Twilight, pointing with one accusatory hoof.

"Me!" I said back. "Pizza?"

Completely ignoring her companion, Rainbow Dash flew up in the most literal, impossible, magical sense of the word and rubbed her hooves together. "Free food?"

"Dash! The mission!" called the alicorn.

Rainbow Dash's eyes widened in shock, then narrowed as her body took a more threatening stance. "You! What's the big deal?"

Doing my best to hide my nervousness, and wishing I still drank, I answered, "I offered to help you last time, then you disappeared. There's no need to get testy. Also, I'm still offering pizza."

"What kind?" asked the pegasus suspiciously.

"Cold veggie on cream cheese," I said. At her sour expression, I waved my hand at the counter. "Don't knock it until you try it. The tomatoes are fresh."

"Fine. But this better be the best damned pizza I've ever had!" said the cyan mare, disappearing behind me. I did my best not to follow her with my eyes as I was suddenly face to face with a royal alien demigoddess.

"So... will you be sticking around any longer than last time?" I asked.

"The last time was a fluke," she said. "There are more of us staying behind as anchors for the spell. This time, we're getting answers. For instance, how did you see through my spell?"

"There was a spell?" I asked. "I guess you guys weren't supposed to look like ponies? Wait- are you actually not ponies now, and the spell is making you see you like this? Please tell me you're not space wizards- I thought that idea was originally Dan's. He'd be heartbroken."

"We're not..." Twilight blinked, confused. "Are you usually this confusing to talk to?"

"Only when I'm nervous," I replied. "Do you always interrogate friendly strangers?"

"All the time!" called Rainbow Dash from behind me. She flew into view and jammed a square of pizza into Twilight's unprotesting hoof. "You've gotta try this!"

"Are you sure?" I asked, just lightheaded enough to let my sarcasm bubble up. "It could be poison."

"Is it?" asked the pegasus, completely unconcerned.

"Of course not- that would be a waste of pizza. Still, you should be suspicious of the alien who saw through your disguises. Or saw your disguises, as ponies. Which is it?"

"Dude, we're ponies, obviously," said Rainbow. "I mean, you were supposed to see us as other monkeys in the park the other day, but yeah. You get it."

"Humans, not monkeys," I corrected. "You might insult monkeys that way," I warned her, and she laughed through a mouthful of broccoli and pepper. Charming.

"Still!" interjected Twilight. "How do you know us? Or see through the spell- which I did cast, and it was a very good one," she added, grumbling. "Nopony here has magic. There's none anywhere!" She waved her hooves for emphasis. "It should be impossible for even a simple illusion spell to be pierced by anything!"

"Maybe humans are immune to magic?" I suggested, bemused.

"Unlikely," said the mare. "It worked on everypony else we passed."

"Then I have no ideas," I said, though I had at least one big suspicion in the form of an assassin tome. "As to recognizing you... you're in a show. Like, a serialized story about you and your friends. Moving, sequential art with sound, if the reference helps."

"That 'sequential art' is an egghead word for comic books, right?" asked Rainbow Dash. I nodded. "Sweet!"

"That shouldn't be possible," said Twilight, beginning to look frazzled.

"Eat your pizza," I said. "I'll demonstrate."

Queuing up the first episode of 'My Little Pony' was easy enough. I wasn't a die-hard fan, but I certainly had a thing for cartoons. 'Gravity Falls' was just as good, in my opinion. Less easy was being crowded on both sides by inquisitive aliens.

"Back off a bit," I said. "Touching a human's elbows is practically a proposition for sex."

"Eep!

"Yikes! Really?"

"Maybe. Still, personal space would be appreciated," I said, placing the computer monitor on the coffee table I'd scrounged up from a curb my first week living here. "Or else I might use my human powers on you."

"You're clearly magically neutral," said Twilight nervously, gaze only briefly able to escape from staring at the screen. "My sense for mana is rather acute."

"I said powers, not magic," I corrected her, then winked at Rainbow.

She stifled a grin. "Yeah, Purplesmart, beware the humans. Wait." She pointed at the screen. "If this is us, does it show, like, stuff?"

"What stuff?" I asked, blank-faced. "Like, how you lay your eggs for the brood mother? And wearing hats- very, very lewd. You'd think ponies were shameless. You'll be touching each others' elbows, next."

"You're yanking my tail," said Rainbow suspiciously.

"Relax," I assured her. "This is a show aimed at children. There's a hard limit. If the writers ever imagined what you got up to in the privacy of your own bedroom, or whatever, they sure as hell didn't show it."

"Good. Dash time is for Dashes only," said the pegasus.

"Should I be surprised you know so much about a show aimed at children?" asked Twilight, sounding a bit disgruntled. Probably from my 'elbows' comment.

"I'm very immature for my age," I told her. "And you're not surprised because you're a particularly perspicacious, perceptive, purple princess pony." I tallied up the words in my head. "Hey, six word alliteration! I just earned myself a cookie."

"You're taking this all rather calmly," said Twilight.

"I'm taking some very strong, anti-anxiety medication. It helps," I said. "Who feels like ice cream?"

"So... what actually brings you adorable aliens to my humble corner of reality?" I asked.

Rainbow Dash, inexplicably holding a spoon in one hoof by means that I had to dismiss as being 'magic', leaned back in her bean bag chair to glare at me. The effect was ruined since her head was upside-down from my point of view.

"We are not adorable! We're bad-awesome. That's your medication talking," she told me.

"Of course you are, and no it's not. It's the orange pills that make everything adorable," I said, as if I were seriously correcting her.

"Rainbow Miriam Dash, you will not make those kinds of jokes!" declared Twilight over her own bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough. "Even if she's sort of egging you on."

"Thank you, Twilight. You are officially the most sensitive and caring Equestrian on Earth," I said. "Unless there are, like, a dozen more of you hiding on the planet. Seriously, what's your side of the story?"

Between that and waiting for Twilight's response, I glanced over at Dash and mouthed 'Miriam'. She made what I assumed is a rude gesture.

"A couple of weeks ago," said the alicorn, "some high energy magical researchers notices a particularly unique fold appear in the local magical fields. It grew bigger, and I was officially asked to step in and look into the matter. Seeing what was on the other side was a bit of a blind jump on our end, but we were protected, and had the other girls stay behind to act as an anchor. In an emergency, there isn't much the Elements of Harmony can't punch through, when push comes to shove."

"So... are you from another planet? Universe?" I asked. "Tiny planet hovering in the middle of Earth, which turns out to have been hollow all along?"

Despite giving me a weird look at the last notion, Twilight said, "That's just it. We don't know. This," she waved at the screen showing episode two, "just threw a wrench in our understanding. Maybe. And it might not matter, in any case. The rift is following a mathematically precise pattern- we expect it to close in about two months."

"Well, I'll do all I can to help," I said. Really, the whole thing was too interesting not to. "I'm curious, though- how did you find me?"

"Tracking spell," said Twilight. "It brought us back to your general area." She levitated her now-empty bowl to the table and sighed. "I haven't said it yet, but thank you. You've been very patient with us, mostly."

"Humans are all about hospitality," I told her. "Also, we can breathe fire. Want to meet my friends, next time? They're all humongous nerds- they'll be happy to help a bunch of space wizards such as yourselves."

"You know, I was almost certain the translation spell was working," said Twilight. "Up until we spent more than five minutes in your company. Still, I suppose that would be alright. When should we arrange the next jump?"

"In..." I checked the clock. "twenty-two hours, if that's alright. Use your tracker thingy. By the way, that's human Earth hours."

"I got that," said Twilight, wryly. "Come on, Rainbow Dash. We've stolen enough of Tamara's ice cream."

"No we haven't!" the pegasus shouted, suddenly. "They put cookie dough in ice cream! We need to steal this idea, pronto! Because-"

But there was a flash of magic, and suddenly the studio apartment only had one occupant, again.

Curious, I nudged open my messenger bag with my foot. There, where I'd placed it while getting the ice cream for everybody, was Tom. I couldn't be certain it had been close enough to Twilight, or if it really did exactly what I'd suspected it did, the first time with the alicorn's tracking spell, but...

A peek confirmed it- there was an entire new block of alien text, this one taking up an entire three pages. Time to get to work...

"Tamara, I hate to stretch disbelief, here, but you may be crazy," said Crazy Dan.

"Possibly," I said, rearranging the campaign map. "Still, if she's not here in... three minutes, we'll start the game. I brought donuts to sweeten the deal, and you've already started eating them. There's no backing out, now."

"I didn't know there were stipulations attached to this donut," said Linda.

"A law student should know enough to read the fine print," I countered.

"The fine print says 'serving size: one'."

"One pony, maybe?" said Jill, adjusting her stuffed mouse. It was her mandatory prop. I had a menacing, stick-on goatee. Really, game night wasn't the same without it.

"I, for one," said Crazy Dan, "am looking forward to-"

A flare of light filled the room, banishing all shadows and heralding the sound of distant bells. Having had to go through the same thing already, more than once, I recovered first.

"Hello, Twilight, Pinkie," I said, waving.

The violet mare shook what looked like excess static out of her fur, and then gave me the eye. "Not that I don't appreciate the informality, but I have to say that I hear 'Princess Twilight' more often than not, these day."

"You broke into my house," I reminded her. "That puts us on a first name basis." I frowned, but only slightly. Maybe I was getting more sociable, finally? 'No, probably the meds. Rainbow was right. Still, I've heard of worse side effects.'

"Hi, Tammy!" shouted Pinkie, bouncing in place.

"Tamara," I corrected her.

"Tammy!" she insisted.

"Fine!" I gave up. "Pull up some chairs, girls. Watch out, Linda bites."

"Just the one time! Stop embarrassing me in front of the princess!" the woman in question snapped. I threw up my hands, giving up yet again in the space of ten seconds.

"Ponies?" said Jill, blank-faced and wide-eyed.

"Yes, ponies. Pinkie? Give her a hug," I suggested. The mare obliged, and pink candyfloss wrapped itself around butch punk rock. It was beautiful- I nearly shed a tear.

"You are so soft!" rasped Jill.

"I know!"

Twilight coughed. "I hate to sound demanding, but do you have any more of that cold pizza? It was... really, really good."

"They don't feed you at the palace?" I asked, and her ears folded sadly. I pointed to a card table. "Right in the big ol' container, your highness." She beamed at me and trotted toward the back of Jill's loft.

"So," said Crazy Dan, notebook already out and ready. "You said this was a magical rift? Is that strictly speaking?"

Twilight nodded from over a growing mound of pizza slices. "Precisely. The rift itself folds space, time, and a few of the higher, fiddly dimensions, but I think that's mostly caused by the rift, as a side-effect. Mostly I'm just hoping to figure this out before it closes, and we lose the research opportunity of a lifetime." She glanced toward me in particular. "It may not seem like much, but most of the real work is being done back home. I'm here in the capacity of a mobile research station, so to speak." She wiggled her saddle bags, which beeped softly.

"Have you been able to conclude anything?" I asked, reaching into my bag for my emergency supplies. I'd had some small amount of faith that there would be ponies here and now, after all.

"We know the 'whats', but neither the 'hows' nor 'whys'," said Twilight.

"What about the who?" asked Crazy Dan. "Are you sure it's a natural event?"

Twilight's eyes crossed, and she shuddered. "Well, it's certainly not natural as we know it, but I would hate to imagine anypony so powerful as to cause it themselves. Faust save us from that."

"Faust, the show creator?" asked Jill. "I mean, your show?" she asked, still touching Pinkie's mane.

Pinkie giggled. "No, silly! Faust is a story- the first mother of Equestria! Except there were supposed to be ponies before that, so... I guess ponies didn't have to have moms?" The mare looked to have confused herself.

"It makes for an intriguing coincidence," said Twilight, pulling up her own chair. I discretely tucked my bag under her, while readying my special props. Rules were rules, after all.

"What is all this?" asked the princess, looking at all of our character sheets.

"A tabletop roleplaying game," I said. "Lots of imaginary adventure," and there, Pinkie perked up. "And lots of math and strategy." Twilight perked up. "Would you like to play? We've just started a new game- I killed everybody last time."

"Rocks fall, everybody dies," said Linda, shivering. I resisted the urge to laugh- I had made spiders crawl out of all of the walls, our last game session.

"I'll help Pinkie with her character sheet," said Jill. I nodded- she was the second-best rules lawyer I'd ever met. She wouldn't steer Pinkie wrong.

"Lean on in, Twilight," I said. "Time to learn about AC scores. But, first!" I pulled out the props. Pinkie got a floppy hat, and Twilight got a child's caricature of a sparkly wand, complete with yellow-painted star. "The first rule about gaming group- props are mandatory."

Pinkie donned her hat immediately, but Twilight poked at her wand with a hoof as if it were diseased.

"You're kidding," she said. Insisted, maybe.

I simply pointed to the space under my nose. "Does this look like the prosthetic evil goatee of a woman with a sense of humor?"

It had taken an hour to set up. And then we had to throw out about half of the house rules we had established for the sake of 'having the whole experience', since Twilight got a hold of the manual and insisted we do realistic travel checks.

"Ah ha! I have thirteen point seven arbitrary units of water," the alicorn cheered. "Twilight is greatest, most conscientious barbarian."

"Not bad for being illiterate, Twilight!" cheered Pinkie.

The librarian princess shuddered. "Yes. I'm... I'm sure they will fix that in a future edition. Or I can have my character campaign for literacy..."

"I draw my sword and make a solid strike, using my standard action!" Twilight declared, rolling her twenty-sider. While the table held its collective breath, she suddenly jerked up and stared into the middle distance. "Already? No!"

Her last 'o' trailed off as she and Pinkie disappeared in a blaze of light. Crazy Dan leaned over and whistled. "Damn, a natural twenty! Looks like we won this dungeon!"

"She'll be happy to hear that next time," I said, and pulled out the scratch paper I had set aside to assign experience to everybody.

Minutes later, when everybody else was gearing up to go home, I peeked into Tom's pages. The new spell block was short, probably the normal telekinesis that Twilight had been spamming. Still, there were more symbols and contexts for me to learn. Tom was still a mystery to me, but he was also giving me answers.

Later that night, I took scrap paper and wrote out five symbols. They seemed to be the bare minimum necessary to accomplish anything, so I tried:

-Designating this(point) as target, do-not-deny element(luminescence)-

There was nothing.

'I... I expected that,' I told myself. 'But I own't pretend I'm not disappointed. It's like Twilight said, nobody here has magic. There's nothing here that lets me...'

I gasped, but quietly, and turned back to Tom. I'd so painstakingly copied symbols out of it...

I wrote out the symbols once more, this time in a free corner of parchment on the third page. The symbols were exacting and specific, but the intent was clear enough:

'Let there be light!'

Linda and I sat in her kitchen, painting plastic sculptures and trying to draw anatomically correct feet, respectfully. This was because Linda reacted... badly to eating food anywhere that was not in the kitchen. Even at other people's houses, she would happily sit alone at a kitchen table while everybody else was picking stray popcorn out of seat cushions, or whatever.

"You got happy," came the unexpected comment.

I glanced up, blinking. "I did what now?"

Linda smiled. "When our visitors showed up. You were in one of your, you know, moods before then. Happy to be expanding your social circle?"

"No," I said. "I mean, I wasn't in one of my, uh, moods." I thought back a week. I didn't remember not being happy.

"You didn't leave your apartment for a week," said Linda, lowering her paintbrush accusingly.

"I don't remember that." I frowned. "Or maybe I'm repressing it. I became so filled with ennui, it became a black hole for emotions and memories, maybe."

Linda went straight from concerned -her default state of existence- to very worried. "You were getting weaned off of that one medication, though, weren't you? You literally sent out an e-mail to all of us, saying you didn't want to make us suffer your presence."

"Pshh. My account history would prove you wrong," I said, reflexively grabbing my bag and opening the smallest pocket.

"Tamara?" Linda prompted me.

"Just habit," I said, smiling back. A quick shake had told me, through long practice, that I hadn't taken a single one of my pills since I last refilled them. But I had refilled them over a week ago.

Had I been losing time?

Had I...

"Tamara," said Linda once more. "You zoned out, there."

I glanced down at my bag, wondered why I had been holding it, then set it back down.

"Just spending some time in the clouds," I told her.

Seven more weeks passed. Twilight and between one and three of her friends stopped in every other day or so. They told me they were making other trips, too, all over the world. Still, she had no excuse as to how their disguise spells never effected me. I thought that I might, ought to have told them about Tom... but part of me was afraid. Afraid that I was doing something wrong. Maybe afraid that it would be decided, without my input, that I somehow didn't deserve this wonderful, magical thing that let me build spells like clumsy structures out of children's letter blocks.

For once, I had found something I loved even more than writing: magic.

"Have some iced tea," I suggested to the mare. "It will make you feel better."

Twilight eyed the pitcher dubiously. "You drink your tea cold?"

"Only when it's hot out and the air conditioner goes fritzy," I told her. "Then putting on my electric kettle seems like a cruel and unusual punishment, so yes. Cold tea."

She poured herself a glass, sipped, and grimaced.

"Sugar's right there," I reminded her. She dove for the little container.

"Anyways," she said, once she dubbed the drink 'bearable'. "That energy curve is hitting its crest, tonight. I don't think we'll have the inertia to come visit, anymore. And we still don't know why this even happened in the first place!"

"Calm down and drink your tea," I said. "It's alright, Twilight. You got to visit a new, interesting place. I got to meet a bunch of space wizards from out of a cartoon. Just chalk it up to being... one of those experiences, you know."

"I... I thought you might be a little more broken up about this," said Twilight, pouting.

"I am deeply in denial. Denial is one of those human powers," I told her. "The day I finally realize I won't ever see you girls again, I might very well bawl like a baby. Or maybe turn to a life of crime and drug abuse. Who knows!"

"Stop that," she said, poking me in the shoulder. "You'll be fine. I have the utmost faith in my friends."

"Um, yeah," I said. "What about them? You didn't even bring them along, this time."

It wasn't often I was looked at as if I was an idiot, even by a mare as clever as Twilight Sparkle.

"I meant you, dummy!" she shouted.

"Oh." I sipped my tea. "Wow. Awesome?" I coughed. "Is this where you make your declaration of undying love? Because I think we should work our way up to that."

I never saw the pillow she levitated to hit me from behind. It wasn't long until I couldn't help myself from cackling like a witch.

"Oh sweet Faust, why do you keep cackling like an evil sorceress? Seriously, I've had to deal with those!" said Twilight, battering at me ineffectually. Taking advantage of her moment of distraction, I reached out and pulled her down to my level. It took her a moment to stop struggling, and then it was just the two of us at the base of the couch, me hugging her for all she was worth.

"It has been so, so awesome," I told her. "You're my friend too. I want you to come visit again if you ever figure out this junk."

"If I can," she said, patting at my hair. The strands had a mind of their own, to my irritation. "But the energy curve only takes three days to fall to nothing. We'll try, and I know the other princesses will back me up on this, but it might just not be possible. Promise me you'll take care of yourself, though, no matter what. You've still got friends here that you can depend on, and I know you still don't open up to them enough, either."

"I promise."

"Do you really promise?" she asked me.

"Cross my heart and hope to die," I told her.

Twilight winced. "That's... really morbid," she told me.

"Humans are grimdark as hell. Now get off of me- I got us ice cream."

I stared into the space where Twilight had been. I thought of Narnia, how at the end of the story everybody had to go home and just pretend nothing fantastic had ever happened to them.

I looked at Tom. I had three days, and I could make them count.

Author's Note

Currently: Seventeen chapters written. Suffice it to say, there won't be any shortage of material for a while. Tune in next time for... cover art!

The Small Step

Chapter Two

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Applejack," I said, offering a hand. She looked confused for a moment, before flattening her hoof against my palm and vigorously shaking it. I was too off-balance to try grasping it like with a normal handshake, which was probably for the best.

"A pleasure, Ah think," said the mare wryly. She looked back to where Twilight was twitching over a whiteboard I'd found when I first moved into the apartment. "Ah've seen Twilight get into a lot of her... moods, but Ah've gotta say you have a better success rate than Pinkie, which is just astoundin'."

"Thank you! I think," I mimicked back. "So you drew the short straw this time?"

She shrugged. "Basically. Ah only saw a little bit of the city last time Ah was here, thought I'd take the chance to meet a local up close and personal."

"Anything you'd like to see in particular?" I asked. "I can't say I'm much of a tour guide, but I spend a lot of time wandering around. See?" I whipped out a spare notepad.

Applejack leaned in and read, "Go outside, damn it. You're turning into a shut-in again." She blinked. "Well... alright then. Let's... go outside?"

"An excellent suggestion," I replied. "Twilight, we're getting fresh air! Come on!"

The alicorn twitched. "I can't leave this now, look at this equation!"

"It's very pretty," I admitted. "In a modern art sort of way, if you're into that. Come on- you can pick my brain for stuff on the way. Anything you like, and I'll cut the sarcasm by half."

"Well then!" The violet mare turned in place and trotted up with a smile. "I'll hold you to that promise."

"Stuck between two snarky dames," said Applejack, shaking her head. "What'd Ah do to deserve this?"

"You were either very good in a past life," I said. "Or you paid my going hourly rate. Come on."

I hid the satisfied little smile as Applejack chuckled and Twilight sputtered about not being some 'mare of the evening'.

"We've all gathered here today for a very particular reason," I announced to the table at large.

Crazy Dan nodded, and raised his rubber ax. "To slay those evil spider men."

Jill petted her fake mouse. "To finally get the experience points you forgot to give out last time?"

I grumbled, but threw out the chart for all the table to see. The three players got to copying down the figures. Really, player characters were insatiable creatures, barely even human. It was why I, as a dungeon master, had to keep their attention with an iron fist.

"But no, not actually any of those things," I told them once they were finished. "Instead, I... am going to do magic."

"Point of order," said Linda. "You're not a sparkly little pony."

"Don't say 'point of order'," I told her. "You make this sound like a democracy. It's a tyranny. And I am going to cast magic, and... I really want your guys' help."

"Deal!" said Crazy Dan.

"Alright," said Jill.

"Why not?" asked Linda.

That, however, was not according to the script, so I ignored them and pulled out my speech. I had typed it, yes, but I had printed it out in very fancy calligraphy fonts.

"Now, your first reaction is to say 'no'," I told them. I ignored the rolling eyes. "But I want you to hear me out. My magic book lets me cast spells, and since the rift has tipped the other way, I think that gives us the chance to send somebody the other way. The information gleamed from this might allow for more stable travel, and promote peace and unity between two different cultures."

I cleared my throat. "More than that, you are all the best friends I've ever had. Never before, not in my old home town, did I find people to trust and sort of vaguely tolerate like I have you. I hope you'll accept becoming my anchors on this side of the rift, not just because of all the wonderful things we might accomplish, but because something something blah blah magic of friendship. End, speech. Hold for applause." I frowned. "Wait, those last bits were in brackets, and I wasn't supposed to read them."

I was cut off when all seven feet of Crazy Dan grabbed me up in a hug. "That was so, so beautiful," he said, voice choked with tears. I kicked at the air- who the hell was actually seven feet tall, these days?

"I said I'd do it, you spastic head case!" said Jill, adding to the hug.

"I'm not actually going to, like, touch anyone, but I feel the same way," said Linda, still at the table. I let that one pass- we all had our little quirks.

"What do we have to do?" asked Crazy Dan, letting me back down.

I smoothed out my skirt, grabbed up my bag, and pulled out both Tom and the three scrolls I had made.

"This is my magic book, which lets me do magic," I announced. "I love it, and it loves me. Its name is Tom, short for Tome. When I write spells on it, they get cast, and I totally made it work. These scrolls," and here I passed them all out, "Are made from pages I took out of Tom. They'll make you my anchors, I think."

"You think?" asked Jill. She was holding her page like it was about to explode.

"I've been short on time!" I said, sounding only slightly insulted. "I've been doing a lot of, you know, copy and paste. Only without a computer. These spells are organized like a drunk's refrigerator, only without the elegance. If I were inventing spellcraft, I'd do a hell of a lot better."

"Of course you would, dear," said Jill, patting me on the head. "Now, can this wait until after the game, or is this time sensitive?" she asked.

"This is day three," I said, suddenly feeling most of the last few sleepless nights. "You heard Twilight- this is our last chance. So as much as I'd like to ambush you all with brigands and highwaymen-"

"Spoilers!" shouted Linda.

I ignored that and went on, "I think it's now or never. Ready to see if this will work?"

I got a round of 'yeses' and 'get on with its', which touched me on a deep and emotional level. Really.

"You are all such dorks," I told them, wiping at my eyes. Obviously Linda's loft was very, very dusty. For a compulsively clean person.

I pulled out Tom, and set it on the table to a solid reaction of approval. It looked very mystical, of course.

"I'll get the candles!" said Linda. "Magic spells need candles."

I was almost certain they didn't, but decided it would make her happy to dim the lights and light some... vanilla-scented candles. 'Way to go on the atmosphere, there, Linda.'

One of the things I had noticed was that, every time I used Tom, I lost the space used to write down my spells. They could only be cast once, I supposed, so I had tried to write tiny. More than that, it seemed like paper disappeared from the back of the book with every spell cast, as if it were being burnt up as fuel. It was like that metaphor about burning the candle at both ends -which I had also been doing, in my rush to finish the spell- except applied to books.

I had torn out four pages for each of the tightly-sealed scrolls, with the first pages bearing dense spell runes. That was the anchor spell, as well as I could piece it together. Tom now had an additional three full pages of text.

I held the tome to my chest in my off arm, and motioned for everybody to hold up their scrolls. I brought up a pen with my free hand and wrote the tiny rune I'd come to call 'execute spell' on each paper cylinder, lighting them and my tome up in sequence. Crazy Dan, Jill and Linda all went quiet with a kind of atypical reverence.

I stepped away and opened Tom to the last filled page, pen in hand. I paused. Memories of the last three years, of getting away from home and making a life in the distant city, of finding people to depend on and be happy with, of starting my career. Of everybody knowing and respecting the name of 'Tamara', as if I'd never had any other.

I was afraid to lose all that.

This was the greatest risk I had ever taken.

'And thus conscience does make cowards of us all,' I thought. 'Though maybe not today. Let me just be brave, just once.'

My hand came down.

-Execute spell-

The light was overwhelming. Gravity had let go of me, and I was tumbling at speeds unimagined through an impossible space and, for that single moment, I understood, as I never would again.

"I'm sorry!" I screamed it, and wasn't sure why. "I'm so sorry! Please, forgive me!"

The weight of the impossible drew me forward.

And then I fell.

I woke up clutching Tom. I heard flames. And shouting- that, too.

"Get the princesses! We have a breach!"

I cracked my eyes open at the too-blue sky, and saw a mountain. And then I knew pain.

In the distance I saw hurrying, panicking figures. Definitely equine. I had arrived, at least.

Something Twilight had said to me, once, occurred to me just then: 'There is magic in everything, back home. In every creature, in every particle. Being here, in your world, feels like swimming through ice.'

I felt like I was on fire, and wondered if maybe I physically wasn't meant to be there.

Out of options, I opened Tome and came to the first fresh space. It was hard to see- my glasses had shattered in the fall from... wherever I had been. The memories had already faded, and I found myself grateful for reasons I couldn't explain.

'I need a pen,' I thought, numbly. Then I noticed that my fingers were smearing the pages with red, and I figured that would do as well as anything else.

-target(this self) make designated to equals(reference(self)) as...

I heard the strange but distinctive sound of teleportation, only multiplied.

"Tamara? Tamara!" It was Twilight's voice.

I went back to writing with my own... red stuff -'Don't say blood don't even think it.'- because I couldn't bring myself to talk and, therefore, explain. There wasn't time to try to spell my way back to Earth, I didn't think. The best I could do was this horribly clumsy spell with syntax like out of a ten year-old's first computer program.

...gain reference(target) apply to equals(reference(self))...

I was writing too large, but then I couldn't see well. Nor did I expect that, even if I survived, that I would ever get the chance to do magic, again, anyways. Half of Tom's pages had already been consumed.

"This is the human you meant? She needs medical attention!" Going by the voice, and what I remembered from the show, that would be Princess Luna herself. I was honored.

"My goodness, this has turned out to be an interesting day," said... John de Lancie? Oh, right. Chaos god. There was no time to fangirl, though, over the demi-immortals running around.

...set final, by terms-setting this(element(not-element))-

I swallowed, but my saliva was coppery and thick. I tried not to look at the skin of my arms, which was literally boiling away. I was only concerned with not blotting out my already-shaky lines.

Twilight appeared like a great violet blur in my faded field of vision. I tried to smile, and hoped it didn't look too gruesome.

"S...sthorry..." I slurred.

-Execute spell-

I woke up alone, and in a dark place, and everything was horribly cold. Though I did not know it, the end of the world started there, with me, and with that cold that crept and filled every cell in my body.

I curled up in on myself, not knowing where I was and not remembering where I had been. There had been... something fantastic. I had been happy. Why had it gone wrong? Why was there blood on my fingers?

I woke up again, I'm not sure just how much later, under a blueberry pie tree. I blinked. That was... odd.

As my vision cleared, I saw that it was not, in fact, a blueberry pie tree. This was as much of a relief as it was a disappointment. On the one hand, pie that grew on trees might very well prove to be the greatest discovery of all time. On the other, my mind was feeling pretty shaky, and that kind of discovery might send me off the deep end.

It was simply a tree with wide, spreading branches, upon one of which somebody had placed a pie to cool. This made less sense than I might have liked, but I could rationalize it away.

'I am alive, am no longer on fire, and there is pie nearby. Things could honestly be much worse,' I thought.

Before I could start counting my blessings, a nearby bush rattled. I watched, curiously, as a little pony -a brown filly- crept up on her belly, eyes on the pie branch. 'There,' I thought, 'Is thievery afoot. Ahoof. Nope, one more quarter in the pun jar for that one.'

At least, I figured, I was both still in Equestria and safe from what felt like more magic than any being should experience and live through. Deciding to try out the whole 'good citizen' bit, I hissed.

"Kiddo, stealing pie is bad. Stop that this instant."

The filly hopped in place and squeaked. Upon seeing me, her eyes went wide and she bolted around the tree.

"Not what I had expected," I admitted. "Am I really hitting all the warning signs for 'stranger danger', or something?"

Not more than a few seconds later, filly and... mother, maybe? Appeared around the side of the tree. The filly led the both of them up to the branch, and started babbling and pointing from me to the branch, and back.

My hearing was apparently off, or something, but I understood a frame-up when I saw one. The little bugger was trying to claim I had stolen the pie!

In response, I settled for raising one eyebrow to Spock levels of incredulity and staring down the child. She wilted. Her mother seemed to have gotten the idea, too, and used her tail to give the filly a quick, but utterly painless, swat before going into lecture mode.

'That was weird,' occurred to me. 'She ought to be freaking out about the ape monster coming to steal her pastries and children. Why-'

And then I noticed how sharp my vision was, like, unrealistically sharp, without my glasses. The way my range of vision itself had stretched to either side. The fact that I could see way more nose on my face than I was used to, though some of the detail was somehow lost.

"What-" And my voice, far too high. I'd at first thought my throat was dry or something, but no. And it sounded too breathy, like I'd spent a lifetime trying to lose my gag reflex the hard way.

Well, now. It seems that I screwed up my mishmash, last-minute, ignorant-of-all-theory spell. Who'd have thunk it? It had been a desperate attempt to somehow graft an element of adaptation to myself, based off of any native targets the spell was able to pick up. Instead it did... something weirder. Much weirder.

I looked down and saw that, yes, that was a hoof tucked under my fuzzy, cream-colored chest.

Well. At least I was alive. An alien, yeah, but alive.

The mare was talking to me, now, babbling, and I suddenly realized that I couldn't understand what she was saying, at all. There was nothing wrong with my hearing- my hearing was great!

'There is only one possible way out of this,' I thought. It was cliche, and my inner story-writer was rebelling against it with every ounce of strength it had. I mimed a heavy 'thunk' to the side of my head, crossed my eyes, and said, "I have amnesia, and stuff. I think I hit my head. You don't understand me, but it also probably effected my fine motor coordination. Also, I am a banana."

The mare seemed suspicious, but even that was tinged with sympathy. It wasn't until I tried to get up and flex my limbs that she began to look scared.

Scared of what? I was just stretching my...

"Oh. Hey. Wings," I said. I tried to poke at one, but it retreated. I guess moving my arm... foreleg, back, pushed wrongly on the new, strange muscles that I'd never actually operated before. Annoyed, I spun and tried to chase the feathery thing, only to fall over.

I whined. Then- oh, I have a tail! And my nipples migrated south for the winter. Golly, I was taking this well. And by taking this well, I meant I began to cry. Trying to wipe away my tears just meant bumping my new forehoof into my muzzle.

"I'm alone and I don't have my body and I got wings but I don't know how to fly and... and..."

A tiny hoof place itself on my side, and there was a soft, shooshing babble. I grabbed the first available thing for hugging and cried on it.

After about a minute of being pathetic, a larger, more tentative hoof pulled at me. I glanced up, red-eyed, at the mare, who seemed to be asking for her daughter back. I awkwardly handed the filly over, though the little thing was still trying to pat my head. The mare looked me over, rolled her eyes heavenward, and sighed before beckoning me along.

"Really?" I asked. She got impatient and waved me along harder, so I stumbled after her. Walking wasn't that hard, so long as I didn't think too hard about it. It was sort of like crawling, but more elegant. Well, the other mare moved elegantly- I just moved like I was trying to crawl on my toe tips. Which I no longer had.

We rounded the massive tree trunk, where I was surprised to find a kind of hard-packed dirt ramp going into the earth, where there was clearly a door set into the arch made by the roots where they reached the trunk. I shakily navigated my way after the two ponies, and offered a quick prayer that I wasn't about to be eaten.

The mare babbled at me, which I didn't understand, of course. Thusly, I provided her end of the conversation through the powers of imagination:

"You seem like you'd go well with barbecue sauce. Would you like to sit down?" She gestured to one of the two stools in the incredibly spartan, one-room living space.

I sniffed, and nodded. "I'm probably delicious, but I'd thank you not to eat me. Sitting down sounds good." And it was great, once I remembered to move my tail to the side. Literally nothing about my body was strictly familiar, but at least I hadn't sat on my tail.

"Do you want an infusion of slood?" she asked. "Mini-me, don't! You'll catch the rabies!"

I jerked, slightly, to the side at the touch of something on my left wing. The filly looked guilty, in a defiant way. I was a little confused- they looked as if I had strong-armed them or something, and the filly acted like she'd never seen a pegasus before. These ponies were... plainly speaking, poor. The delicious pie had been baked in a plain, clay oven. They had one large sleeping mat that they likely shared. While I'm aware that 'My Little Pony' was likely the least accurate way of viewing an alien world, there hadn't been hints of anything like this.

I lacked perspective, and a means of gaining it. Really, all I had was myself.

I accepted a glass of water, politely refused the slood, and made my way out the door.

Sleeping in a tree was not... the worst place I'd ever found myself staying. Or at least it was, but only after I'd gotten sober back in the day. My day after leaving the tree ponies had been a short lesson in familiarizing myself with... myself. My voice had sounded normal, if still a bit breathy, after I'd stopped having to compensate for my shitty vocal cords. I'd officially broken the record on sexual reassignment procedures, and not had to pay a red cent, minus the horrifying trauma. Neato!

That alone would have made me give serious thought to doing this voluntarily, had this all been something other than a stupid accident. Gender... validated! Species... working on it.

I could walk, 'jog', and run, for all that the movements themselves were unfamiliar. My joints were weirdly flexible for a four-legged critter. I could touch my nose with my tongue, which was awesome. I was really, really missing my fingers. And toes.

I was a smallish, short-coated, cream-colored pegasus with red mane and tail. The wings had little graphite-colored speckles in the outer primaries, which I thought were a nice touch.

"Oh, magic. Why don't you make sense?" I asked the air. I stretched, as apparently sleeping in a tree was, despite being surprisingly not terrible, still did funny things to my funny new limbs.

The branch was wide, low to the ground, and offered little protection whatsoever from the elements. Mostly I hadn't wanted to sleep on the ground, last night. With a short hop -which probably looked equal parts adorable and ridiculous- I landed, and apparently my wings flair automatically when I do that.

Okay. Fire, shelter, food and water, in whichever order. I can do that. I only had to figure out how to manage tools without fingers, protect myself against dangers which are, currently, complete mysteries, figure out what foods won't kill this body, and purify water from the... ground. Water just lying there, and not from a tap.

Oh god oh god oh god-

Two weeks. I looked like hell, felt like hell, but I was flying.

The tree filly was there below, laughing or clapping depending on whatever I was doing being triumphant or stupid. Face-planting earned laughter. Hovering in place got clapping. Flying backwards on accident got laughter. Going up and picking apples for both of us? Solid applause!

The little girl babbled away happily, as little girls do, and dug into her apple. Not for the first time, I stared. She was holding it. I poked unhappily at my own fruit, and it rolled away.

The filly saw my trouble and, instead of laughing, ushered me toward a large root that surfaced nearby. At her clear instructions, handed out as if from a plushy dictator, I took the place opposite her.

She began rhythmically tapping her forehooves on the rough surface with sharp clacking noises, drumming it in time.

"Hylothi li,
Vrofa hsi,
Huatha satha mu."

Then the noise by her drumming changed. Soft, pattering sounds.

"Isthzo sjay,
Mistho hway,
ava thothi ju!"

I slowly, tentatively, made to mimic her.

"Hottie chi..."

"Hylothi li!" the filly corrected me. It was like staring into the soulless eyes of my fourth grade teacher, and I could do naught but obey.

After a short age, we got through the first verse and I was happily tapping away like a moron, because children are awesome, and I am powerless to refuse them.

Pat.

Pat. I stared down at my forelegs. Hmm. I brought my hoof up, twisted my fetlock, and my hoof flexed too. I looked to the grinning filly, then back to my hoof. I did the little tapping trick again.

Pat, pat, rap, rap, pat, pat.

I reached over and touched the apple, and my hoof curled around it. I brought it up, took a bite, and felt unto a god. With my other hoof, I tested my weight and found it as solid as it ought to have been. Putting less weight on it let me flex it, putting more on forced it into a tougher solid...

"I win, I win, and everything is wonderful," I declared. Sure, there was as much dexterity to it as a mitten, but at least I had grip. My monkey hindbrain was happily chittering and flinging feces with wild abandon.

"Thank you," I told the filly, and was suddenly struck with how stupid I had been, the past thirteen days.

"My name is Tamara," I said, pointing to myself with my free hoof. "Tamara."

The filly's eyes lit up. She babbled cheerfully, hopped, then introduced herself as 'Hayli Hwali'!

If the show was any indication, it was probably something adorable in English. Like, Maple Flower, or something. And that would make sense, because she was a tree filly! Oh, how I amused myself.

"Thama! Thama!" The filly pointed up toward the tree. "Alvi, Thama!"

"Alvi, then?" I asked, and she nodded. With more concentration than I hoped would be necessary in the future, I fluttered up and grabbed two more apples. Back on the ground, I held an apple out on my hoof -no longer having to cradle it to my chest- and waved it. "Alvi?"

"Alvi!" she agreed. I passed Hayli the apple and smirked.

'And 'A' is for 'Alvi'. I wonder what 'B' is for.'

And thus began my language lessons.

I had magic. Not like I had before, with sweet, dear Tom, but real magic nonetheless. I was lying on a cloud -softest thing ever- and molding vapor into fun, interesting shapes. I could condense it into something like the consistency of wood, too, so so long as I concentrated, I had ready-made tools. Flimsy tools, yeah, but tools.

Grinning and flaring out my favorite appendages, I flipped back over the edge of the cloud and dove.

It was a private little secret of mine- back as a human, I had sometimes pretended to have wings. I would flex the muscles in my shoulder and back, telling myself that 'this' would flare them out to catch a thermal, and 'that' would rotate them out to let me cut curves through the air. Some instinct, a blend of my new body and old, wishful thinking, felt absolute and unending joy because I was flying.

"Thama!"

And the crowd goes wild, yes, in the form of one little girl. I angled toward Hayli.

"Hello, Hayli! You happy good?" I asked, in my terrible Equish.

"Thama! Me and mom going flibber-flap orchard!"

I was paraphrasing, of course. Mostly substituting nonsense for the words that I didn't understand.

Hayli and Theratha were both walking along one of the area's thin game trails Theratha -and getting her name from a filly that only ever called her 'mom' had been hell- were headed for the half-wild orchard that provided half their food. Being able to fly had given me a good handle on the local geography, up to and including the small settlement ten miles to the north. I hadn't approached that, yet- I hadn't seen a single flying pony, and Theratha's behavior earlier on had made some lingering suspicions take root in my head.

I was somewhere very, very backwater. Maybe. I had other suspicions, too, but didn't like to think about those too much.

I followed them, and Theratha more or less ignored me. Hayli had become the unofficial pegasus ambassador in the family. This wasn't their 'harvest' day- Theratha came out every other time and, true to her cutie mark of a thriving oak, tended to the flora without taking anything. I had no idea of how good she was at that, since the trees... didn't seem to be doing so well.

I watched, listening to Hayli's enthusiastic language lessons with half a perky, revolving ear, and watched Theratha grimace as she removed a brittle, dying branch from some sort of prickly pear tree.

"Momma, what's wrong?" asked Hayli, seeing it too. Kids saw a lot, I knew, and parents rarely hid how they were feeling as well as they thought they were. Theratha put on a smile and whispered to the filly, but Hayli frowned.

"No!" She spun in place and glared at me. "Thama! Make hersh!"

"Hersh?" I asked. A new word.

"Hersh!" she shouted. She sat on her haunches and brought her hooves down slowly, wavering. "Pshh!"

Hersh. Rain.

"Huh." I was a pegasus. Pegasus equaled weather.

Theratha was worriedly trying to hush Hayli, looking nervously at me, but the filly shrugged her off.

"Thama! Make rain, please? For mom?"

Well. No time like the present. I saluted the little filly, who smiled cheekily, and I shot straight upward.

The joy of flight combined with the thrill of discovery and magic, and I rose in a spiral. A clearing just south of the orchard sent up the most awesome thermal- one of my favorites in this forest, and sent me up even higher. I was at the cloud layer. The sun glinted harsh and white in my eyes, but I felt none of the usual pain. I was built for this.

I spun, pushing and condensing at all of what I felt to be the right places, and the cloud bank grew darker and thicker. It was big. It seemed more than I should be able to handle, but I was patient and persistent. I knew I wanted it all in one place, so I got up top of the gray mass and began plowing it toward the ground. Once I reached the altitude that, what... felt? Yeah, it felt right. I left off, flew to the side of the could bank, and kicked.

Magic, or at least pegasus magic as far as I could tell, was about intent.

'I intend for you to take it like a cheerleader!' I ordered, and lo, there was rain. Heavy, wet droplets that had come out at just the right density and I wasn't sure how I knew that, but there it was. The job well done, I spiraled down through the rain, which swept right off of my feathers but tangled my mane in a way which actually felt very, very pleasant.

Hayli was bouncing in a puddle, chattering and hopping and just being a hyper-active six year-old, bless her tiny heart. Theratha was staring up with wide eyes at the cloud, absently stroking the bark of an apple tree. When I stuck the landing, she actually bounded up and hugged me. I only caught every other word, and only understood half of that, but I caught 'thank you'.

"Um, is okay. Is nice," I told her. "Good for Hayli, good for Hayli mom."

"You bluh bluh want for bluh?" she asked, and that worried look was back.

I scratched at my neck, nervously. "No want. Hayli want rain. Hayli talks words. I know words."

And thus did I become the orchard's weather director, Hayli's foalsitter, and Hayli's student. And, just barely, Theratha's friend.

Two more months. In that time I had picked up on a lot. Not just flight, or pegasus magic. This world was weird. The length of the days varied immensely, the sun and moon were either too large or too close, compared to Earth, and the flora was just different enough to throw me off-balance.

Everything was strange. Still, I wasn't completely alone. Even on those nights where I spent too much time thinking about my friends, my three 'anchors'.

"Happy Tuesday," I told myself, having assumed for lack of knowledge of the actual date that the days were assigned by however I felt when I woke up. Saturdays were great, Wednesdays were middling, and Mondays... Mondays were bad.

I rolled out of bed and let myself fall through the floor. My little cloud cottage -much better than trying to cut planks out of fallen trees- had plenty of windows, no doors because they were sort of pointless, and was basically fluffy all over. It only needed a little bit of periodic maintenance, and I was getting ridiculously good at it.

Today was a Tuesday, which meant I felt... weird. Really weird. I did my best to listen to my new, strange body, but some signals just didn't check out. Did I need more iron, or something?

For lack of anything else on my busy, busy schedule, I went down to see the tree ponies. Oak Branch, which was apparently what Theratha meant in English, was outside dusting off the family sleeping pallet.

"Hello, Oak!" I said, making a three point landing and waving with my free hoof. She didn't jump at my appearance, anymore. She actually favored me with a smile, and went back to dusting. "How are you this day?"

"A little sad," she admitted, which shocked me less than it used to. Ponies were, in general, terrible liars and had less of a sense of interpersonal boundaries. "It is garble in year, I something something old home," she explained, nodding toward the distant community of earth ponies.

As we talked, I ended up building a bit of a fascinating picture. Oak had been in a herd, a legitimate polyamorous arrangement of happy little ponies, but the 'head mare' had been very traditional. On the one hand -and damn me if I sunk to saying 'on the one hoof'- she had been 'volunteered' to try to attract the attentions of a second stallion for their farmstead. On the other, her attempts had ended in one pregnancy, no extra herd member, and that was apparently a shameful thing.

The poor mare had ended up leaving under increasing pressure from the head mare of the household, and had made a little life for herself out in the forest. Of course, out here the weather was wild, and she wasn't under the umbrella of the deal that the distant community had made with the local tribe of pegasi.

That... confirmed some things. Some suspicions I had had for longer than I'd care to admit. A few minutes of dialogue out of the good old pony cartoon -and lots of debate about comparative history with Twilight and Aplejack- had built a very, very basic idea of the history of this world, and I was definitely displaced.

That hurt more than I cared to admit. If things had been different, and gone like I had hoped, I could have been back home and human with my old friends, or even stuck with ponies I actually knew. And had translation spells.

I missed organizing game campaigns with my human nerdbuddies, and I was way overdue -or maybe underdue? Timewise- on updating my online stories, and I missed eating unhealthy foods with my pony princess friend and laughing at how wrong we humans had gotten their lives.

"You okay?" asked Oak.

I nodded... then stopped and shook my head vigorously. I might as well repay honesty with the like.

"I want my friends. Very, very far. Lonely day, feel... weird. All over."

She gave me a look of sympathy, but there was a hint of mischief in her eyes, too.

"Feel garble grumble funny too. Funny week, gibberish time."

"Gibberish?" I asked, which came out as 'hwosis', mimicking her.

Oak laughed, really laughed, and gave me a look I could hardly identify. "Hwosis," she confirmed. "Like so."

And she leaned in and licked my cheek.

A jolt of heat, and heat, ran through my body. It was tingling and electric and familiar in a very different way. I whimpered.

"H...hwosis?" I asked, voice unsteady. She nodded, and slowly lifted her hoof to touch one of my wings which, contrary to my even being aware, had flared out. Like I was subconsciously trying to grab attention for...

Oh.

Oh my.

I was alone, and lonely, and feeling so mixed up about my situation that it hurt, but...

A thought occurred, and I glanced around nervously. "Hayli?" I still hadn't figured out what, if anything, the filly's name meant.

"Out play grumble hum. We can whisper mutter play," Oak told me.

'Okay, I could work with this,' I thought, my breath quickening. I glanced, and found a thick, tufty area of grass and, swallowing, placed my wing over Oak's back and started guiding her over. She was delighted to see that I had understood, and leaned in to lick my cheek again. I whined, and couldn't bring myself to care about how it came out disturbingly like a whinny, and licked her right back. I wasn't sure what the etiquette on kissing was, so I restrained myself to following her lead.

I was quickly reminded of just how strong earth ponies were when Oak rolled me over back-first into the heavy grass, which pressed against my wings and ruffled my feathers in a way that I couldn't believe I'd never felt before.

My tail was trying to rise, and just ended up pressing firmly into the brush under me. Oak leaned in, drawing her muzzle from my chin down to my throat, and trailed off to my collar bone where she gently but firmly bit me. God but it was too warm and I didn't care, I just felt my legs stretching and trying to spread further than my hips would allow.

Oak was eager. For however long it had been for me, and an entire body ago, I didn't think she'd done this since before having Hayli. She crawled back, past my chest and rested her head on my belly. She grinned up at me, and I had to exercise my terrible pony language skills and hiss, "Please."

Her long, flexible neck drew her back and, just while I was figuring out that the usual modest fur and skin under my tail had pulled back wide and had begun dripping, I was sharply reminded of just how large a pony's tongue was. A sharp, wet rasp traveled up my lower lips and I bucked up against her forelegs, which held against my movement like they were made of iron. I moaned. I'd never before moaned in my life, not even for that, but I was moaning.

She parted me again, and again, and at the crest of her tongue's short, hot path she twisted it, and I almost cried. I was almost desperate to do something back to her, I'd never before gotten more than I'd given, and I liked to give, so I twisted violently until we were parallel to each other.

"Tham'ra? Tham'ra, what- oh!"

I blessed my long, flexible neck as Oak twisted above me while I sought to repay the favor. Her warm, soft body covered me completely and pressed me further into the grass, and it ached in the best way possible. I let myself be crushed, feeling the rhythm of Oak straining against a body that wasn't there, and filled the gap with my lips and tongue.

I whispered to her in English, putting to use the harder syllables which were absent from the pony speech but, as I soon discovered, had a wonderful effect on the soft, pink folds between her legs. It took her a long time to remember just what she had been doing -which I didn't really mind, given that meant I was doing well in finding what buttons made her groan- but when she did, it hit me harder than ever.

I bucked and writhed, and my cries sent my lips in new, spasming shapes against her sex. I came, and again, and Oak finally almost collapsed when I brought her to that same peak. She was shaking and flushed, so I eased back a bit. I moved more gently, cleaning the thin rivulets of liquid that had painted the inside of her thighs, and she cooed.

My neck ached, so I let myself fall back onto the little nest of mussed grasses that we'd made, and tried to settle my breathing. That sharp heat had faded to a dull, still-glowing warmth. I hardly noticed when Oak turned around, delicately minding my own spread body, and tucked her head over mine.

"Good, whisper not hum, so long. Lovely soft hushing Tham'ra."

I licked her throat and let myself relax against her barrel. Minutes later, I heard a soft snore. If I had been in a position to pat myself on the back, I would have. More than the sex, there had been something so gratifying about satisfying somebody, when everything else felt so out of control.

"Momma?"

My eyes opened and I flinched, which Oak seemed completely dead to, tired as she was. I glanced toward the house to see Hayli, and she was... smiling. She looked like it was Christmas morning as she glanced between Oak and me. The filly trotted over, stepped on my wing, stumbled over my stomach, and fell into the thin corner of space between myself and the other mare.

"Momma, staephi sill." She nuzzled us both and fell asleep then and there.

Author's Note

This story is going to be a long road, but pretty compressed. Months or years will take place between chapters. By necessity, there are going to be a few 'noodle incidents'.

Also- can I get a few comments when it comes to downvotes? (Not that I don't appreciate them with upvotes, too...)

Seriously, are you disliking the theme, plot, mistakes on my end or what? Problems need fixing. If you don't like the direction a story is going, leave. If you like it but have a valid concern? Lay it on me! One of the benefits of web media are that they can be updated. Let version two-point-oh have less dialogue confusion, or more scenery description, or whatever.

The Storm

Chapter Three

The aquarium wasn't very busy, midway through the week, which gave us a little leeway. However the girls might have appeared on the outside to the public at large, they were still a bunch of dorky aliens.

"Ah... Fluttershy?" I tried. "Why are you staring at the turtles?"

The pegasus looked cheerfully back from the thick glass wall, behind which the sea turtles bobbed. "Oh, Tamara, I'm just saying hello to them. They're very wise and old creatures, you know!"

"So I've heard," I told her. "Between two and four times a human's life span, I think. You're really talking to them, then?"

"Oh yes," said Fluttershy, who went back to whispering through the glass.

I made to say something, before deciding that sometimes you just had to let mares and turtles have their conversation time. Or something.

"Dare I ask what you're up to?" I said, wandering over to Twilight. The mare was checking her ever-present saddlebags full of recording equipment.

"Comparative analysis," said Twilight distractedly. "Despite having so many similar creatures to our world, the animals don't... quite react the same. A little less intelligent, a little less of everything, I suppose." She sighed. "I thought that perhaps some of the creatures here that normally sense bioelectric energy might react somewhat to my magical field. Unless I directly interact with them, however," she gently brushed a school of piranha with her levitation field, sending them scurrying, "then they don't notice. That's a big mystery- how can creatures from two such different environments develop the same? Or nearly the same," she added. "Birds and mammals tend to be a lot more intelligent, even sentient in some cases, on our world."

"Maybe they developed without magic," I volunteered. "Maybe magic waxes and wanes over time, like global temperatures. They develop without magic, or with it, and adapt when that changes."

"Maybe," said Twilight, frowning. "Though I can't say I like the thought of magic just 'going away' like that. Still, the similarities between here and Sola are a little jarring."

"I'll bet," I said. I made to make some sort of stupid joke, but the both of us were distracted by the sight of Fluttershy slumping to the ground in front of the massive glass wall.

Twilight was gently scolding the mare and forcing one of our over-priced bottles of water to her lips before I could consider doing something other than stand there like a lump.

"I told you that you can't push yourself, Fluttershy!" said Twilight. "Using your talent will exhaust you, here- this place is like a dry sponge for magic."

"Just... just wanted to talk to the turtles," muttered the yellow mare unhappily.

"It's like air pressure," I muttered. At Twilight's questioning glance, I went on: "Like, we're used to having our bodies push out against the world, because it's always pressing in. Deep-sea animals die when they get too close to the surface. For you girls here, there's no... magic pressure?" I tried.

Twilight sighed, but gave a wry smile. "I should have let you give the safety lecture before I let the girls come over with me."

"No 'xplodin' fish, plz," said Fluttershy, looking a bit concussed.

"That's it, today's field trip is done," Twilight declared. "Tamara? We'll be back for the game, tomorrow."

"Bring cake," I said, before they both blinked out of existence. I stood, sighed, and decided to go sketch the Moray Eels. The trip wouldn't be a complete waste that way, at least.

I closed the door behind me, forced myself to ignore the low ceiling and the sense of claustrophobia that seemed to have come part and parcel with the new body, and brought the basket full of delicious daisies onto the rough table in the tree ponies' home.

"Oak?" I asked. She hummed and set about separating the flowers from the stems, and I knew she would end up using both for different parts of the meal. "What is word 'staephi sill'?"

It wasn't often I got to see the mare blush, but her chestnut coat turned a deeper, redder shade. She glanced up at me, then back down at her hooves.

"Grumble herd word mutter means like whinny mother." Oak coughed. "You... hear from Hayli, yes?"

I did my best to parse that, and asked, "Like.. also mother? Mother who not had daughter-filly?"

She winced and nodded. I worried at my lip, then leaned in, believing that I had figured out at least one pony custom, and kissed her cheek. I moved to break off, but she leaned in and caught my lips again.

Licking was sexual. Kissing was... familiar. Familial, even, in the strange system that ponies followed. She and I surely weren't dating in the usual sense -and I wasn't stupid enough to think otherwise- but we were there, and enjoyed each other, and both of us helped the household and child therein in our own ways. It felt... well, primitive wasn't quite the word for it, but it was something I found I didn't mind at all.

We broke off, and I licked away the taste of blueberries that had been left on my lips. "Oak? What do I say, call Hayli? She call me 'staephi sill', herd mother, I call her what?"

Oak flushed, and smiled. "Say, Hayli-swahilly."

"And I call you?" I asked.

The flush intensified, and she said, "Shofhi."

"Shofhi," I whispered with a grin, and licked her ear. The mare shivered, laughed, and batted me away.

"No! Grumble whine this night, dark, will hweff'etta you. Promise." She winked at me, and I disappeared out the door buoyed by more than air.

Outside, I flew straight up and drew a lazy spiral through the sky until I spied my target. I brought my wings back sharp against the lines of my own body and dove, feeling a thrill as I airbraked just a few feet away from the filly who had been following frogs in the nearby creek.

I did a four-point landing, flicked my ears playfully, and said, "Hayli-swahilly! More words for your herd mother?"

Hayli abandoned her frogs and gasped, running at me and burying herself into my forelegs.

"You, mutter and momma and me and-" And at that point, her words came too fast and excited for even my slowly-learning ears to follow even in the slightest. That didn't bother me in the least.

"Come on, herd mother! Up again!"

Another a long string of days, and I could hardly care to count them. The three of us, and I guess I was one of the 'tree ponies' now, had been busy. Winter was supposed to be coming, but explaining that to me had turned into some weird math problem that was the best Oak Branch could do with this planet's weird cycle. There were too many words for concepts I hadn't heard of outside of science fiction novels.

In my first week, I had buried a stick upright in the earth to try to get an idea of far I was from the equator. In four days, I had gotten three different shadow lengths. My inner scientist had then gone on vacation for a bit.

So Hayli and I were busy harvesting apples and pears and just about anything else we could, to fill the larder that Oak had happily begun digging. Two adults, it seemed, made for a much more productive dynamic, with a filly between them.

Even then, Hayli had insisted on helping. So I held the filly, flew up, the filly grabbed some apples, and we flew back down again. It was ridiculous, but she was having the time of her life. Hayli was absolutely fearless, and I just loved that about her. I even admired her for that, a bit, bundle of nerves that I usually was.

Oak had cheerfully outlined another trick that she'd heard pegasi could do- clearing clouds and magnifying the sunlight within. If I got that trick down, we could dry out baskets of food in no time flat and have a healthy, preserved stock set aside.

"You need wings, Hayli!" I told the filly.

She twisted her head back and giggled. "I got some!" she said, pointing at mine.

So adorable it hurt. I nuzzled her mane until it was a mess and she was almost squirming too much to be held airborne, and then let the matter go. Still, we were making good time. With any luck, she would soon be tuckered out enough that we could head back and she would fall straight into a nap. Then Oak, so grateful that we had gotten so much done, would fall into my hooves and we could...

"Herd mother, why are you laughing?" asked Hayli, confused.

"Um. Only thinking of Shofhi," I said, which was like 'loving lover', as opposed to 'Shwof', which was just 'lover'. It hadn't taken me long to figure that one out, and how Oak had taught me the first word first for a reason. It was sweet.

"Oh! Okay," said Hayli.

I coughed, and we went for the next apple circuit. My... season had ended after a couple of weeks, as had Oak's, but that just meant I no longer felt like a furnace. After biology had stopped shouting at me, metaphorically speaking, it was still quietly cheering me on to continue things with the curvy mare.

And Oak had reciprocated. Often. With... vigor. Geez, but I thought being a pegasus gave me stamina...

"We good for apples?" I asked. "Ready for berr... buh..."

"Berries, mama! Berries!" the filly corrected me. "Blueberries, now! Then straw-berries."

"Berries," I said, making sure I had the inflection down. We landed together at the big basket and I muscled it onto my back to head back to the house. Our house, now. I'd moved my own cloud cottage into branches, which was a little awkward-looking, but created a nice extra bit of shade.

"Birds don't have a happy smile, so they chirp a lot!" sang Hayli, slowly to make sure I got the words. "They say 'hello' and 'how d'you do!' above the green tree tops!"

"And every frog," I hummed, "bubbles with a great hop," I sang, stiltingly. "And they jump but can not touch the big tree top!"

"Mama, that's not the words!" exclaimed Hayli. I grinned at her.

"New words," I said. "For more long song. Need to make more song for my herd-daughter."

Hayli seemed delighted at the notion. "Eee! Um, and... 'never did the snake sing, it hisses and it got no wings!'

"And we don't have a dog to bark, so we, um, use ears to find a chirp lark!" I sang back.

We reached the tree, and Hayli was giggling as I tried to navigate my own tiny vocabulary and come up with new verses on the fly. We dropped off our load of fruit and I watched Hayli pace unhappily in front of the tree.

"I don't like it. The village is stupid," she told me. "They don't like mom, and they're dumb, and I can't go with."

I nodded, and gathered her close with a wing. "Mom has to go for things to buy, for winter. Goes for you, so you are warm and happy. Go for berries now? Blue-berries and straw-berries and Hayli-berries."

"There's no Hayli berries!" the filly insisted.

I smiled and leaned in. "Think so? No berries... here?" I started rooting through her mane, teasing apart locks of auburn hair. Hayli shrieked and began galloping away.

"No, come back little tree!" I shouted, and made to chase her.

"Good day?" I asked Oak, who kicked the dirt off her hooves and tiredly trotted into the low room.

The mare glanced at Hayli and mouthed, 'Later,' but said, "Oh yes, grumble quiet good. Was Hayli good for you?"

"Of course!" I said, hoof to my chest in mock insult. "Hayli is best daughter."

"Yup!" said the filly.

"Very nice," I said while nodding. "Never throws pine cone at her herd mother."

Hayli froze, and turned on me. "You threw first!"

"Yes," I said, grinning. Oak rolled her eyes and set her bundle of new, well, 'newish' blankets down in the corner. The pallet was crowded, but she had all but forbade me from sleeping up in my cottage, anymore. Both my herd members wanted me there as often as possible, and I found myself thinking not at all of the queen-sized bed from back home. It had been far too empty, anyway.

We poor, happy three got down to putting together a simple dinner. Strawberries strewn in sweetgrass, served in carved wooden bowls, and Oak or I having to wipe at the corners of Hayli's mouth every two minutes.

I got to listen to -and try to memorize- a lullaby, which set Hayli off to sleep in front of the still-warm oven. The warm, gooey feeling disappeared when I realized Oak was ready to talk the kind of serious, somber business not meant for the ears of foals. We settled at the tiny table, and I began stroking a wing along her shoulder as she got her thoughts in order.

"Whistle's flock wants whisper sigh fight, other name flock taking air-land space. Taking more food from exclamatory grumble elder village. Everypony shouting whinny preparing trail under sigh but what to do?" she asked, rhetorically, leaning her forehead against my wing. "Taking grumble talks are soon, fighting and no rain for some name grumble fields. I am worried."

"We will be okay," I told her. "You have pegasus, yes, stay at home, give you rain and... more," I added, trying to get her to smile. It worked, but barely.

"Sigh worried watching for future, whinny oldest mother elder grumble for string," Oak said. 'String', as I'd learned, meant a group of earth ponies. Same as flock for pegasi, and I'd yet to hear of more than the most casual -and insulting- reference for unicorns.

"Here," I said, guiding her off of her stool. "You need calm, calm from tired and walking. I... massage. Lie, lovely Oak," I told her.

"Too nice, too good, sigh," she said as I guided her over to the pallet. I didn't figure there would be anything more amorous happening that night, but I wanted to at least make sure she didn't go to bed tense. She hated having to leave Hayli behind to buy supplies, and it ate at her, even now that she had me to stay and mind the filly. And I certainly couldn't have accompanied her, no matter the circumstances. She would be ridiculed, as I understood it, for consorting with a pegasus...

'And lord help us if the words 'transformed alien' ever reached their ears,' I thought with a grumble.

...And any of the pegasi that received tribute from the village would, if they spotted me, see me as some sort of radical exile without a flock of my own.

So there, in the quiet shelter and isolation provided by our corner of the forest, I forgot about those ponies who would rather forget about us, and did my best to bring Oak's mind to somewhere which didn't have any room for conflict and stress. I pushed as best as I could to loosen her muscles and comb her fur into place, squeezing knots of tension and kneading out unpleasant memories. Her groans soon turned to quiet snores and I lay down next to her, pressing as much of my skin into hers as was possible, and joined her in slumber.

Hours later I woke with a gasp. I rolled, and stared into Oaks's heavy-lidded eyes. I was still addled by exhaustion and my thoughts mostly went as far as, 'When did things turn sexy?'

In the corner, I heard Hayli making soft sleep sounds. I tried to point out that any noise we made might wake her up, and Oak, in her own way, challenged me not to make any noise.

I bit my tongue at a sudden wet stirring and bucked my hips up, up into the mare's warm mouth.

"Tham'ra momma, are your legs okay?" asked Hayli as I stumbled into the table again. I'd elected to give her the chair and just stand, for... reasons.

"I am good, herd-daughter," I told her, trying to give as reassuring a smile as I could when the back half of my body was still mostly numb.

Oak snickered around a hot, clay mug full of tea, and I resolved to pay her back later with interest.

Until then, I was pretty certain I'd be useless for walking anywhere. Thank goodness I had wings, right?

Snow was falling. I quickly learned how to manipulate cold weather as easily as I did warm, but even then I could only do so much against an entire storm front. It was all I could do to keep the snow from falling too high around our tree burrow. Easier was to build a little cloud shelf above our spot and change it out every few hours, allowing the piles of snow to fall to the ground elsewhere, as whatever magic I pushed into the thickened vapor shelf disappeared and let it turn permeable again. Hayli thought the concept was awesome.

Like a fluffy force-field.

It was month two of... five, I thought. This was supposed to be a long winter, the third, winter, Oak called it. The seasons were predictable only in that they were capricious and challenging to the ponies that had to live through it. If anybody had actually designed this calendar, they ought to be taken out back and shot, in my opinion.

I had taken to practicing my flight in my free time. It was... there really weren't words for it. Flight fulfilled some deep need, and pressing myself to newer heights, in every sense of the word, was something I couldn't help but love with all my heart. It wasn't better than sex, I supposed, but it was definitely on par, only in a different way.

Even when Oak and I took to challenging that whenever we had the time to ourselves.

Wheeling out in a wide, lazy curve, I set my sights for home. It was getting dark out, and even my birdlike eyes were beginning to fail me. It wasn't until I was only a quarter mile away that I saw the commotion and the fires.

My heart almost stopped, and only relaxed by the barest fraction when I saw that the flames were contained by torches. A long string of ponies stretched through the forest, but some had broken off at the door of my tree.

I landed at a fair distance away, folded my wings, and moved cautiously forward. I only wished for a moment that my mane and tail blended with the snow as well as my coat did, before taking a moment to dust both with thick flakes of snow.

"Momma!"

Hayli barreled out of the thick snowfall and hit my legs, nearly sending the both of us over- she was getting bigger.

"Hayli? What is wrong? Who is here?" I asked.

"The village ponies," she said, breathlessly. "Mom's mom, an elder! They want to all go!"

My heart really did stop, then, for the space of a single beat.

"Come," I said. "We will talk and learn," I told her. She nodded, but didn't look very happy about it. To tell the truth, I wasn't too pleased myself.

We drew in close to the tree, and Oak spotted us with an odd mixture of relief and resignation. This, I knew, was going to be bad. In front of her was the oldest pony I had ever met, with a color scheme that was familiar but going grey with all due speed.

I walked straight up to the two of them, with Hayli in tow.

"Mother, this is my herdmate," said Oak. The old mare stared and seemed to be working herself into a fit, before shaking her head and focusing back on Oak.

"The flock is grumble, inaudible making demanding. No safety, no anything. Demand too much-" The mare rambled and paced in her thick, rough cloak, and not for the first time I cursed my own slow understanding of the earth pony speech. She continued, "to stay or die. And she," she pointed at yours truly, "will not come. There is no place! Should we be grumble, found with that, only worse."

I froze. So did Oak. And at that moment, I heard the thunder.

The wind must have been carrying the sound away from us before, but the maelstrom was definitely centered over the village in the distance. By my best guess, the pegasi had found their earth pony serfs gone, and weren't too happy about it. No doubt about it- everything that the string of travelers weren't then carrying was being destroyed in the most violent way possible.

It hurt. It hurt like nothing had since I found myself alone in an alien forest. My body hardly felt the cold, but the sensation of tears freezing on my muzzle was unmistakable. I pushed Hayli toward Oak.

"Oak?" I said, pressing in close, to the elder's obvious discomfort. "Go, okay? Go be safe. They will not like you, if they find you. Go, and I can stop their follow tries. Okay?" My language skills were worse than usual, under the mounting stress, but Oak had always been good about picking up my meaning.

"Tham'ra, no! No, no. Hayli and I need you! Stay, mutter, we do not need-"

I shushed her, wing against her lips.

"Go and be safe, beloved lover."

I ducked down and picked up Hayli, depositing her on her mother's back, and then whirled on the elder, wings flared out as wide and as threatening as I could make them. Steam poured from my nostrils. If what I understood about the situation was correct, then...

"You!" I growled, hoof pressed tightly against the fur on the elder's chest. She tried to recoil, so I pressed in harder. "You are mother to Oak, yes? Mother of mother of Hayli, yes?" She nodded, suddenly frantic. I guess she was ready to give up on pretending that my presence didn't intimidate her. I didn't want to be scary for being part of another tribe, but I did want her to be scared. "You be mother to Oak, to Hayli, or I will find you. You understand me." It wasn't a question. I tried, in that moment, to abandon the soft pretense I'd carried since coming here. I willed her to understand that I was very alien in every damned sense of the word, that she had never met anybody like me and, heaven willing, never would have to again.

Something of that must have shown through, because she all but flinched into the snow. "Yes! Yes, I understand!"

I shuddered, the anger making my blood run hot and itchy under my own fur. I wanted to flex fists that I didn't even have, but I stifled the urge, for the moment, and turned back to Hayli.

"Good bye, daughter. Love you dearly."

She shook her head. "Mama Tham'ra? No, stay! Herd mother, stay!"

Her speech became faster, and Oak had to struggle to keep her aloft. It hurt, and always would, that I never caught every single word she'd ever said to me. I was relieved, too, that I couldn't catch every word as she begged for me to stay.

I brought my wings down with a snap, and was in the low-hanging snow front within seconds. I waited there, watching as the last of the string of earth ponies disappeared into the forest. I had to fight the urge to punch the cloud, since that would just give away my position from the lightning burst.

It only took minutes -I didn't have to wait long at all, really- for them to appear. Two scouts, in thin wooden plate armor, strafed through the upper reaches of the trees. They immediately rounded on the biggest oddity in the area- the cloud cottage that I had stuck in the tree. They rounded on it, speaking in the short, clipped pegasus dialect that held maybe one word out of ten that I might have understood, had I been closer.

One, a steely-maned mare with golden eyes, circled the cloud structure and began poking at seemingly random spots. My eyes narrowed, and I tried to figure out just what she was trying to accomplish-

With a blur and a crack, she barreled hooves-first into the roof, and the entire thing discharged lighting, a magnificent bolt of it, straight into the heart of the tree.

The upper reaches of the plant were already frozen through, and the trunk didn't so much split as it did shatter. I gaped. The two pegasi laughed and clapped each others' hooves, after having destroyed my house, they blew up my fucking house!

There had been nothing worth stealing, hardly even worth having, and even that had been abandoned to flee these fucking, these...

I would, I decided, take a page out of their book. I shut my eyes, took to the air, and did a sharp u-bend straight back down, to the protective cloud 'umbrella' I'd set far above the tree to keep us from the snow's mercy.

I saw the flash through my eyelids, and heard the cries of dismay below. Then I heard the sound of twenty hours of accumulated snowfall burying the two of them, as the force of my kick dispersed the shelf of vapor entirely. I hardly moved from my spot, then, content to hover and wait.

It didn't take the first one long to dig her way out. Wet snow clung to her fur and feathers, and she shook herself fiercely to dislodge it from her armor. Her eyes had been closed in reflex- she never saw me plow into her, forehooves first.

The mare, the one with the golden eyes, was instantly half-buried again. My hooves skimmed the top of the snow drift -and the whole surface was still steaming where the ruins of the tree boiled it on contact- and gripped her one free wing, and twisted it at exactly the wrong angle. The mare shrieked, still blinded and disoriented, as I made sure the break was too severe to let her airborne again.

Of course, the second pegasus had meanwhile broken free of the freezing, steaming snow soup and taken that moment to slam into my side.

I rolled, through frost and splintered branches, and had a hoofful scooped and ready to sling into this one's eyes even as she charged in for a second strike. She shrieked, and I made a similar noise, only louder. I bucked her chin, snapping her head back and arresting her momentum. We wrestled down the incline, but my vision was clear enough to time my fall and end up on top.

I ended up shredding half her primary feathers in the effort of snapping one of her wings, too.

"Run, run you fuckers!" I bellowed in English. The two of them, pained and disoriented, slid and collapsed their ways down the hill and back toward the game trail they had first followed in.

I shuddered. This new body of mine had been in perfect health when I had first woken up, not ten feet from where I now stood. After that, I'd done almost nothing but fly and push myself, if only to fill the empty hours.

I was angry. I was so very, very angry. Angry at the pegasi who had bled the village dry, at the villagers for casting out Oak who'd only done exactly as her herd had wanted, then to only drag her away because of their choices.

Angry at myself, too, for not understanding enough to fix it without fighting. I'd never fought in my life before that moment, but there I was with aching hooves and heaving sides.

Those scouts would reach the main body of the flock soon enough. My best bet was, what, to hide? To bury myself in the snowstorm above and pray I picked a direction they wouldn't be able to follow me? They might bypass me entirely, true, but them going after Oak and Hayli wasn't a better option. And if they did make to chase me, then they were infinitely more experienced than I was. Hell, I'd never gone beyond this narrow strip of forest in all my months here.

So there I was, unarmed and unarmored, and with a superior force coming for me. I had nothing but anger and... that was it. Even the excuse of not being in my original body wouldn't hold, since being human-shaped wouldn't have offered me any advantages, except to maybe weird them out enough to make them hesitate.

I had nothing going for me. I wished I had Tom. At least then any spell I tried might backfire spectacularly enough to take some of the flock out... with... me...

I blinked, and wavered a bit, sinking into the snow cover as my vision crossed. I had absolutely nothing but myself, true.

But even that was more than what I'd had, all those months ago at the base of the mountain.

I wasn't oblivious to my situation. I just wasn't sure what else to do. The thing to keep in mind when you're cast alone into an alien world and, obviously enough, in an alien time is that you're alone.

It was simple nature, human or otherwise, to invest myself into the safest, friendliest circumstance possible. That had been in a space under a tree with two other outcasts.

I was angry at the approaching troops for so many reasons. It would be a lie to claim that at least one of those reasons wasn't, plainly enough, that they had shaken my tenuous little comfort zone. I knew it couldn't have lasted. But they stole the chance from me to do it on my own terms. This would be the second time I had been cast out of my home.

A burning, resentful part of me decided it would be the last. That I would be on the offensive from then on out. When you're alone, you sacrifice things.

Things like mercy.

They approached in complete silence. The two scouts went first, limping and shivering along the ground. The remainder of the flock were in the trees, gliding soundlessly from branch to branch and hardly disturbing a single snowflake below. Others, more skilled at stealth or with colors more suitable for winter, circled around and ahead the small, smoldering clearing.

The scouts stopped at the hill of snow and splintered wood, and began describing just what had gone on. Trying to spin a believable tale as to how they'd been so brutally and quickly thrown off of their routine, no doubt.

I didn't plan on making it any easier for them this time, either.

Scratching in the snow hadn't worked. Smearing the hot mud over myself hadn't worked. It hadn't been hard to figure out that I'd need a more... personal medium. Before, I'd had Tom to pull magic from.

-where target(not-self) set other...

So I did the same thing I'd done the last time I'd really needed a pen and hadn't had one- I'd written out the magic script in my own blood. There'd been enough splinters lying around from my old home, after all, to make a small cut on one of my legs. The rest had just been a memory exercise, though admittedly one I had just barely managed.

...describe element(luminescence) and-not-and process...

I stepped out from under the heavy bush. The thing's drooping branches had made for a small, natural cave, and let me stay out of sight long enough for the flock to get nice and close. Instantly, every eye in the space was on yours truly.

...provide element(convection) not-self(self)-

With a flick of my hoof, I completed the rune on my chest.

-Execute spell-

Upwards of thirty pegasi, warily watching or angrily waiting to attack, beheld a lone, ragged-looking pegasus light herself on fire.

"Run, you bastards!" I bellowed. I prayed English would sound sufficiently mysterious and threatening, since I didn't think I could remember my Korean well enough. I stepped forward, and shivered at the sensation of snow flash-boiling under my hoof.

"Leave, leave the villagers!" I commanded, now in the earth pony speech. I knew at least some of the pegasi would understand it. You had to speak the lingo in order to give orders in it, after all.

"Leave them, or else burn!" I shouted, and flared my wings. The now-visible runes shrieked tunelessly, and to be honest, completely harmlessly.

Heat and noise roiled off of me, filling the air with the scent of burning paper. It threw my mane in a non-existent, fiery wind.

"Run!" I shrieked, and ran myself for the most decorated-looking pegasus among them. She wore real metal, and not just the molded wooden planks of most of her ponies. I ran for her, and fire trailed off my body like a comet's tail in the wake of every step.

It could have gone so wrong then. It wouldn't have taken much.

The moment that mare reared back and, instead of charging, turned tail and ran? I knew it had worked, then, and just had to hold on for a little while longer.

She called for some kind of retreat, and was leading by example the entire way. They hadn't come here for this- they'd expected to round up frightened villagers. They were a brute squad, scrounged from everybody who hadn't been needed to fight the experienced pegasi of the opposing flock.

I waited until they were gone. I waited another minute longer than that.

Then I collapsed.

I woke up and couldn't stop shaking. I wasn't sure how much time had passed, but I was wet and cold and felt hollow in a new and terrible way. Moving was painful- the fight against the scouts had left my muscles overextended. Still, I was beginning to feel the chill almost as badly as I had before becoming a pegasus, which was probably a very dangerous sign.

When I opened my wings, I did my best to ignore the dried blood on the inside of them. Cleaning them was a priority for later. At that moment, my only goal was to go straight up and the come back down. Long enough to snag a cloud, long enough to...

I blinked, and found myself fifty feet closer to the ground than I should have been.

"No, no, eyes up, up at that grey, featureless sky and you just stay awake, Tamara. Stay awake." My pep speech to myself didn't help much, but accidentally biting my tongue did wonders for my focus.

I focused on the task at hand. I didn't let myself consider how quickly everything had fallen apart. Or on how willingly I'd fallen into this simple little life in this strange place, all in denial of the enormity of just how badly I'd fucked myself over, trying to follow my friends across an impossible divide.

I grabbed hold of as much cloudstuff as I could, and brought it straight back down with as much the help of gravity as anything else. Back on the ground, I brute-forced it into thick, clumpy walls in a dome shape over my head. A tiny hole at the top, and a tiny hole along the base for circulation...

I built the thing over a thicket of brittle, dead bushes to save on having to gather wood. After that, it was a matter of gathering a hoof full of the vapor and agitating it, compressing it, until a got a thin, hot stream of electricity. The brush quickly caught fire, the cloud walls were too dense to let the heat escape and I...

I...

I slept, again.

Author's Note

Here's where we start skipping forward entire years, and more. Think of it as a highlight reel.

Mostly, it's a case study of what happens when you take away nerd's Wikipedia and give her the ability to set things on fire with her mind.

Paradise

Chapter Four

"My little pony, ah ah ah..."

"That's it," said Rarity. "Next time we simply skip the introductory segment. I'm all for a catchy tune, but..."

"Normally you're not expected to marathon episodes," I told her. "And the music's not terrible- you'd almost think ponies normally broke into song like that."

There were two awkward coughs, from Twilight and Rarity, and one giggle from Pinkie.

"Seriously?" I said, unable to stop the smile from creeping over my face.

"Ponies are inherently harmonious," said Twilight defensively. "Just... sometimes it's a little more literal than you'd think."

"And it's really fun, too!" said Pinkie.

"I am never, ever letting this go," I declared. Popcorn flew at my head from three different sources. Then Pinkie gasped and hurried over to collect the loose kernels. Thank goodness, I mused, that I'd started to keep my apartment cleaner with the constant stream of alien guests.

"About that inherent harmony thing," I said. "That has to have come back to bite you more than once. I mean, messing that up brought about the Windigos, right? No offense," I added hastily.

"You're right in that," said Twilight. "But then there's no advantage evil won't try to take hold of, according to Celestia."

"Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity," I quipped. "Hanlon's law."

"Ooh, I like that one," said Rarity. "Then again, much of my work is in customer service..."

A few chuckles spread about. I opened my mouth and asked, "Is this where we sing an ode to bloody-minded customers?"

More popcorn and a desperate Pinkie followed that.

The Valley was a massive area. Some called it the Paradise Estate. Most called it the only land available to ponykind, given how many of the other peoples of the land fell prey to the monsters who also called Paradise Estate home. Roving herds, makeshift villages, and hidden forts dotted it from the north to the south. Mostly it seemed to be the dumping ground for every fairy tale that had ended in a plot twist. Stories were told in every settlement of past heroes, and of better ages that had long since faded.

On the northwestern border, there stood a mountain populated by a strange race called the aurochs. Shaped much like minotaurs, but more gangly. Stretched-out, even. Their horns grew straight out from their skulls for several feet to either side, leading to the natural development of truly massive doorways.

In the highest, oldest auroch keep, there was a library. Of all the races, I mused, it had to be one of the most warlike that just so happened to sit on the greatest treasure trove of information within the lands known to any of the pony tribes.

"You are... quite sure of this, Lady Tham'ra?" asked the earth pony at my side. Wandering Hooves was my hired guide, and further proof that 'Tamara' was simply unpronounceable to the pony tongue.

Even to my own, damn it.

"Yes," I said, sparing a glance at the nervous, bottle-green stallion. It was rare for a male to have such a lone, far-roaming position, but he was good at his job and, more often than not, it was to my advantage to ignore the 'usual' customs. It wasn't as if they were usual to me, after all.

"I've spent six months looking," I told Hooves. "This is my best bet thus far. Is your auroch-linga good enough to get my request across to them?"

"Yes, but... but you've heard of their price, haven't you?" he asked.

I grimaced. "That won't be a problem."

My wings twitched under my cloak, and I was reminded of how much they needed a good preening. And a bath. I might keep my flank covered -still bare of a cutie mark, even after five years- but that didn't ward off the paranoid thoughts of lice. God damn, but I still hated bugs. Tham'ra, the fearsome and squeamish witch.

Keeping clean was hard in a medieval environment.

The arena was small, and its stonework was old and crumbling, just like everything else on the mountain. It seemed like all the known world was on the decline, these days. The unicorns could hardly keep summer following spring, and it was no great wonder that everything seemed to be dying. I wondered, sometimes, if I hadn't ended up some time long after the years depicted in 'My Little Pony', instead of my going theory of having been cast back to an earlier time. Either way, it was those discrepancies which had stopped me from immediately seeking out my friends, those first few months.

It was cowardly, in a way- if I didn't see, it couldn't effect me. Up until the world steam-rolled me with its normal shenanigans.

I approached the desk set up in the market just outside the arena. I had to consciously stop myself from pushing through the crowd of much larger beings, since aurochs tended toward a hair-trigger temper. Much like myself, sometimes, I mused.

"Go ahead," I told Hooves.

The stallion stuttered his way through his introduction of myself to the impatient bull, a bag of gold coins was exchanged, and I was pointed toward one of the auroch coordinators that spoke one of the pony dialects. Easy enough for me, I decided. I had learned about five of them, after all.

"Thank you for your services," I told Hooves, and handed over another bag of coins.

"This... this is more than I asked for, Lady Tham'ra," he said, feeling out the weight immediately.

"You did more than I expected," I said, shrugging. It wasn't as if it was strictly my money, after all. I'd gotten it courtesy of a group of bandits that hadn't known how to take 'no' for an answer.

That is, they hadn't known until after they'd met me.

He scampered off, and I found myself facing a massive cow of an auroch, with fur the rare gold hue that gave the species their name. She gave a cursory bow, nearly beheading a passing shopper.

"This way," she told me.

I blinked. "Unicorn?" I asked, matching her speech. "That's a rarity. Do they come this far west?"

She grinned with wide, flat teeth. "I traveled far, as a calf. Would you prefer southern pegasus, maybe?"

"It's all the same to me," I replied, and gestured for her to lead the way. It was considered polite, by them, to be able to turn their backs on a stranger. It made an odd kind of sense, even if I sure as hell didn't share the custom.

"What prize will you fight for?" she asked, sounding curious. Not one being in a hundred was a pony, up here.

"A boon," I replied. "By the city. I wish to access the archives- two fortnights should do it."

"Ha! A scholar, then? Or a fool seeking a treasure map," the cow said with humor. We passed under one of the arena's massive arches, past busy functionaries and the occasional working hostage.

"More a scholar," I admitted. "I'm looking for a number of things. Stories and records." And, because it couldn't do me any harm, added, "Of humans and other strange beasts. Of the prophecies left by the Moochick, and Queen Majesty."

"The mad bitch queen? Hoo! Never a unicorn with so may airs as her!" the cow crowed. "I had a scribe's education, pony. And the Moochick is long since passed, you know."

"That's why I'm looking for prophecies, and not his home," I replied with a grin. "Can't imagine living in a mushroom, myself."

The cow laughed. "Here, into this pen," she said, pointing toward some bleachers held behind a low, rickety fence. "Have you chosen to fight the rounds, or go straight for the champion?"

"The champion," I answered. "I'm tired and impatient, and wish to get this over with. And I don't enjoy fighting enough to drag this out."

"Ought I to bet on you, then?" she asked, leaning casually on the gate as I passed.

"Depends on if I'm famous enough to give you the kinds of odds you want," I called over my shoulder. "Tham'ra the witch."

Years of travel, years of wandering. Settling down had seemed like a pointless activity, in a world less politically stable than medieval Germania, so I had kept on moving. I'd stay with a group long enough to pick up on the language and scrounge up any useful or esoteric information, then I'd head to wherever else seemed more interesting.

It had been strange, and wonderful, and occasionally horrible. Like I'd noted, the world seemed to be in a kind of twilight state. There was nothing new under the strange, unsteady sun- just entropy. Just old things left like traps for the unwary.

I dug through the old forts and castles. Met the tribes who could trace their lines back the furthest back in history. I saw the blackened crater where the demon centaur Tirek had been buried after trying to bring about night eternal, and even once scaled the volcano that held the banished mass of the Smooze.

That, I think, might have been the worst. At the caldera's lip, you could hear the shapeless mouths below, shrieking threats against the world and all its peoples. Demanding that it be let out, threatening to devour the very surface of the planet.

I chucked a rock into it, which made me feel a little better, before I left.

I passed through lands belonging to ponies, aurochs, dragons, knids, sphinxes, pixies- insofar as the pixies would claim to own anything- flutterponies, and naga.

And in that time, I figured out magic. That is, I figured out enough to be dangerous to myself and others, at least. Enough so to get me branded as a witch- one of those few non-unicorn active casters. There were already stories going around about me luring children into candy houses, which was ridiculous. If I had that much candy, why would I need to eat children?

I had been rather cheerfully tuning out the crowd, reading the personal journal of some long-dead naga explorer, when somebody roughly tapped my shoulder. Once I would have flinched and apologized for having let someone bump into me- now I just glared and demanded who the fuck was taking up my time.

An auroch shouted and pointed out at the arena, where a massive bull of her species was clasping his fists together and taking in the crowd's blood-curdling cheers.

The announcer was bellowing something, probably along the lines of my opponent's impressive credentials, maybe. I ignored him. It wasn't as if I could understand his babble, and so whatever it was couldn't effect my nerves in the slightest. I was already keyed up enough by the fact that the guy in front of me outmassed my form by about four times.

All that meant was that I would have to keep from getting in close.

I stowed the book in one of my cloak's inner pockets, hopped the fence, and trotted out into the arena floor by a couple dozen feet.

The crowd was going wild. I doubted many, if any, recognized me, so I assumed that they were cheering on big boy.

A sharp gong split the air, and my opponent turned to face me, fists curled up and a look of rough, stupid amusement on his face.

I was feeling oddly nostalgic, just then, and had been sort of missing the internet, recently. Which was to say, I always missed the internet. So I scraped a hoof along the ground, snorted, and shouted:

"Come at me, bro!"

The auroch obliged, and I became uncomfortably aware that his heavy hoofsteps, carrying him on thick arches of keratin as big around as my entire barrel, were shaking the ground.

"This, here, is exactly the place for subtlety," I muttered.

I had, memorized and refined over the last five years, eleven spells. They were the ones I had shortened to the least amount of characters possible, committed to physical memory, and practiced repeatedly. Otherwise I had to work from scratch paper, or freecast, which tended to explode in my face if I didn't have time and space on my side.

Big boy assured me I had neither of those on my side, so I went with good old number three: Vapor Steps.

There were probably an unlimited number of methods to casting, if you discovered the kind of knack that I and those few other witches and sorcerers out there had. If I had to guess, they held onto their secrets as tightly as I did.

My method suited my body- I used my natural weather magic to shape the thinnest, all but invisible sheen of vapor into the string of symbols that represented a spell. Then, using the knack, I pumped energy into that string until I had the strength of spell that I wanted.

I pumped just enough, into this one.

My body took on the appearance of cloudstuff, and out of it poured a dozen ponies made of the same, until I was one of those ponies galloping hell-bent away from the original shape, and only a copy of myself was left behind to spawn still more images of me.

Predictably, the bull plowed through the construct, shattering it into mist. The crowd roared, maybe in disappointment -I couldn't tell- but by then there were already three dozen of me running around. Unfortunately, the images could only manage so much realism, so two of the moronic copies lasted only seconds before running face-first into the arena walls and dispersing themselves.

God damn it.

Still, I acknowledged, the fewer they were, the more effective they were. Having more than, say, six, was only useful insofar as it tended to create a disorienting fog. For a shallow, bowl-shaped space such as the arena for the fog to collect in? It was perfect.

Big boy was roaring and throwing his meaty fists around at any cloud image within reach, and there was still not a chance in hell that I would be facing him physically. So I moved on to spell number seven: Shock Webbing. More than anything else, I wanted this guy to stop moving.

I drew out the sequence, which was slightly shorter than for the Vapor Steps, and allowed the magic to seep down my hooves and into the dusty surface of the arena floor. Unfortunately, that meant I had to stand still for as long as it took to let the magic seep down. More unfortunately still, not a single one of my duplicates had been clever enough to stand still at the same time, meaning there was suddenly a big difference setting me apart from all the other 'mes'.

Big boy noticed, and began to charge.

I stood my ground, reflexively loosening my front hooves into their 'flexible' state to let the magic flow just that much easier. It still wasn't on par with what an earth pony could do through the same medium, but I thought it helped.

We were separated by about thirty feet. Hardly any time at all, considering the speed he had built up. I might, then, still have had time to take to the air and avoid him. Or to roll to the side, if I optimistically downplayed the kind of reflexes that made for a champion fighter.

I stood my ground.

That same ground then reached maximum saturation, and my webbing sprouted from the ground like they had been shot off from cannons. They crossed over one another, making a massive field of overlapping threads at every possible angle, leaving only the space around my body clear. Not a true web, yet, not without big boy's input.

He barreled another twenty-five feet forward, until he was literally within spitting distance. That meant catching every thread in a straight, twenty-five foot line, each one clinging to him, and each one delivering a small electrical shock.

The auroch was buried in the stuff. Every muscle in his body seized up. Air exploded from his lungs in a bellowing shriek that was pure instinct.

I let the threads fade from the rest of the field and, presenting a casual front, strolled around him at an angle. Now I heard the crowd. Very few of the dialects in this intercultural market hub were ones I recognized or understood, but I caught a few, specific lines. 'Used magic' was a common one. I glared, not at anything in particular, but I glared. I'd worked to earn my power as much as big boy had his muscles, and used the tools at my disposal. I had barely tapped my own tribal abilities!

Well. If they wanted something physical, then they'd have it- there would be no doubt.

I snapped my wings out and flapped twice. Once to gain height, and once to propel myself toward the back of big boy's skull. I countered the motion by putting a mule kick to the base of his neck. His bellowing cut out, and he slumped further into the webbing, still twitching. I dismissed the magic, and he fell the remainder of the way to the ground.

I turned to the balcony that hosted the administrators, bowed, and went back to the waiting pen.

A hour later, and the games had finally ended. I found myself back with my guide, whose name turned out to be Erma, and who turned to have, indeed, put a bet on me.

"I have a feeling I'll like working with you," she declared. "And if I don't? I have my consolation prize." She jingled a healthy-looking bag. "Now, as your representative, I've got the voucher. Your boon's a weird one, but it's pretty low tier. You probably could have just placed in the tournament and earned it."

"Probably," I agreed. "But I've come too far to leave things to chance. So I imagine the library is open to me?"

"One month, or two fortnights, as you put it," agreed Erma. "Don't try to steal anything, don't cause too much damage, and you have the run of the place."

"Excellent," I said, rubbing my forehooves together. Having wings to keep you level while you used both front hooves to make goofy gestures was a blessing. "Take me to where I can gather writing supplies, first, and let's get started."

"Sure. Ah," the cow rubbed nervously at her knuckles. "There are some poetry books I have been curious about. Would it do any inconvenience, in any time where I'm not assisting you-"

I laughed, and cut her off. "This is a boon for you too, isn't it? By all means, Erma."

So in addition to all the texts I'd been looking for since the previous autumn, which this year had been a mere eight months ago, my assistant was happier to help me than ever. It was nice to get what I wanted without... additional bloodshed, in any case, for once.

A week of searching. The first day had been mostly figuring out how, exactly, the library was organized. Mostly the system had been, 'throw every book of a subject in a given room'. Of course, the city archives, taxes and such, were 'important enough' to actually be in order.

'Philistines,' I grumbled.

Still, in those days I had managed to amass a good number of volumes that covered just what I was looking for, more or less. The whole thing was more hit-or-miss than my old neighborhood library, but I had to count what few blessings I'd had.

Written histories, and not just the mythologized oral histories that had been most of what I had previously come across. Books of prophecies by seers that were at least half-sane, and not simply sampling the finer mushrooms in life. Compendiums of legends and strange creatures. Books on spell lore, even.

Of course, a lot of this still had to be taken with a grain of salt. I remembered old woodcuts of exactly the kinds of peoples sailors claimed they had discovered, or claimed they would discover, in time. Mostly, those had read like exactly the kinds of things you'd imagine drunken sailors coming up with:

'Woah, they were people with, like, one big foot. Just one. They rode on them like surf boards!'

To which you could ask, 'Are you sure they weren't just normal folks on surf boards?' Then the reply would probably be, 'Nope, one big surfing foot. Drink your rum.'

Or:

'Headless people. But, with, like heads where their nipples should be. Eye-nipples. Hey, where's my rum?'

And none of them had bothered to apply scientific rigor to this, of course.

I had higher hopes about these texts, though. I assume that, in a world that already has magical talking unicorns, there was really only so much one could hallucinate.

"Erma," I waved blindly over my shoulder. "Erma, look at this."

The lady auroch wandered over, a book of her own already in hand. She peered curiously over my shoulder.

"Hyuman Kynde," she recited off the boilerplate heading. "Yes, you've found a calf's tale. Very nice."

"They're real," I said, happy to note this one was in low-unicorn script. That was much easier to read than those wing-dings their scholars used. "I used to be one."

"Ah. Is this a witch thing?" asked Erma. "And... why tell me?"

I couldn't tell by her tone if she thought I was delusional, so I just went on being honest. "What does an auroch care if an ape turns into a pony? And it's more of a 'me' thing. Did it to myself by accident while trying not to die."

"Ah. Good on you for not dying," said Erma, patting my neck. "And I suppose a pony might see you as a kind of changeling to hear that, as if you were a fae tale monster and not just a fae tale."

"Correct! Now I'm looking to trace human appearances on this world, and figure out how far away from home I am, in both time and space."

"Time?" Erma coughed. "You may have lost me, witch."

"Sit," I offered, blindly pointing. "I can read and lecture at the same time, and this might help you in locating more useful references."

She sat, and listened enthusiastically as I spun my story. This one obviously had gotten a scribe's education. I didn't share information about myself on a lark, really, and I wasn't sure I'd ever shared more than small tidbits over the past few years. There had never seemed to be a point to it, aside from dredging up painful reminders.

It took a few minutes to get to the end, but finally: "...and that's where I am, now. Tracing half-accurate stories from my own world to put together an accurate list of events, figure out my place in them, and maybe learn enough to see my friends again."

"Which friends?" she asked.

I shrugged, and sighed. "Any of them, really. It's been a long time."

"Out of curiosity, are any of these tales from your world of aurochs?" she asked, which I figured was only sensible.

"Sorry," I said. "They were pretty limited, and took place in a land 'far, far away'," I added, throwing in air quotes.

"Fair enough. And probably better to let the future... or past, perhaps, decide itself."

"You are a wise cow, Erma."

"Thank you, witch. Now, the nature of time, you said?" she asked, getting up. "And prophecy. I shall try the western wing. It might be among the fiction."

"Good thinking!"

Another week in, another pile of texts. Sleep was, as always, for the weak.

"More tea?" asked Erma.

I glanced up from the latest tome and rubbed at my eyes. It was important to get as much progress done as possible, which was wearing at me, a bit. I supposed I could always break another skull out in the ring, but that sounded like an unsanitary hassle. I blinked at Erma.

"How strong is it?" I asked.

"I stirred it with a silver spoon- the silver has tarnished," the auroch informed me.

"Give it here, then."

I sipped, gagged, and sipped again. From the corner of my eye, I saw Erma with a broad, flat volume as she took her own seat at one of the corners of the table I hadn't commandeered.

"Anything useful in that one?" I asked.

"Hmm?" The cow glanced down. "I shouldn't think so. It is a treatise on architecture. You, er, did say that I might pursue my own-"

"No, yes, by all means," I said. "Sorry if I've kept you too busy to hold to my word."

"Not at all, witch. I have time now, and a book, and now I shall see how my magnificent city has been built," the cow said with gentle amusement.

"There is a certain charm to mountain-top settlements," I muttered, going back to teaching myself pre-Majesterial unicorn. It was like someone had taken the mage script I was used to and applied a hammer to it, and then removed all the verb tenses. "Slightly impractical, highly defensible, lovely scenery."

"Ah ha ha, you might have the right of that. Ancestors know it's hard to get fresh leeks up here."

The tea began to hit me, and with a rush I dragged over one of the earlier tomes, and started to cross-reference. I remembered, not for the first time, that pony speech often had no place for harder consonants.

"Mehan Wiilhyamz, Haythuckee sdadts." I closed my eyes, and let my forehead rest against the page. "You know, Erma, if this had been translated from a draconic or, heaven help me, pixie text-"

"Pixies write?" asked Erma, astonished.

"...Probably no," I admitted. "But if they did, I would bet that this would read..." I clenched my jaw, and did my best to shrink my tongue. "Megan Williams, Kentucky State."

"That is significant?" asked the cow.

"That is nearly my home," I answered. "Somebody presumably from there, counter to all damned sense, and from no more than two hundred years before my time. Probably much more recent. And that there, in the book, was over four centuries ago from the present. But that..." I rubbed at my temples, to try to make the hurt go away. "I need almanacs. Anything that describes where... griffons live?" Another avenue of research, there, that I hadn't gotten to, yet. "Not now, but when you have time," I added. Griffons were close neighbors to Equestria, Twilight had once mentioned.

"What is a griffon?"

"...Faust take me now."

"Who?"

"Damn it."

I eventually got my almanacs, but they didn't make sense. I was half hoping it would be some sort of mirror-image of earth. That, at least, would have been predictably mind-blowing. It happened in all the cool science fiction novels, anyway.

"It was Earth all along, you damned dirty ponies," I muttered.

But no. And the almanacs barely covered the subcontinent I was on, and a lot of the southern areas seemed to be more of a 'fill-in-the-blank' puzzle than a real exercise in cartography.

More dead ends on human lore. The prophecies were... less than helpful, even if some had promise. 'Alicorn' was only mentioned as the stuff that made up unicorns' horns. Well, them and the species of kirin, at least. Nothing on the Elements of Harmony. Nothing on... basically anything. There was a wealth of information, but that wealth was all in Canadian dollars, to use a metaphor and stretch it to its breaking point.

I looked to the wall of scrolls- I hadn't even touched those, yet. And there were even older rooms, tucked further back into the carved chambers of the mountain. I had only days left.

"Tham'ra? Witch?" called Erma. "Are you alright?"

"Um, yes. Of course. Shouldn't I be?" I asked.

The auroch stood just outside the room, looking in with a hesitant expression. "It is only... have you not heard the fighting outside at all?"

"Some sort of festival?" I asked. "I guess I haven't been paying attention."

"There is fighting in the streets," Erma explained. "It is an invasion- the old auroch council is seeking to reclaim its old throne and remove the interlopers."

"The interlopers," I said, my mind catching up to her phrasing. "Funny thing to call your employers." She winced- jackpot. "Let me guess. You were looking up that architecture to find ways into the city for somebody. You've been looking for the opportunity, and I provided it just by being here. Now you're looking to sneak me out of here to avoid the fighting since you figure I'm not such a terrible mare myself. Am I right?"

Erma was staring. "Is... was that your magic?" she asked.

I laughed out of reflex, but sobered. "Nope. It's just a very familiar storyline, to me, I guess." I gestured around. "Are the books going to be safe?"

The auroch flinched. "I... I should hope so! But... there is fire outside, and a great deal of it, too. If some vandals take advantage of our noble cause, then yes, there may be damage."

I tapped at the tome in front of me and sighed. It wasn't as if I were about to decide any other way, but...

"Want to help me save a library?" I asked. "I can save... roughly eight times my bodyweight in books."

To her credit, she didn't ask me how. She did, however, say, "But that's hardly anything! The western wing alone-"

"Law documents, and tax forms, and ledgers," I interrupted her. "Then there is the science, art, magic and history. The city is burning- why are you worried about tax forms?"

She bolted down the hall.

I ducked through the low passage, grumbling about the cobwebs, filth, and protruding edges of the uneven stone walls. Erma, it turned out, had found two secret passages into the city. One had been perfect for the 'traditional' forces which had already overtaken most of the city. The other...

It turned out that one of the previous oligarchs had had a thing for pegasi, and built a smaller passage that only his paid-for lovers could fit through. I was truly traveling in style, here.

The low tunnel opened up over a sheer rock face. I made my escape through the simple use of gravity, that almighty mistress.

I flew out a couple miles and circled the mountain, hovering in place there and watching the great mountain city burn. Erma had called it a glorious return. I called it another point of civilization crumbling. Maybe not the best point of civilization, but still. Before leaving, I had promised to return the literature I'd taken as soon as the aurochs were stable as a people, again. I figured that would give me more time than I could ever need.

'Speaking of...'

With a flick of my hoof, I double checked to see that my travel bags were in place. In one, was an especially rare treasure- a Many Bag. Like a Bag of Holding from out of a game, it contained more space on the inside than seemed possible. Unlike that game item, you 'used up' the space. I'd filled it to the brim, and as soon as I removed its current cargo, it would be no more than an ugly purse. Fantastical, but unfortunately not an overpowered artifact.

"Good bye, Erma," I muttered. "And good luck."

I glided off into the night.

The unicorn keep was exactly as I had expected, even allowing for the embellishments made by the other tribes. Lots of stone, tall towers, and insular as hell. I had only made it in because it was a fair day, and because even self-righteous bastards with god complexes needed deliveries of fresh goods.

Spell number two: Ghostly Hand, was basically levitation. Honestly, if you went around with a hooded cloak and floated an apple along with you, it was just assumed you were a unicorn. Not bad at all. In a few years, I might get good enough at pure weather manipulation that I could mimic the effect -minus the glow- with air currents.

It was in the market that I got my first little blast from the past. Or future. Or... alternate universe? I was still struggling with that, to be honest, but:

"Apple Clan Apples?" I asked. The stallion at the counter nodded guardedly- the poor guy was obviously used to working with unicorns.

"The Apple clan?" I asked. Confused, he nodded. I grabbed him by the hoof and gave it a solid shake. "I met one of your kinsponies, a while back. Kind mare, really. What do you suggest, today?"

"Well! Any friend 'o a friend, I guess, is a friend!" he declared, looking a bit more cheerful. "Red galas would go down a treat. The wife is on some fritters already, if you'd wait a moment."

"Sounds good," I said. "It's been a few days since I've had hot food. I was up north."

The earth pony's eyes widened. "Gall, you hear about that bull city? Wasn't hardly one stone left on the other, the way I heard it."

I grimaced. "Saw it from a distance, yes. It'll be a long time in rebuilding, I think."

The stallion snorted. "Right. More time than I've got. Oh, here's the fritters. Say hi, Jackie, friend o' the family, here."

A rosy-cheeked mare had come up with a hot tray from out of the cart's little oven. I waved. "Hello! I'm Tham'ra. It's a pleasure. I knew a orange, blond mare by the name of Applejack. Sweet mare, told me everything I knew about home cooking was wrong."

"Sounds like an Apple," said the mare with a grin. "Er, wait. You said Applejack? There ain't been one of those in the family since Dream Valley, and you ain't..."

"The witch, Tham'ra?" asked the stallion, voice gone choked and low. Likely, he imagined that a 'witch' was likely old enough to have seen Dream Valley from a first person perspective.

I believed that there were only two ways to go about things, and I chose the nicer option. I chose to believe that I was in Equestria's past. I grinned, made a vaguely mystical sign with my right hoof, and bowed. "Your clan will know the earth and all its fruits for a hundred generations."

"Gosh!"

I smiled. "How about those fritters?"

It had taken a bit of doing to get the Apple couple to accept my gold for the food, and eventually I'd had to pull out the 'we witches have no need for your earthly metals' bit. Somehow, it didn't occur to him to ask why we had a need for 'earthly pastries'.

After that, though, I had a short but quiet journey through the keep, and there I reached my day's destination.

It was one of the seven great spell circles maintained by the unicorn tribe. Dozens of them gathered in each circle at dawn and dusk, doing their best to guide the heavens and keep the world on something of an even schedule. Their success might have been debatable, but it was generally agreed that they helped more than they harmed.

I settled onto a spot high up on the wall, and watched one of the world's greatest works of magic being done. Above me, the celestial bodies moved.

I'd had no other real purpose in coming here- it had been a detour. One well worth it, it seemed.

And yet...

'I wonder where I can get another Many Bag,' I wondered. 'And an unattended library.'

Author's Note

Here we have an original species, I think. I figured, since they have so many intelligent creatures in just the small area we know from the show (dragons, buffalo, zebras, diamond dogs, griffons, ponies of all kinds and so on) that there were bound to be more of them further afield.

Next chapter, we get a short glimpse into the 'present' as understood by our six heroines. All without having to switch perspectives! I thought it was a nifty enough idea, and I hope you'll like it once it's published.

On a personal note: I know it was short, but how was the fight scene? I was going for 'succinct' here. To be honest, fighting scenes are going to be few and far in between, so I want to get them right when I do include them.

Bottled Message

Chapter Five

Pinkie stuck out her tongue in concentration, surveyed the dungeon one last time, and rolled.

I leaned over, did some mental math, and nodded. "You've got the devil's luck, Miss Pie- you anticipate a collapse of the cave's roof and successfully lead your party around it."

"Those dark lords always hire shoddy contractors!" said the mare.

"And they never let their minions unionize," said Crazy Dan, checking the stats of his earth pony paladin again. A busy weekend had seen three new races added to our game- mostly written out in one of my spare notebooks.

A book on native Equestrian fauna had made for a healthy addition to the monster manual, too.

"Twilight the barbarian is upset," said my favorite purple mare, who had really enjoyed the roleplaying aspect. "She thinks we ought to fight the rocks. She is strong!"

"Yes she is," said Jill, chuckling. "I want to do a dungeoneering check- those inscriptions sounded ominous."

A half-successful check had the party learning that the dungeon was older than its current master, and had once been a temple to the god Kord. That had Linda excited- her paladin was a worshiper of him. I had my fingers crossed- for as much as my job was to challenge the players in the most brutal ways possible, she'd be getting some useful loot if she were clever during the next game session.

"And that's the night, I think," I announced. "Anybody staying for movie night?"

"For Miyazaki?" said Linda. "Count me in. I want my animes."

"Daisy, we're moving out."

The earth pony spat at some sort of leaf which, well, it looked pretty damn close to good old cannabis, and quirked her brow. She slid on the cart harness long before I'd reached her side, and only then asked the question.

"No luck, witch?" she asked.

"Nothing!" I shouted, kicking a nearby log. "What wasn't stolen, they burned. They burned books!" My wings ruffled under my cloak. I needed to go for a flight soon- clear my head and maybe throw some lightning around. That always made me feel better.

"Some things just end up lost, witch." The mare looked up, then further up, at the crumbling tower. Wizards, of course, love towers. It was only common sense. "Somepony you knew?" asked Daisy.

"That place has been abandoned for decades, Daisy," I said, irritation leaking out of my tone. She didn't so much as blink. "Mare, I'm not even forty!"

'Until next week,' I stupidly reminded myself.

"I figured it was a witch thing," said the earth pony with a shrug. "You know, eatin' babies keeps you young." This time, she couldn't hide her smile.

"I hate that rumor!" I stomped, reducing the earlier log into two, smaller logs. It had started out rotten though, so that was less impressive than it sounded. "I've never eaten babies! I never will! You've seen me eat dinner, Daisy. You've watched me, right?"

"Amazing what the chef's presentation can do. My uncle makes a cake that looks like a house, you know." Her ears flicked thoughtfully. "You know, if the house was cake-shaped."

"...Potato-shaped babies," I muttered.

"They're sorta shaped like potatoes to begin with, to be fair," said Daisy, trying to sound like she was trying to be sympathetic. The bitch.

"What do I pay you for, Daisy?" I asked.

"To pull the cart, Lady Tham'ra," said Daisy. "And next you'll say, 'but I don't pay you for sass'. And that's right, you don't. The sass is for free."

"But I don't pay you for..." I swallowed, and her words caught up with me. "Oh. Oh god, I've turned into my mother. I might cry."

"There, there," said Daisy, who was still enjoying herself far too much.

We were back on track soon enough. The cart had been an addition I made... about eight years ago. From when I first started seriously collecting lore. Many Bags were ridiculously expensive, rare, and only worked in specific situations because of their limitations. A cart charmed for toughness and lightness, though? Much easier. Easy enough to manage on my own, as a matter of fact.

Daisy was the second assistant I'd had in that time. She was getting paid ridiculously well, and would probably end up going back to her family in a couple months with enough to help her herd open their own farmstead. I got transportation and conversation, which kept me free to run around and less likely to go crazy, respectively.

"Where to next, my lady?" asked Daisy the morning after my failed attempt to raid a forgotten unicorn's tower.

I sighed over my bowl of greens. We'd have to stop at a town, soon, for travel bread and cheeses, and other necessities. But after that...

I flipped open my latest spare journal and backtracked over a few months' worth of notes. "...Here. Right. Magical scrying pool just past Trotting Wattsville. We'll stop for goodies and hit up the pool."

"Looking to do some scrying?" asked Daisy. Like Erma had, and like my first assistant Rumbler had, Daisy had picked up the concepts of magic well enough to talk about it with some confidence. Just because you can't use it, obviously didn't mean you had to treat it as something supernatural.

All joking aside- magic was a thing, and it could be understood. It was natural, just... a weird kind of natural. Like jellyfish.

Daisy was probably one of the most educated earth ponies, or ponies, of this era, period, simply because I couldn't help but obsessively pour facts into anybody I met for more than five minutes at a time.

"Maybe," I said. Honestly, scrying was one of many branches of magic that I had never bothered with. There was only so much I could do, when I was always on the move. Sure, I'd read about it, but theory and practice were two very different things. I didn't have a Twilight Sparkle on hand to pull miracles out of her butt.

As nice as that would be.

"Honestly," I said, "If the Mirror of the Moon Goddess wasn't reputed to be as powerful as it was, I probably wouldn't bother. That's the point of artifacts- they're a way of covering a handicap, or amplifying something you already have. I've got no practice in this field, so I need as big a boost as I can."

I'd escalate my attempts, of course. Space, then time, then time and space.

"Sounds good," said Daisy. "Um, how are we for funds, if we're resupplying?"

"Well, we've still got your pay on hand," I said, in case she was worried on that account.

Daisy rolled her eyes. "Don't be dense, Witch."

"Don't call me dense! I am a powerful, vengeful magic user! Ponies all over fear my name and think I eat babies!" I growled.

"Do you need a hug?" she asked me.

"...Not right now," I muttered, kicking sand onto our cooking fire. "But you're right, we need travel funds. So... we're taking the Seabringer road!"

"The one with all the bandits?" asked Daisy. "With a nice-looking cart with just two little ponies pulling it, without any visible weapons?" I nodded eagerly, and she sighed. "Well, alright then. Still, I feel sort of bad for them whenever we pull this."

"It's a public service," I assured her. "Which we're benefiting from. That makes us generous and clever!"

486 A.M. -Fourteenth day of the second medial summer

Twenty years, more or less, away from Earth. Soon I'll have been a pegasus as long as I've been a human. It's almost laughable to call a couple years 'soon', but then the time has been passing quickly. How long do pegasi live? I can only guess I was twenty-five in body when I switched over, but who knows? I know that the tribe is so militaristic these days that death by disease or violence is by far so common that 'maximum lifespan' is a debatable variable.

I'm still learning. Always am, I guess. All that and no cutie mark, too! I'm probably -ha- doing it wrong, but then my current journey takes precedence. My only journey, really. Ever since Oak and Heather, I've lost the motivation to settle for a normal life. I didn't think the idea had occurred to me before stumbling across them, but then life tends to surprise you.

Heather. I only learned what 'Hayli' meant months after scaring off that flock of pegasi, fifteen years ago. I was in a field, and some pony I didn't know was complaining about catching his hooves on all the 'Hayli'. I broke out in tears, like some madwoman -madmare- when I figured out my once-daughter's name. I had eight months with those two.

I've said it before- this land is a mess of dead end fairy tales. It's steeped in mysticism and secrets, and here I am thinking I can pull together enough fragments to make some sort of useful, complete something or other.

And to what end? Where am I trying to go? What do I do if I find out there's no going anywhere?

This place is chaos, among which are small pockets of fragile happiness.

Short-lived, and fragile.

-Tamara Jessica Whittle

"This is... less than optimal," I said, staring into the depths of the Lunar Arcadium.

"Why?" asked Daisy. "This is great! I've never met seaponies, before!"

I stared at the stupid, stupid pony, and sighed. Reaching into the cart, I pulled out a large paper board and a stick of graphite. On it, I wrote in big letters, 'Not Explosive!'. Then, seeing some of the hippocampi watching us curiously, I added, 'Not A Challenge!'.

There was a muttered, 'Aw, shucks,' from behind us. But I knew how to deal with this. In fact, parking so close to the entrance might work to our advantage.

"You, there!" I said, bearing down on one of the seaponies who was wearing a sufficiently fancy hat. That, I was pretty certain, meant status.

"Who, me?" she -I went by the voice- said, gesturing innocently to herself with one fin.

"Yes," I said, stopping at the lip of the pool. "I am the witch, Tham'ra! If I return to find-"

"Your cart is safe, oh great witch!" said the mare with a grin.

I went on and ignored the interruption, "Then I will teach you how to add colors to your explosions, in the way of the naga shamans!"

Her faux-innocent look, which I was certain held madness and the desire to see the world burn, disappeared and was replaced with honest interest. "Promise?" she asked.

"Promise," I said, and waggled my hood. She waggled her hat back at me, and the deal was sealed.

I went back to Daisy, who looked highly amused, and took in the whole of the Arcadium. It was a massive, mostly underground complex. The outside had been carved meticulously in certain places, giving the impression that the Roman senate itself had been half-buried in natural stone. It was... beautiful. Some group had put such care as to make a mathematically perfect monument to mystery itself.

There were no records, not even a mention in the myths, of just who had built it. Other groups and species had dwelt there since. Earth pony druids, naga mystics, a unicorn war party looking for shelter... and now seaponies. God damn it.

Seaponies were the one race I'd describe as, literally, insane. How a water-dwelling species earned such a love for fire and explosions boggled the fuck out of my mind. Clever, cheerful, and responding to every situation with the maximum amount of force. Every species that had met them stayed the hell away forever after, while every species who hadn't met them assumed that the buggers were harmless.

The Lunar Arcadium was historically concerned with the moon and the element of water- that the seaponies had moved in pointed to there being actual waterways connecting to the monument's deep pools. I was more than a bit impressed that the place was still standing and not at all on fire- that the place was full of non-flammable water wouldn't have stopped even a single determined seapony, let alone a colony full of them.

"Come on, Daisy. Are you at all religious?" I asked, making conversation as we disappeared into the Lunarium's arches, surrounded by cheerful, watchful, mad seaponies.

"Not really," the mare admitted. "I spare harvest for the earth mother, of course. And thanks for letting me visit home last month for the festival-"

"Of course," I said, waving her off. Heaven knows I hadn't been able to celebrate any of my old holidays. Buddhists liked Christmas too!

"But no, not as such," said Daisy.

"Try praying anyway, just in case. This is about to get weird," I told her, leading the way.

I pulled back the hood of my cloak. It was a new one -which was to say, I'd ended up destroying over a dozen of the things what with one thing and another, and it comfortably covered my wings, blank flank, and lack of a horn. I could be from any tribe, to the casual observer. I'd already heard more rumors about how the 'witch' had sacrificed her own cutie mark -her own destiny- to gain dark powers. Flattering and worrying in equal amounts.

The interior was unbearably ancient, yet still in good shape. Channels and pools of water were everywhere, and so we gained a curious entourage of seaponies. I saw a small school of foals and, being stupidly unable to help myself, cast spell number nine: the Illusive Illusion. The fillies began chasing luminescent, floating flowers and giggling all the way.

That, of course, just drew more seaponies. Soon I was handing out illusionary flowers like a politician that had gone kissing hands and shaking babies.

"I need to snag a stallion," moaned Daisy. "Lightning Quartz told me she's on the lookout for somepony nice to join the household. With luck, we'll be ready to start something come next year's first heat."

"Kids are pretty great," I said, musing on how I'd sworn off reproducing back when I was a teenager. I'd already gone sterile, as a human, and figured I'd always be okay with that. Now I had my grand crusade, and held off on the idea of settling for entirely different reasons. "You're a good mare, with a very lucky family," I told Daisy. "And that includes the future members, alright?"

"Sappiest evil witch, walking right here," said Daisy. I did the brave, adult thing and blew a raspberry- substantially dirtier in pony culture than for humans. Daisy nearly tripped over herself.

"Pardon me, witch?" called a seapony. She wore the fanciest hat yet, so she was obviously someone of great importance to this little colony. "What do you seek in our humble caves?" she asked.

I turned to her and bowed. I tugged on my hood, then tugged it back off, to show deference. The school of seaponies around us went quiet- they were getting a show.

"I'm looking for the Mirror of the Moon Goddess. I hope to use it to find some lost friends, and if not, then to add to my own magic lore. The moon will be full, tonight, and I beg you let me put the pool to peaceful use," I said, keeping eye contact.

"Fascinating!" the mare declared, clapping her fins together excitedly. "This is a wonderful safe place, good for minding foals-" And their young, I figured, were the only things they wouldn't explode, which explained this place's good condition, "-and reflecting on the mysteries of our ancestors. May we watch this great magic of yours?"

I grinned, a bit. "I can't promise that I'll manage magic of any sort, but you are welcome to watch. Mind you, you might see some queer happenings."

"Dear witch, weird is our watchword!" the elder declared, to the cheers and enjoyment of the rest of the school. "But first, since moonrise is several hours away, would you care to provide more of those marvelous flowers?"

Practicing magic for the sake of practicing magic, and making people happy? This time, my smile grew until it nearly hurt.

"I think I can do better than a few mere flowers, lady seapony."

Our escort had turned much more enthusiastic when we continued some time later, leading us ever deeper into the depths of the world. The Arcadium was well-lit by its inhabitants -I imagined the fire soothed the crazier half of their brains- but it brightened into a soft, magnificent glow that drew the eye to a magnificent, still mirror made of water. Too still.

"Does nobody swim in there?" I asked.

The mare from earlier, Algae Crescent, shook her head. "No, never. We know what waters aren't meant to be touched. It would do no harm to us, but we might very well do harm to it, if you follow my meaning."

"I follow you," I said, and began pacing around the pool. It was beautiful. More than the stonework which was crafted to funnel the environment's natural magic into the waters, more than the great oculus above which encircled the full moon, the place seethed with enchantments. I didn't recognize the feel of the spells, or the structures that had held them in place over the centuries.

Most importantly, I could feel that they were still potent.

"This..." I drew out the word happily. "This should do nicely." I whirled in place and began marching for the platform.

The grand entrance, which we had come through, led straight onto a stone path that led out over the water. It was completely unsupported, so as not to ruin the pool's symmetry. I carefully stepped onto it, less out of fear that it would crumble than that I might miss something important.

Most magic was about intent and feel. Only the unicorns, of all the tribes and races of the known world, wielded magic close to the manner in which I did. My spells demanded strict definition- the Lunar Pool would demand desire. On the plus side, my hunch had been correct- I wouldn't need any more knowledge of scrying than I already did. The Pool would provide the means.

"Witch, is there anything we can do to help?" called Algae. Daisy had settled next to the elder's pool, where the two of them were the first among the many watchers.

I started to answer in the negative, but then... "If you'd like to start chanting, that would actually be pretty awesome," I called back. "Nothing in particular, just make it nice and mystical. Hum if you're tone-deaf."

Daisy planted a hoof onto her face, but Algae grinned in appreciation of my fine sense of style. "Never a seapony born who couldn't sing, witch! You'll get your chanting!"

And lo, there was a full choral background of noise, reverberating throughout the chamber and filling the air with cryptic beauty. My very skin shook with the vocal force. The pool, though, didn't. As a simple test, I flared my wings and swept them over the surface. The ripples flattened out faster than I could form them.

Even inactive, the magic was potent enough to effect the real world. 'Perfect.'

I reached out with intent, and only with intent, and made myself the very focus of the chamber. I spoke clearly, and performed the first test. Scrying was a thing primarily of the present, then of the past, and distantly of the future. I had a lot of power at my disposal, just then, so I went in order.

"Myself," I ordered, intoned, and cast my eyes downward.

Then there was no water- there was only an image of a barren, wet rock landscape, at the lip of which was a small cart. My cart. Right below me was the oculus, and the pool through that, and myself there, staring into the pool, which showed the oculus, through which was the pool, through which-

I forced my eyes shut- the magic forced an intensity to your awareness, trying hard enough to please you that the normal optical illusions became all-consuming. On the brighter side- the first test had worked.

I released the first command, and next tried, because I couldn't not...

"Heather."

I was viewing the past, now. Not the distant past, but some point within the last decade. Far beneath my hooves, there appeared a meadow. In it was a trio of ponies, braiding grasses together in the custom of those adorning their loved ones with special little symbols, spelled out in the language of flowers. There was a chestnut-colored mare laughing, and she bore a cutie mark now, and-

I released the image, and swallowed. Second test, a success.

"Earth."

Nothing. The last image had faded, but I was only left with my own mirror image.

"Earth. My family. My friends?"

Third test, a failure. Whatever distance separated myself from there, it was too great. Or maybe the humans I had known and loved were dead, but even then I should have seen their pasts!

'Fine. Okay. I will calm down, because I am not done yet, and I have to do this so I can not let myself stop.'

I would try something more specific. A target closer, in both time and space, with whom I was familiar.

"Twilight Sparkle."

There was no smooth transition, this time. I felt the change immediately- outside magic was pouring in like somebody had placed us at the base of a great vortex.

The waters shook, frothed, and rose as if somebody were shaping gravity like clay.

This wasn't supposed to be happening. Nowhere in the structure of this place's enchantments was there even a hint that the pool should, or could do this.

I considered turning tail and running, but my own damnable curiosity and the hope that I could somehow contain any more violent reactions kept my hooves glued in place. I grit my teeth, and felt the hairs rising all along my back.

And then...

And then the water stilled. It was still vertical, a wall of liquid that defied physics and common sense, but it became mirror-smooth once again. Before I knew it, the reflection was gone, replaced by something entirely different.

There was a room beyond that mirror surface, magnified two times over and with such perfect clarity that I might have thought I could take flight and set my hooves down on that warm, sandstone floor.

I raised my hoof, waved, and said, "Hello, Twilight."

The alicorn stared. She was clearly in the middle of a ritual. She was looking at me, and so clearly that was a scrying ritual of her very own. Two people glancing through two windows, on two trains, passing one another on parallel tracks by sheer coincidence. She stood in a corona of her own magical energy, jaw dropped as she stared at me. I decided to take that as a compliment.

"Hi!" I said again. I waved at the other ponies, too. Her five friends, who I'd come to know to greater or lesser lengths during their visits those years ago. Beyond them stood Equestria's two diarchs, similarly staring.

"Um, say something? Anything?" I tried. Rainbow Dash's mouth was moving, but there was no sound.

There was no sound. The pool was a strictly visual medium! And I... was a pony. Damn. The only thing I shared with my past self was the color of my mane, which... didn't make for the best clue ever, what with the hooves and all.

It would be shaky, I knew, given how I was already the center of a more powerful spell than I could ever have managed on my own, but I spread my wings and began inscribing my magic in the air. The Illusive Illusion, weak and shaky, still managed to form in front of me. It had to have been something unmistakable, which Twilight and I would have in common, and which would hint as to my identity.

An uneven, half translucent twenty-sided die appeared. I pointed desperately.

"Come on, Sparkle, read my fuzzy lips!"

Pinkie got it first, I think. Or maybe she just thought the spell was nifty, because she began hopping and singing mutely. I threw off my cloak completely, to make sure they got a good look at me. The better the target image, the easier it was to scry.

I was still waving hard enough to strain my foreleg, and I think my eyes were a little wet. For whatever reason, I was caught off-guard when the image shuddered. It wouldn't be long, now, I felt.

"Good-bye!" I enunciated as clearly as I could. "Good-bye, please be safe!"

Luna and Celestia were actively casting at Twilight's ritual components, now, even though the purple alicorn was losing the magical thread despite her obvious efforts. They looked... frantic. Had my contacting them been dangerous? Was I, contrary to my own expectations, doing harm in the temporal sense? Obviously, things had gone weird enough on my end... and if they were in danger?

I waved once more, and released the enchantment.

Metric tons of water fell back into place, in much the same way as you would have expected- moisture painted over every surface. I cracked my eyes opened, only to find my face covered with sodden mane hair. I couldn't have been more soaked if I had jumped into the pool myself. I turned back toward the entrance. Seaponies were just now appearing back above the surfaces of their own pools, peering to see that the danger had passed. Daisy was blinking away a faceful of sacred water.

"How did it go!?" she called as I slowly approached.

"It... went," I replied. "I'm going to say we broke even, here."

Algae Quartz lifted herself to the lip of her channel and peered at the central pool. "How is the artifact faring, witch?" she asked.

It was a good question. I pushed aside the more immediate sensations of being wet and heavy, and felt out the enchantments that had so recently wrapped around my form.

"The magic is weak," I said, squinting distractedly. "But still there. It should be restored naturally in a few seasons. This whole place is built to refill itself." I glanced back at the pool and its diminished water table. "In every sense of the word."

"Excellent!" said Algae, clapping. "I believe this calls for a song and a feast! How do you feel about seaweed and fish?"

"I feel very good about both those things," I said, a soft grin creeping over my lips. "I think we should celebrate, yeah. Though I think Daisy will skip on the fish."

"They wriggle!" said the earth pony mare.

"They're like mobile vegetables," I said dismissively. "Have some seaweed." I turned back to Algae. "And I think I promised to teach one of your own ponies the joys of copper and magnesium."

I took it back- seaponies were my kind of people.

I reclined in a wide, shallow pool of water. I didn't get the opportunity to swim, much, and this definitely seemed the place to do it. The seaponies rarely ventured on dry land, awkward as it was for their biology. Daisy was happily dog-paddling a short distance away. From what I remembered, she had mentioned growing up by a river. Ponies didn't tend to swim unless they grew up near water- it was harder for them to learn than it was for humans.

My belly full, and my mind reassured but the brief, live image of some of my friends, I felt myself turning introspective. I stood and trotted, knee-deep in fresh water, until I reached the drop-off that led further into the Arcadium's deeper channels. I looked at my reflection.

"Daisy?" I called.

"Yes, lady?" she asked, pushing her mane out of her face.

"Tell me honestly, because this is for science. How old do I look to you?"

There was a long, thoughtful moment, before the mare replied, "Not very old at all. Young even. If I were to guess, that isn't out of some special effort on your part?"

"Not hardly," I said, wearing a small, self-deprecating smirk. "I worry. I wonder if I might not be young for a very long time. There was... there was a spell, you see, back before I was in any way the witch I am now. Way back. My being in these lands was just one unforeseen side effect. I wonder what else I might have done to myself, in my haste."

'You know at least some of what you did,' I mused. 'It's been over a decade since you could sign 'live long and prosper', for instance.'

"Some would consider that a good thing," said Daisy, who I could tell was filing away our conversation under 'weird stuff the witch sometimes babbles'.

"A long life is a blessing, for those who share it with their loved ones. One minute out of millions, I saw my friends. I was all but there."

"You had your chance," said Daisy. "You might have another, yet."

My reflection stirred. A tiny seapony colt was floating in place, just beneath the water. There was a big gap where his front teeth should have been, grinning up at me. I playfully snapped at him, and he disappeared in a trail of laughing bubbles.

Then, it appeared, he began rounding up reinforcements.

"Ah, witch?" asked Daisy. I gestured for her to go ahead, so she asked, "Those ponies. Some of them were..." she lifted her hooves and gestured vaguely at both her sides and forehead. "They were beautiful. I've never seen the like! What were they?"

All I did to answer her was grin, before turning back and diving into the channel's depths. My wings propelled me like fins, chasing the mad, aqueous ponies that lived purely in the moment and wanted to play 'tag' with me.

"Lady Tham'ra, I'm impressed! You were down there ages," said Daisy, as she pulled us toward our next destination. "You held your breath for quite a long time. Did the seaponies want something of you?"

I stared straight ahead, not daring to meet the mare's eyes. "Yes... they wanted things. Very, business. Things. We're on our way to the Greenheart Grotto, aren't we?"

"As you requested, lady witch. Are you alright? You seem flushed. Perhaps the water was a touch too cold?"

"I was very warm," I mumbled, and shook myself. I had been almost certain I'd been pulled into some sort of native, seapony dance. A very close dance. A dance with five partners, all circling each other and touching one another oh-so-fleetingly.

"I... am going to review the naga dictionary," I declared, turning toward the cart's narrow door.

"My lady? There are no naga at the Grotto, are there?" asked Daisy.

"Just in case!" I said. "Long lists of words. And definitions. Dry, dry paper. Yes."

Hours later, and I still felt far too wet.

"Now, she is most definitely mad, but it is a harmless madness."

"Are you certain? She seems so... normal."

"Don't let appearances fool you! Magic has addled her- the lack of a horn has disrupted her body's humors, causing the brain to overheat."

"Damn it, Daisy, I can hear you!" I shouted from on top of the cart. The mare stared back at me for a long moment, nodded pleasantly, and went back to warning her cousin about the rigors of his new job.

Grumbling, I returned to my notes. This particular bunch wasn't full of spell lore, or history, or myths of any sort- honestly, it was mostly gossip. Rumors traveled as fast as trade routes, and sometimes faster. The new unicorn monarch, King Bullion, had just been crowned. He was basically a child, but even still there hadn't been a hint of squabbling from the various mage nobles. His mother had apparently trained him well. Already, three duchesses had disappeared under 'mysterious circumstances'. Really, it was business as usual for the unicorns.

Commander Squall had been spear-shaking as usual, calling for higher conscription rates at this 'blatant act of aggression'. Of course, for pegasi, everything up to and including bringing in firewood for the winter counted as an act of aggression. The old stallion was old, senile, and still capable of flinging around storms with his own four hooves. An interesting combination.

The only difference in the pattern was how these two tribes were acting with more cohesion than usual. The earth parliament and their speaker, Madame Wormwood, were due to meet at the Winter's End festival, and... and I was beginning to see a pattern to it. Ponies of every tribe had existed in tiny family groups for ages. They survived by being mostly unobtrusive in a valley known for being stupidly lethal. Large groups attracted larger dangers.

But if the signs were as clear as I thought they were, then they might be aiming to skip that whole intermediate, 'look at this smorgasbord we made for you monsters' stage and straight to something larger still than that. No single tribe had ever been unified, not once in known history, and now it was looking like all three might be doing just that.

"The world is changing," I said, musing out loud. Changing into what, though, I couldn't imagine. Three new political forces, dead center in this strange little subcontinent, and all of the old kingdoms that had surrounded them were crumbling at the same time.

The aurochs had been at war with each other for almost a decade, now. The naga were reduced to small, traveling groups after the southeastern coast had become a feeding ground for feral wyverns. The other races wouldn't be able to pull together long enough to fill in the land's ongoing power vacuum, so that left... ponies.

"My lady witch?"

I rolled until my head could hang over the side of the cart. I blinked down at the young stallion. "Yes, Thorny? You ready to go? Your sister has abandoned us?"

"Yes, ma'am, I mean, no! I mean..." he coughed. "Daisy has gone on, yes. We are ready to move at your word. It is only, she mentioned..."

"Yes?" I asked, stretching my neck that much further down.

"She mentioned that you are addl- er, atypical," said Thorny, working himself around the unfamiliar word. "That is to say..."

"I don't care that you're a stallion, boyo," I told him. "I'm not going to tell you to get back in the kitchen- I don't have a kitchen. She said your mom was the traditional type, right?"

"Yes, ma'am." He looked over his shoulder, as if wary of being chased.

I sighed. Pony society- proof that either sex could fuck things up. "Get yourself hitched up, then. It's onward to adventure, danger, hardships and a tidy wage."

Thorny grinned up at me, showing the family resemblance to Daisy. "Yes, ma'am!" It wasn't long before we were trundling away from the western marshes. Nonplussed, I floated down to trot at his side.

"You seem excited. I did mention the hardships, right?" I asked.

"That you did," said Thorny. Still, ridiculously cheerful.

"And the dangers. And I'll be training you hard. If you don't pick up at least two new dialects this year, I'll see myself damned."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I mean it- I will dock your pay if you can't curse out pegasi in their own language, hear me?" I asked.

Now he was doing his best to look professional and hide his smile. "Yes, lady Tham'ra."

"And you better learn to write! Daisy said you couldn't write. I will teach you or you will suffer!"

Later on that night, the stupid pony up and hugged me.

I'd show him, trying to appreciate independence and a decent education like that!

Golden Mistake

Chapter Six

"Alright," I said. "I have to ask. What was the whole business with the mirror world?"

Twilight winced. "It's properly a 'subdimensional pocket. Not a 'real' universe, but a reflection of ours. And I have no idea why the natives were human. Or... human-like. The mirror's construction pre-dates modern history."

"Proof of other connections like this rift of yours?" I asked.

Twilight shrugged, then nudged her game piece. I did my best to hide my disappointment- she had just all but killed my rook with that move, and with nothing to gain for the sacrifice. I didn't much like no-win scenarios.

The wind picked up a bit, and I tightened my coat rather than complain. Suggesting we move or put the game off until later would break the peaceful little mood we had going. The fading light in the sky was still enough to let us continue up here for another half hour.

"It's all a big mystery, to be honest." The mare stretched her neck, and resumed letting her eyes dart over the board. "It seems there are just too darned many of those, and not enough time in the day. I wouldn't want to break from what I have, but just having a little time to canter backwards and get a good look at things would be nice."

"The world's not nice enough to give anybody that kind of time to just think, Twilight," I said, grinning and nudging a pawn forwards. "Wishful thinking gets you nowhere. Or maybe it does get you somewhere, and I've just been doing it wrong this whole time."

Twilight snickered. "You're doing it wrong."

"Was that a meme?" I grinned. "Oh my gosh, my baby grew up and said her first meme! I need to take a picture." I stopped, there, and turned thoughtful. "Wait. Would that bypass whatever makes it so I see through your disguises? What does human Twilight look like?"

The unicorn shrugged. "You know? I actually have no idea. We should get a camera after our game. I guess no different, relatively speaking, than you would look as a pony."

"Probably completely ridiculous," I said. "All black and red, with glowing eyes. And half phoenix- like some sort of spontaneously-combusting hippogryph. My cutie mark would be an exploding planet."

Twilight promptly fell out of her chair.

An hour later, with the both of us crowded around a tiny camera viewer, I declared human Twilight to be adorkable. She began pelting me with couch cushions.

Thirty years since the scrying pool. The seaponies had moved on, and something less... wholesome had moved in, making another attempt not worth it.

I stared over one of the many parapets lining King Bullion's northernmost outpost. The royal family had tried to mandate an air of celebration, while at the same time spamming every courtyard with armored battle mages. I watched one pony try to manage a game stall while one of the posted sentries just stood there and stared at him. Stared and stared. I was pretty sure the showpony was about to experience some sort of psychotic break under the strain.

Miles away, along the grand promenade, my latest assistant was putting on a one-mare play. Tiny Tinder had delusions of thespianism. No doubts my cart had been nailed up as the backing to an improvised stage by now.

This, the presentation of Princess Platinum as heir apparent to the unicorn tribe, united, was probably the first party I'd ever received an engraved invitation to. Imagine my surprise when, while plot-deep in a swamp and digging for sunken dragon placards, a messenger found me and bowed, before presenting a wax-sealed envelope.

TIny Tinder had actually fainted at the news.

So here I was, with every excuse in the world to meet the latest rising star in magical circles:

Starswirl the Bearded.

Thirty-two years old and with hardly more than a scraggly goatee, the already-famous mage had been retained as a tutor to the new princess. Rumor had it he was looking after a student, too, the little upstart.

I smirked at the thought. 'Upstart'. By the way Twilight had gone on about the stallion, I had no doubts he could tear me apart, in a classic mage's duel. Maybe. I was tempted to find out.

The point was, though, that 'Platinum' and 'Starswirl' were names that I knew. They painted my place in history. Pre-Equestria, yes, but only barely. Here I'd spent so much time wondering at my own fate, bemoaning the crumbling nature of the world around me, and I hadn't had the perspective to see that I was trotting through the start of a new age!

Even though the end of this age was marked by death and ice, and by hate made incarnate in the feral Windigos.

I felt somber. Other names, too, had come up. Commander Hurricane had succeeded Squall, after the old mad bastard had led a final charge against the face of a sheer granite cliff. Nobody was certain if it had been suicide or if the senile fellow had seen the rock as a legitimate threat that needed punching. Creme Puddinghead had been voted in as the speaker for the earth ponies. I stretched my memory back as far as it could go, but no solid mention had been made of when the royal pony sisters had been born. Discord had appeared, 'at some point'. But the possible disparity in the timelines stretched for a good fifty years more.

I was still a good fifteen centuries away from the present, and I was pushing seventy. A strange seventy, maybe, and with far more vitality than I could explain, but I might be pushing a century before I met the two ponies I knew might be able to pass on even a short message to the future.

I hadn't left my family on good terms, once upon a time. I'd like to at least forgive them for being contrary-minded bastards, even if they didn't appreciate it. And my old group deserved to know I made it alive and safe, more or less. They had been my anchors, after all. In a lot of ways they still were.

Frankly, I wondered that half my purpose in keeping assistants around was to keep me from talking to Linda, Jill, and Crazy Dan until I became convinced that they were talking back.

"Lady Tham'ra?"

I pulled away from the edge, and brought my attention to one of the many nameless attendants who ran around the keep. He gestured toward the trap door at the parapet's center. "We are about to begin the dinner, lady. If you would follow me." His eyes flickered toward to the space beneath my cloak. "By hoof, if you would."

I gave him my most creepy, enigmatic smile. I'd had a long time to practice it. When he recoiled, I said, "Of course. I can keep to my hooves as well as anybody else. I understand having to look up causes quite the strain."

I followed after him, keeping to a straight face even as, every time he glanced back to make sure I wasn't doing something particularly insane, he would trip over the stairs.

It had been more than a friendly reminder on his part- Bullion had declared every unicorn settlement to be a 'no-fly zone'. Any pegasus that approached by wing was automatically marked for death. The poor stallion was probably prone to high blood pressure, or something. Or would be, soon enough. I was all too aware that this tentative peace wouldn't last.

The functionary dropped me off at the entrance of the banquet hall, where I proceeded to ignore him and do my own thing. I had to see a beard about a thing.

Only, Starswirl was nowhere to be found. I resisted the urge to gain some height to search -again, marked for death if I flew, though that only made me want to fly more- and decided to wing it.

I almost groaned- I had lasted maybe an hour as a pegasus before succumbing to using pony puns. By my current guesstimate, I owed the old pun jar back on Earth about fifteen thousand dollars, plus interest.

My head was bare, but I decided to live up to my reputation by gathering a sizable pile of hors d'oeuvres and levitating them along behind me, like a row of ducklings. I got stares, and some of them seemed to be of recognition rather than straight confusion.

"Lady Tham'ra, a pleasure."

I found myself facing an unfamiliar mare, teal and white, hovering along a crystal decanter and glass. I bowed.

"Is it?" I asked. "It would seem so, but then who's to say?"

"I am," she said, laughing. "Countess Mallard. I've heard a great deal about you. But then, who hasn't?"

"I haven't the faintest," I replied, looking around. "But I imagine that would include anybody looking at me as if I were wearing a torch on my head." I grinned. "I could work up an illusion- it would give them a real excuse to stare!"

Mallard seemed viciously delighted at the notion. "I think the stares are just from those who don't quite get enough fresh air. A witch in her seventh decade, racing through the most dangerous corners of the Paradise Estate. How do you do it?"

"Walk upon alien worlds, die upon the base of a mountain, and be cast away in the presence of a mad god," I informed her.

The countess blinked. "Oh, dear. I was hoping it was just some brand of wrinkle cream."

At that, I laughed. "I only wish!" I gestured with some sort of rhubarb biscuit. "I assume you're waiting with bated breath for the princess to show?"

"Oh, but of course. We're seventh cousins, you know- I'm two hundred and thirty-seventh from the crown, myself."

I smile, and tried not to betray how absolutely creepy it sounded, that she knew that off the top of her head. Royalty were, just, just damn. I occupied my mouth with a biscuit and surveyed the room. No luck there, still.

"I admit I came with some ulterior motives," I said. "I heard that old... er, young Starswirl is in residence. I found some dragon writings, recently, that he might be interested in."

"The mage, yes," said Mallard, waving off the notion as beneath her notice. "But dragons, you say? Massive brutes, aren't they?"

"Oh yes," I said. "They write on tablets the size of a grown mare- hard to use quills, you see."

Already, I was looking desperately for an escape. I even found one, in a matter of speaking.

"Pardon me," I said, waving off the countess. "Witch's business, you understand."

I pushed through a thin crowd, snacks marching after me in line, and came up to an acquaintance. Of sorts.

"Captain! Captain Letra Belle, how are you, old bean?"

The mane sticking out from under her helmet was streaked with grey, her coat was thinning, and I would give credit to any rumor that said she suckled the bone marrow from her fallen enemies. She snorted angrily at the sight of me, and a few thin sparks of magic danced off the tip of her horn.

"Witch. Witch. I pray you arrived sans invitation, that I might have an excuse to-"

"Nope!" I waved the gold-embossed leaflet. "Your darling king wanted me here, Hell Belle!" I noted one of her subordinates, lining the wall as she was, trying not to laugh at the nickname given to the captain by her own troops.

"Our, king, you insufferable wretch," growled Belle.

"It's pronounced 'witch'," I lectured. "With an 'ih' noise. Close though. As to the king," I rubbed, with an expression of absolute shock, my completely bare forehead. "King of all of us, you say? He so enjoys the title, though. Unicorn king? It's up there on his coat of arms..."

Letra Belle was about three snorts away from an aneurysm. I'd stake my nonexistent horn on it.

"An entire platoon disappeared, last year," the captain said, voice gone quiet. "Your... mobile shack was spotted in the area."

"I'm well-traveled," I admitted. "Did this all happen near that pegasus herd? The one mining copper on unconsolidated lands? The ones who weren't doing anybody any harm?"

"That territory was on the king's declared warpath..."

"It's a shame he never got that war," I said, shaking my head. "Hey, wouldn't you know it, I found a full complement of shiny new spears within days of that happening?"

I should have stopped myself. I really should have, but Miss Belle and I had history. The mare was half a minute away from taking me on a candle-lit hate date with all the autoerotic asphyxiation I never asked for.

'Oh, god, I'm recreating the old youtube comments section in my own head. I need a drink,' I thought.

"Enjoy the party, Hell Belle. I'm sure you'll be waiting to send me off the second I step away from the keep."

And bless me, but I could put a smile on anybody's face.

At the punch bowl, something deep enough to host a family of geese, I was assaulted by a long-suffering sigh.

"She really does hate you, you know," said the sigh's owner.

I nodded, and replaced the ladle. "That may be, but she's cute when she's angry."

"You... have a very odd taste in mares."

I lifted my drink, looked to see who my latest conversation partner was, and nearly painted his fancy beard with rose-pear punch. Gentlestallion that he was, Starswirl held my drink as I tried to deflate my lungs properly.

"S... sorry. I'm good, now." I took my drink back. "You know, I was looking for you," I told the mage.

"Oh, goody, I'm famous! And here Clover thought I was putting on airs," said the stallion with a smirk.

"Your fame will grow. Someday, little fillies will idealize you and your fine facial hair," I told him with a straight face.

"Dear lord, you really think so? I'll hold my breath," he added, but still seemed legitimately pleased at the thought. I wished I had been joking, just then, but...

"I propose a dialogue," I said, the greater point to my even having come here being just that. "I've found... a wide range of magical lore, and I hear you're quite the pioneer."

"Forty spells and counting," he said, buffing the front of his delightfully tacky, Dumbledore-esque robes. That, I knew, was less than a fifth of what he would one day accomplish, and that was just in individual spells. His theories, experiments and journals would occupy an entire wing of a future nation's capitol library.

"Have you done any study in the areas concerning... time?" I asked.

He beamed, which I took as a good sign. Then he had to go and say, "Just this autumn, that is, second autumn, peranua, I devised a pure-cast spell which will tell time to the nearest tenth of a second!"

"I meant something a bit more involved," I said, trying not to let my smile break like so much fine china. "Say a mare wanted to visit a point many years in the future. To see how the grandfoals are doing, for instance."

The unicorn's hat rose under the lifting power of his eyebrows. "I've... I've theorized that one might visit the past, as if scrying with a physical anchor. It would take more power than any dozen unicorns had on hand. The future, let alone visiting it..."

"Say one weren't to visit, but to emmigrate," I tried.

"That..." He shook his head. "You propose losing lengths of time that, after having traversed them, could never be gotten back. How detached would one have to be to leave behind so much?"

"Very," I admitted. Then the fellow went and surprised me.

"You are said to have walked a great many years, Lady Tham'ra. Have you been taking such steps forward?" he asked, scholastic excitement coloring his voice.

"It... might very well appear to be like that," I admitted. "But it isn't, or else I wouldn't be seeking such a method now. I'm an oddity." My grin came back in full force. "In case you couldn't tell."

"You know, it did occur to me," said the mage. "But back to the matter at hoof? What is your motivation, lady witch?"

"Imagine having heard a prophecy, the conclusion of which you'd like to see in person. Only, it was set to be fulfilled many, many years in the future. That's not entirely accurate, but it's the best way I have of explaining myself at the moment." I shrugged.

"Well." Starswirl stirred his own punch. "Should I find or write such lore, I shall keep you in mind."

"Then I'll just be sure to share tidbits here and there, to keep your interest," I told him. "For starters, I have some sketches of Himmelgart's third testament in my saddlebag and I think you might very well like a copy. Here..."

I was sandwiched between two nobles so stuck-up their nostrils had begun migrating toward their ears, I'd had to listen to an hour of terrible, dry speeches, and some inconsiderate fuck had planned the coming appetizer filled to the brim with radishes, but I was still feeling pretty good. Starswirl and I were practically nerdbuddy palhonchos, and the rest of the courses couldn't possibly be as bad.

Trumpets blared. My head, as well as every other present in the hall, zeroed in on the main table. Red carpets were strewn, rose petals were thrown, and a tiny unicorn in a trailing dress was led at the shoulder by King Bullion himself.

Princess Platinum was... she was...

My mouth went dry. I was staring at a teenage Rarity. Her mane was done differently, and she held herself differently than the mare who had once gone behind my back to layer my bedroom with mauve brocade, but it was unmistakable.

I had a terrible suspicion as to whom, exactly, Starswirl's apprentice resembled.

"Presenting, her royal highness, sixth of her line, heir to the unicorn throne, bearer of the rings forged in the heart of Dream Valley, and lady of the noble Majesterial line, Princess Platinum!"

I was jolted from my shocked little headspace, and so joined in on the rapid tapping of the tabletops. What else was there to do but applaud?

We ate, toasted repeatedly to the new princess, and I did my best all the while to distract myself by reciting spell script in my head. I'd figured out quite a number of them, by that point in my life.

It wasn't until the dessert course was served that anything went especially wrong. King Bullion excused himself early, sweating heavily. He lingered just long enough to kiss Platinum on the cheek, and left with a whole guard contingent. I wondered if that was normal, for the king, or if he'd been called away on some military matter. Unicorns were notoriously paranoid, after all.

But maybe with good reason.

"The king!"

A soldier, helmet hanging by its strap, barreled into the room at top speed, skidding straight into the main table. Diners were shunted to either side. He brought both forehooves down on the setting with a sharp crack, and shouted.

I watched Rar... Platinum's face as the panicking stallion screamed to the room that the king had fallen dead upon the stairway. The news was screeched at top volume not a foot from her ear, and at first the words hardly seemed to impact her. She didn't seem to know how to parse it.

She stumbled, like a puppet, as Starswirl took her by the withers and ushered her out of the room.

I saw the look on Letra Belle's face, and fled through the stampeding crowd.

"Damn all architects, damn everything!"

The guards were in as much a panic as the nobles. I backed into an alcove and watched three nearly come to blows as they tried to pass on contradictory orders to each other. The names of several outsiders, ambassadors and persons of interest were mentioned along with, 'warrants for arrest'. My name came up more than once.

And the keep was just too fucking maze-like for me to find the exit! Like hell would I take to the windows above a crowd of trigger-happy unicorns.

I'd already covered my cloak in illusion, changing the apparent style and cut until I was literally swathed in green.

"Psst!"

I readied a fire spell, holding the script-vapor tight against my plumage. I was in an alcove, and the noise had come from behind me.

"Psst, Miss Witch! Ma'am, lady? Please come this way!"

Twilight Sparkle stood behind me, robed like an ascetic monk and looking terrified.

I swallowed back bile. "You... would be Clover."

She looked shocked that I actually knew her name, but nodded eagerly. "Yes! My master sent me to find you, only I don't know all the hidden passages yet, and I can't imagine whatever strange magic you might have that would be contradictory to any expected-"

"Yes, thank you," I said, cutting off the same level of babble I used to spew like a fire hydrant as a teenager. Fitting, I guessed, since Clover looked to be about thirteen.

I tried not to think about how adorable Twilight Sparkle's baby pictures must have been.

"Master Starswirl sent me to find you! Please come this way, Lady Tham'ra!"

For lack of a better option, and for lack of any desire to say no to that face, I nodded. She disappeared behind a tapestry, and I remembered how it had been almost six decades since I last read 'Harry Potter'.

The passage wound sharply, and at times I had to get creative just to keep the young mare in my sights, but eventually we stopped in a tall, dank chamber that looked uncomfortably like an oubliette. The only light came off of Clover's horn, so I brought up some illusory flames.

The purple mare stared, wide-eyed. "How are you managing... no." She rapped on her own skull. "Focus! Okay. My master is aware that you are in dire straits, and asked I show you one of the hidden passages out of the keep."

I smiled. My new nerdbuddy was already paying out in spades.

"But!" said the little unicorn. "Should he find you had anything to do with this he shall..." and here Clover grew uncomfortable. "He shall hunt you like an errant dragon's pigmeal, and slaughter you accordingly." She swallowed, and shrunk in on herself.

"Your teacher is awesome," I told her, which shocked her right out of her fear. "Tell him he has my thanks, and that I taste nothing like pig. He may find me when he will, and I'll be happy to speak magic to his heart's content. Stay safe, little Clover."

"Oh! Um, I'll let him know!" Clover seemed pleased at a job well done, and aimed her horn off to the left. "That shall take you to the base of Granite-hoof Pass. Stars shine on you, my lady!"

"And on you," I said, casting a lazy salute.

Ducking into the passage, I found myself quietly saying, "My, young people these days are so polite oh god I just said that I really just argh!"

I set off down the hall, and wondered if this passage, like another from so long ago, was similarly meant to funnel prostitutes in under the eye of the public. Then I wondered if I could make Clover's head explode by asking her that very question.

"Tinder!"

The skittish mare jumped, getting about two feet of air.

"Yes, lady Tham'ra?" she said, spinning in place and saluting. I landed on the cart and began kicking the shutters closed.

"We're leaving immediately," I told her. "Get us ready and... take off that wig, please. It is incredibly distracting."

"At once!" she said, shuffling out of her costume. I'd have felt bad, but there was a complete absence of any audience whatsoever to her one-mare show.

"Where to, my lady?" she asked, pulling on the harness and pulling us toward the road.

"West. Southwest," I corrected myself. "Events are coming to a head, and there's only one place for us to go."

"Oh. And that is?"

"The same place as everybody else is going," I said, pulling out the very same notes I'd shown Starswirl earlier that evening. On it, a positively ancient worm had described the migratory routes that the strongest of their flyers would take every ten years, beyond the western sea. It described a particularly wild land, fertile and full of new peoples found nowhere in the entire Paradise Estate.

"After we reach..." I rifled through a few pages, "the coast, and Amaranth Port, I'll be releasing you from my services, Tiny."

The entire cart jolted, and the mare looked back in shock. "May, ah, may I ask why? Tham'ra, have I done something wrong?" she asked.

"Not at all," I said, smiling more for her sake than for mine. "It seems I'll have to stay in one place for as many as a couple years. It's... important that you go back home. Your brothers are likely worried for you."

"Those lunkheads? Well, I mean, maybe. I guess," Tiny admitted. She was terrible at hiding the affection she held for her siblings- three brothers was a rarity in even large pony herds. "Will you be okay, though?"

"Fine. Probably even great," I said. "In fact, I think I'll be letting you go with a bonus. Do the Red Hill Brigands still operate on the Narcissan road? We haven't visited them in a while."

We traveled long into the night, and it took us some time to notice that the unicorns had delayed dawn by an entire hour, in mourning for their king.

The Amaranth Port was beautiful. Not picturesque, since mud slides and heavy waves hit it from either side regularly, but it had its own strange charm.

Most importantly, any large group of travelers would have to pass through if they were to travel anywhere up the western coast, with the mountains cutting off the mainland any further north. So if, hypothetically speaking, several tribes of ponies had to abandon the center of the subcontinent, they would have to travel down around the mountains and back up through my little crow's nest in order to do so.

I gave Tiny a hug, ushered her off, and began my search for somewhere to put a bed. On the trip there, I'd somehow begun picturing, nay, fantasizing about a real bed. My little cart cot had done me proud, but...

"Pegasus down. No, spun wool?"

And thus you had a witch, wandering down the main road of Amaranth, talking to herself out loud. I was pretty certain that at that point I'd long since just settled for 'raving eccentric'.

I marched into town hall, demanded loudly that somebody tell me where I could find a house, and was pointed toward a property broker by some nervous clerk. I thanked her, pretended to lay a curse upon all her enemies, and marched right back out.

"Hello?" I called, entering a dim, lantern-lit hall a few minutes later. "Hello, I need a house, please. I will take one house, to go. Preferably with a bed that... that I haven't quite decided on. Forget the bed for now, let's talk houses."

"Do you mind?"

I blinked, hard, and turned toward the desk placed furthest in the corner. A unicorn, ridiculously tall for his tribe and wearing a roughly-spun jacket was glaring at me. The place was otherwise empty.

"Should I? Mind, I mean. Can you get me a house?" I asked him.

He stared, looking out-of-sorts enough to completely forget his irritation. That passed quickly enough. "No, seriously. It's eighth day- why would you expect any sort of office, anywhere, to be open? Let alone expect to be able to buy a house?!"

"I don't often keep track of the days," I admitted. "That's my assistant's job and she... well, she's gone home. Permanently. Um. Can you give me house with a calendar, while we're at it?"

The stallion sighed. "I just explained this- no houses today. No anything today. Unless it's in the market square, and I doubt the farmers have houses at hoof, then you're out of luck. Find lodging and try again tomorrow, when ponies are actually working."

"You're working," I noted, trotting closer. I had to duck a pile of loose parchment, which had avalanched off of one of the empty desks at some point in the past.

"For lack of..." he cut himself off. "Yes, I suppose, I'm working." He looked at his own desk with an expression of absolute misery.

"You look down," I told him. "Would you like some candy? Ponies keep telling me I'm old, so I keep thinking I have to be filling some sort of stereotype, here."

He stared. "What? No. What?" He shook his head, sending his loose, heavy mane dangerously close to an open bottle of ink. Not, I think, that he'd notice. His mane was a deep, navy blue, and his coat was almost as dark. His jacket was large and loose enough to cover his flank, which I imagined held a cutie mark -sorry, 'talent mark' for stallions- depicting a rageaholic office temp.

"House?" I tried, once more.

"No," he said.

"Fine," I bit out. "But I'll have you know I'm an ancient and powerful witch. Demons fear to face me."

"You must have awful bedmane," he snapped back. "Come back tomorrow."

I slept in the cart, just outside the city limits. Some hours after moonrise, I clambered to the top of the vehicle and stretched my wings, calming myself by picking out microcurrents in the air. Far above me, in the hills that backed Amaranth, dark shapes whirled in tight spirals, dancing and chasing each other. They didn't seem to be dragons, so I tried not to let myself be bothered. Night flyers were rare, but there was always some pegasus, somewhere, willing to take the late watch.

"There once was a..." I trailed off, then tried again. "In the town of Amaranth, where the ocean tide slowly chewed at the hills of... no. Just no."

I couldn't remember the story I'd been working on, before jumping into magic pony land. I think it had had vampires, maybe. Or giant leeches. Something that stole blood, anyways. I must have recently gotten a blood test done when I'd come up with that one.

But I still couldn't recall. I wondered if I could still draw a human face from memory. It wouldn't have to be a good one- head width was five eye-widths, hair line was generally at one third of...

I gave it up as a bad job. It was late, and I was tired, and with any luck this town would have a more extensive library than 'what the mayor's got on her shelf'.

I waved a good night up at the wheeling shapes above, shut the cart door behind me, and slept.

For the second time in two days, I barged into the property broker's building. This time, it was actually busy with ponies at work. The place was like a realtor's office from back on Earth, only if somebody had fed it through Robin Hood's wood chipper, first.

"I would like one house, please," I announced, revving up my previous spiel. A greasy-looking mare slunk over to me with a grin too wide to indicate a healthy, sane mind.

"Yes, how can I help you?" she asked.

"I want a house. Square-ish, with a calendar in it if at all possible. Beds are negotiable. Where's that grumpy fellow I was talking to before?" I asked.

"Grumpy fellow?" The mare looked confused. "Were you speaking to one of my agents, perhaps?"

"Sounds about right," I said, rearing up to spot the grumpy stallion at his desk. "Perfect! That's the one- he owes me a house."

"You want him?" the mare asked, looking upset.

"I doubt he comes with the house," I remarked. I tromped up in front of his desk and rapped my hoof on the edge. "Hey there. Can I have my house, now?"

He glanced up at me, sighed, and said, "Oh. You're back. How... nice." He was looking, just a bit frantically, toward the mare at the front of the office.

I tapped his desk again until he paid attention. "Yes. One house please. Show me some properties, or whatever it is you do. You're a broker. Broke them to me."

"Well, you'll have to provide proof of assets," he said, shuffling a small pile of papers uncomfortably. "That is to say, so I can match you to something within your means. Maybe you could describe your ideal housing situation..."

I ducked my head under my cloak, rummaged through one of the large pockets I'd had sewn into it for me, and came back up with a diamond in my teeth.

"Here," I said. "I can pay in dawnstones. It's real- hold it up to the sun and it hums." He stared, so I tried, "Is that worth a house? I have more."

"We... may have to see a jeweler first."

"Let's go!" I declared, dragging the stallion along. The office had gone dead silent when I pulled out the gem, so I took advantage of the shock to clear out of there.

We had gotten half a block around the corner before the stallion understood what was happening, and muscled us both to a stop.

"What are you- what is wrong with you?" He jerked away, jacket fluttering like he was standing in a high wind.

"I want a house, and you can show me houses," I told him. Really, we'd already covered this ground before.

"I'm just a clerk! They wouldn't put me out to do this sort of work even if I wasn't!" He shouted, then abruptly clamped his jaw shut and glanced around nervously. "Look, let's just go back, shall we? Land Share can get you set up and deal with..." he waved his hooves at me, as if he could possibly encompass all of my many, many virtues in one package. "Alright?"

"Nope!" I said. "Though I'm curious- why not you?" I leaned in more closely. "Is it that you were the only male in there? Is it your... wings?"

"Yes!" he hissed, before he froze and realized just what he'd gone and confirmed.

I'd met all sorts in my travels. I went to out-of-the-way places, and so met a lot of out-of-place people. Hermits, freaks, the metaphorical and, sometimes even literal, cursed. Decent people, hurting and distant, and only set apart because, in a land of paranoid, close-knit herds, differences were shunned in short order. One or two of the less closed-off ones had been assistants of mine, in time.

Even in magic pony land, not one of them... us, walked without flaws.

The pegacorn. The half-breed. My first time coming face to face with a bitter mare who had settled atop the Ramshorn Hills had nearly given me a heart attack, me thinking she was an actual alicorn. She had mistaken awe for disgust, and I had left her to herself out of shame. How could I explain? How could I tell her, 'I too have spent two lifetimes in bodies that I hadn't asked for, and I understand'?

I returned to that spot years later, and she had long since vanished. I had left feeling shame, and still felt it, at how I hadn't been quick enough to just... reach out. I might have failed had I tried, yeah, but I never took the chance to succeed, either.

"That's fine with me," I said, smile pasted to my face like a kindergartner who had been drinking Elmer's glue from the tap. "Can you show me a house anyway? This might be your break- not everybody can help a witch buy her first house, ever."

Really, it was stretching things to claim that the cart, which I'd more conquered than bought, counted.

"You-!" The stallion's covered feathers bristled. He was a tall one. He loomed very well, but then I'd been loomed over by the best. Spoilers- flutterponies loom best of all.

"So you're crazy and a witch," he growled. "Great. Going to tell my fortune are you? Here's a hint- it probably involves the loss of my job."

"I don't do fortunes," I admitted. "Not normally, and I'm cheating most the time when I do, anyway. But, yes. Witch." The Illusive Illusion was one of the most adaptable skills I had. It could mimic any of my other spells, and minus the final effect, was a low-cost way of winning a lot of situations where I wasn't facing another illusionist. Those who had seen me cast the real things once, forever after reacted to the illusions as if they were dodging real streaks of fire.

In this instance, it was flowers and bunny rabbits. A sickeningly cute garden seemed to crawl right out of the dirty, unevenly paved road. A bunny nuzzled my fetlock. Another tried to to the same to the shell-shocked pegacorn, but he danced out of the way before he could feel that there was, in fact, nothing there to feel.

"Call me Tham'ra. You might have heard of me."

Spoilers

Chapter Seven

I shuffled out of my bed, around the curtains that served as the interior 'walls' of my studio, and blinked stupidly in the glare of computer monitors.

"Pinkie? Twilight? ...Crazy Dan? Why the fuck are you in my home? It's past my bedtime." I glared toward the window and confirmed that, yes, the sky was the gray of dawn.

"Oh! Um, hello, Tamara!" squeaked Twilight. "We're just... sort of doing things. Important things. Why don't you go back to bed?"

"No. I've seen this movie. Puppets drink your blood, or something." I wasn't very lucid just then. Instead of heading back, I rolled onto the couch with my comforter wrapped around me like an impractical toga.

"I hate that movie," said Pinkie, nodding along.

"We're... installing some stuff on your guest session," said Crazy Dan. At my glare, he hastily added, "I'm not touching your computer account! Swear to baby Jesus. Just- this is the only computer the girls have been using to browse the net, and Twilight doesn't want them to break their brains."

It clicked, and I groaned. "Fanfiction?"

"Yes, that," said Twilight.

I looked to Pinkie, who shrugged. "I've already read it all."

"Pinkie, there are too many to read in just three weeks," I mumbled. She stared back at me until I shivered and pat her on the head. "Just stay away from the porn channels, okay?"

"Aw..."

"Just don't delete my harem fics," I told Crazy Dan. "I've got the entire cast of 'Les Mis' as queer, robot vampires. It's post-ironic-meta fiction. A period piece, you could say."

"Lady, I don't know whether anything that comes out of your mouth is true, anymore," said Crazy Dan. "And I'm afraid to ask."

"Then you really don't want to read my Deadpool, Lord of the Rings crossover."

"Is it weird that I've read better Daring Do fanfiction in a world that doesn't publish Daring Do than I've found in Dash's house?" asked Twilight. "Also, Spike may never, ever read this. Any of it. Why does everypony ship me with Big Macintosh?!"

"'Cause he's studly!" said Pinkie, trying to be helpful.

"He doesn't read anything but murder mysteries," grumbled Twilight. "A girl has to have standards. And the number of ponies who think I have some sort of teacher complex..."

"Don't you mean 'people' who think you have some sort of..." I trailed off at her expression.

"Those too," said Twilight. "It was worse when Luna sent me a letter, saying I had 'her blessing', just in case. Tamara? I take everything back- let me stay here. I can live on your couch forever, and nopony can ask me if alicorns like it rough, okay?"

"This is the most awkward wake-up call I've had all week," I replied.

"Why in the names of all the stars in heaven did you have to sit yourself in this misbegotten place!?" Starswirl, wearing his now eponymous cloak of bells, stamped on the roof of my home. Given the way Amaranth listed far up the foothills to the east, the roof served as a back door to the next street back and up.

"Many reasons," I said, sipping happily at my tea. "Mostly to stay ahead of the crowds. I'm a very trend-conscious mare, you know."

"What crowds, Tham'ra?" asked Starswirl. He'd gone straight from apoplectic to tired of my shit- a record for him. This was his third visit so far this year, and I felt a little sad that he had gotten used to my shenanigans. I'd have to step up my game.

"We'll get to that," I said. "Tell me, how are the unicorns doing with that whole 'management of the celestial bodies' thing?"

Starswirl settled back down into his chair and nursed his own mug of black tea. "Fine. The schedule has never been so precise as it is now- my old timekeeping spell has eased things. The princess has, as they say, stepped into her role quite naturally."

"Right," I said. "Good to know. Tell me, why did the earth pony tribe only manage their Winter's End Festival on the first day of summer, this year?"

"Far be it for me to claim to know Puddinghead's mind," said the stallion. "And you know the patterns drawn by the sun and moon are circuitous things at best, half understood even on good years-"

"Starswirl." It was short, clipped, and shut him up immediately. "Don't talk to me like that. I am old and wily and half-mad, and you can not tell me that this is all part of the 'natural course of things'. There is something wrong in the Paradise Estate. The name was a joke in the days of Dream Valley, and it's a cruel joke, now. When will the unicorns send their expedition? I assume Platinum intends to lead."

Unicorns are very specific in the technique and posture required to bash their heads into table surfaces- it's a natural consequence of having a horn.

"Confound it, mare, how do you know?! How do you always, always know?"

"I am a wise and strange witch," I told him. "Hold on. Whistle! Get up here! Stop doing your job and say hello to the mage!"

The door at the top of the staircase burst open. Winter Whistle stomped out, mug in hoof.

"Tham'ra, you hired me to actually get work done. Not to drink tea with crackpot wizards!"

It warmed my heart to hear him refer to a classically-trained battle mage as a crackpot, to his face. Starswirl didn't care, the codger, but it showed a certain freedom in Winter's attitude that had grown over the last year.

Also, he'd seen what I did to the last pony to dare call my assistant a half-breed.

"Your job description is whatever I decide it is. Sit, or I'll send you to buy a calendar. It would make a better assistant, and with half the talk-back."

"You couldn't figure one out," snarked back Winter, taking his seat. "Hello, again, Starswirl."

"Winter Whistle. I have never so admired another stallion's patience as I do yours," the unicorn said. "How is your levitation coming along, my boy?"

Whistle ducked his head down- only his dark coat hid the flush on his face. "Quite well. I mean, compared to how I was." He furrowed his brow and, slowly, and with no few errant sparks, levitated his own mug. His horn was visibly stunted, compared to most, and was barely fluted at all. Still, there were a few things he could accomplish with some focus. More so, ever since Starswirl had started dropping hints.

I clapped, and Winter let his mug clunk gracelessly back onto the table.

"Well done. Remember, circles within squares, and breathe," said the unicorn, referring to a common magician's thought exercise.

"And you're here just in time," I told the pegacorn. "We're about to discuss the unicorns' mass migration away from pony lands."

Let it never be said, in the great history texts of the future, that Starswirl couldn't perform a magnificent, beard-soaking spit-take. Well, I'd never liked that table cloth anyways.

"Is there nothing you hold in confidence?" he asked me, glaring.

"A great deal more than you can imagine," I told him. "But there's no reason to hide anything. Besides, I trust Winter Whistle more than just about anybody else."

"I'm not sure how I feel about that," said Winter, not bothering to specify whether he meant the migration or my trust.

"Besides, you have only fragments of lore to go on, as per the destination," I said. "A few vague mentions about dragon migrations."

"Which you provided for me, to whatever purpose which still escapes me," said Starswirl. "You've shown no great love for unicorns, after all."

I went on as if I hadn't heard him. "And you can't honestly believe that the movement of a princess and her cohorts will go unnoticed," I added. "How is Clover, by the way?"

"Fine," said Starswirl, rolling his eyes and apparently giving up on arguing with me. "And she's fine. She and the princess are... closer than I expected they would become, but there's little enough harm to it. Better than the few months she couldn't stop talking about you."

I mimed fanning my face. "That's flattery, Starswirl. Right there. Keep doing that. Tell me how all the mares love me, again?"

The poor guy groaned. Eventually though, he had to ask: "What else do you know about what's to come, Tham'ra? You know I hesitate to ask how you've come to know... a great deal of what you know. Nor will I diminish the efforts you've put into gathering lore. But, have you any ideas you might care to pass along?" He frowned. "Since you keep second-guessing mine, that is."

"Sorry," I said. "Truly, I am. What little I've gathered over the years is as vague as it is useless. I have a direction, sometimes, but I stumble blindly because no real course has been set. You," I said, "and yours are the ones putting the world into motion. I'm just following and picking up on spare pieces."

"You are a strange one, witch."

"You're telling me," muttered Winter.

"A pox on both of you," I declared.

"Tham'ra? Tham'ra. I literally cannot see. You cost me a job, forced me to follow you in your mad experiments, and now you have taken my sight. Congratulations, I am broken."

"Drama queen," I muttered, and removed the topmost books that had somehow settled over the last available gap in the... impromptu book fort?

"There," I said, peering into the gap. "I have restored your sight. It's a feather-plucking miracle."

"Are we done, yet?" he asked, slowly digging his way out of the stacks. "You wanted these unpacked. Surely we can wait until later to begin sorting them?"

"Yeah, I guess," I said, peering at volumes I'd collected... quite a long time ago. I could do with rereading a few of them. "Come on. Let's go to the waterfront. It should be quiet, by now."

"Don't want staring crowds," muttered Winter.

I cuffed him harmlessly over the head with my wing. "I know you don't like crowds, dummy! Neither do I! I just know how to act crazy enough to get some personal space."

"Act?" he asked, a small smile finally appearing on his muzzle.

"Maybe. Who knows. I'm a mad old woman, Winter. Let me have my quirks," I said, gathering up our scarves. Autumn hadn't hit so much as it had capitulated to winter like an army of naked molerats faced with a dragon. The leaves were freezing right onto the branches, shattering off instead of just falling, first.

"You're not old," muttered Winter.

"I'm probably eighty-two!" I said. "And I count years differently- it's probably been even longer. It feels longer."

"It doesn't matter," he insisted. "Gods help us if you ever do grow to be the cackling madmare everypony thinks you are, but you're not. You're just... different. You understand things, and make the whole world fit in that strange head of yours. You make every pony fit, too."

We passed under the bridges that formed over the lane wherever the second floors of this sloping settlement grew close enough to one another that one address and its opposite became indistinguishable. I considered Winter.

He had lost his job, but it was even odds whether it had been my fault, really. His old boss had been looking for excuses to get rid of him, and he'd burned favors to get the position in the first place.

The stallion had been pushed out of his home mere days after his father had died. Winter Wing had sired four children, and shielded the colt as well as he could, given his situation. I'd have liked to have met the old man, I thought.

Half-breeds, as Whistle had sardonically called himself, were rare. Tribes didn't intermix often, and usually their foals were healthier for it.

"But I'm half of one, and the other, and still don't come to even half altogether," he'd said to me, once. But he was clever, and beneath the anger there was a sharp wit that cut even me, sometimes.

The waterfront was, indeed, quiet. I found myself casting half-furtive glances at the distracted stallion, and even my famous motor mouth failed me. He intrigued me. Months ago when he first started to open up, it had been all of his little contradictions, and the way his hurts masked his hidden strengths. The way he babbled about the sky, as his moon and stars cutie mark declared to all the world to see, when he was brave enough to go without his cumbersome jacket.

Eventually, I had shocked myself when I finally realized that I was looking at him longer, taking in more of him than I expected to. I hadn't looked at a stallion that way... ever, honestly. He was absurdly tall, all long limbs and slim barrel, and messy mane that I just wanted to reach out and mess up a little further.

There would be an Equestria, soon. I'd solved the mysteries, more or less, that had plagued me since I first stepped off of Earth and into strange, strange lands. I still didn't feel any great urge to settle, so to speak, and even Amaranth was just a stopping point, but I wondered if I might not welcome company. More solid company, that was- assistants came and went, and I didn't much care to see Winter go.

"Follow me," I said, stepping off the pier and onto the rocky shore to the north of it. This was the route I'd have to follow soon. Me, and every other pony that hoped to live beyond the great coming frost. For now, it was just a private place to have a conversation that I was suddenly very nervous about. My stomach was fluttering- it hadn't done that since I'd faced murderers and pirates and finally stopped flinching at the blood.

"You look a bit... off," said Winter, eyes full of concern like they were when we both pretended to be normal ponies. "Are you sure you don't want to go back? Sleep might do you... well, I know you don't seem to need sleep, as we mortals know it, but you could read, or something."

"I'd like to tell you a few things," I said. "More than I've told anybody else. There's a lot, so we'll be walking to make sure you don't doze off halfway through," I said, the words coming clipped and fast. "Then I'll ask you a question. And I swear by all the virtues I never claimed to have that I'll abide by your answer. Would you listen, Winter?"

"Yeah. Alright. If you feel you need to-"

"Want, not need," I corrected him. "I want to more than anything, but I could go without. I just... haven't wanted something in a long while. Not like this."

"Then go ahead. I'm all ears," he said, flicking said appendages wryly.

"Right. Fine." We stepped onto a more solid, smooth part of the shore, which took away my excuse to lower my gaze and watch my steps, but I kept it up anyway.

"I was born almost a century ago, now. I was born on another world. Not some far country, not in the distant past, as Starswirl's convinced, but another world. I wasn't even a pony- picture a tall ape, mostly hairless. Like an adolescent dragon, even. I met some curious ponies mostly by accident- they'd gone wandering and come across me one day in the park, as they explored my home ity.

"After that, I found myself with just enough magic, which didn't otherwise exist on that world, and just enough ignorance to put it to use rather recklessly. It... made me feel special. When my friends couldn't come visit me, I was set on going to them. But the land here is magical, and it doesn't like something like what I was. I put together a spell that cost me everything, hoping it would let me adapt. It did," I fluttered my wings, "in the most dramatic way possible.

"Even then, even alone and changed, there were some positives to it. I had real magic, then, for instance. And..." I licked my lips. "I wasn't the happiest example of my race, Winter. I was... born wrong. Female with all the male attributes." I shuddered. "All of them."

"I couldn't even... my mistake cost me my first world, my first and second group of friends, and I'd traded a physical dysphoria for a mental one. That's me. As I am, as I was, and as I figure I'll be for at least tomorrow. Knowing all that now, as nobody else has, I ask you:"

I tugged off my cloak, naked as I so rarely let myself be. "Would you have me, Winter? All of me? I'm a mad witch, put together all wrong again and again, but I... I want you. Would you want me?"

We had stopped walking, standing on the cold shore with only the crashing green foam to break the silence. I was flushed and almost sick with tension, and looked Winter in the eye through my bangs as if they would somehow shield me from disappointment.

Seconds passed, maybe years, even. I must have blinked, because suddenly Winter was so much closer, and I felt my neck stretch back as he licked my jaw. Heat ran through me, but even that wasn't enough, because if all he could do was-

He kissed me.

It was... innocent, and desperate. Like mine had once been, in those days where I felt most unwanted. I'd learned an ease to simple, casual affection between bodies, but even my first days, my short days with Oak Branch had been a thing of instinct when we couldn't trade words so much as glances and-

I kissed back.

I couldn't feel even the dim chill, anymore, that little reminder that though the cold couldn't pierce my coat and feathers, it was still in fact there. But I felt like summer all over.

I broke the kiss long enough to dart forward and seize the base of his wing in my teeth, making his body shudder. He leaned over, easily with his long, slim neck, and reciprocated. I whined- he was taking it slower, and I could hardly stand that. I reached up and brought a hoof down his chest, and had one of those rare moments where I wished I still had fingers to play across his flesh.

His wings flared. Not quite a pegasus, maybe, but I was pleased to see he had the same reactions. Those would be my guides.

I licked at the joint. Winter gave the kind of throaty moan I'd never heard come from a stallion's throat.

"Tham'ra, Tham'ra, please. Let's... I want to..."

I swallowed. Slow, teasing was the bulk of my experience. It was my preference, even, usually. But right then my nerves had fed that sense of want so much, I'd ended up driving myself into a frantic mess of desire. My back legs ached, I could feel them trembling and I was already pushing them into the sand, trying to lever myself closer under Winter's neck.

"Yeah. I'm... ready." Years, I mused, and I still managed to get myself into new, overwhelming sensations. This was new. I just barely managed to check once to see that we were alone -because I knew we wouldn't make it back up through Amaranth and to the close confines of the house- and frantically put up a weak illusion in a wide dome around us.

I backed away, offered a grin that was equal parts nerve, laughter, and desire, and turned around. I planted myself, not too low, because he was that much taller than me to begin with, but lowered my front until the sand tickled my throat. I glanced back at him, heavy-lidded, and raised my tail. It had hurt to keep it down over myself by then, anyway.

Winter looked at me like I was the only beautiful thing in a world of cold ashes. His chest heaved, and at this angle, I saw he'd pushed out of his sheath entirely. Ponies so often looked positively tidy. A tuft of suggestive fur, a slight bit of bulk that revealed not a thing. Winter... I stared. It wasn't anything I'd never seen on a stallion, though never so close and personal. His length stood out and throbbed, roughly human-sized but shaped just differently enough, and on a slightly smaller frame, that it commanded more attention than I would have expected.

I forced myself to relax, between my thighs. I wanted to enjoy this.

"Slow, Winter. Slow at first, but please." I breathed. "Take me." And because I wanted him to know, and feel like I did: "I want you."

He nodded, and came closer. My eyes closed as he carefully, slowly slid his face and chest over my back. I pressed further back against him, tightening the curve in my spine.

"Tham'ra?"

"Please. Slow, but... don't not... I..."

I felt him press against my folds. The flared tip of his length stretched me from the start, roughly -deliciously- pushing me apart. I flexed, unconsciously, and he gasped.

Another pressure came up against my sex. The flared ring at the halfway point -and god, but he was only halfway in!- pushed against me. I groaned, and decided I wanted to push back.

His wings, still rigid, collapsed around my sides, pressing me in at the same time as he was pressing me from the inside out. I panted, memorizing him as he made a pressure map of every nerve, and only then did he pull back.

And then he pressed forward, again.

We moved, awkwardly at first, until we had the measure of each others' timing. I could feel his movements growing more confident, and my own grew more demanding, and he brought his tongue to the thin, soft coat between my wings. There weren't words to compare that sweet pressure to anything human, and I gave up trying to label it a long time ago. I just knew that it made me writhe.

His body slapped against me, the sound low and thick so that it blended in with the distant, crashing waves. Sweat beaded under my legs, and the droplets shook free as he thrust again, and my breath came out so hot with every gasp that it ought to have melted the sand into a molten puddle under my chin.

Winter moved more desperately then, pressing against my walls in a new, foreign angle, where I had nerves stretching all the way to my rasping, moaning throat. I grew more frantic in turn, wings and forelegs thrashing in sharp jerks against the beach as I tightened myself against every attempt he made to draw back, to draw out of me. I didn't want him out of me. I wanted him to... to...

"Tham'ra, gods, Tham'ra, I-"

"Finish me," I rasped. "Don't stop until you can't move, until you, ah! Have nothing left in you..."

Seconds later, his body shuddered, shaking me from the inside out as he bit my mane and pulled. His length pulsed, throbbed, filling me further and I flexed the muscles in my channel even harder, trying to draw him in as much as I possibly could.

Three, four thrusts came before his motions slowed, and he fell against me completely. In turn, I slumped and let my back legs loosen until we were both curled up in a warm, heavy pile.

I felt him try to move, so said, "No, wait. Stay in me... just a while. Until you can't." He slumped back, and slung his neck over mine. I cooed -an embarrassing thing, that winged ponies could make when they weren't vehemently denying they could- and didn't find myself caring, much.

"I've never felt like that," he told me. "Is it always like that?"

I grinned, bright and damp, and said, "No. It gets so much better." I was warm and achy, and hadn't come, but it left me with a low burn in my belly that I found quite pleasant. First thing on my list was to introduce him to oral, then to oh-so-many things.

He softened, eventually, and drew out with a kind of torturous slowness that made me sigh. I felt emptier and, at the end of it, fuller. I'd enjoyed it all so much more than I'd expected, and more than I would have believed before meeting him.

I tried, briefly, to interpose other stallions in his place, and it just didn't work. Still queer -for a human, at least- but I had happily made Winter my little exception.

'I think,' I mused, 'that I'll keep him.'

Months passed. The town hall was built around an auditorium. Tertiary education was all but unheard of among pony kind, and apprenticeship was usually the best method available for education. Still, each town of a certain minimum size tended to have some official who arranged lectures when there was an available space.

I strode in, up onto the rickety stage, and levitated a small, pointed cane. I rapped it on the great slate board that leaned against the wall behind me.

"Mares and gentlestallions!" I said, pushing myself a bit to be heard throughout the space- I'd probably be croaking like a frog for the next two days, but I was too excited to let that dissuade me.

“This is a brief talk concerning the aethira, that race that once built a kingdom stretching from today's Forest Primerum, down to the southern coast of the subcontinent. If you've ever wondered where that extra volcano by the Balking Butte came from, well, it's because the aethira seemed pretty intent on going out with a bang. So they made a gods-be-damned volcano!”

I grinned, and my audience seemed suitably appalled. Dozens of ponies, among them path-charters, trail-blazers, and historians had apparently caught wind of my little speech. I'd been doing about one per month, and they were turning out to be popular!

And if they were appalled now, then they hadn't seen anything, yet.

“This lecture will involve discussion on how to recognize aetherian ruins, how to bypass their dangers, and a quick refresher course for those who don't know to avoid active volcanoes. Also, I'll detail my ongoing efforts to recreate the magics that can, apparently, summon volcanoes!”

Some mare near the back began to cry.

“If my lovely assistant, Winter Whistle, could set up my maps, I'll describe the blast zone.”

At the sight of Winter, whispers broke out. Most of them were by the few locals who'd come in, but I could see Winter trying to shrink in on himself, even as he mounted the stage.

Mean thoughts ran through my mind. With a loud cough, I brought out the cord necklace I kept tucked under my cloak and made it subtly glow. On it was a feather that shone a deep, dark blue, and it didn't take a genius to know just whose wing it had been offered to me by. I would have offered him one of my own, but a stallion carrying a mare's feather carried unfortunate implications. Reminders of 'the bad old days'.

“I would remind you now that this is a polite and friendly lecture,” I announced, and brought forth the illusion of a low, mad groaning noise coming from the walls themselves. An illusory trickle of dust, which might give the impression that I could bring the roof down around our ears at any moment, helped to further get everybody to shut up.

“As I was saying, if the lovely assistant, who has touched me in ways none of you shall ever be allowed to, can provide my maps...”

Two months. We had a summer, of sorts, that ought to have been a bright flare of a season. This solar cycle had, in years past, driven back the snows with a sharp, bright blow. Word was that the unicorns were going to try to hold the pattern for as long as they could- both other tribes had grown dangerously unimpressed with the last few years. The deep freeze was coming, and the windigos were quietly, subtly drawing closer.

Still, life went on. Particularly, it went on in the tiny living room that was less filled with furniture than it was filled with cushioned bookends. I might, I admitted, ought to have left some of them in the cart still parked in the nearby alley. Casting my usual security precautions over two locations every week, though, would have been more than I'd be willing to put up with.

It was midway through the week, and I was hunting pegacorn. I crept under a curtain, eased around a stack of transcribed, oral histories, and grinned out from under the legs of a tall bench.

"Whistle... Winter Whistle..."

He was, as before, hunched over a desk and doing some translation work. Over the months he had picked up on old earth pony, my first language when I arrived, and had been drawn into my little 'Rosetta Stone' project. Silly pegacorn- he wasn't running. He probably didn't even get that I was hunting him.

The poor, oblivious bastard.

"Tham'ra, why are you crawling under the furniture?" he asked, not bothering to look away. Damn it.

I gave up the effort and stood, shaking my mane back into something presentable as I cantered over. Impishly, I ducked my head under his wing, forcing it out over my neck.

"Tham'ra?" he looked puzzled, up until I thought he caught the look on my face. "What are-" His breath caught, and he swallowed. "You're... you smell... gods, Tham'ra, why are your seasons so weird?!"

I pouted. Winter had been around long enough to pick up on that little tidbit. I wandered around clear-headed when entire pony villages decided to go stupid, or tended to stare just a bit too long at the mares trying to go about their working days when they were being all productive and clear-headed. Now I was staring at Winter.

"Alien, maybe? Or maybe I spent too much time on the road for my body to adjust," I suggested. "Winter..."

"Ah... ah, um. Should I... get a room, somewhere? Give you a few days?"

"You can't have a few days," I grumbled. Yay, biology- turning seventy percent of the pony population into dumb teenagers twice a year. I was feeling very delightfully stupid. And warm. Stupid warm.

"Tham'ra, you're not thinking straight. Remember last fall, when you went and tried catching fish with your teeth? You scared all hells out of me, and I'd only been working for you three days, then!"

"I don't care that I'm not thinking straight," I told him. "I was thinking straight last week. Here." I ducked under the desk, giving his barrel a sharp nip as I went and sending him jumping back, and pulled out a very specific piece of parchment with my mouth. I pulled back out into the open, holding it out to him like an earth pony and waggling my brows as suggestively as possible.

Because he was being no fun, he took it with a hoof.

"Dear Winter Whistle," he read. "I can feel my... sexy times coming, and I want you to stay. If you want, we can do this, and if you don't want, you should run very fast because I'm going to want Thammy-time with my own hooves. No watching if... if you don't want to join in." He swallowed. "Tham'ra, this is in crayon. I've seen you draw, and it's beautiful, but these are stick figures doing... things! You've lost your mind."

"Winter," I said, forcing myself to be as serious as possible. "I want you to stay." He knew as well as I did what that meant, to go fooling around while I was in season.

Admittedly, if he didn't stay, it would be unbearable. I'd never had to stay away from a lover while in season, since being with other mares was basically free of... certain consequences. Being alone when I had somebody would leave me chewing on the furniture and trying to sit on ice cubes.

"With me?" he asked. It would be hard for him, I knew, wrapping his mind around the future like that. Pegacorns didn't tend to form families- they were, at best, fetishes for the ignorant.

"With you." I licked the corner of his mouth. "I can feel this one. It'll be short. Five days, maybe. But I want to make them count." To make sure he got the point, I reached further up and pulled the end of his ear into my mouth.

"Ah! Yes, yes I'd... I'd like that. Do you think we'll be okay?" he asked, eyelids fluttering. I gave him points for staying coherent- at that point, with me smelling as I probably did, and chewing on one of his more sensitive spots, he ought to have already lost his mind.

I spoke so that the heat of my breath would paint the inside of his ear, and told him, "We're going to be fucking magnificent. So fuck me, Winter."

There are rugs everywhere, and I'd just begun buying them for some reason, one a week for about six months straight a while back, but I reluctantly decide not to drag him to the floor. In all honesty, that would probably end up happening this week anyway, but our 'inaugural rutting' should, I felt, take place in our bed.

He hadn't slept in his own room since our first time together, and I hadn't wanted him to.

We stumbled up the stairs together, to the single, second-story loft room. I stopped him there, feeling silly and far too excited about the idea that struck me, then.

"Give me five minutes," I told him.

Winter boggled. "Tham'ra, I don't want to give five seconds. Why? Why in the name of all that is good and holy?"

I bit back a grin- I may have drawn my tail over his face a few times during our race upstairs. Though to think about it, it was less a race and more him following my backside with laserlike intensity...

"I have a little present for you," I told him. I cocked my head to the side and looked up at him with big, doe eyes. "You want your present, don't you?" I gnawed on my lip, slowly and very visibly.

The stallion nodded half hard enough to rattle his own teeth and turned -with difficulty, with his wings pressed out against the wall and banister- and looked away.

"And if you peek," I told him, "you won't get tomorrow's present." Honestly, both sets had been bought on a lark during one bored night out in the market, but I hadn't not been thinking about him, so I felt it counted. He went rigid and nodded toward the far wall.

I ducked behind the bed -pegasus down- and muscled aside a stack of spare blankets. The bundled cloth hidden underneath came free from its package and I went to it.

"Oh, Winter? You can turn-"

I hadn't finished the sentence before he had spun around, only to freeze. Certain things, I'd found, were just good for a girl's ego. Winter whimpering like a child in a sweet shop just then was one of them.

I came around the bed, slowly and deliberately, with green socks pulled up to the thigh on each leg. I'd managed to tie a large green ribbon into a bow around my tail, just to... highlight the whole image.

"Do you like your present?" I asked.

He went misty-eyed. "This is it, isn't it? You tried to describe how that 'Christmas' day felt. This is how it feels, isn't it?"

I snorted, which shouldn't have been sexy, but he kept right on staring. "Well, you didn't find me under a tree, but why not?" I decided not to hum the lyrics to 'Santa Baby', for fear that I'd laugh hard enough to chase away even my unusually high arousal.

"I'd tell you to get me ready," I said, almost stuttering a bit as I admitted, "but I've been... getting myself ready all day. Whenever you weren't looking? I was touching myself, Winter." I walked closer, angling around just far enough that he knew that I wanted to be the one to touch him, but not far enough to imply I wanted a chase, just then. I let the crown of my head draw along the underside of his wing, cat-like, before twisting my neck and ducking down toward his belly. He was already out, already hard. I leaned forward and dragged my tongue up toward his flared head- his member jumped at the contact.

"Ah! I thought, because the heat, we were going to..." his voice turned into a gurgle.

"We will," I called from under him, licking my lips. "Just making sure you were... up to it. To be fair, though, I probably will be using my mouth on you this week. I've never woken you up with my lips wrapped around your hngh, ah!" I gasped- he'd curled around my smaller form and pressed his face under my tail, putting a suckling kiss to where I'd been showing almost all day long.

Like I said, whenever he hadn't been looking...

"Bed," I growled. Ponies weren't built for growling, but I had reason to. I spun around and started pulling him by the shoulder.

"Like that time last week?" he suggested. "With you on your back, and me facing you?" Life as a pony- when throwing in the missionary position now and then was actually spicing things up.

"Yeah, just, help me over," I said. Short of catching me from falling out of a cloud mid-coitus, a real danger for pegasi, my wings didn't want to relax long enough to actually flip over.

Winter, so silly and kind out of the public eye, all but danced with me backwards until my rump hit the edge of the bed, then kept gently pushing until I'd toppled with a rush of air. I scooted back just far enough to give him room to climb up after me. Above me, silhouetted by the dusk light of the far window, he looked like ink and obsidian wrapped in sleek muscle and fur. His eyes were a bright, bright red that took in my body and glinted.

“Do you think I look extra fuckable, Winter?” I asked, bringing my forelegs down over my neck and chest, ruffling my coat to make it look messier than it was, and yet slightly less messy than it would be in short order.

“You really do,” he said, but pulled back.

I stared. He shouldn't have been pulling back- he should have been doing the exact opposite of that!

Then he ducked down and kissed my thigh, forcing a gasp from my lips. His mane fell around his eyes as he looked up and caught my gaze. “I think I ought to unwrap my present, but I'd really rather leave them on you.” He kissed further down, less than an inch from where I had already soaked through my own coat.

“Winter, I thought we were going to just,” and that was as far as I got, because he licked me, all the way up to the small pink hood where my nether lips met.

“We will,” he assured me, breath chilling the slick skin. “I'm just making sure you're ready,” he said, purposely mimicking my earlier words. “I want to-” kiss “-let you know all the-” lick “-ways I love you.” Suckle.

My eyes tried to roll up into my head as his lips pulled at my clit.

“For how you make me feel like a complete pony, and not like I'm half of anything,” he told me. “For how you trust me enough to whisper secrets into my ears, at night. For how you've learned every inch of my body... and taught me every inch of yours.”

Winter, the poet that nobody ever cared enough to hear. I whimpered. The poet who said silly little, beautiful lines to me when he thought I was asleep.

“For wanting me, when I was afraid to be wanted. My lovely, loved, and yes, fuckable mare,” he whispered, and kissed his way up my body. He paused long enough to run his tongue over my teats, but the remainder of the trip upward took much less time.

Really, it couldn't come quickly enough, for me.

I blessed him, in the back of my mind, for being tall enough to tuck his forelegs under my wings even as he lay chest-to-chest with me. His mouth tucked into the crook of my neck and he was still whispering as he carefully drew his lower body up into mine.

It had been a long time since I'd felt nervous about making love to him- since I'd had to psych myself up to be with a male. Instead, I just grinned at the familiar feel of his sex pressing inside of me, stretching me. I felt wet and heavy and full, and he always entered so slowly, at first.

I hissed as he bit my neck, just like I'd showed him to. He was a lot more picky about me doing the same to him, which I didn't mind much. I couldn't reach his wings from this angle. Instead I ducked my head over his and licked at the thin, soft down at the base of his horn.

A long while back, I'd broken out laughing as a unicorn mare confided in me how often the other tribes expected unicorns to want a kind of awkward 'head fellatio', when most of the horn didn't have sensation but for pain, when hit. The skin and nerves on the head's crown, however, just before their manes grew back from the horn, were almost as sensitive as wings, in the right mood.

And lucky me, I had a lover who could offer a direct comparison like none other could!

He grunted at the feeling of my tongue, and I had to let my head fall back into the mattress as he suddenly hit a harder, faster pace. My hips jolted back, and he pounded away. I was far too warm, and every fresh throb of contact sent static up through my belly. I could taste his sweat.

His eyes were closed, and I knew he was cutting off as many senses as he could out of instinct, just to focus just that much more on the feel of me.

I strained right back, trying to force him ever deeper inside me. I gasped, and there might have been words. Might have, because I was trying to speak English with a mouth never meant for it. Winter must have gotten my intent, though, because when I told him to 'fuck me harder' in a half-forgotten Minnesotan accent, he obliged.

When I began to squirm, half-controlled spurts and shakes, he bit down again, marring my cream fur with a flat ring that would bruise and I saw nothing but white stars. Long seconds passed, and I couldn't be certain but I thought I was clamping down on his length like a vice. He bore down on me and I felt him flex, inside, as he came hot and thickly. I kept on shaking, wrapping as tightly around him as I could for almost a minute afterward.

“Winter...”

“I know.”

“No, really. Winter?”

“Yes, Tham'ra?”

“Heat sex is the best sex.”

He groaned, which might have been an agreement, and might simply have been him giving up all hope. I was cool with it, either way.

"So..." I drew circles in his coat. "Again?"

Author's Note

A little bit hesitant to release this one, but that's mostly just because I have less confidence in writing explicit material than anything else.

Then again, after I've finished this one, I aim to write something akin to a rather well-known story: Xenophilia. I hope to bring the same love of world-building to that one as I think I have to this one.

Of course, I still have another eighty-thousand words of this story to release -already finished- and one or two chapters after that to finish things off.

I plan on punching you all in the feels. Your feels, they will ache.

The Migration

Chapter Eight

"I love this! Humans come up with the most interesting party ideas," said Pinkie. "Picture parties- this one's going on the list."

"Hush up and pass me the glitter," said Jill, bent over her own poster board. "The green kind. I need something to represent the evil in my soul."

"Is that what the duck is?" I asked.

"It's a swan," Jill corrected me, then stared down at her picture. "Wow. I'm, like, really bad at birds."

"I can help," said Fluttershy, smiling around a piece of charcoal and speaking fluently through it as only ponies could do. "First, you'll want to add some length to the neck."

"Rainbow, pull back the splash tarp," I called over.

The pegasus looked back and rolled her eyes. "It's fine! This is art. You know, modern art?" She slapped her wings against her own canvas, and grinned at the feathered lines. "So worth the extra hour of preening, later. You girls think I can sell this?"

"I believe in you," said Crazy Dan. He adjusted a protractor and continued his sketch recreation of the Death Star. "And I believe I need another beer. No salt, please," he added, keeping in mind our pony opposites.

Twilight absently levitated over more of the 'rye drink', though skipped both the alcohol and small bowls of salt. I admired that- even in the midst of our art party, she was still 'on the clock'. Between working on her -surprisingly good- watercolor of her old tree library, she managed to continually adjust a little crystal and brass dial that just barely poked out of her saddlebags.

"Thank you, Princess," said Crazy Dan, saluting her.

"Not a problem," said Twilight, sending the other two bottles toward Jill and Rainbow.

"I have chips!" said Linda happily, breezing out of the kitchen. "Chips and napkins- everybody gets a napkin."

I leaned over while most everybody was making room for plates. After a few seconds, a little laughing snort bubbled out of my throat. The alicorn at my side looked up from the cavas I'd been spying on.

"What?" asked Twilight, looking hurt. "I thought the details were rather accurate..."

"It is," I assured her. "It's just... sweet, is all. It caught me off guard. You crammed all ten of us into that room."

Twilight looked back at her work sheepishly. Four humans and six ponies, drawn more 'standing awkwardly' since I didn't think Twilight was very good at drawing people in casual poses, were in her library. Four humans that couldn't visit, visiting a location that no longer existed. It hurt me right in my sentimentality.

"It's just wishful thinking," she mumbled.

"It's sweet," I said again. "Have some chips, princess."

“You're certain?” asked Winter, trying not to jostle the mugs of tea he was carrying out onto our roof. I reclined on a pile of relocated rugs and shrugged.

“I've got a feeling,” I said. “I was right about the first party, wasn't I?” I asked.

“You've been bribing street urchins to report to you- no claiming credit on that one,” he said, hoofing over my mug and settling by my side. It was adorable- he didn't have half my natural cold resistance, and he was trying to put on the moves by wrapping his wing around me. Well, I certainly wasn't going to start discouraging him.

“But I knew to bribe them in the first place, now, didn't I?” I asked, peering through the primitive telescope. My little flying friends were up there, still, so the next party hadn't made an approach. Well, I called them friends, but I hadn't actually ever met them. Nor did I know who and what they were. Still, Amaranth's mythical 'sea hawks' were the subjects of plenty of rumors. I only knew that they disappeared immediately at the approach of pegasi.

“Whatever,” said Winter. “You still haven't explained what this has to do with what you and Starswirl were talking about.”

“Elementary, my dear Winter,” I said. “A party of earth ponies runs through here in the dead of night three weeks ago. All heavily clothed, but of course Chancellor Puddinghead and his protege Smart Cookie were with them.”

“Of course,” sighed Winter, kissing my cheek. “It's all so obvious, now, isn't it?”

“Stop teasing,” I muttered, not too bothered at all. “But yes, so long as you've got a few key facts. Like Starswirl admitted, Platinum and some of her court are aiming to travel out over the Turtora land bridge. So of course, neither other tribe wants to be left behind. Tensions are rising, resources are depleting, and not one wants to let the others gain an advantage.”

“You mean the winter drought,” said the stallion. “I've seen some of the more hard-pressed earth ponies in town pressed to eating fish, even.”

“Good for them!” I said. “Fish is good for you. All mobile vegetables, is what I've been saying.”

“Right,” said Winter, having heard the sentiment before. “Though you eat more of the stuff than most pegasi I've ever met.”

I would give him that, yeah.

“Point being,” I said, “is it's not some winter drought. The unicorns have been pulling the sun in on closer paths, the pegasi have been corraling clouds away from every major settlement to let in more light. It's getting colder, and the ground is literally dying. There's hardly a farmer left above the Prickle River, which they've been able to cross so easily because it's been frozen over for the last two seasons!”

“That... no. But the drought's hit everywhere in the Paradise Estate! You're telling me it's dying?” Winter asked. He, I knew, hadn't seen much of the Estate from this side of the mountains, but he knew as well as anybody else that it had been the pony homeland since the first exodus out of Dream Valley. It would be like me hearing that the Yellowstone Caldera had gone off back home.

“Yeah,” I said, because that was as much as I could say.

“Will the mountains stop it? Are we even okay, here?” he asked, a quiet desperation seeping into his voice. His leg curled around me, drifting lower until rested over the growing curve of my belly.

“For a while, maybe,” I said. “But... not in the long run. We'll have to follow the herds. It's a big thought, I get that, but a whole other land awaits us. We'll have fun. You, me, and she,” I told him, tracing the hoof that was tracing my side.

“He,” said Winter. “I'll put five bits on it.”

“Deal,” I said. “Wait, no, I was saying something. So, the unicorns are going soon, the earth ponies are already gone, and the pegasi will do the same. All three along this route, going ahead to scout better territories. I imagine they'll send word back once they have a foothold.”

“They what?!”

I did my best not to jump -nobody is supposed to ever be able to surprise a witch, after all- but Winter flipped out enough to cover my little twitch. It helped, of course, that I vaguely recognized the voice.

“Hello, Princess Platinum,” I said, turning and waving. A group of twelve cloaked unicorns stood on the street above and behind my home. I'd call it coincidence, but I couldn't imagine any group containing Starswirl the Bearded would have passed by without at least saying 'hello'- he and I were still nerdbuddies, after all.

“Witch!”

“Hell Belle!” I called back. Winter was already up and posed over me like a bull ready to charge, the sweetheart. “Starswirl, could you hold that whoresdaughter back? I'm not in a state to fight right now, and my other options are a lot more lethal.”

“Captain Belle, stand down!” ordered one cloaked figure, his voice rough and familiar.

The tense one, with a glint of metal under all that cloth, bristled. “This bitch is wanted under multiple warrants, and I'll see her dashed at the bottom of a cliff by night's end!”

“Princess,” said a smaller figure urgently, clearly Clover, giving a gentle shake to the one to have first shouted in surprise.

“Er, Captain? Stand down,” ordered Platinum.

“But my lady!” begged the captain.

“That is an order,” said the voice, regal calm gaining ground in her tone. “I would hear her explain her earlier words.”

“It's alright, Winter. Help me up, please?” I asked. I wasn't an invalid by any means, but damned if I didn't get sore way too easily, recently. My adorable little parasite was making her presence known.

“Tham'ra, what state do you mean?” asked Starswirl. He dropped his cloak, which had literally been piled over his usual hat, and there was more than a hint of worry in his expression.

“An entirely natural one,” said Winter. “And this one's my fault, I'm afraid, mage.”

And of course, midway through helping me up, he had to lift my cloak and put my baby bump on display.

“The bitch has gotten fat. Wonderful,” said Letra Belle.

“Oh hell no,” I growled, pulling up a vapor script of something nasty to cast at a moment's notice.

Then Clover had to ruin the mood by being adorkable. She squealed, bolted forward and began rubbing my belly. This was apparently a thing that everybody took as a given when it came to pregnant mares- touching their bellies was somehow, implicitly okay. Whether or not you'd asked.

But this was Clover, and it was hard to get angry at a mare who was that delightfully oblivious.

“How many months? Oh, Lady Tham'ra, you'll be a mother!” the young mare said.

“Gods preserve me from having to deal with your offspring,” said Starswirl, but with a grin on his face. “At least Whistle may provide a decent example for the child.”

“That was hurtful and unwarranted,” I declared, before turning my attention to the princess. “Princess Platinum, it's a pleasure.”

She nodded. “Isn't it just? Now, you were just mentioning the other tribes, were you not?” she asked.

“I was,” I said. “It was inevitable, really. The tribes together number almost two hundred thousand, by Harried Counter's latest publication. That's a lot of hungry ponies, in a land that soon won't be fit to feed even one. Your escape hasn't escaped notice by the others, you must understand.”

“It is not an escape,” said Platinum in clipped tones. “I will see my race has a safe haven waiting for them. I will face the unknown, if need be.”

“Only a turn of phrase, Princess,” I said. And it was, too- I couldn't see Starswirl or his protégé having anything to do with a mare so cowardly as all that. For one, the old codger was too clever by half for blind cowardice. Strategic cowardice, maybe.

“As I was discussing with Winter, here, the tribes have all been orienting themselves on a single goal. Inevitable, really, with the blight and cold. Hunger is a powerful motivator, Princess. The earth ponies are ahead of you, and the pegasi will soon overtake you. Your remaining advantage is the time you've put into preparation- three of your celestial temples have already been dismantled, haven't they?”

That last tidbit had come from Starswirl, but so long as he kept his peace, I got another few points in my 'creepy foreknowledge' attribute.

“You presume a lot,” the princess told me, which wasn't really news.

“You're certain, Lady Witch?” asked Clover. The unicorn was still rubbing my belly, perhaps trying to teach the fetus Morse code. That seemed horrifically likely, actually...

“My love is a clever one,” said Winter, nuzzling me.

From what I could tell, the moonlight must have caught his head in just the right way to show off his less... usual attribute.

“We're listening to a half-breed?” asked the princess.

Winter stilled. Clover backed away toward her group, having been close enough to feel the tension under my skin.

Starswirl was rapping his own head with his hoof and cursing.

“Have a care, Princess. Insults don't sound any prettier from a royal mouth than a common one,” I said, keeping my voice low and measured.

“I will not be talked down to by a pegasus witch!” replied the monarch.

“Princess,” tried Clover.

“My lady?” offered Belle, seeing her chance.

“Princess Platinum, I am looking forward to my middle age,” said Starswirl. “Aside the fact that we are traveling in secret, aside the fact that we are on neutral shores, and aside the fact that he is her stallion... we are insulting a witch in her own home. I count her as a friend, and I am still not stupid enough to presume her mercy.

“Our journey is only possible because of her help some two year ago. I can't tell you what enchantments she's made ready since we've started speaking, but I can all but taste them in the air. Please, my lady, I do not wish to die tonight.”

It was really kind of him, pretending that the spell scripts I'd written were at all lethal. Or, perhaps, he thought I was willing to use lethal magic in a crowded, sleeping town. I wasn't sure how to feel about that second possibility.

“She showed us the dragon writings, my lady,” said Clover. “Remember?”

The princess seemed to forcibly calm herself, and inclined her head. Certainly not a bow, but also not a sign that she'd try and demand my head.

“A fine show of faith indeed,” she said, and I resisted the urge to let my eyes twitch. “We will not tarry long, mares and stallions. We have found ourselves in a race, it seems.”

I nodded and, out of some sense of intuition, glanced up. My little flying friends were gone!

I took a quick step toward the telescope and aimed it for the horizon, very gently sweeping it back toward us.

There, not five miles away, were dark shapes moving in formation against the frost-white clouds.

“And there are our second place racers,” I declared, making sure all ears heard me. I heard the movement of cloth, and figured that everybody else was trying to see what I had.

“The crazy one is coming closer,” Winter whispered in my ear.

Instead of asking the reasonable question, 'which crazy one?', I whispered back, “Not for long.”

“Belle,” I called, making a guess, “do watch out. My roof isn't the most steady construction."

“Captain!” bellowed Starswirl. “Perhaps you could keep your eyes on Commander star-cursing Hurricane? Should I remind you that she's still, in fact, our chief military rival?”

“Y...es, war mage. Should I prepare spell fire?” asked the mad bitch.

“The altitude that they keep for traversing long distances would make that pointless, Captain,” replied the wizard. "Better to cloak us from sight.”

“Already done,” I said, looking away from the telescope. I beamed at the group.

“I haven't noticed anything,” said Clover, confused.

“I believe that is the point, apprentice,” said my favorite Gandalf analogue.

The candle clock had burned down through another hour marker. I stared at it, and tried not to do the math that would tell me exactly how long I had been lying there. Of course, I failed.

“My mother,” I muttered, “was in labor for all of fourteen hours with me. I do not, not, not want to claim to have outdone her!” I was beginning to feel stupidly desperate. “Maybe a Cesarean?”

“A what, my lady?” asked Buggy Bumper, the midwife. I wasn't usually superstitious, but who could go wrong with a name like that?

“It's a cut, you just cut and pull the foal out through that. That can't hurt too much, right?” I asked.

“Love, you're scaring the nice mare,” said Winter, who'd been very patient with the midwife. I'd put my hoof down to make sure he wouldn't be chased out of the room. I didn't want him somewhere else, damn it all.

“That... that would be bad,” I admitted.

“Yes it would,” he agreed.

Buggy shook her head and put it out of her mind. It was a pretty common reaction for ponies that had to spend time in an enclosed space with me.

“You're nearly there, dear,” she assured me. Pony midwifing was apparently less involved than it was with humans- ponies were just built for easier births, I supposed. “Mind on something else, and keep breathing. What names have you got for the little one?”

“Solar Wind if it's a colt,” said Whistle.

“Minerva if it's a filly,” I said, voice cracking. Named for one of my favorite witches, of course.

“Dear, the little one's coming,” said Buggy.

I bit back the urge to, well, bite the mare. “Yes, I can feel it. They're not being very subtle, after all!”

I breathed and, at Buggy's frantic gesture, I bore down. I'd hurt more, in the past, and had the scars to prove it, but then I'd never had my mother-fucking vagina stabbed, before.

Finally, after a moment so horribly stretched-out I thought it wouldn't end, I heard a tiny, tiny cry. I was so absolutely out of it in that moment I hardly noticed finishing the rest of the whole, messy process.

“Oh my.” It took me a moment to realize I was the one talking. A very small thing had been pressed into my forelegs and it was crying at me.

“Healthy pegasus colt,” said the midwife. “Very bright coloring- more so than his mother, even.”

“Oh my,” I said, uselessly. I smacked my lips. “Why did I just lick him?” I asked.

“That's... what you're supposed to do?” said the midwife uncertainly.

'Right,' I thought. 'Magical pony land.'

“I don't have to eat the placenta, do I?” I asked. Buggy stared at me in incomprehension. “What? That's what cats do, right?” Ponies didn't really understand what endorphins were, and it began to occur to me that I probably had far too many of them, just then.

“You are not a cat!” she shouted.

“Thank you for you time,” said Winter, ushering her out the door. “Payment's on the counter downstairs, have a lovely evening.”

I ignored them and went back to grooming Solar. Pegasi, it seemed, didn't have feathers when they were born- just thick, downy hairs on their wings. He was going to shed everywhere. I just knew it.

He was a bright white, with strawberry-blond hair. I was like someone had bleached my own color pallet. His eyes were closed and still mostly blind, but I saw a hint of rose under his eyelids. Winter's eyes, only lighter. He began to calm and go quiet under my ministrations, until he was nothing put a softly breathing puff ball.

'I gave birth to a tribble. How nice.'

“Tham'ra, how are you feeling?” asked Winter, slowly approaching.

“Tired, reeking of sweat, achy, mildly delusional and uninterested in sex for the next two weeks,” I replied. “Get over here and hold us, you goofball.”

We settled into a quiet pile, and I was minutes away from drifting off to sleep before I heard:

“Eat the placenta? Really?”

“I will strike you down, Whistle.”

Three days, before he began walking. Locomotion was apparently something to be done wings out, head forward, and at full speed into any and all piles of books. On the plus side, parchment tended to be soft.

I levitated the little monster back over to myself after the fourth time he fell over, blinking in confusion that he hadn't yet mastered the ability to walk through matter.

“Dinner, kiddo,” I ordered. “Or... second dinner. My tribble is now a hobbit. Did you evolve? Like, pokemon-wise? I should take you out on the circuit and earn badges.”

Winter did as any good lover should and ignored my rambling, except for that moment that occurred every three seconds where he swung around to confirm that Solar and I were both still there and alive. I prayed ponies didn't get whiplash.

Solar ran head-first into my belly and, once again discovering where food comes from, once again went at it like he'd never eaten before. I winced, and tried not to think about the inevitable teething.

“Will you have that translation done by tomorrow?” asked Winter. “As it turns out, a party of unicorn scholars is coming through this week, and I think we'll have buyers.”

“Ought to,” I said, checking my latest page over. “Not like we need the money right now. Maybe I should take a break- start a project.” I blinked, and caught onto what he had just said. “Right. The second wave is coming through.”

Each tribe had sent scouts back, all looking to have enough of their own ponies to establish a foothold where the land bridge opened onto the new territories.

“Looks like,” agreed Winter, who had taken on a much more active opinion on politics ever since I threatened a Princess on his behalf. I'd made a stallion swoon!

“What kind of project?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, stroking Solar's mane, running out of hair before I ran out of hoof with each stroke, “I was thinking. There aren't any books here like I had back where I was born. No real foals' books. Kids can read before they turn two, did you know? At least, many of them can. The earlier the better."

"I'll just give him that essay on thaumic resonance you keep under your pillow," said the stallion with a grin.

I blew a raspberry. "Or he could proofread your essay on tides. No, I'm thinking something fun. With pictures. Lessons and morals but not, like, stupid ones. Share because it makes sense, not because you get gobbled by monsters if you don't."

"Who told you about the Greedy Guzzler?" asked Winter, appalled.

Ponies. Really.

"Seriously. I used to write a lot. Stories, not essays and notes on what can kill you. I could..." My thoughts began to wander, and I let them. I'd been a born bibliophile, and could probably recreate dozens upon dozens of books from memory. Human stories. I looked at Solar, who was suckling away like there was no tomorrow. He was as far from understanding the road I'd traveled as was possible. He ought to be sure of himself, and have stories he could relate to. Heaven knows I'd have liked to have had the same.

He was a pony. A small one, more of a pony pupa than anything, but a pony. He ought to have pony stories. Someday I'd tell him about all the strange places I'd come from, and he would either want to know more or just leave it behind, but that would be his choice.

In the meantime, I'd like to see him read.

I chuckled, ducked my head down next to my foal, and nuzzled him. I said, next, purely on a nostalgic lark:

"Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria..."

Warm light filled the room, and I froze at an unusual, tingly feeling.

I didn't wear my cloak in the house. It was why I immediately saw the change. On my flank, there was a stylized quill and ink well cutie mark.

"Winter? What just- what did I do?"

I heard the sound of bowls clattering to the counter top. Winter was blinking wetly.

"Wow," he said. "That... was a long time in coming. I guess it really does come to everypony, if they wait long enough. It's lovely, Tham'ra."

"Is it? It is." I wasn't sure quite how to express what I was feeling. I picked up Solar and held him up over my side. "Look, Solar, look at mama's butt! Isn't is awesome?"

"Nnn!" He wiggled and strained to be set down and go back to where the food was.

"Brat," I said, and started to laugh as I settled him back into place. I might have been crying. "That... that's not an explosion, or some goofy witch's hat, or... Winter, that's for stories!"

"I can't wait to read them," he said, abandoning dinner to cuddle up to us.

I was in the marketplace. For no particular reason, really, other than maybe to stalk a trader who tended to show up with rare books every once in a while.

"Mama!"

I was also wearing a decorative headpiece. Sure it was loud, hungry, and had to pee every hour on the hour, but it was also extremely adorable.

"Mama, book!"

It also knew four words, and used them extensively. Usually when it wouldn't make a lick of sense. Winter was alternately 'mama', 'no!', 'book', or 'food'. I lucked out, and was 'mama' more often than not. Solar wasn't close to being as cold-proof as me, young as he was, so he was wrapped in a heavy cape, and spent his time outside buried in my mane.

Flakes of snow fell all the time now, except in the afternoon. It wasn't summer anymore, but then the unicorns couldn't hold the sun's path so close forever. Privately, I was grateful- I had no way of knowing what kind of heat wave the rest of the world was dealing with. My foal had yet to feel warm weather, and probably wouldn't for some time.

I almost itched to follow the long track northward, but I knew that there would be no coming back. More than that, I didn't want Winter or Solar anywhere nearby when the Windigos finally made an appearance. Hearth's Warming Eve had yet to happen. The true bulk of the pony migration hadn't yet started.

And here I was, still working off of the throw-away comments made by one Twilight Sparkle, during the afternoons where we sat and watched caricatures of her adventures with her friends. Highly accurate and well-researched comments, but still nothing more than conversation. That had somehow become 'Prophecy 101', for myself, even if I could apply only a small fraction of it.

Thank goodness I hadn't pulled a Rainbow Dash and fallen asleep on the nearby couch instead of listening.

The 'third wave', as I called it, had been passing through. Builders, mostly, of every tribe. I dreaded the thought of real military passing through. Amaranth was a geological bottleneck for a race without any real seafaring abilities, and those close quarters alone had caused some serious problems.

"My lady witch, thank goodness I've found you!"

Case in point.

I turned and wore a weary smile for Paper Prudence, who ran the desk of the local constabulary. Or of what used to be, at one time, a constabulary. It turned out that the cops tended to be overwhelmed when dozens of stressed-out strangers ran through your town every day, all bearing royal writs from different 'kingdoms', and all with an ax to grind.

"What's going on, Prudence? Do you have more of that cobbler on hand?" I asked. I didn't ask what kind of cobbler. It was hit or miss- even with the temporary increase in trade made for by all the new travelers, food was still always in short supply. Gold, always plentiful in magic pony land, had dropped in value.

"I only wish I did!" said Prudence with a nervous giggle. "No, lady, there's another... a thing is... I think you might want to..."

"Where at?" I asked.

She slumped. "Market square. Please hurry."

I kicked off and took to the air. Solar shouted 'No!', but was giggling, so I assumed he was fine with it. He really loved flying. Even Winter had gone and taken him down by the dunes, where the slope and wind let the stallion get air time without stressing his body too much.

A few streets over, I caught sight of what had sent Paper into such a mood. Earth ponies and pegasi, a good dozen of each, facing each other down in the middle of the square. The earth ponies were big, lifelong tradesponies by the symbols on their flanks. The pegasi, also builders but of a different kind, were light things that were taking every opportunity to 'buzz' the earth ponies. They were used to shaping clouds. By the look of things, they'd go down hard if the earth ponies began bucking lumber into the air, which seemed to be what they were slowly aiming for.

The pegasi would go down hard, as would anybody else caught by the fracas. Or they would dodge, strike the earth ponies, and bystanders would still be hurt.

"Time to go to work, my little hobbit," I said, pulling my hood up over my head and the foal thereon.

"No!" he shouted, but giggled as he found himself in his favorite hiding place. "Book!"

"That's right," I said. "Book." I trotted forward and put on my most winning smile- that would be about all that the crowd would be able to see under my hood.

"Hello, and welcome to Amaranth! I am the welcome wagon, though as you may notice, I have no wheels. Times are hard- what can I say?"

Stares. Then- "Who in the hells are you?" asked one of the earth ponies.

"I'm the one welcoming you, as the welcome wagon. You," I said, pointing at the stallion in front of me. "And you," I pointed to the pegasus who was trying to get an angle on the back of that stallion's head, who froze sheepishly. "All of you! And if 'welcome wagon' won't do for a name, you can call me Tham'ra, the witch, lately a resident of Amaranth." My hood moved- and I carefully didn't react.

"What's that on your head?"

"It's a hood!" I declared. My hood giggled. "It may also be a foal- I was in a bit of a hurry to leave the house this morning, and I often mistake the two."

"Mama!"

"Probably just a hood," I said. "Now, are we gathered here for a party, or something? Unless you're just passing through, then just standing here and glaring at each other wouldn't be too productive." Both tribes bristled. "We can do this nice and peacefully, even. You guys go first," I said, pointing at the pegasi. They went from offended that I was butting into their business, to pleased that they'd been ushered ahead in the metaphorical queue.

"And what makes you say they ought to go ahead first, miss thinks-she's-a-witch? I can see your wings."

I quirked my head, and felt Solar grab on more tightly to my mane. "Because last time, I let the earth ponies through, first. I flipped a coin for it. This is fair, see? And you all-" I pointed to the ground bound group, "can go have a drink in Tilly's inn, knowing your fellows have a head start."

One of the pegasi, now looking more nervous, spoke up next: "And just how did you make sure that the pegasi didn't go first last time?"

I let my smile drop and, with a flare, brought my wings out to either side. And they kept coming out, kept unfolding, until they stretched to touch either end of the market square.

"I am the witch of Amaranth," I said, a hint of gravel to my voice. "Do you think I would have let them escape without my abiding?"

The pegasi didn't so much fly as teleport toward the north. I nodded, and tilted my head toward the remaining tribe. "Do enjoy your drinks. Then be out by sundown."

The lot of them backed away, and I guided them with one massive wing toward the pub. I guessed that they would wait until sundown was minutes away before charging out of the pub and toward the border of town at a dead run.

With a flap, I dispelled the wing. They burst into gently-falling feathers and then to dust, and then the dust blew away. They had come from dust to begin with- just corporeal enough to move the wind, just enough to fool the pegasi. I laughed, and Solar joined in because Mama thought something was funny.

The wings had been large enough to let me fly without the aid of pegasus magic- for a moment, I'd have fit in better on Earth than here. Biology took shortcuts in magic pony land. My wings were awesome, a healthy four feet out to either side, but they would be mere movie props if I couldn't navigate the weather itself.

My hood stretched, so I pulled it back to reveal Solar stretching his own wings in mimicry.

"Nuh uh," I told him. "Your feathers just came in." His first feathers, too- with no primaries. The limbs still existed to keep him warm and little else. I dreaded the coming months, when he reached that age where he had workable wings and too little mass to keep him grounded. A pegasus toddler was the most awkward foal possible.

"Come on," I said, because talking to a foal was both good for him, and meant I had an excuse to monologue. "We need to see Prudence. She can talk to the mayor for us, 'cause he's still angry about the thing with the cats."

As if it had been my fault. I just called it good old 'noodle incident number five'.

Paper Prudence was pacing by the town hall, nerves visibly snapping before she caught sight of the two of us and relaxed.

"Did it all go well?" she asked.

"Half gone, half supporting our local economy," I said. I ducked for a moment as she fussed over Solar for a bit. If I had to deal with ponies touching my pregnant belly, then it was his turn to get poked at. Fortunately for him, the foal was a lot more outgoing than I ever was. Like Whistle, maybe, before he became an angsty teenager.

It had taken me a bit to explain the concept of angsty emo boys, and he'd gone all sorts of pale.

"You should talk to Barter," I said, breaking Paper's little foal moment. "You remember what I told you before?"

"I can hardly believe it," said the mare, looking at the range of mountains that neatly held off both the Paradise Estate and the growing blight. "But I can't argue with all these other ponies leaving- some of our own have already joined the herds moving northward. The town might just empty on its own."

"Better to organize it," I said. "Or else we end up leaving the insular and elderly to be easy prey for the soldier bands that will soon follow. Nally's Foals' Home can't just decide to 'empty on its own', for instance."

"Nally's Barter's cousin," said Paper with a wince. "That should lend a bit more weight to it. Will you be traveling with us?"

I almost froze. I would have, too, if I hadn't thought about it ahead of time. The migration was speeding up. Dozens per week would turn to hundreds, then the Windigos would come, then the final bulk of ponies and any stragglers left thereafter. The three of us could stop at the land bridge, see that Amaranth as a whole went on hoof at least that far, and wait to cross ourselves.

It seemed selfish, but a kind of critical mass had to be achieved. Tensions rose every day, as predators starved and ponies found themselves with extra time to squabble over what was left. That would draw the wind spirits. Ought to. I would have walked to the very epicenter myself had I not been selfish enough to want a family at such a time.

Solar hugged my head. Maybe because he felt my tension, maybe because he just wanted to hug my head. I decided I definitely didn't regret him.

"We'll be going," I assured her. Whether we followed all the way was a matter of timing that I couldn't control.

That seemed to settle the eternally-anxious mare's nerves again, and she graced us with a smile.

Solar decided that meant he had a new landing platform.

"Solar, no!"

"The little foal looked at the dark, dark bedroom and thought, 'will fear help me?'. He knew he was home and safe, and so he thought, 'It's okay to be brave. This isn't like the dark forest, because my papa keeps the monsters out. I will be brave.' And so he lifted his head, and walked inside."

Solar was already out like a light, and had been for five minutes. I'd only made sure the extra buffer was there, to be certain. He jerked awake sometimes, when sudden air currents hit his little wings and told some gooey part of his brain that there were predators about.

Or maybe he was just twitchy, and evolutionary psychology was bunk. Either way, he got five more minutes of story time.

I set the roughly-bound book down on the side of the bowed, child-size bed shaped to keep him from rolling out, and back out into the hall. The door closed with a soft 'click', and I abruptly found myself unable to back up further. A warm weight settled over my back.

"Feeling better?" I asked.

"Lungs are clear, body strong, mind... a little cloudy," admitted Winter with a crooning chuckle. "Though I don't think that's because of the flu." He put his face into my hair and breathed in, slowly. I fought to keep a straight face, but it wasn't working very well.

"You were smoother before you started dripping from every hole in your face," I told him, trying to snark but aware that we were both getting warmer where our coats pressed together.

"I've got a few words I wrote. Couplets. Mostly about your flank," he admitted, and I cackled. Quietly, though, because Solar was napping, and...

"Solar's having a nap," I said out loud. "That gives us a good two hours alone with one another..."

"Two hours? I'm not that healthy, yet," protested Winter, but I could tell he was talking through a smile.

I gasped, and turned to give my most shocked, innocent look. "Oh dear, I suppose I'll be doing the work then. Because, like I said: Two. Hours."

This time, he was the one backing up.

It was summer. Nominally. Mostly that meant a break in the frost. Outside, I could hear the slow dismantling of Amaranth.

"I was distracted. It's been a distracting month," I declared. "How the hell didn't I notice!?"

"Weird cycles," said Winter, who had been scrubbing the same spot of table for about ten minutes. His fetlocks had gone all damp and he hadn't even noticed.

"This is... this is..." I paced, bent my head down to look at my still-flat stomach.

"Is this bad?"

My head swung back up with a snap. "No! No. An accident, not a mistake. There's a difference. Nobody claims this kid is a mistake, or I start setting fires." I may, possibly, have had a few buttons that could be pushed. Big, red buttons that blinked and whistled and carried warning labels in thirty languages.

"Right! Yes. Not a mistake," agreed Winter, forgetting he was holding a rag at all and scratching at his mane with the damp cloth.

"Good," I said, glancing back down at my belly. "...Now what?"

"Five bits on another colt," said Winter.

I came back up, maybe to snap at him or maybe to take him on his bet, but he'd already made a wing-assisted leap over one of our rickety stools and caught me up in a tight hug.

"You can do anything," he told me. "You could scare off armies, and survive jumping across a hundred worlds, and get me to fall in love with you."

"You know..." I said, leaning into him.

"Know what?" he asked.

"I can't get double pregnant."

Winter pulled back a bit and stared. "Is this how you always react to stress?"

I went momentarily cross-eyed in contemplation. "I could make it my habit, if I really tried. With the power of positive thinking."

Author's Note

Sorry about the next chapter. It's basically the start of a... long line of dramatic bits.

Hearth's Warming Eve is coming.

The Long Road

Chapter Nine

Is it very weird that I like watching these?" asked Twilight. Her, Rainbow, Fluttershy and I were all seated in my apartment, watching my computer screen in the dark. Rainbow was asleep, drooling on one of my spare comforters. Fluttershy was combing out the mane of a lion plushie that was easily larger than her- a token of a day at the carnival.

"Not really," I said, shifting so the princess wasn't cutting off the circulation in my leg. I only had so many chairs, after all. "It's like... photo albums. You look at pictures of your last family reunion, and it only has the happier, sillier bits in it. Maybe you remember that uncle whats-his-face spiked the punch, or that one of your little cousins locked himself in the crawl space, but that's not in the photo album."

"It's just so... goofy, I suppose," said Twilight, waving a hoof at the screen where she and her friends were learning a very valuable lesson. "My friendship reports are never that short, and never so short on details. Goodness sakes, most of them have graphs, in real life!" In the corner, Fluttershy tittered. "I mean, you don't hear all the dirty jokes that Rarity and Applejack trade, either. They make a game of it, you know. Points if somepony blushes."

"Serious 'Les Yay'," I said, chuckling. At Twilight's confused look, I added, "As soon as you have a full day -and believe me, you'll need a full one- I'll introduce you to TV-Tropes."

The alicorn pat my calf. "Looking forward to it."

"I've got to ask, though..."

Twilight groaned. "Go on. The last time I let you make assumptions about ponies, you wrote a ten page story of Celestia as some kind of queen bee brood mother. Ponies are mammals- we don't pupate!"

Cue adorable snort from Fluttershy. Twilight would never know, but the pegasus had given me all the information on bees as my source material.

"Alright then," I said. "Magical kindergarten. What's up with that?"

Twilight sighed, then shuddered. "It's... a nickname. The Moonlight Society hosts... gosh, they're a bit like boot camp, I guess. Unicorns with trouble controlling their power get sent there to learn attenuation and focus. Think 'juvenile hall' meets a martial arts monastery. I've had to go four times."

"No!" I gasped, trying to cover my grin.

Twilight rolled her eyes and poked me in the kidney. "Don't give me that, you upstart monkey."

"Ape," I replied. "You technicolor tapir."

"I'd like to meet an ape," said Fluttershy. "Could we do that, please? Visit a zoo, I mean, if we have time?"

"From what I can tell, you've met every family of critters but apes," I remarked. "What's so special about them, other than being the most handsome animals?"

"There are none on Sola," said Fluttershy. "None at all. Like Earth has no wyverns, we have no apes."

"Weird," I remarked. "I smell a conspiracy- somebody set out to make sure that no pony would ever see an ape play with a kitten."

Fluttershy's eyes went absurdly large. I sighed, paused the episode, and brought up a Youtube search of Koko the gorilla.

"Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh!"

The trip, some four months later, was... odd. As Amaranth made to move as a whole, we found ourselves being caught up from behind by a crew of earth ponies. The most practical tribe had decided, while the third wave was in progress, that they might as well make things easier on those families following behind.

Their answer was to build a road.

Amaranth -where it used to be, that is- had only been connected to the greater part of the Paradise Estate by a thin trail. A wider route, lain down with crushed gravel made from the nearby mountains, stretched up to that point in the coast just as we were building the last wagons and stowing away the remainder of our goods. Even my cart, preserved for almost four years, had gotten an upgrade. Not much of one, maybe, but a few extra enchantments had put a foal-sized space between the book shelves.

Winter would be introduced to my old traveling hammock. I was willing to make us both fit. Or fail at it hilariously.

Barter, the town mayor who had run unopposed for twenty years by virtue of nobody else wanting the job, had made the call for the town to simply travel with the civil engineers. It slowed us down, maybe, but meant the going was easier, and a small profit could be turned by catering to the workers. Nilly had already sawed open a bartop in the side of her own carriage.

But then Amaranth, one of the last towns to ignore the increasing segregation of the rest of the land, had found the plan a mixed blessing. Non-earth families, and especially mixed herds, found themselves trailing further behind by necessity. No more violence had broken out than the occasional drunken brawl, but a kind of psychological pressure had pushed them back anyway. The tradesponies all took the attitude that the other tribes were just yet more of their oppressors benefiting from their hard labor. In any other place, they might have been right.

Barter was an old stallion in a position of authority, with no romantic attachments- to put a more familiar, human label on it, he was like some sort of Victorian spinster, or governess. He only became more unpopular with the rising tension. That said, he tended to stay away from any conflicts. Authority defaulted to whoever yelled the loudest. Or, in my case, whoever could set themselves on fire on command.

I... straddled a fine line. Putting a stop to the violence could easily turn into me playing the part of the bully. Keeping myself safe through intimidation was one thing- it cast me as a strange, singular creature. Acting on behalf of a group, or of groups, meant I was seen as just another pegasus. Another overtly military gargoyle, of sorts.

On the other hand, I was sixth months into my pregnancy and having a hell of a time of it.

"Winter, I'm hungry."

He winced. With Solar, I'd been eating near my own weight in fish. This time, I'd gotten cravings I hadn't had since I left Earth.

"No red meat," said the pegacorn. "I am legitimately terrified, here. There is a family of cows following near the back, Tham'ra."

"I have been trying not to look at them," I said, looking away. "You could get me a squirrel. Squirrels are almost as dumb as fish, I think."

"I will not get you a squirrel," said Winter, looking ill. "Here," he said, digging into his saddlebag. "Eat a pickle. You like pickles."

"Does it bleed?" I asked, peering at it curiously.

"Sure," he said. "Look, I'll hitch myself up and we'll start, see? Everpony's doing their daily catch-up."

Say what you would, but the crews were making fast progress. More than that, but the long trail of those herds catching up were slowly but surely adding members to the working force. Most of them were volunteers. There were so many, they weren't just building forward from the end of the road- they wouldn't have fit. Sections at a time were being finished ahead of the road's 'end', and with every connection, progress jumped forward by miles.

"I should take a turn," I told him, the pickle having mysteriously disappeared. "It's a good ten miles-"

"Which is why you shouldn't," retorted Winter, glaring. But I could see the bags under his eyes.

"We could hire somebody," I said. I'd been insisting for the last two weeks, since we'd been on the road.

"That would go over just fine," he said back sarcastically. "Mixed family with a witch and a half-breed, ordering around an earth pony."

"We'll find a bulky uni... er, pegasus," I suggested. A healthy unicorn in their battle corps might manage it easily enough, but just asking would probably prompt an honor duel, or something. Pegasi at least had stamina to make up for the lack of raw bulk.

"What do you think, buddy? Wanna take a turn?" asked Winter. Solar peered down from the footboard, perched because his newest little habit was to seek out high places. Like a cat.

"Um, no. No, please," said Solar. I'd been beating manners into him by play-acting overly polite encounters for giggles- it seemed to be taking.

"Do you know what you're saying no to?" I asked, my lips quirking.

"No!" His wings whirred.

"There's that option, gone," said Winter, winking up at the foal.

"Heck to it," I said. "I'm gonna levitate it. Just... sideways."

"You can't levitate yourself," Winter reminded me. "Remember trying? You spent two weeks interrogating unicorns before giving up."

"We'll walk alongside it, then. Winter, you won't let me pull it. I won't let you pull it. We'll have a nice, romantic walk- it'll be a little like walking a dog," I told him, discretely renewing the warming spell I kept on his jacket.

The cold kept doing bad things to him. The last time he'd tried to play in the snow with Solar, he'd stumbled back inside unable to breathe. I reminded myself to ask one of the others in the 'mothers' circle' -which I otherwise avoided like the plague- to knit him a balaclava.

The new kid couldn't come soon enough. My biggest regret was that being a witch's son meant that other parents were wary about letting Solar play too close to their own foals. A sibling might turn out to have been the best thing for him.

One of the simplest facts of magic is that of kinesthetics -moving matter, which was its own branch of study- effected actual mass, and not apparent mass. Our cart was enchanted to hell and back, years of spells reinforcing each other until it was much smaller than it ought to have been, considering its cargo. It was lighter, too, slightly, but not when magic was imparting movement. Hence, why a sturdy pony could pull it, or even myself in an emergency, but pushing it those ten miles with magic would leave me magically worn out.

But I could hide magical exhaustion from Winter better than I could physical, and I'd have to drive myself half to death with it to actually endanger the baby. Thus, my option was clear.

That night, I very carefully waited until both Winter and Solar were deep asleep, and fluttered up to the roof of the cart. It didn't take long to unfold the telescope- Winter had set it up to be used whenever we stopped.

I adjusted it, leaned in, and spotted them. My little flying friends.

Now, I figured there were any number of reasons that 'sea hawks' might follow a group of ponies. Lots of creatures took cues from other species. Sparrows pecked grain from harvested fields, mice found crumbs fallen in the pantry, and so on. But I had let myself remain curious long enough.

I cloaked myself in as subtle and layered an illusion as I could. It was a demanding enough spell that it was impossible to cast anything else with it- the only limiting factor.

The second aspect to it was flight. I'd had longer to practice with my weather magic than any pegasus alive today. With what little focus I could spare, I could keep the wind wrapped around myself. My passage wouldn't so much as stir the night insects. That is, had there been any in the frosty air. I stepped away from the cart, and kept going until the last late-night bonfire was a speck, and began my climb.

It took ten torturous minutes just to gain the altitude. The air current came sleeting down the mountains at odd angles, and I had to adjust myself constantly. It was only once I came close enough to discern real shapes within the dark, fleet forms that I nearly lost hold of any sense of stealth.

Thestrals.

There had been thestrals flying above us the entire time. Decades of wandering, and not once had I come across more than rumor of the sub-tribe of pegasi. From here it was easy to see how, at some point, some pegasus foals had simply never lost the infant down on their wings, how the light sensitivity of childhood had similarly somehow been connected to what ought to have been a crucial developmental step, and had then turned into an advantage, however long ago.

I nearly squealed in excitement. I wanted to hug one, so bad.

After forcing myself to breathe the thin air in controlled gasps for a long minute, I swallowed and thought about how to go about this more cleverly. My little flying friends had always fled at the passing flocks of pegasi- spooking them by appearing from out of nowhere might very well cause them to react violently, and I wouldn't blame them. Fear was such a powerful motivator, after all.

Instead I wheeled around and gradually wove my way closer to the mountain's sides. As I'd suspected, not all of them were at play. A young stallion was... stringing an instrument? Oh, yes, he had a musical cutie mark. I didn't recognize either the mark or the real instrument it mimicked, but the meaning was clear. I settled next to him on the rocky outcropping, came in close, and adjusted my illusion cloak.

Casting any other spell was beyond me, right then, but pushing my current illusion out to encompass more space was less taxing than you'd think. He didn't even notice until I cleared my throat.

"What is it, Quill?" he asked, voice thick with an old pegasus accent that was only spoken in certain, out-of-the-way boonies. I guessed cultural transmission wasn't a big thing, for these folk.

"I would like to talk. Why are you following those ponies down there?" I asked.

His ear twitched, then he froze as he figured out my halting mimicry of his speech wasn't coming out of 'Quill's' mouth. He turned and stared, looking utterly horrified.

"I come in peace," I assured him. "I'm just an old, curious mare. Could you help me sit down? I'm afraid I'm a little further along than I ought to be, making a trip up here like this with a foal on the way," I said, pretending to slump and stumble. My gambit payed off- he dropped his instrument and hurried to help ease me back against the outcropping.

"Who're you?!" he hissed. "Why are ya'-" He was panicking, slit eyes a wide, scared red.

"Just visiting, because I'm curious," I said. "I'm a bit of a scholar, which makes me nosy by definition. Don't feel too bad, now. I'm a mad witch- you never had a chance to hide. Us witches are insufferable like that." True. The only other -pony- witch I'd met had been a paranoid hermit of an earth pony who had tried to feed me to a carnivorous elm. Good times.

"You should go," he said, trying to look older than he was. It didn't work- his voice cracked midway through the sentence.

"I really shouldn't. Not yet, anyway," I said. "Would you like to be friends?"

"What."

"I've never been friends with a thestral. It could be nice! I learn about you, you learn about the blight I'm sure your people have noticed, everybody wins."

"You know what the blight is?" he asked. It came out quickly, almost as if he hadn't meant curiosity to get the better of him.

"I predicted it," I replied. "Witch, remember? It's why I could scream at the top of my lungs and none of your kin would notice. So, what's your name?"

He looked steamrolled. "Midnight. But, no! You just can't..."

But from there, it was easy.

Three weeks later, I lost my mind.

Not immediately, of course. First there was Desnee Digger.

He was one of the problem stallions on the work crews. I'd had cause to watch him more than once, and Nilly had made it a habit of kicking him out of -away from, rather- her traveling bar. Winter had gone there early in the evening to buy some brandy. Heated, and stewed with honey and raspberries, it was the best way we'd found yet of helping his persistent cough.

Desnee was a mean drunk, and Winter, turned so confident over the last four years, had spoken up just as the massive pony had begun one of his tribalist rants. Desnee must have made a more eloquent speaker with his hooves than his mouth, because he reared back and delivered a mule kick into Winter's side.

It was important to keep in mind that the largest earth ponies working the road crushed the paving gravel with nothing but their own, inborn strength.

Two more of the work crew had pulled the drunk off of Winter. I wasn't certain if they would have done the same if he hadn't been wearing his wing-concealing jacket, or if they just didn't want their mate to see trouble over a half-breed.

Winter walked all the way back to our cart before collapsing.

"Whistle?" I asked, sorting through some reams of parchment out front of the cart with Solar. "I know I suggested you stay for a beer, but-"

The ragged sound of his breathing reached my ears, and it was entirely too wet.

"Winter!" I jumped off the cart and ran to him. "Prudence! Prudence, get over here now!"

From the next camping spot over, I heard hooves nervously sliding over the gravel. I put it out of my mind as I slid to a halt next to the stallion and began checking him over. My first worry was some sort of deep, respiratory infection. Those were rare in ponies, but Winter had a bad constitution when it came to the cold.

But he wasn't feverish at all. When I probes his ribs, I had half a second of finding that something felt incredibly off before his body seized up in deep, wracking coughs that left bloody spittle over my haunch.

I lifted the jacket. His wing was... bent. As was his side. There was a dent in his ribs, wide and deep, and Winter's head was rolling back into the gravel and his horn scraped against the freshly-chipped stone.

"Tham'ra? What's going... oh sweet earth mother!"

"Prudence, get a healer. Get every unicorn healer you can find. Bring them now," I ordered her. She ran.

I readied one of the only two healing spells I'd ever been able to devise. The flesh-knitting one was useless in this case, because I couldn't cast with enough delicacy to heal internal injuries. I shakily shaped vapor into the script for a Soothing Susurrus. It took me three tries to cast the numbing spell correctly.

Winter's shaking eased, but he didn't breathe any easier. If anything, the sudden lack of movement made me feel even more horrified at the situation.

"Love? Look at me. Eyes open and look at me," I said, voice too loud. Solar had approached at some point in time, and I swept him close with a wing.

It took the stallion a long, slow moment to manage it, but his eyes finally lit on my face. He mouthed something, grimaced, then tried again: "H..hey, love. Went... wrong, there." His side rose in a breath, except where it was damaged. If anything, that spot seemed to only sink in further with the effort. "It'ssh... alright. Feels okay."

"Because of my magic, dummy! You're hurt!" I barked, as if he could have missed that little fact.

He grinned. "Yeah... Thanks for... th'magic. Better."

"No. No you're not."

I had seen so many injuries, over the years. There was red foam at his lips- never had that meant an easy recovery. Rarely had it meant a recovery of any kind at all.

Solar struggled forward and tried to pet his father's mane, making 'shoosh' noises. Winter shooshed him back, and the foal forgot to be scared. He giggled as I pulled him back.

"Tham'r, somethin' I wanted... tell you," said Winter.

"I love you too," I said, a bit too quickly. I was well aware of the time constraint.

"No... knew tha'... Come closer..."

I leaned forward. He whispered in my ear, kissed my mane, and then I leaned back and nodded. I didn't react to what he told me. That was the wrong time for it.

"Winter, healers are coming," I told him, but the sounds of frantic ponies were still a long way off. I realized they might have been too late even had they been waiting at the cart with me when the pegacorn first returned. His eyes trailed back to his side, and he weakly shook his head.

"S...sorry," he slurred. Then his head fell back.

He slept for another hour that night, until he wasn't just sleeping, anymore.

I woke up the next morning shivering. I hadn't stopped in well over twelve hours. Solar was nestled into my side, just above the curve of my belly. He stirred as I moved, yawned at me, then began looking around.

I followed him as he jumped out onto the frost-rimed ground and began circling the cart, peering under the wheels every so often and frowning when he didn't find anything. He glared at me as if I was playing a trick on him.

"Dad?"

I shook my head. He began peering around again, and started another circuit of the cart.

Louder crunches echoed behind me and Prudence shuffled up. I looked at her, but didn't speak until she met my eyes.

"Can you watch Solar?" I asked. "Just for an hour or two. I know you're busy with Berry Leaf, but-"

"Sure enough, Tham'ra," she said. "I... I can understand if you need a moment alone."

I smiled. "Thank you, Prudence. Can you do me a larger favor?" I asked. Her ear flicked in acknowledgement. "Just keep him inside the cart until I come back? He shouldn't see his mother upset, alright?"

"Of course," said Prudence. "You're a strong mare, Tham'ra. Have your time to be weak if you need to- we all do."

I nodded, as if I was seriously taking her advice, and kissed the still-searching Solar before walking off. Behind me, I heard Prudence bundling him up and pulling him inside. No doubt she'd stoke the little inside stove and get some warm food in him.

I stopped by Nilly's, apologized for waking her up, and asked a few questions before moving on.

It was another mile to reach the spot where the tradesponies camped. While I crossed the distance, I considered script combinations. Freecasting was messy at the best of times, even with all my practice, but it seemed more and more obvious, the further I got, that I'd have to resort to just that. I'd be needing a new spell, after all.

There were always ponies awake with the dawn there, moving and exhaling steaming air as they moved about. Still, there were more about than was normal. One stood in the middle of the road, eyes on me as I approached. Amber Etching, if I remembered right- the crew's foremare.

"Good morning," I told her. I was absolutely expressionless. It seemed to be too much effort to so much as smile or frown, just then.

"Lady witch," said Amber, the most polite address I'd ever heard from one of her crew. No big deal, that. She went straight to whatever words she'd had prepared for me. "I know something happened last night. Rest assured, it will be taken care of."

"Of course it will," I said, nodding. "Can you please show me where I can find Desnee Digger? I need to see him. It is important."

"Lady, I promise, we'll be determining just what's happened here. Whatever extenuating circumstances-"

I blinked, slowly. "But there aren't any of those. Please show me where I can find Desnee Digger. The barmaid explained everything to me, already. Thank you for offering, but I won't be needing your help."

"Listen, witch," she said, but I wasn't, and didn't plan to.

I swept my wing to the side, gently, and she accelerated over the gravel until she disappeared somewhere past my peripheral vision. Then I walk on.

Other ponies tried to approach, so I swept them away too. Everybody else seemed to notice that I hadn't had to so much as brought either of my wings within several body lengths of the interfering ponies, so they kept their distance. I kept on cantering forward.

There was a clever little building meant to be assembled wall by wall, like some sort of on-site construction trailer minus the wheels. A dozen ponies stood there, as if protecting something at their backs. I approached, but slowed to a stop once the lot of them began to bristle. One of them stepped forward firmly, but she seemed a bit pale for all that.

"You can't have him," she told me, answering my first question before I could ask it.

"So he is in there?" I asked. "That will do just fine, thank you. Please step away from the building."

"No!" the mare shouted, more firmly still. I ignored her.

Then I cast the Mammalian Mirage.

I got the idea from good old-fashioned thermal imaging. Except, instead of changing my own sight, it changed how everything looked. Every pony within the area began trailing colored smoke- reds and yellows according to their body heat, that plumed up into the air in sharp contrast to the frost.

Ponies shouted in alarm. Some screamed, and I didn't blame them. Later, I would feel bad for casting magic on them without their permission. Even harmless, it was bad form and poor manners. But that would come later. Now, I took in what was plain for the world to see.

One large plume. He was alone in there- even children would have shown up, small as their heat signatures were, but now I could be certain he was alone. That was good.

My next trick was nothing especially 'witchy'. I'd been trailing my wings back over my body the entire walk here, collecting air and dragging it along in a messy kind of balloon. Anybody who bothered to walk behind me would find it like trying to walk into a storm, only without the movement.

I slapped my wings forward, over my head, and the bag opened up around me, directed forward and into the building. The pressure skyrocketed within, too fast to escape back into the outdoors, and the structure gently, but firmly, popped..

The line of ponies was blown forward. I stepped between them, swaying to avoid the falling planks of wood, and came right up to Desnee Digger. He was stunned, and that was no small wonder.

I let the Mirage dissipate, reached into my cloak, and jammed a seed pod down his throat. The confused stallion choked it down, eyes rolling, until he suddenly came to his senses and realized he should be terrified.

"What was that?! What did you do to me?!"

I sensed the approach of dozens of ponies, all moving much more carefully now, but none moving to attack, yet. Good. It was better to have an audience for this part.

"You just ate a 'bleeding heart fig'," I told him. "Something I found a long time ago, traded for more gold than you'll ever hold. It cost me... well," I grinned, "it cost somebody an arm and a leg, just to obtain."

He clutched at his throat.

"Don't be afraid of it," I said. "It won't hurt you. Really, it only does one thing." I leaned in, just a bit, and spoke up so that the growing crowd of would-be witch burners caught every word. "It will make you tell the absolute truth. Now, why did you kill my lover?"

Digger shook his head, but his eyes were already going filmy. Whatever he may have wanted, his mouth opened of its own accord.

"That freak was talking like he knew better! Better than I did! I was telling it like it is, those lazy fucking unicorns, those stupid fucking pigeons, and he was both, and he told me to stop! I kicked him, and I was going to keep kicking him but these weak dirtsacks stopped me!" He shouted louder than ever, but there were tears in his eyes, now- there wouldn't be any hiding behind 'circumstances' for him.

The group around us had stopped approaching. I looked, briefly, at them. They looked angry, or sickened, or dazed. A very few looked approving of his words- I'd watch for them.

"He walked away alive. Did you want him to die? Did you mean to kill him?" I asked, bringing my attention back to Digger.

He was all but sobbing. "Yes, I'm happy he died." I didn't have to ask how he felt about having to face the consequences of his actions.

"He couldn't fly," I said quietly. "Not very much like those 'pigeons' you mentioned, he couldn't lift more than an apple with his magic, not with the world's greatest wizard helping him. He had a son." I patted my side. "He had another foal on the way. He read me poetry every night. Do you care?" I asked. "Would knowing have made you not do what you did?"

"He was a freak," said Digger, shuddering.

"Okay." I stood back up and hooked him up alongside myself with a Ghostly Hand. He thrashed, but I ignored that.

Amber Etching was back, looking rumpled but determined. "Witch, you can not do this."

"Can't I?" I wondered, and double checked my surroundings. But no, there weren't any gods in my way, and I didn't especially feel tired, despite the long, restless night. "Oh," I said, "You meant to say that 'I shouldn't do this' or that 'you wouldn't allow me to'. But both of those are not correct." A thought occurred to me. "Don't worry, I don't plan on killing him. His life will be entirely out of my hooves."

She didn't look reassured in the least, so I added, "Really, he'll be very much alive after I'm done!"

She still didn't move. Honestly, I'd woken up so completely, absolutely calm that morning that I was caught surprised by how easily I switched gears. Dust rose and my wings seemed to grow out twenty feet in either direction. I lit the dust on fire because I felt like it, and my illusory wings flared and sent heat out in a circle. I scented burning paper on the air.

"I don't give a flying, feathered fuck about what you think I cannot do! He murdered Winter, and the greatest mercy I'll offer is to give winter a chance to murder him, you simpering, ignorant, bigoted children!" I reared up and sent a billow of hot, dry air over the crowd. "I am tired of this! Any creature that wants to leave this corpse of a land will do so in peace, or they won't leave at all! Kill yourselves and each other once you step off the land bridge, and not a moment before." I glared. "Or take the easy way out, and try to stop me now."

I twitched my wings, and burning feathers fell away to either side.

Nobody dared try to stop me.

I walked back down the road, past the crews, and past Amaranth, until I was passing through the growing mass of migrants. It probably made for an odd sight. Me, seemingly oblivious to the pony alternately walking, kicking, or letting himself be dragged along in an effort to fight my hold, who trailed right behind me.

It probably helped that Digger's screamed, still-truthful rant never stopped, not once, as I walked against the flow of traffic.

The ponies who we passed knew he was a killer. Two out of three looked at this as an obvious kind of justice. The remainder didn't step in to help him as Digger described, over and over again, killing my husband in all but name.

I stopped at some point. Just far enough, I thought, and dropped Digger out in front of me. The spell I'd been scripting, mulling over in my head for the past hour suddenly solidified. It would work. I could tell- it felt right.

Digger shrieked and rolled, trying to get away as letters made of cloud stuff sunk into his fur, visible to the open air for bare moments as it took hold.

"Digger? Desnee Digger, put your eyes on me. I'm going to tell you exactly what's going to be happening to you, from now on." He wasn't listening, so I shook him violently with the Ghostly Hand. "There. Now, that bleeding heart fig was... well, I fed you the whole one. You won't be able to stop yourself from explaining yourself to everybody you meet. That's not your punishment, but it certainly won't hurt."

I stepped in close, until he had no choice but to look me in the eyes. "At first, you'll be pulled south. You can walk, or the magic will drag you until the skin falls off, up until you get back to the lands of Paradise Estate, central. You'll be by the shore, then. Feel lucky I didn't make you take a more direct route, through the mountain range."

The spell took hold and began dragging him away. I cantered gently, keeping up. "Next, you'll be free to go anywhere... except backwards. Every step you take toward the center of... Paradise... is one you can't take back. You can circle, or stop, or just keep on marching, but sooner or later you'll find yourself in the dead center of the subcontinent. Then... you'll stay there. I hope you eat well before you reach that point, because that's where you'll stay."

He was angling forward where the road had curved, and he had to fight to keep himself from pressing off the boulders scattered to the side, freeing himself onto an open path before being crushed. Still, I followed him.

"Winter is coming, Desnee Digger. The land is already dead, and the ice will come. It will bury you- the howling ghosts will have their new domain, and they will find you, so pray you freeze to death and are safely buried by the frost before they come!"

I stopped, and watched him be dragged inexorably onward. "Walk, Digger! Walk the long road and don't stop! You took Winter, and now winter is coming for you!"

I shook. I shook, and fell, and sobbed there. I'd pulled the most satisfaction that was left to be had, and it didn't amount to hardly anything. Soon I'd have to fly back and ready a boat to take Winter out to sea, because I knew he would prefer that to cremation or burial. He'd want to go like his pegasus father. I'd have to explain to a child still working on his full sentences that his dad wouldn't be coming back.

I would have to puzzle over Winter's last words, when they were hardly a puzzle at all, but the last little clue to the century's greatest puzzle.

The night air was cool, some two weeks later. As if it would be anything else, I mused. Solar and I were curled up on the roof still, having somehow missed the fact that our yawning meant we should have migrated to the cot inside.

I had stopped trying to put Solar back in his own little makeshift nest after the first two nights. Fitting myself and Winter in that small space had been an exercise in stupidity, and some of our limbs inevitably ended up hanging off, but now it was unbearably empty. And Solar kept waking up to find dad and I both, only to fail every time. Better not to let him wake up alone for a while.

Not sure why we hadn't slept the night through and woken with the sun in our eyes, I glanced around until I saw we had a visitor. And really, with how quiet thestrals tend to be, I felt pretty impressed with myself that his approach had caught my attention at all.

Then Midnight tapped the roof with his hoof again, and I realized he'd already done before it as a courtesy. Damn it.

Realization hit me, and I stood up.

"Oh, Midnight, I'm sorry. I missed our meeting, and the one after that, and-"

"I saw the boat," he said, and my mouth clicked shut. "I figured to give you some time- don't worry about forgetting."

Proof positive that not all teenagers were oblivious, I supposed.

"Yes," I said. "Well-"

"Mama?"

Midnight and I both looked over- Solar was awake and muzzily wiping at his eyes. "Who is it? Scared?" he asked.

I smiled. Reading my little story to him, 'Feel As I Will', had been a good idea.

"No, dear. Midnight is a friend. He helps me with my books, like dad did." A written lore of thestrals, which was different than what Winter and I had sometimes worked on together, but close enough. "Come say hi, he's nice."

Nervous but, knowing that it was okay to be brave whenever I gave the okay, he trotted forward and smiled shyly. "Hi! Ah... I'm Solar? Who?"

"Er, Midnight," said the young stallion. "Didn't you just hear-"

"He knows it's polite to give his name and get a name back," I told Midnight. "Now, um... do you mind if I put him down for the rest of the night and we can get started?"

"No need," said Midnight. "I'm just dropping in. The elders are moving us up to the the Lonely Sentry- that's the last mountain at the land bridge, so we have a good place to see what's happening down here. They're all very curious. I thought about letting them know what you told me, but..."

"They'll be angry," I supplied. "And not be in a listening mood."

"Yeah," said Midnight, his sheepish smile flashing long, sharp canines. "I've got one or two of the other kids I'm going to talk to. Ponies who won't freak out, you know?"

"They're free to visit," I assured him.

Midnight flinched- Solar had wandered up and started touching his wings. The foal looked up and asked, "Why?"

I caught onto his meaning, and gestured him closer. He leaped into my chest and tucked his head up under mine, glancing out at Midnight.

"Remember," I said, "What I said about all the ponies? There's pegasi, and unicorns, and earth ponies and sea ponies and flutter ponies too?" He nodded, and rubbed his head up against my chin. "This is a new kind- he's a thestral. He likes the dark, and he likes to fly really high, and he likes fish, and apple juice, and he plays songs."

Solar quirked his head. "Shessal?"

"Thestral," corrected Midnight.

"Tessle?"

"Thest..." the stallion sighed. "Bat pony. Bat pony is good."

"Bat pony!" chirped Solar. Of course he got that right away.

"Right," said Midnight, bringing his attention back to me. "So, um... how's it going with the..." he pointed at my belly. Awkward boy! Polite, though.

"Five months, maybe earlier," I said. "I'm doing fine- no tea, no alcohol, just waiting until I start waddling like a penguin."

"What's a penguin?" asked Midnight. "No, nevermind. But, um, remember, if you're looking for names, 'Midnight' is a very handsome one."

I laughed. "Nice try. I've already got a name, though. Go, Midnight, I'm sure I'll see you under the mountain."

Moonlit

Chapter Ten

"They're what?" I asked, trying to clear my head and make sure that I'd heard correctly.

"Rarity, Applejack, and Blues," said Twilight. "And... I think they're looking to court Golden Harvest, too, but I'd bet bits that they're going to wait for a bit. Applejack says she's dropping hints to remind the other mare that there might be, you know, an option later on."

I stared, until Twilight became visibly annoyed and snapped "What?"

"Is... that common, for ponies?" I asked.

Twilight grinned, and flicked a good-natured ear toward me. "More common than not. You humans are like griffons- monogamy and semi-political marriages."

I shrugged. "Jill was dating two nice people the year before I met her, but yeah, you're mostly right."

I turned back to my computer screen. Some of Twilight's ceaseless magic-babble had given me a few ideas, not the least because humans had a better general understanding of the natural world than ponies. Magic excepted. Bringing up source material on geomagnetic fields had excited Twilight to no end, so I was using a scam pass to bring up physics essays from the local university's database.

Twilight adjusted herself in the next chair over, making herself comfortable in the human-built chair before asking, "What about you?"

I gave a little snort. "Not dating, won't be dating anytime soon, dead set on females and unlikely to find more than one -if that- who could put up with me. Your turn."

The pony quirked her brows up, but didn't look up from her papers when she replied. "Golly, Tamara, don't be so optimistic. You're making me feel bad about how disappointed you'll end up being." She grinned. "No stallions at all, then?"

"Not in a hundred years," I replied. "You know us silly humans- most of us are ridiculously monosexual. Why, how many suitors does the pony princess have? Or did you just build yourself a nice little harem?"

"No!" said the alicorn, finally looking up from her work with something like panic in her eyes. "Faust, no!" Eventually she calmed and gave a self-deprecating grin. "I might poke fun at Rarity for reading all her 'saddle rippers', but I think I picked up too much of my own from the fantastical romance section."

I didn't let my eyes move over to the door of the library's reading room. Instead, I just whispered, "Play along so we can mess with Dash." I lowered my head so that Twilight's mane would obscure my face and winked. Realization crossed her expression, and she winked back.

"Of course I will, Twilight," I enunciated clearly and loudly. "I mean, I've never touched a pony like that, but I can't imagine any mare better than you to be my first."

"The first of many, I hope," said Twilight, affecting a soft, simpering sigh. "Oh the things we'll do to each other. Of course, for science, we'll have to... expand our test group, if you know what I mean."

Her lecherous grin made my ribs hurt, I was trying to hold my laughter so hard. I waggled my eyebrows and asked, "Can I show you the dance of my people? As soon as we get the rest of this test group together, I picture something more like a conga line. Ponies have invented sexual lubricant, haven't they?"

"Have we ever!"

I pretended to be surprised to see Rainbow. "Hey, Dash! How are you?"

The pegasus, wings out and straining, gurgled.

"Tell me, just out of curiosity," I said. "Do you know how to dance?"

The panic in the mare's eyes was priceless. Watching her try twice to get out of the room before finally scrabbling sideways to fit was the straw that broke the camel's back before both Twilight and I cracked up.

The librarians asked us to leave less than five minutes later.

Night was falling, but the march didn't stop. The shadow of the mountain range behind me stretched out over the land bridge, so that only the bare rock several miles out glimmered red with the fading sun. Still, even in the encroaching dark, not a single pony stopped their trek. If anybody stepped onto the bridge, they would continue to the end, come hell or high water. The last corner of the Paradise Estate was host to a massive shanty town, growing by the day as it served as a gateway to the west, crystallizing around the ponies that had come up from Amaranth.

The bridge itself varied from a wide, stony outcropping to something only a half mile across at points. Sea salt kept most of it bare of life, and the endless line of ponies stripped it further for fuel or food.

"Mama! Look, ponies!" said Solar, pointing excitedly.

"Yep, ponies," I agreed. "You clever foal, what would you expect? We live in magic pony land, after all."

"Magic pony land!" Solar cheered, hopping up and down. The kid was growing fast- his wings whirred away in excitement, but they couldn't lift him anymore, since his mass had caught up.

Thank the heavens- chasing him was hard enough before I began putting on weight again.

"That's right," I said, turning about. "Come along, kiddo! We're off to meet our new friends."

And I meant that- for some reason, the rest of Amaranth had gotten leery of dealing with me too closely, after dragging an exile to his slow death down through the middle of their camp ground. Most of my social contact was nocturnal, now.

Solar and I disappeared into the low hills beyond Amaranth, pushing through dead brush and sneaking under the illusory cloaks I cast periodically. Though I doubted anybody would dare follow me, I took Midnight's request for secrecy seriously.

"Herd mother," said a low, female voice.

I rolled my eyes as I pushed Solar into the clearing. "A herd of two and a half, Thicket. How are you, this evening?"

The deep green thestral bowed, as ridiculously formal as ever. Not a complete stick in the mud, since she had continued visiting the group without raising a fuss with the others above, but still overly exact. "Well," she said.

"Hey there, Tham'ra, Solar," said Midnight. "Ready to start?"

I looked around at the circle of five thestrals. All young, all curious, and all viewing this as more of an adventure than anything else.

"Sure. I've got presents, first," I announced, dropping my saddlebag to the ground with some relief. "It took me a while, but I managed to dig through my library and come up with these." With a smooth rasp of unbuckling cloth, I pulled out three books. Two bound, one a bundle of papers that had been a transcribing effort of mine from... a while ago. I wasn't sure when- I think it was from I was still traveling with Daisy.

"Come up with what?" asked Dawn, Midnight's younger sister.

I grinned. "Well, turns out there is a little bit of thestral lore already out there. I've already got these transcribed, so they're yours to keep. Just remember to keep them on the down-low, right?"

"We know the drill," said Midnight, having been told what 'on the down-low' meant a while back.

"What else did you get us?" asked Satin eagerly. The oldest, she still managed to be the least mature of the lot.

I rolled my eyes and through over the tiny packet of candied raisins. She let out the echo-high squeaks that meant a happy thestral, the kind of 'eee!' that only preteen girls should have been capable of, and pounced on them.

"What are we to do with those?" asked Thicket, prodding at the volumes.

"You read them," I said, and noticed as she sort of deflated. Something inside me slumped. "You... can't read?"

"Of course we can," said Midnight, shifting. "Some of us. Uh, by 'us' I mean..."

"Mother Artemia can," said Thicket. "And... Romu. I think. He says he can."

"I know some," said Midnight. He leaned over one of the books, then eased back. "Apparently I don't. Is that how everypony else writes?"

A suspicion grew in my mind, and I pointed to a clear patch of dirt. "Grab a stick, write me a sentence."

He did so, stick in mouth like many ponies did for finer work. Hoof-writing required practice, and the flexibility and grip only developed near puberty. Most ponies never cared to switch over. Solar carried crayons in his mouth or, using his wing tips, splashed paint around with gleeful abandon.

Midnight slowly, painstakingly wrote out three words. I squinted at the lines.

"That's... old earth pony script. Really old. Arkayan, I think. I don't think this thing even has adjectives."

"Whatatives?" asked Dawn, half the fruit candies in her mouth at once as she leaned in with puffy cheeks.

"Like, a 'red' berry, or a 'big' dog. Or a 'big, red' dog. Midnight, how would you write 'blue feather'?" I asked.

He gnawed sharply on his lip. "As 'a feather as of sky', or, 'as day sky', if you want to be specific."

A script almost as archaic as their language. I refused to say any language that worked was inferior, but I doubted there was another pony in Amaranth that this group could actually talk to, other than Solar. He had a limited vocabulary, but being my child, he knew that vocabulary at least three different ways over.

"These are in modern pegasus," I said. "I could teach you, easy as anything. You could learn just about anything, that way, or talk to anybody."

"More of those outsiders, I assume," came a voice from above.

On reflex, I shuffled Solar under my barrel as I looked up. All four of my little group had been wincing, but not running- they recognized the voice.

A large, grey-streaked mare stood upon a bare stone pillar above us, glaring with yellow eyes that gave a sharp glint in the dark. Beyond her, dozens of other shapes fluttered in the dark. The thestral tribe wasn't large- this had to be all of them.

A paper bag fell from her hooves -a familiar paper bag- and Satin flinched. Somebody, I figured, hadn't gotten rid of her part of the evidence.

"Hello, flock elder," I said. "I am Tham'ra, the-"

"Witch, traveler, etcetera," said the mare, cutting me off. "And meddler. You've been watched, more often than you know. Wandered the Blackorn Forest, cut the throat of the dragon Barbelethero in his long slumber, and so on."

I tried, as best I could, to recall those times and others. Had I been watched? Had the shadows seemed a bit too dark?

"Well." I forced an unsteady grin. "You have a bit of an advantage over me there."

"Indeed I do," said Artemia, as she couldn't be anybody else. The flock drew closer, half-seen.

"Mama? Scared?" asked a tiny voice.

"Hush, Solar," I said, petting him blindly. "I'll guess either your group has been following me, for some reason, or there are yet other flocks out there. Tell me, how's the hunting on the mainland?" She glared. "Because it won't get better. And I'll bet you moved to the Lonely Sentry, not because you were curious, but because some of yours are banking on the fact that they might have to follow the herds below. Are the other flocks following your lead?"

"Enough," said Artemia.

"No, it's not," I said. "You're all going to starve if you don't go, and if you go, you'll be flying through a warzone in short order. Unless you find a safe route around Pegasopolis."

"Around what?" asked Midnight.

"Colt, be silent!" barked Artemia, apparently long too tired of her ponies talking to me at all.

I studied her face. "You don't know. None of your scouts can fly that far and stay out of both the light and the notice of the other tribes. You won't talk... probably can't talk to any of the ponies below, except me, because you've gotten so out of touch."

"Witch, we have ways of dealing with your kind-"

"No!" I shouted, cutting her off, this time. "You won't, and you can't in any sense of the word. And if you've watched me for any length of time, you'd know that. I've not gotten any less dangerous, Artemia. And you and yours are only getting more desperate. This is the only olive branch you'll ever get. Censuring these brave, curious, clever four and... attempting to silence me will just signal the last, terminal decline of the thestral people."

"Your threats-"

Again, I cut her off. "What threat? Kill me, and I'm a harmless corpse. But you'll be cutting your own throat with the same blow, nag."

Silence stretched on for a long time.

"I... am not comfortable with this," the mare said, wearing a cloak almost identical to my own, only larger and heavier still. Apparently, thestrals did, occasionally, travel the ground below- they just kept as far away from ponies as possible.

"It's not so terrible," I said, but then had to stop. "Solar? On your hooves- mommy can't carry you and your sister," I told him.

He rolled off of me, landed, and pressed the crown of his head up against my belly. "No!"

Sibling rivalry before there was a sibling. Heaven help me.

"Witch, you said we would discuss the political climate in..."

"Terra Equestriana, they're calling it," I helpfully supplied. "The earth pony chancellor sent a message runner back through just last week who got a bit too talkative. My sources" -Nilly- "have passed a bit more on to me, since then. We're going to my, oof, home. We'll have some privacy there, and I have a... a couple of rough maps. They aren't much, but they'll help with the... the thestral route."

"Witch. Are you feeling well?" asked Artemia. She looked about helplessly.

"Just... really feeling it, today," I admitted, slouching a bit in the middle. "Probably been all those late night walks. I'd have asked Midnight to bring them closer, but I wanted to be careful. Can't be too careful. Not since Winter..."

"What of winter?"

"Who, not a what," I replied, almost giggling. Really, pony names... "My... stallion. Did Midnight not inform you?"

"I was told your paramour died in a bar brawl," admitted the mare.

I grit my teeth, but forced myself back onto my hooves and moving forward. "He died for being... atypical. He was picking up a tea ingredient -he never got drunk- and was found an acceptable target for being a pegacorn." I favored Artemia with a wry smile. "I've always had a soft heart for the strange."

"I'll forgo feeling insulted," said the elder. "I am... sorry to hear of your loss. That was some time ago, now... I think I remember one of my ponies mentioning it?"

"Four and a half, five months," I answered. Since he lay there, wounded and dying, and apologized for bleeding on my fur.

I shook my head, which I found turn remarkably clearer for another bout of nausea that decided that now would be the perfect time.

"Ugh. Let's just... it's right ahead," I pointed.

I'd gone and had another small, warm room built right up against the parked cart. It gave Solar and I a little more room, and had a proper cooking stove in it. The rough floor had been layered with all the rugs I'd bought in Amaranth the previous, and it was comfortable enough to fall asleep in whenever the two of us didn't make it back to the cot, or fell asleep reading together.

"Get the door, dear," I said, and Solar scampered ahead of us, jumping to grip the latch from his teeth and proceed to hang there like a novelty knocker. "Thank you," I told him, pushing it open. He swung along with it and giggled through his teeth.

"Is he... quite well?" asked Artemia.

"Quite, yes. Why do you ask?" But my attempts at keeping a straight face failed as a cramping pain shook my frame. "Sweet festering Shatner, child, what is wrong with you?"

"Mama? Wha'd I do?" asked Solar.

"Not you, your sis..." I broke off, since having Solar scold my belly wasn't as funny when I was already in pain. "Nothing, dear. I'm fine," I said, then just sort of rolled over onto my side as a sharp, cramping pain bent my spine.

"How far along are you?" asked Artemia.

I forced my eyes open wide enough to glare at her. "What? No. No! It's a month too soon! This is just... false labor. My sister had those- they happen. They yerargh-uh!"

Admittedly, I had left my sentence trailing a bit, there.

"I'm a grandmother four times over, don't tell me what I know about foalbirth!" said Artemia. "I don't care how unnaturally old you are, you're still well on your way," she informed me, voice muffled.

I frowned, opened my eyes again and, "Stop looking under my tail!"

"You're dilating."

"No I'm..." My eyes crossed. "I... may be."

"What's wrong?" asked Solar.

I smiled for him, reached into my cloak, and offered him a sweet. "Nothing, dear. Have a snack."

He devoured it on instinct, smiled, and curled up into an unconscious ball. Bleeding heart figs weren't the only useful substance I'd come across on my travels, after all.

I levitated him onto the bed inside the cart on instinct, shortly before completely losing the ability to focus on anything at all.

"I find myself hating you, witch, for that I never had such a thing myself as a young mother," Artemia told me.

"I don't use it often," I protested, gritting my teeth. "It looks like today will... nn... be a poor day for work. Tomorrow, maybe?" I asked, panting.

The thestral had thrown off her cloak and began pulling off mine. "You expect me to leave? You're a moron, witch. I served to aid my last grandchild into the world just last moon- you'll not find better hooves for this work among you day ponies."

"Artemia," I gurgled, "you don't even like me."

"And yet, amazingly, I've nothing against foals. We'll split a fresh pitcher of blood later and have ourselves a true friendship," the mare growled.

It would have been a great comfort if I could have said she was joking. "That... is a joke, right?" Her expression told me all I needed to know. "Oh. I owe Midnight... ah... an apology. Offered me... gah, fuck, cup of fox's blood."

"Fox?" asked Artemia. "I had not realized his full respect for you."

'Oh, goody,' I thought, but resigned myself to a sanguine chaser, later on. Thestrals were strange.

"Now, you know this part, yes?" asked the elder. She began rooting through our small pile of dishes. "Hot water. Linens..."

And so it went. My second birth was shorter, only two hours long compared to the better part of the day that had been last time, but still more painful.

"Hurts, it hurts, it hurts," I announced, chewing on my own hooves.

"That would be the horn," said Artemia. "The end is near, just keep on at it, come now." She removed her hoof from my side, where she'd been rhythmically rubbing in time with my breathing for the last hour.

I screamed, feraly, into the crook of my foreleg, and heard a little chirruping echo. A fresh towel fell in front of my eyes, and I buried my head in it roughly to wipe away the tears and sweat that had mixed into a stinging film.

"I... I, wait. Horn?" I asked, still trying to catch up.

"Aye, a unicorn filly. Congratulations, you have a small firestarter on your hooves. Good luck with that."

A tiny, damp, blue bundle was thrust at my head. Her mane and tail were a cobalt hue, and her coat was a deep, blueish indigo.

"You have a name for her?" asked Artemia while I looked at what was unmistakably Winter's filly, colors and all.

"Winter told me right before he passed," I said, feeling horribly heavy. The implications settled over me like a thick blanket, letting me know that the future would be horrible, and the little filly's birth just confirmed it. I wanted to cry.

The tiny foal curled up tighter, and I hurried to clean and warm her. She would be worth it.

I'd once referred to her as a happy accident. Now I realized just how wrong I'd been- there had been no accident. I'd gone back in time, yes, and interacted all-too-briefly with the true present before that. There could be no accidents in that kind of circumstance. I was working my way through a massive loop, lacking only the knowledge of how it closed.

The implications...

"Her name is Luna," I said, brushing out her mane.

It wasn't every day you learned, without the shadow of a doubt, that you were doomed to fail as a mother.

"Wake up, kiddo," I said, gently shaking my firstborn. Somu Sap, or candies coated in the stuff, was easy to shake off, even for foals. The little white foal stirred and yawned, blinking up at me.

"Morning?"

"Not quite," I answered. "Your baby sister came today."

Solar blinked, and looked to my much-reduced pudge.

"She's in the outroom," I said, and beckoned him over.

Artemia had disappeared, but demanded I have her back in a week's time to talk about her flock's business. I imagine even that grace period was due only to the fact that Luna had been born so small.

We stepped down from the carriage's main body and the tiny, pale foal slowly, tentatively approached the slowly breathing bundle lying in a nest of pillows.

Solar leaned in and sniffed at the cobalt tuft and stared. He looked back over his shoulder at me.

"She's sleeping," I was informed.

"You don't say," I said, and the foal went back to watching the newborn in silence.

I stayed back and watched Solar, and brought up in my own mind the suspicion I'd had since Winter's last request, some months ago. It had seemed too neat- the greatest remaining mystery in my mind had been the appearance of Equestria's diarchs. These were the most important decades surrounding the country's founding. The younger sister, Luna, and the older... the eldest...

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. What were the odds? I didn't think it was impossible that some odd curse might by laid upon my firstborn, but beyond that, the answer was obvious.

What did I know of how pony foals behaved, typically? Roles were mostly reversed, compared to humans. A 'modern woman' was an 'old-fashioned' pony.

Who better, to raise a healthy and happy transgender individual in a medieval society than somebody who'd been born outside that society? Who themselves had been...

Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe some incredibly unlikely circumstances had simply culminated in me assuming the most convoluted explanation possible?

Still.

"Hey, kiddo?" I whispered. My firstborn's ears perked up and... he... turned away from Luna and trotted over.

"Yes, mama?"

I gathered... him... up, and tucked my chin over a head of strawberry-blond mane. "I just want you to know I love you no matter what. You and your sister are the most important things in my world. Do you remember what I told you about, about how if you ever think I'm wrong, you can tell me, and how even foals can be right, even when parents aren't?"

Solar nodded against my neck.

"Good. Good, just... remember that. So you know it's okay to tell me if..."

'Fuck,' I thought. 'When the fuck did I know? When does anybody know? The kid's four, but...'

How old had I been?

"Kiddo? When you grow up, do you want... no, wait." I was screwing this up. I knew I was, but I was honestly trying. I sort of wish my own parents had tried, really. "Back in the village, who did you like to play with, more? The colts or the fillies?" Winter had taken Solar out whenever he could, because that tended to be what stallions did, in magical pony land. My time with the little one had been later in the day, reading stories and singing songs.

Solar pulled his head back and quirked it to the side. "Fillies."

"Oh. Okay," I said. "Why do you think that is?"

Tiny, rose eyes glanced back at Luna. "It... felt more nice."

"That's okay," I told him. "Solar, do you like being a colt?" Incomprehension. "How would you like to be a filly? If... if I said you were my little girl, instead of my little boy. You would still be nifty, and smart, and I would always, always love you so much. If you're really a girl, or really a boy, you can tell me. You can be Luna's big brother, or Luna's big sister. That's... they're both okay."

Solar frowned, the world's most thoughtful toddler.

"Because when I was a little... foal," I continued. "Everybody thought I was a boy, until I said they were wrong."

Solar stared at me, shocked. "Why?"

"Because I was scared to tell them," I admitted. "But remember when the story, that when you're in a safe place, it's okay to be brave, even if you're scared? You and Luna are both very safe here."

"Oh." Solar pushed back into my chest again. "Can I be pretty like you?"

Years ago, I had stared into this world's future, seeing it through a pool in a sacred place whose builders had been forgotten by time. I had seen my friends long left behind. Beyond them, I had seen two regal mares, around whom the whole world had turned.

"Even prettier," I promised. "So, are you a big, beautiful girl? Or a big, handsome boy?"

"'M'a girl," said the foal, talking shyly into my coat. I rubbed her back.

"Want a girl name? It's a special one. It's fit for a princess." A nod. "How about 'Celestia'?" A quirky little Spock-brow, which she'd copied from me. I smiled. "But we can call you 'Tia'."

Celestia smiled like she hadn't since Winter left us.

"Love you, mama."

"Love you, Tia. Would you like to learn a song to sing for Luna?"

As it turned out, I had been right about the thestrals- Artemia's flock hadn't been the only one, and they hadn't been sitting on their haunches during the Paradise Estate's new, final winter.

I sat with Midnight in a little space beyond the grove that had been chosen for the next meeting. The flock mother had insisted that, since I was 'taking my sweet time', things may as well include the newly arrived elders as well.

"So... you really aren't..." The thestral paused, staring at my eldest. "How?"

"Magic," said Celestia, giving the enigmatic shrug I'd taught her. When in doubt, I'd said to 'blame magic' or say 'ask my mother'. And if she changed her mind, having a mad witch as a mother would be excuse enough to declare herself a damned cactus, should she prefer it.

'Please don't declare you're a cactus,' I mused. 'It's hard enough for some to tick the right damned box on medical forms.'

"But, you said you're a filly," said Midnight. "Now. And she said you were-"

"Magic," said Celestia, giggling, because she was still too young to hold a straight face.

The thestral looked to me and I repeated Tia's enigmatic shrug. "Magic. It's the darndest thing. Get over here, little girl. You are covered in burrs."

"No'm not!" my eldest protested, scratching at her ear like a cat, probably to try to dislodge the burr there.

I ignored her and started combing out her coat, using my teeth when it came to her mane and tail. Another weird pony thing... that I didn't know I was doing until after I'd started doing it the first time.

At that point, I was nearly certain that ponies were, in fact, part cat. Watching Tia chase tinsel when she was back in diapers only confirmed it, really.

I shifted Luna back a little further down my neck in her ridiculously heavy sling -unicorns needed to stay warm, and it hadn't been warm for a couple of years, now- and put Tia back on her four hooves.

"Come on, then, let's go see what the big ponies want," I said, and Tia nodded officiously, high-stepping out in front of us and leading the procession.

"Frikking adorable," said Midnight, slipping back into the thestral patois. He had an ear for languages, which had pleased me to no end- I figured I ought to pick up students more often.

We entered the grove, and I bowed low while Tia began trying to stare the crowd down. She'd gotten so much more... confident, it seemed.

"Flock mothers," I said. There were seven now, and Artemia anticipated two more to come in the following weeks. The mountain above had never seen so many inhabitants.

"Witch," said the main mare herself. "You are... in a better state for this, now?"

I curled my neck around and nuzzled the massive bundle of cloth resting between my wing joints. "That I am," I told her. "Midnight here has my maps."

Artemia motioned him forward, and the stallion began arranging the large, rolled parchment out on the flat stone at the grove's center. He set out smaller stones to keep them unfurled, and I got right down to business.

"This, here, is the heart of the newly settled area," I said, pointing to the narrow triangle of clear space where the land bridge met the other end of the sea. "To the west is the frost shelf, which seems unrelated to the great freeze. Probably glaciers, sustained by the winds of the far north. It makes for a pretty bleak barrier. Here," I pointed, "is a thick forest, which by all reports has been... less scouted than barricaded. There are a number of dangers there that the three tribes have never come across. Massive things that seem none too interested in sharing space."

Manticores, I didn't say. An entire pride of them, maybe, which misrepresented the rest of Equestria but made the approaching settlers think twice.

"And in this narrow triangle, there are the three tribes. Commander Hurricane's Pegasopolis to the northern end, and Unicornia and the Earth Villa to the lower corners. The Earth Villa is to the southeast, closest to the coast, and should present the safest air route without either Hurricane's squadrons or Platinum's magical artillery."

I sighed. "Mind you, each of these settlements is only a two days' journey from one another. It's obviously unsustainable, not just politically, but in terms of space. Tens of thousands have yet to make the journey, and..." I blinked, looked up at the watching faces, and said, "...and you likely don't care about all that. No big deal- you have a route. Now you just need to make the trip over the bridge."

"Night would be best. Of course," said one mare, Citrona Umbra, I believed.

"For more reasons than you know," I agreed. "The travel is being made in waves- every day, groups set across from sun up to sun down, but there are wide gaps left by those empty times of the night. Really, just maintaining pace, and space, within these gaps should leave you unmolested by anybody."

"It all seems rather simple, for all of the build-up you insisted on beforehand," said yet another flock mother.

This time, it was Artemia who responded, snorting. "We are shadows and bogiemares to the lot of them. If we are to keep our solitude and safety, then yes, this preparation was entirely necessary."

'And go straight back to becoming ever more of a non-entity,' I thought, and I knew it for the unkind thought it was. But it was true. I resisted the urge to look to Midnight- he and his little group would end up being more important than they could possibly imagine. I thought of Luna, and wondered if, with two foals now bouncing around, I might need a nanny. Somebody who would, just by being there, leave the future diarchs familiar with this strange little tribe.

I fought the urge to shudder- really, out of all the people who shouldn't be performing social engineering, here I was...

"All settled, then," said another mare, Shadi Sern. Her group had only arrived the night before. "The day ponies are coming in greater numbers, the, ah, 'fourth wave', as you said. Now and before they arrive should prove the most fortuitous time."

"If it were done, it would be best done quickly," agreed Artemia. "When will you be ready to leave?"

It took me a moment, longer than I'd like to admit, to realize that she was addressing me.

"I?" I asked. "What of..." And there I stopped myself, and forced myself to think before talking.

Thestral wings only behaved mostly the same as pegasi wings, but the nervous twitches of the assembled party were there if I only looked. These ponies didn't know me, didn't trust me, and I was just another 'day-dweller' to them, albeit one who knew far too much for their peace of mind. I'd mentioned all these dangers, the cold and blight had boxed them in from the other direction, and here I was offering salvation if they just... did as I said, but not 'as I did'.

'Really,' I asked myself, trying another tract of logic, 'Did you think yourself safe to wait it out here? The living winds are coming, and these herds around you will seem as delicious a treat to them as the new settlements will. You are not safe. You have never been safe. Tia and Luna are not safe, but at least they'll be with you.'

I blinked. "I'll need one of your bigger lads to pull my cart," I admitted. "My library's outgrown me a bit, and I haven't hired on an assistant since Amaranth moved." Sheepishly, I added, "And I doubt I'll get any takers with my new infamy."

"I saw that," said Umbra. "We were already on our way here, and... my goodness, you really are a witch, aren't you?"

"I would ask you not to talk about that," I said, the familiar, horrible calm settling over me. "My children are with me, elder."

In Umbra's defense, she looked at least somewhat sheepish.

"Yes, well. I'm sure we can provide... somepony."

"Satin can do it. She is much stronger than she looks," said Artemia.

The calm went away, and I was able to genuinely smile. Or, at least, try to. "Excellent. Somebody I know I can pay with sugared fruit." I carefully did not look in Midnight's direction, as I could hear his sides shaking. "Tomorrow night will be fine. I'll disassemble our little addition tomorrow and we'll sleep in. The rest of you can join us by dawn, but you realize we'll have to push on through the first day to avoid being overtaken."

"We have some large tents we can put up," said Shadi. "My herd uses them in the desert when we can not manage the whole trip between adequate perches in a single night. Day travel will be hard, but cloaks are easy to manufacture, and we should manage for a few days."

"Four or five," I noted, drawing my hoof along the irregular line between the two landmasses. "We have a plan?"

"We have a plan."

A Warm Place

Chapter Eleven

"This is an evacuation," came Jill's voice through the cell phone. "Code blue! I repeat, this is a code blue!"

"Damn it, Fluttershy!" I muttered.

Over my shoulder, the pegasus whimpered. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I... I might have overreacted-"

"A 'starvation diet' doesn't mean they're starving the 'little kitties'!" I hissed. I lifted the cell in my hand and added my own frantic question to the conference call. "Crazy Dan, what's the word on Twilight?"

"We owe her a set of Harry Potter books," came Dan's voice. "She saw some kids trying to hiss at the anaconda in the reptile house-"

"This is Linda, and I need towels!" Came Linda's voice, accompanied by a very familiar giggle. "Pinkie wanted to swim with the baby polar bears- she game them new toy floatie balls!"

"What's the word on Rainbow Dash?" I asked.

"Got her," said Jill. "I think she might have bit somebody. We're on the aviary."

"You mean... in the aviary," suggested Linda.

"I said what I meant! Just because you can't see her wings, doesn't mean they don't work!" said the angry barista. We all ignored the 'hell yeah!' that echoed over her line in familiar, tomboyish tones. "I can see the koala pen from here- they are wearing adorable, tiny hats. I repeat, they are wearing adorable, tiny hats."

"Tell me one of your friends can behave in public!" I hissed.

"I'm sorry!" said Fluttershy.

"What's the big what, now?"

Both of us -though Fluttershy was pretty much aimed wherever I was looking, at the time, given her position- turned to see Applejack. The earth pony was sipping on a lemonade and carrying a family of stuffed pandas. There was a granny panda, two sibling pandas and a baby panda. Adorable.

"We have to break out of the park," I explained.

Applejack sighed. "Ah figured this'd happen eventually. Ya know, Ah can't take them anywhere?"

"No kidding," I deadpanned.

"Let's go climb a fence, then," said the farm pony. "This is Jasper's Amusement Park all over again."

'Metaphors can't do this justice,' I thought, looking back over my shoulder. 'It's like that story with Moses, except I'm leading a bunch of grumpy bat ponies instead of Jews, off of a beach instead of over a desert, and I'm a fluffy flying pony instead of a prophet, and... yes, that metaphor didn't last too long at all.'

The sea spray was sharply cold, even at the center of the mile-wide shelf of rock we were walking over. This last stretch, we were all walking at night. Hundreds of ponies, cloaked or crammed into one of the two carriages they had somehow... acquired... followed tiredly. A large number were tucked into my own little vehicle, and Satin had been joined by Midnight in pulling.

Another elder, by the name of Starlight, appropriately enough, signaled for us all to halt. She was watching the stars, and the moon, and it looked like she was plenty satisfied by what she'd found. With a quick, semaphore movement with her wings, the group began to dissolve. Cargo was unpacked, cloaks were cast aside, and the carriages that I neither knew nor wanted to know the source of were weighed down with stone and sent into the crashing waves below.

Artemia approached me by hoof, even as flocks took to the air by the dozen. They would make it to the distant shoreline, and the safe spaces beyond, just fine.

"I have received a request by several of the youngsters," she informed me. I already knew, of course, but I controlled my face the best I could for the sake of the look of things.

"Oh?"

"Indeed," said the mare wryly. "Six of them insist on... learning from you. Midnight has the ultimate goal of producing a thestral library, and I'm inclined to allow him- his sister will be leading the flock someday..." she muttered something which might have been 'ancestors save us', "and she's thrown her support in on the idea. I'm not entirely opposed to it myself."

I grinned, and even the last five days of trying to keep a bunch of ponies that managed to be stereotypically spooky and as hyperactive as children at the same time in line couldn't break my mood.

"It would be a pleasure and an honor," I said.

Artemia leered, just a bit. "A soft heart for strange things, you said."

"Like attracts like," I said. "And you don't get stranger than me."

Artemia sighed and trotted away to share a few quick words with the six idling youths, who stood awkwardly apart as their kinsmen took off around them. Then Artemia left and we were, basically, alone together.

"Alright, kids!" I said, in my best 'camp counselor' voice. "Time for bed- you're all diurnal for the time being. If you can't sleep, I have some candy that will drug you to a happy slumber. Satin, that's not an excuse for free candy."

I hopped inside the cart. But as the vehicle gently shook and the air behind me distorted, I remembered suddenly that I had the only shelter left in our group. I felt my ear flick thoughtfully, shrugged, and wandered over to the bed.

Tia, from where she lay curled protectively around Luna, glanced over sleepily at the group before dismissing them and dragging both herself and her sister into my side. The six thestrals quietly started piling my endless pile of rugs against the base of the cot, and started piling themselves in next, so close that I felt Dawn and Midnight through the thin padding of my bed. It seemed they'd just assumed that... no, I told myself. This was how they always slept, in a ridiculously large pile in whatever cave they called home at the time.

I'd spent... a lot of time alone. Occasionally I'd observe normal pony families, but hadn't ever wondered what sleeping arrangements would be like. I wondered if, had I ever gotten involved with an actual herd, in the classic sense of the word, if this was how I'd always spend my nights. A warm press of bodies, soft snores, and quiet hums.

Hell, neither Winter nor I had stopped... looking, even during the heights of our relationship. But with us being who we were, getting anybody to look back more than casually had been an exercise in futility.

But this warm huddle of sleeping others, this placeholder herd...

I never slept so well.

Equestria -Terra Equestriana, still, really- somehow managed to be better than the Paradise Estate in every single way. Whether it was the close living provided by the united tribes that kept away the predators and dark, or the way that I was walking over unblighted land for the first time in many decades, or just the general sense of newness, it was there.

The upper reaches of the forest that served as a barrier to the rest of the future Equestria, where it met the cliffs that served as the shore there, became home. Like in Amaranth's second, shanty town location, I just began adding on sections to the sides of the cart. A little 'out room', a workspace for my new students, and a tiny platform up top with the beat-up old telescope that Winter had left behind.

"Midnight, stop staring. You'll give me ideas," I warned my first student. In true teenager fashion, he sputtered and blushed.

"I've just never seen a day pony infant," he said in his defense. "Not really. Minus the bump on her head, she sort of looks like one of us."

I glanced down to little nursing Luna and grinned. "She's got her dad's colors. Stick some downy wings on her and call it a day," I said. "But yeah. A couple weeks and she'll be toddling around and causing me no end of trouble. Like Tia," I added, as the sound of violent crashing echoed from the nearby bushes.

"We're quite alright, herd mother!" called Thicket, trying to maintain her composure from a distance.

"Another thing, you keep calling me that," I said, rolling my eyes. "My 'herd' consists of one plushy potato," I gestured to Luna, "and one ballistic missile," I gestured back to where Satin was trying to keep watch of Tia.

"But... you're an elder," said Midnight. It was the same answer I always got from the little flock. My ego wasn't certain of whether to be pleased or bruised.

My sense of humor, though...

"Are you saying I look old?" I asked, forcing my eyes through long practice to go bright and teary.

Midnight jolted. "No! Never, of course not! Forgive me, witch, if my words-"

"Mama!" My ballistic missile wrapped herself around my head. "I found a frog!"

I straightened the new kink in my neck and sighed. "And is the frog now on me, silly filly?"

"His name's Bip! I want a skirl, now!" said Tia. That was a 'yes' then.

"Say it with me," I said, focusing on the important part of our little back and forth. "Sku-whir-uhl."

"Sku-whir-uhl! Please can I?" she asked, hanging off my head and looking me pleadingly in the eyes. Above her, 'Bip' looked at me pleadingly, too. Probably hoping to be returned to his pond.

"Ask Midnight," I said, and the missile leaped off of me and charged the young stallion who was far out of his depth.

Then I felt it. The cold, the blight, the screeching hunger that must have been in my head because nobody else had ever mentioned it. I looked northward, through the narrow trees of the forest's edge. The distant sight of Pegasopolis had turned dark and roiling, and thick clouds rolled closer past it, down from the frozen north.

The windigos must have finished consuming the Paradise Estate. Gorged and following the feuding tribes, they had given up what little subtlety their animal minds were capable of.

"Everybody to me!" I shouted, stopping Midnight and Tia dead in their places and marking the rustle of the other five approaching thestrals. I'd never yelled in their presence before. Dawn, Satin, Thicket, Tilter and Penny raced into the little clearing.

"Everyone together," I barked, pulling up Luna mid-meal and holding her close. She began to cry.

"Mama?" asked Tia, but she quickly followed the lead of everyone else and looked at the sky. "Inside, now?"

"That won't help. Come here and hold your sister," I said. "Midnight, hold the two of them. Everybody get in as close as you can." I more or less pushed them into a pile and stood out in front of them, facing the oncoming front.

My mind worked desperately. I had no idea how long it would be between the onset of the cold and whatever it was that the three hangers-on to the tribal leaders were meant to do. I had never asked exactly how 'Hearths Warming Eve' had first happened. It hadn't been relevant, and anything that Twilight Sparkle might have mentioned would have been colored by history.

"Tham'ra, did I get those blasted directions right?"

It seemed too absurd, really, that I hardly believed it even after recognizing the voice of the grumpy stallion pushing through the brush. He stepped into the clearing, noisily shaking the foliage from his bells.

Starswirl's eyes alighted on me and he glared. "You had to pick an ancestors-forsaken forest to park that contraption of yours in! Being mad is no reason to be inconsiderate, you know, and are those thestrals?"

I glared. "Starswirl! Get useful or get in that pile!"

He looked confused. "This is all rather sudden. Usually a mare ought to get a fellow flowers, first-"

"Argh!" I stamped over, grabbed the wizard, and spun him in place. "Icy sky monsters! Put up a barrier against wind or shut up and stop being useless!"

He stared up, wide-eyed, from under the brim of his hat. "Oh, stars. The meeting, my princess! My student! I have to get back, right now-"

"There's no time," I told him.

"No, my new Blinking Step cantrip, I can cover the distance, I can!" His horn began glowing a bright, blistering gray. I tapped it, sending him almost crumpling to the ground.

"You'll put yourself halfway into a tree," I growled. "They're miles away, your spell's not complete yet, and you're a moron!" I forced myself to breathe. "Star, you have to trust that your student can handle this."

The unicorn stared. "Handle this? How can anypony handle that?!" He gestured off toward the roiling clouds- faces were appearing in them, now.

I clenched my eyes shut. "Starswirl, you've asked me how I know what I know, and never questioned that I knew. Believe me now when I say that this is happening, and the best that you can do is pray that Clover is every bit the mare that you've trained."

"Then why are you so intent on putting up a shield?" he asked, stammering.

"Because I'm a very paranoid mother," I explained. He nodded, and settled himself at my side and began casting.

Between chanted syllables, he said, "You're telling me this will all turn out fine?"

"It better have," I said, scripting vapor into a pattern I'd been practicing off and on for the better part of a decade, just in case. "It cost ponykind Paradise Estate, it better be buckin' worth it."

"Those things killed what was the only world we've known for centuries, and now they're here?" asked the mage, redoubling the power he was putting out. "Witch, I am not okay with this!"

"Neither am I, wizard. But, yup," I said, simply enough. "But now my children will know summer."

"And the, er, thestrals?" asked Starswirl, straining.

"Ongoing project."

"Ah."

Over the thick shape of Starswirl's protective ward, I wrapped hot, wavering air into a stubborn sheath. The first breezes to reach us were gentle, almost tentative in their movements.

Then came the winds.

I watched through the combined, wavering barrier as frost crept over everything. There was no true snow, but the space outside grew so horribly brittle and white. I spread my wings, as if trying to encompass the whole of the world and telling it to shove off in the same motion. Starswirl bent almost double, horn aimed ahead as if he were trying to take a more direct approach and stab at the cold with everything he had.

And then we waited.

An hour, two. The tiny herd behind us watched in silence, wincing as branches from the trees around us turned brittle and fell to the ground with sharp snaps.

I began shivering. Not, mind, from the cold- our space was still safe. It was the strain. My little 'knack' drew from the same wellspring that fed my pegasus magics, and even almost ninety years of practice could only push a self-trained somebody so far. I was held to such scarily effective standards because I was clever about what I did have, and lied my ass off when necessary.

"Tham'ra..." Starswirl was peering at me from out of the corner of his eye.

"M'fine," I muttered through dry lips.

He shook me. And why- the bastard had stopped! God damn it, but if I were in a state to move, I'd give him such a kicking!

"Tham'ra, it's over," he insisted. "Look. Feel!"

I blinked. My vision had turned blurry as it had gotten harder to keep my eyes wet, but... the distant clouds had turned a more natural color. The ground beyond, even, looked just a bit healthier than it had before the frost. That pervasive aura from before had disappeared as if it were never there.

"Oh. Oh, good," I said, before raising my voice. "Midnight! Dawn! Help me back over there!"

I let my weight sag against the two ponies who were at my side in an instant. 'Good little minions,' I thought warmly.

"What was it, mama?" asked Tia, cantering up worriedly with frog and sister in tow.

"Monsters," I told her. "Some brave ponies chased them all away again, though. You remember Clover?" The foal nodded excitedly. "She helped them. You make sure and say 'thank you' next time she visits. Satin, put on some tea, would you? We have a guest."

Suddenly reminded of the day pony in their midst, the tiny flock tensed up. "Go on," I insisted. "All of you. I'll explain to the old stallion, alright? He's a friend."

And like that, he, I, and the two foals had a good amount of space to ourselves. Tia ignored her rapidly escaping frog to run up and hug the fellows front legs.

"Hi, Starswirl! Pleased to see you! Um..." she wracked her brain, "Nice weather!"

"She's just the politest thing," I cooed, sweeping both of them up together. Luna burped.

"She?" asked Starswirl. "Tham'ra, I'm not half as old as I might look, but-"

"Magic," I said.

"Magic!" echoed Tia.

Starswirl's eyes all but crossed. "I'm almost entirely certain the the school of transmutation..." He trailed off at my glare. "Ah, magic was it? The darndest thing." He cleared his throat. "I've met... a fair few ponies who've had trouble with magic. A quick illusion and a dapper wizard's robe, and none say that there was ever a problem, aye?"

"You've a very nice beard, Star," I told him. The somewhat small unicorn, voice eternally, practiced gruff and as surly as anybody, went still.

"It's... quite a good beard, isn't it?" he asked, stroking at it. "But if we could make yet another, completely unrelated change of topic?"

"Sure," I said, smiling pleasantly. "Which topic? The monsters are already gone, so that's a bit of a dead end there-" and I thought, 'and you'll not pry it out of my own dead lips,', "but what else could you mean?"

He frowned, back to business as usual. "The thestrals, mare! You've a load of imaginary ponies running around and making you tea!"

At the shout, Satin looked over from the heating kettle and waved.

"Less imaginary than you'd think," I said. "These are my students. With any luck, future thestrals won't have to remain quite so imaginary. What brought you out here in the first place?" I asked.

"Just hoping for some more of your uncanny insight, I suppose," said the stallion. "The mages of the dawn and dusk temples have been straining without their usual arcane monuments. More of them have been coming down with exhaustion. Building new ones will be a work and a half."

"Easy," I said. "Have the pegasi scout out some likely places, further into the land's interior. I'm sure you can fit together some artifacts that'll indicate ley lines. Heck, maybe one or two mountaintops. I know how you unicorns love your towers."

"Tower equals wizard, wizard equals tower," said Starswirl knowingly. "But I doubt the pegasi would help us in that respect even if it meant the sun otherwise stalling in the sky altogether!"

"I think you'll find that, by the time you get back, things will have changed," I said. "Thank you, Satin."

The mare had appeared and hoofed each of us a mug of sharp black tea, and Tia had gotten one full of juice. I managed not to wince as she tucked her full face into the sticky, sticky substance.

"One of these days you're going to spill it all," said Starswirl.

I grinned. "Oh, but I have, at least, for the most part." I sipped at my tea, then said, "Of course, you don't have Winter's persuasive... charms."

"I don't need to know that badly," declared the wizard.

"No I didn't!"

"Oh yes you did!"

"Girls?" I prompted, and both fillies froze, eyes on me. Instead of reprimanding them, though, I motioned for them to step back. They did, and got those little conspiratorial grins as I wound up, breathed, and bucked backwards with both hooves.

The oak tree I struck shuddered, and out fell two thestrals. Thistle, uptight, clever Thistle, fell on her feet and immediately began fixing her mane. Midnight managed to fall on his head.

"What did I tell you about that?" I asked.

"Ooh!" Luna, of course, knew that whatever else was going on, the bigger kids were in trouble. Only Tia knew enough, in a little kid sort of way, to look visibly embarrassed for both the thestrals' sakes.

"You, um, you said-"

And that was as far as Midnight got before Satin fell on his head.

"Tia, what's they doing?" asked Luna.

"They were kissing up there," whispered Tia in a too-loud voice.

Then of course I, in a too loud voice, had to ask, "You three were kissing?!" I put a look of faux shock on. "Oh, Midnight, if Dawn's up there I'm going to be quite creeped out."

"Lady Tham'ra!" shouted Midnight, shuddering at the mention of his sister.

"I do believe she found a tree with Tilter in it," said Thicket, looking utterly and delightfully shameless. It was hard, I thought, to tease the ones born with so much poise.

"Good for her, I suppose," I said. "You ponies watch the place, and get to working on that tree house! I won't have my cart soiled by your youthful indiscretions. Private time is for private places."

Midnight began choking on nothing at all, but Satin just smiled and said, "Yes, herd mother!"

"Come on, girls," I said, beginning our long march to town. I did my best not to see my children trade promises of ribbon from the town for candy which Satin seemed to regularly get a hold of, despite never visiting civilization. They didn't get much, allowance-wise, but they could do with it whatever they wished.

The walk was as peaceful as it ever was. Three years of living on the outskirts of Earth Villa had, as any life did, developed a kind of routine. I worked the thestrals' brains thin, then stuffed them back full of knowledge. We all added to the living space we had. The girls learned woodspony lore on top of whatever classical tidbits I manage to cram into their heads, and I got a visit from Starswirl or Clover every couple months to trade books and courtly gossip.

Tia wanted to learn to be a witch, someday, and Luna just wanted to be a little tree-monster. Or something. The girl had a rich inner life, if nothing else.

The habit of shouting at the wildlife had taken a bit of getting used to, admittedly, but at least she kept away the rowdier squirrels.

"Mama?" I became aware of Tia shaking my foreleg.

"Hmm?" I noticed the girls were both standing in front of me, looking back worriedly. "Oh. Did it again, didn't I?" I asked, and they both nodded. "Nothing to worry about, let's keep on."

I had to take a sharp right to continue along our path, though. I turned sometimes, daydreaming, or even sleepwalked and always found myself pointing towards the southwest. Never when I needed my concentration for something important, but...

'It started after Hearths' Warming,' I thought. 'Something's going on and you keep trying to look at it, even if you're not certain just why. Like you felt the Windigos, this is a danger you're only feeling because you know it's going to happen.'

Maybe. Or maybe senility had finally hit and my still-young body was just hosting a brain turned to sludge.

"Alright, now, let's not let things get too quiet," I said, smiling back at the girls who were in their autumn cloaks. Tia had demanded wing slits, unwilling to go quite that far in mimicking me. I'd admit that the feeling of restriction on one's flight limbs never completely disappeared, and she didn't care to pass herself off as an earth pony as I sometimes did, only to carry two trump cards on her back. Not when she was still a couple of years from them fully developing, anyway.

"Luna? You start- name the twelve magic circles. Tia? Let her talk, and fill in any she misses after she tries."

The little unicorn grinned and belted out, "Kinessic, 'Lusory, Ampify, Stashial, Chantment, um..." She glared down, cross-eyed, at her own nose. "Markayshum."

"Very good, Luna- that's half," I said. "Now, you said 'Kinesthics', first- what's that one all about?"

"Pushing!" said Luna proudly.

"Right. We push -we impart velocity- to move things. If we give something speed going up, it floats. There's plenty more, too. The next one, Illusory magic, is all about..."

"Pictures! And music!"

"Those are a big part of it, yes," I said, and started leading first her, then Celestia through the basics of illusion.

"When do we get to learn it, though?" asked Tia.

"When you're big," I replied.

The little pegasus pouted. "You said yesterday that I was already a big girl."

"Bigger, I mean," I said with a grin that I didn't try too hard to conceal. "I want you and Luna to learn your tribal magic, first. The more you start with, the better you'll be as witches."

"I am a witch," said Luna, pointing up at her nub of a horn. The barest of sparks fluttered away from it.

"Nope! Unicorn magic's different," I told her. "I want Tia throwing around storms, and you sending up fireballs before I teach you witchcraft." I bit my lip. "Not in the house, mind you. Books burn too easy."

"Yes, mama," sighed Tia. Luna sent another spark out, apparently trying to measure it against 'fireball' status, and was surprised that she didn't manage to incinerate a passing tree.

I tried -and couldn't quite manage- to connect these two foals with the near-deities of the future Equestria. Especially since, not three days ago, I caught Luna eating a bug.

"What I wouldn't give for a camera," I muttered quietly.

The impromptu home-schooling lesson ended at the same time as our trek did, walking into Earth Villa. Like Amaranth, the entire place felt more than a little temporary. Though that, I acknowledged, might be the feel of all frontier towns everywhere. Already, routes were being laid out to the south for those who weren't content to live at the site of the last Windigo Freeze. Reports were being sent back of an... empty country.

Wild, yes. Different than the Paradise Estate? Well, the populace was faring a lot better, and a lot more safely, so that, too, was a yes. But there were ruins there, and signs of past habitation. I knew for a fact that there were other nations that the settling ponies hadn't yet reached, but none of them had made so much as a token appearance.

Frankly, I all but itched to go and see just what it was all about, but there were still the thestrals to consider, and I didn't want to go dragging my girls around when they needed at least some stability. Even if it was a very odd sort of stability.

"Lady Tham'ra! Girls!"

"Clover!"

In an instant, I was left behind as the violet unicorn mare at the entrance of the market square was overrun by Tia and Luna. They really did idolize her.

A lot of ponies did, really. It said a lot to the progress made recently that a unicorn could travel through the earth tribe's temporary capitol unmolested, but then news had gotten out over Clover, now 'the Clever', Private Pansy, and Smart Cookie. The three mares who had gone from right-hoof aides to the most powerful ponies in the world, to being the heroes who pushed back winter eternal.

I trotted closer and scooped up the girls, sketching a quick bow to the younger mare. "Hello, Clover. What brings you out east of Unicornia today?"

Clover laughed nervously. "You do, actually. The princess was looking to seek your aide in something."

"Starswirl twisted her hoof again?" I asked, recalling Princess Platinum's... distaste for me.

"Of course not!" said the other mare, eyes too bright and shifty. "I'm actually here to get the chancellor and Smart Cookie, too. We have to include everypony in big decisions, now, after all!"

"Of course," I said. "Well, I promised the girls we could browse the market first. Are we on a very tight schedule?"

"I suppose not," said Clover numbly, having gotten an eyeful of Luna and Tia's pleading expressions. "We're getting a pegasus escort. One of the other court mages has managed to put an extension spell over a carriage- pegasi can draw them through the air as if they were being pulled over level ground!"

"Sounds terrifying," I said, and smiled. "I'm looking forward to it. Girls, go with auntie Clover, I have to do a thing."

"A-auntie?!" stuttered Clover as I made my escape.

I wandered between the simple thatch-roof homes until I found an out-of-the-way place and made a wing-assisted leap up onto one of the sturdier buildings.

"Hello, Tilter. Did you hear that?" I asked the cloaked pony who was lounging in the shadow cast by a chimney. She nodded. "Mind letting the others know we'll be gone for a bit?" Another nod. "You know you're all a bunch of creepy stalkers, right?" Another, more embarrassed nod. "Well, that's alright," I told her, leaning in for a quick nuzzle to show there was no harm done. "Just try not to terrify the locals."

She saluted, and I hopped back down to ground level. Creepy, adorable bat ponies.

"Remember, girls," I said, boosting the fillies up into the carriage. "When this thing inevitably falls apart, you grab hold of me and I'll get us back down safely."

"Okay, mama!" said Luna, who looked disturbingly excited at the prospect.

"And what about the rest of us?" asked a voice from behind me.

Without looking, I answered, "Grab the steadiest-looking pegasus you can, or grab Clover. I think unicorns bounce."

"Tham'ra!" said the violet mare, appalled.

"What, you don't bounce?" I asked.

"I meant stop scaring my friend!" said Clover.

I turned and, not for the first time, had to stop myself from staring too hard at a too-familiar face. Smart Cookie was the spitting image of Applejack. Beyond her was, horror among horrors, Pinkie Pie incarnated as an elected official. Applejack in particular looked extra pale.

"I... I, I beg your pardon, Lady Witch! I didn't mean to cause insult!"

I was disappointed on two levels. First, that I'd somehow managed to scare a face I'd known to be both familiar and friendly. Secondly, that this familiar face didn't come with an adorable accent.

"I'll let you know if you do," I said. "Hurry on up, and don't stand on ceremony. I think I and the young ones are just here for ballast, so we might as well get to me being useful."

"Right you are!" said the Chancellor, passing Smart Cookie with a bounce in her step. She was obviously older than Cookie or Clover by far, all amiable confusion and manic cheer wrapped in a candyfloss mane with a few streaks of gray. "Hey, there's mini-witches in here! Neato!"

"Mini-witches, say hi to the Chancellor," I called. There was a tiny chorus of sheepish 'hi's.

"Ready, Clover?" I asked, and the unicorn cut herself off as she made a quick double count of the passengers.

"Looks like!" she said. "Um, be kind to the Chancellor, please. I think she's a bit... out there."

"Aren't we all!" I replied, and grabbed Smart Cookie, who was still looking frozen in fear at me. "Come on there, Apple, there's work to be done."

"Ah... uh... wait, how'd you know I was an Apple?" she asked as I pushed her aboard.

"Girl, your kin are everywhere," I told her. "Lovely ponies. I think your great aunt was one of my old assistants. Four years, and she never gave up her recipe for fritters."

"I should think not!" said Cookie, before remembering to be nervous.

I sighed. "Girls? Smart Cookie here is afraid of me. Do something about it."

"Stop hurting mama's feelings!" shouted Luna, the filly with the largest lungs in all the world.

"But I didn't-" Smart Cookie looked horribly conflicted.

"I said stop!"

Tia groaned, and did her best to ignore the new back and forth as I leaned into Clover to be heard above the noise.

"So, not that I don't mind a good adventure," I said, "but why me, specifically?" I gestured toward the fillies. "I'm not looking to go into combat, here."

"Oh, it's not!" said Clover. "I mean, you won't! It's just, master and I are still certain you're the best linguist we've ever met! And there's this spot on the Canterhorn mountain we've been looking at for, well, it's just about the most perfect crossing of ley lines we've ever seen!"

"Ley lines aren't words," I reminded her. "I hope you don't need me to read them."

"Oh, no," said Clover, chuckling. "There are just some... strange ruins near the top. We've never seen the writing there, before, and if anypony has a chance of figuring them out, it's you!"

"Brains of a feather flock together," announced Chancellor Puddinghead, leaning in. "Only Clover here hasn't any feathers! This is a travesty!"

"Isn't it just?" I replied. Puddinghead had nothing on her... descendant? Reincarnation? Freakishly similar future pony? It wasn't as if they shared cutie marks or anything, so I just chalked this one up to mysteries that I didn't much care to answer.

And then the Chancellor whipped out a pair of false, neon-green wings that she hooked onto Clover's side.

"Much better!" declared the pink mare, wandering off to lean over the front of the carriage and interrogate our pegasus drivers.

"They look good on you," I said, keeping a straight face. Clover groaned.

We had stopped at Unicornia to pick up Starswirl, the princess, and a few other mages. A second carriage had arrived with both Commander Hurricane and Private Pansy. Tia immediately strode right up to the commander and demanded to learn just how she could throw around storms.

"Kid, that's the most awesome thing I've ever heard a filly say," admitted the frustratingly familiar, rainbow-maned mare. "But give it a couple years first, aye? I'm sure you'll make officer material in no time at all."

Luna, not to be outdone, turned to Clover and demanded, "Fireballs! Puh-lease?!"

I cackled.

We flew through the rest of the day, stopping for the night at the Baltic Mare, which was an inn that had sprung up and which had, in turn, had a few small houses spring up around it. My inner child was giggling at all the available puns, and I couldn't help but wonder how 'Baltimare' would look, someday, as a true city. If it was anything like the American east coast, it would be classy as hell.

Not for the first time, I wished I'd done more traveling before my little world-hopping incident. The middle-of-corn-fieldsville Minnesota had left me stunted, I thought. Which was probably why I'd spent so much time on the road here, come to think of it.

When it came time to set of the next morning for the Canterhorn, I stumbled out of the little room I'd shared with the fillies with their slumbering forms still slumped over my back. I grunted, Princess Platinum grunted back, and we both tried to suck every ounce of nourishment from our morning tea. She, of course, had insisted on a full set of china, served by a nervous-looking unicorn colt. I made do with my mug.

The two pegasi were just disgustingly awake -lousy military types that know what a sunrise looks like- and polishing their armor. Private Pansy had the same look of peace on her face that I remembered Fluttershy having, only she wore it while inspecting a gladius. Trippy.

To my embarrassment, I zoned out twice more on our trip westward. At least I didn't try to stumble my way to face another direction. Tia's discrete nudges kept me aware and, on top of that, aware that whatever I was looking at, we were headed right for it.

Some kind of magical artifact that only interacted with the brainwaves of a human crammed into an adorable pony body, maybe? Or perhaps one or two of those old prophecies I had squirreled away in my archive had lodged themselves in my brain on a trail of old magic, telling me I had to play 'the wise old mentor' to some sort of 'chosen one' griffon liberator. That could, I admitted, be fun.

The Canterhorn was a tall, beautiful piece of landscape that was utterly alone on a great, wooded plain, but for a few nearby foothills. Dimly, I remembered old geography classes and tried to figure out what natural forces had come up with a mountain that seemed to rise out of nowhere.

There was a wide shelf of stone, a small natural plateau, that served as our landing pad. A number of ponies were already there, laying the groundwork to what I knew would one day be Canterlot. I grinned at the thought of what kind of magic and engineering would go into extending that shelf out over thin air, making space for an entire city.

We landed, and immediately spilled out, stretching as we hadn't been able to since our hours-long flight had started at dawn.

"Woo! A girl could get stuck, sitting like that for so long!" declared Puddinghead, all the while stretching out her unnaturally limber legs.

"I highly doubt you'll ever have such a problem, Chancellor," said Pansy with a small grin.

"Mare's gonna outlive us all," muttered Smart Cookie.

"Do come along, everypony, if you would," said Starswirl, looking to head off another argument such as we hadn't seen since three hours ago. When Puddinghead had tried to get us all to sing the chorus to 'Ninety-Nine Flagons of Meade On the Wall'. Worse still, I think I might have been the one to introduce that song to ponies, some six decades beforehand.

I turned as I moved, both trying to take in the growing settlement and also because I was somewhat compelled to. It was unnerving, really, that whatever had been catching my attention was here. Was it that convergence of ley lines Clover had mentioned? Such things had never piqued my attention before- natural convergences were just about everywhere, after all. You couldn't throw a bit without having it bounce off of a mystical convergence, sometimes.

"In here," said the wizard, pulling our attention to what looked like a natural recess, a cave whose mouth was far too wide to qualify as actual 'shelter'.

"You know," I said, "I didn't have to come out here. Didn't anybody think to do tracings of these words?"

There was quiet as the whole group suddenly went silent.

"We... didn't think of that," admitted Pansy.

"But you're here now, witch, so get to work!" said Hurricane. In retaliation, I cast a grayscale illusion over her mane. The mare had no idea why the rest of the group was stifling their laughter.

It grew dark near the back, out of the direct noon light, so the unicorns lit their horns out of habit. The cave wall was... a mess. An absolute mess. Lines were scratched over almost every surface, pale and chalky against the dark stone of the mountain's heart. I stared, and couldn't help the frown that something seemed utterly familiar about it.

It took me a minute to see past the horrible state of the hoof-writing, and the weathering, to take note of an especially large space that had been cleared just above head-height, all to accommodate a single, jagged message. In English. Plain old English, as I hadn't read from something I hadn't myself written in over eight decades.

'Tamara look behind you.'

There was the barest moment of incomprehension. A second of wondering just how I was supposed to fit this surprise into my current world view.

That tugging was back, and it was behind me.

I let my wings slip gently out from under my cloak and slowly turned. The others had their eyes on me, which was all wrong. The tall, misshapen figure cast hardly a shadow. Its eyes gleamed yellow, red, and mad. Its teeth, especially its abnormally long canine, were a sharp white.

"Why hello, there. My goodness, but when I felt my time to once again rise had come, I hadn't expected... this," came a smooth, male voice from a mouth that grinned wider than actually fit its face.

I didn't have just my own foreknowledge to blame on how I reacted. Really, in the bowels of history, scribed on tablets by peoples who no longer were, anymore, the shape of a draconequus was a familiar one.

I whispered something, all but inaudible.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that, little pony," said the mad god, leaning down and turning his ear toward me.

"Run," I said raggedly, harshly.

He looked surprised. "Now why would I-"

The cave exploded in light and sound, as I unleashed every bit of myself in a spell that I had affectionately named 'God Killer'. It was the single biggest display of pyrotechnics I'd ever crafted out of spell script and vapor, and a long streak of stone on both the floor and roof had simply ceased to exist.

But my 'God Killer' hadn't killed a single damn thing, and I knew it.

"Run!" I shouted, grabbing the girls and throwing them on my back.

"What was that?!" called Platinum, meaning either my spell or the creature.

"What wasn't it?" asked Cookie back, staring at where the chimeroid had been.

"Draconequus!" shouted Starswirl, the most read of the rest of the group. "Evacuate the mountain! Evacuate everything! Flee for your lives, you morons!"

We fled. We all did, ducking around the molten streak of stone and out the cave whether by initiative or primitive panic instinct.

"Starswirl, I demand," Platinum huffed, "That you tell me what just happened!"

"Mad gods, appearing all throughout history!" the stallion shouted. "Better to be struck down by an invading army- at least then death would be our worst option!"

A stallion with the proper flair for the dramatic, I knew he was just being realistic.

"Mama, what happened?" asked Tia, hooves wrapped around my neck. A glance back showed Luna had latched onto the other girl's tail with her teeth.

"He's, that's..." I struggled to think of something appropriate. "I won't say his name, I don't know if he can be summoned, but this is a time where it's okay to be very, very scared!" To the group at large I shouted, "Get everybody you can to disperse! Numbers are not a strength, here! Meet back up at the Baltic Mare in one month, and make sure everybody you love is away and safe!"

Discord had come. The chaotic king had arrived to take his throne.

Disorderly

Chapter Twelve

We stayed cloaked, and hidden, and in disguise. When illusions became too obvious to those magic-users around us who were compelled to seek out dissent on behalf of their master, I taught the girls how to mix dyes that would blend manes and coats into natural-seeming shades. Sometimes we cursed ourselves, temporarily, to seem like other misbegotten victims of the mad monarch. Nobody looked twice, and nobody wanted to look even once, at those unlucky few twisted by Discord. I frequently found myself wearing antlers, just because that seemed like the sort of thing he'd do.

The three of us, the girls now ten and seven respectively, camped out upon a delightfully boring outcropping of stone and brush. I cloaked the fire from above to protect us from what looked like the roving eyes of a pod of sky-whales. I wasn't sure what the creatures had been before- I just knew that history didn't seem slated to allow them to live for very long past this period.

Assuming time behaved like I thought it did.

Assuming Discord's presence itself didn't, somehow, throw out the rules of causality that I'd been secretly hoping kept me from fucking up the future too much.

After the whales had disappeared over the horizon, I heard a winged pony touch down behind us. I had just enough bare-bones magic running to stay abreast of the fact that it was one of the thestrals.

I turned, and didn't recognize the stallion. That was no big surprise, since I'd only personally met some of the hundreds of his tribe that had immigrated over with the rest of pony kind. Nevertheless, I offered a respectful bow.

Thestrals were literally bred to hide. It was only my pushing the issue, and the flock mothers' awareness that not even stealth could hide their tribe forever, that had earned the resistance a secure line of communication in the form of these silent messengers.

"Hello, Downy!" whispered Luna excitedly. It figured, really, that Luna of all ponies would somehow manage to memorize the face of every thestral she met, even in passing.

"Lady witch, and herd," said Downy, bowing right back. "Firstly," he said, straight to business, "Mage Starswirl is nearly through with building the hidden celestial circle. He says we might soon have rested back control of the heavens." He glanced up at the sky, which had been dark for a good eighteen hours, tonight. "Which would be nice. Secondly, the griffon Baroness Whitetalon has pledged another flight of soldiers to protect what she calls her 'favorite rabbit-hunting ground'. I take that to mean that the northwestern borders may be more stable this season, so long as that cloud of algae doesn't flock through again."

"And third?" I asked, because there was always a third.

Downy winced. "Chancellor Puddinghead is... not well. There is word of proposing another vote, but even then, the earth tribe cannot account for everypony in this climate. They say he will not reach spring, whenever the stars claim that might be. The identity of the possible new Chancellors are unclear."

I sighed. "Hear that, girls? Road trip."

"A road trip? My goodness," said Tia in full unicorn-mimicry. "As opposed to the walkabout we've been on this past... forever?" she asked, with no small humor in her voice.

"Ooh, can we get souvenirs?" asked Luna, bouncing.

"Would you like them?" I asked Downy. "Two fillies, and I'll throw in a pair of novelty spectacles."

"Do they clean windows?" asked the dark stallion. "Because I have no windows, and I'd hate to let their skills go to waste if I took them myself, you see."

"Shucks," I said. "Looks like you're stuck with me, girls."

"I was really, really worried there," said Tia, patting my neck.

"Er, Lady Tham'ra?" prompted Downy, and it took me less than a second to figure out what he was asking after.

"Still on a line for the Canterhorn," I told him, the resistance now well aware of my uncanny ability to locate Discord. "He's been there most of this season. Pansy thinks she saw molten rock pouring off of the side of the mountain and making new faces. Heaven help us, I think the king's taken up sculpture."

"Oh goody," muttered Downy. "New hobbies are always a bad thing, when it comes to the mad god."

"Aren't they just?" I asked, rhetorically. "I won't keep you. Fly safe, alright?" I knew how well thestrals didn't like exposed places, and my magic was hit or miss when it came to countering Discord.

The thestral flew off, and I got back to putting together a simple salad of sweet grasses and leeks. We still had a little spiced cream from the last village we passed that could serve as dressing...

I watched proudly as Luna demonstrated to her big sister how she could lift two rocks, now, and send them orbiting each other. She was up to levitating four stationary targets, too. Tia sent little gusts of air to try to knock them off course.

The girls were growing up so quickly. And, at the same time, not nearly quickly enough. I knew that they would have to face an elemental force -worse, one that thought he had himself a sense of humor- alone. History said little about the princesses' parents, as far as I knew. I tried not to think about what circumstances could cause that.

On the other hand, I'd gotten to trying to plan out everything. I fed them every scrap of knowledge, forced them to think of the most outlandish scenarios that magic pony land could throw at them, and wondered how much good I was really doing.

The future -the present- was coming, and the past was weighing on me far too heavily. Causality felt more and more like a steel trap, less a guarantee of things to come and more like a great set of gears that was insistent on ironing out the finer details. Ironing out me.

I could have handled that. I really thought I could have. But what I couldn't handle were Luna and Tia facing so much, so young, and with only each other to rely on.

"Eat up," I told them, and did a quick bit of mental math to figure out how much sleep we'd gotten, lately. Days were just too unreliable, the last few years. "We should be able to make some distance before we have to stop again. Luna, you ride with me. Celestia, how are your wings doing?"

The pale pegasus cast a critical eye on her own limbs and grinned. "I think I should be good for a while, mama. At least enough to get back to the ground and maybe a bit further. Following your tail wind helps."

"That a girl. Fly lazy, fly smart."

I looked back over the edge, idly shewing on my salad and wishing we'd had a chance to fish, lately. Or managed to pick up something with a few more calories. The earth ponies tried, but there were limits. And Discord's 'clever' idea of free-roaming foodstuffs more often than not came with side-effects.

'Turn me into a pelican again you lousy fuckstick of a demon.'

I glanced down at the open, twisted plains and wondered, not for the first time, where the original inhabitants had gone. No doubt retreated to their current kingdoms along the border. Nature abhorred a vacuum, and Equestria had been good real estate before Discord began plying it with his special touch. I suspected he'd been there for quite a while, waiting. Letting his new toys arrive in their own time, maybe.

"Saddle up, little Luna!" I said, pushing dirt over our campfire.

"I'm not little!" protested the seven year-old, clambering up my cloak.

"You look little to me!" said Tia, helpfully.

'My siblings and I were never this intent on annoying each other, were we?' I wondered.

I'd only ever met the Chancellor a handful of times. It said more about her, really, that the entire earth pony tribe adored her in spite of, or perhaps because of, her many, many eccentricities.

I wondered at the wisdom of having brought the girls, but then it wasn't as if I could have left them behind, now, was it?

The small network of tunnels that served as one of the many safe houses of the resistance had more hanging black cloth than I imagined anybody could scrounge together in such poor times. Luna and Tia both sat quietly, solemnly, in the little ante chamber that we'd found for ourselves.

"Girls? Come here," I said, praying that I wasn't about to somehow screw them up. I gathered them in close and tucked them under my wings. "Here, and out there, is an entire world. And everything, from the largest country to the tiniest speck of dust is exactly where it is because of one thing- because of the ponies that shaped it."

I swallowed thickly. "Not one pony was ever born that didn't change the world. In small ways, and large ways. Pudding did a lot, so very much, for so very many. Her life is written upon every step she took, every thought she ever put in another pony's head. Like how you girls are here because of your father, it's important to remember: just because a pony's gone, doesn't mean they're not a part of the world, anymore."

"It's hard," I said, "to talk to you about this. A little part of me wishes that I never would have had to, and that you two could live without ever having to see somebody go away like that. But you'll remember that she still matters. That she's as beautiful and important now as she was this morning, or last year, or next century."

"And if you have any questions, or just want to talk, you know I'm here for you. Alright?"

"Yes, mom."

"Y's, mama."

I heard a sniffling noise coming from the doorway. My head jerked upward- Smart Cookie was there, sitting on her haunches and wiping at her eyes.

"That was beautiful, Lady Witch. I'm sure that's exactly what the Chancellor would have liked to have heard."

"Actually," I said with a thoughtful air, "she'd probably prefer to hear that we were going to save her a slice of cake, tonight. I believe her clan believed in the really old-fashioned traditions, right?"

Cookie nodded, straightening up. "Yes, well, we've already got a few casks of honey wine ready. It's a bit small in here, but those bat ponies of yours will make sure lots of the groups out hiding will raise a glass tonight, wherever they are."

"Um..."

I looked to Tia, who was trying to look subtle. "One glass between the two of you," I allowed. "Smart Cookie, may we spend the night?"

"Of course," said the mare. "I know we got off on the wrong hoof-"

"I've got four wrong hooves," I assured her. "No big deal. Tell me, have there been any messages left for me? We'll need to set off tomorrow for wherever it is we're going next."

"Oh. Right," said Smart Cookie, pulling up a length of parchment covered in chicken scratch. It was a startling reminder that, not only was she more or less in charge of stopping Puddinghead's... stranger excesses, but she had also been the mare's secretary. "Um... before she, you know, before, she and the Commander were worried about these... dogs. Wolves maybe."

"You're not telling me something," I said.

"They might be made of trees."

"Timber wolves?" I asked.

Smart Cookie grinned. "Hey, that's a clever one! Sounds like something the chancellor would have said. But, um, these fellows are large, with a capitol 'L'. Our only wheat producers that held out through that snow that... fell up from the ground... are being threatened."

"A combat role?" I asked.

Smart Cookie shrugged. "If you have to, then we've all seen what you can do with fire... mostly we want to know if this is natural, and something to be scared of. Or if it's Discord's work, and something to be terrified of."

"And this is why you girls can't have a puppy," I told them, turning to face the littler ones.

"What about a cat?" said Luna with a frown.

"They make me sneeze," I said bluntly. "Get something nice, like a bat. Or a snake."

Tia shuddered, but Luna threw her hooves in the air and shouted, "Yay!"

It had long occurred to me that Luna took after me especially.

It had all started so well, I'd felt. We'd talked to the farmers, had some pancakes which were, I'd admit, a rare treat for the three of us, and then the howling had started.

"Finish your pancakes," I said, dabbing at my mouth with a rough napkin.

Tia looked worriedly outside. "But mama, we can help!"

"Stay with miss Cherry Blossom," I said, pointing toward the worried-looking earth pony, "and finish your pancakes."

I kissed both fillies on the head, pushed through the door, and looked up. And then further up.

Cherry's home might have been carefully hidden in the hillside, but I wouldn't put it past these behemoths to destroy it -and the ponies inside- through sheer clumsiness.

"I used to have time," I grumbled to myself, "to work on clever spells. Fire's fun. I mean, who doesn't like burning things?" I lifted into the air, gritting my teeth as terrified ponies fled below me. "I got to show the girls my 'Starry Spiral' last... year? Fuck the order of the seasons these days, frogs are off hibernating in the spring... Luna thought it was the prettiest thing ever. And it's still lethal. Thirty damned books I haven't translated out of old Neologia..."

I cleared my throat, filled my lungs, and, "Hey, ugly!"

It wasn't my best. It wasn't even that loud. Nevertheless, the three towering creatures stopped their march immediately and stared at me head-on.

Which was quite the thing to do when their heads each had twice as much mass to them as did my entire body.

Their massive, glowing green eyes widened. There bark-wreathed jaws pulled back and trembled, and sap fell like slow, thick drool onto the plain below them.

They looked disturbingly eager, and not even my ego could justify the unnerving focus in their attentions.

"Um." I hovered in place, like a moron. "Good doggies?"

They howled, plastering back my fur and soaking me in the scent of... fallen leaves and blood. These weren't the pony-sized things from the episodes of 'My Little Pony'- they were monsters. Twilight, too, hadn't ever described them like this.

And the thing about monsters was, unlike when facing ponies, there would be no bluffing and relying on my reputation. These things were already far too interested in how I'd taste.

I pulled up vapor script -always easier when I was using my wings actively- and wove current of hot air around me. Concentrating oxygen out of the air was a newer trick, and one I wouldn't expect to be possible of ponies for another four-hundred years. 'Comparative science' had been a pretty regular topic, back when the mane six were visiting. Twilight and, surprisingly, Pinkie, were the biggest takers on chemistry. Rainbow had just wanted me to make her an account for Call of Duty.

I kept the current of highly, highly flammable air away from my head -pegasi were good enough at drawing oxygen into our lungs that I might send myself into shock by accident- and wove my way around the beasts on a wide, arcing trail. They lumbered around, trying to follow me, but their size worked against them. I lined myself up, did my best to picture the precise curves I'd need to take, and tucked in my wings.

The fact, no, the experience that separated flyers and made for true masters of the weather, was that realization that we didn't fly with our wings. We moved the sky around us, and just happened to fly as a side effect. Flapping your wings just once could last a pegasus for one short, intense distance.

The golden fields below me went soft and streaked through with speed. Each of the three dogs moved as slowly as the sap within whatever they had that passed for veins. I brought my hooves forward, a silly little affectation that nevertheless made the airborne slalom easier to direct.

Over the back of each of their necks.

I snapped my wings out at the end of the short path and spun like a top, coming to a rest with my front aimed at the three things given mobility, and cast out a spark of plasma.

Magic could provide the heat, but my little trick with the air made that space above and behind their heads flare a sharp, vicious blue. And stupidity made me stop where the backdraft would send me into a tree.

"Why does this world not have safety goggles?" I growled, shaking my head clear. I'd be seeing stars for the rest of the day.

"Rrr...rah!"

"What?" I blinked, and between those white stars, I saw another white object. A familiar one, with tiny blue figure behind her, cheering her on.

"Oh stars, why couldn't they have been chubby, shy little nerds! Take after mom a little more, why can't you?" I groaned, forcing myself back into the air to where Tia was trying to pummel the furious, smoldering head of a timber wolf. I more fell than flew through the air, watching with terrified eyes because my eldest was so damned close to that thing's mouth-

But as I neared, and saw her tear loose a part of the wolf's snout without it so much as flinching away from where it watched me, a little warning bell sounded in my head. Creatures, even magically animated ones, don't ignore damage to the most vulnerable parts of their body. Not so much that it wouldn't turn, ever so slightly, and snap the filly in half. But these creatures had carried a grudge with them, here, against something that ought to have been like a harmless bird in comparison.

"You don't like me," I growled. "You're gonna like me a lot less in a second!"

I caught Tia and Luna both in a Ghostly Hand and dropped them off in a massive stack of hay, made an about face, and released a Starry Spiral. Tiny, white-hot points of light gathered and flew like tracer bullets, only much slower. Instead of going through the timber wolves, as munitions might, they slid along surfaces and into every available wound and orifice and only then began burning. It wasn't the kind of thing I'd do to anything that wasn't a plant golem, and I was reminded just why that was as the three began burning from the inside.

They howled, and writhed, unable to move their limbs from when the first trails of fire burned through what must have served as spines. They gave massive shudders, and finally fell still.

It was an act of restraint that I was able to fetch nearby clouds -thankfully the white and fluffy kind as opposed to the candy ones, because chocolate rain and fire made for a nasty smell- before rounding on my girls. Rain poured down over the wooden corpses and nearby field.

"No!" I landed roughly as they poked their heads out of the pile of hay. "No fighting monsters! No getting eaten by monsters! You're both grounded, now go to your rooms!"

"What rooms?" asked Tia.

I ignored her and began pacing. "I am officially putting my foot down-"

"What's a foot?" asked Luna.

"-No traipsing around in dangerous area and you could have died even if it didn't eat you its teeth were bigger than you are tall-"

"I don't think she's listening," said Tia, rubbing Luna's mane with a hoof. "Give her a second- this is like with those dog-people things."

"-And another thing, Luna was right behind you! There are no cheerleaders in fights! Cheerleaders are for hoofball- not for when you're facing giant dogs made of malevolence and-"

I broke off and spun. "Are you even listening?!"

"Yes, mama," said Luna, head bowed.

"Um... yeah, but you're saying a lot of things that don't make sense," said Tia, flinching.

My sides heaved. I forced myself to breathe, calmly and steadily. "I.... I'm not... I'm not angry at you girls. I'm not." I recoiled, inside, seeing a little redhead in place of Tia, trying to teach herself to remain quiet and just listen to the hours and hours of yelling, and...

"I'm scared," I said, breaking my own useless train of thought. "I was so very, very scared, right then. There are monsters out there... here, even. You have no idea how important the two of you are. How much you mean to me."

'Meaning enough to me that I haven't tried to look for a way to the future in over a decade,' I didn't say. The very minute I chose to take Winter as mine, to make a family, I'd known that I would rather take the long way around. What was it, seventeen hundred years until I met my friends, again? I didn't seem to be aging- I could wait.

Could have, if I didn't expect that even that choice might soon be taken away from me. Discord's reign was ended by two sisters- not by two sisters and their neurotic mother.

"But we just watch and we watch and we can't do anything!" said Luna, muzzle up in frustration.

"And you, Tia?" I asked.

She nodded. Reluctantly, but she was clearly glad her sister had voiced that. "We want to help. You help those other ponies all the time, and it's important because we know we could just go back and hide but you don't, even if you don't have to. I mean," she shuffled her hoof through the matted grasses, "you always complain about it but then act like you're trying to be everypony's mom."

I was speechless.

"We love you, mama, but we want to help," said Luna. "So we... so we all, I mean, together..."

"Come here. Both of you... come here." Reluctantly, nervously even, they shuffled forward. I let my bruised, magically exhausted self weigh on them just a bit. Enough to let them know that I was completely there with them.

"You know I've been around for a long time, right?"

"You're old," said Luna, with all her usual tact and adoration.

"Luna!" hissed Tia.

But I just chuckled. "Yeah. Almost a hundred years old. Now keep that in mind, because I have a hundred years of lessons to cram into your heads, and not a lot of time in which to do it. I'm..." I swallowed, knowing how utterly necessary this was and yet just how much of me was rebelling at this. It was the part that didn't care about the march of history, or the flow of time. Or about two alicorns I'd never met, because the princesses were small and still had tiny faces that smiled up and called me 'mama'.

Unfortunately for my weaker parts, I knew children were meant to grow. I wanted them to grow. Their lives would be written with every one of their steps, and I knew they would have a lot of steps to take. Compared to the ways they would rock the world, I'd done little more than wade through sand.

"You two are going to be heroes," I told them. "And I'm going to make sure of it."

The two of them brought themselves in tighter. The scary moment was over, and I sure as hell managed to catch myself at, what I thought was, the perfect time to catch a problem from growing.

I had to do better. I owed them that.

And because he had always been so much better at this, I wished Winter was here.

High up above the marsh, on a bough coated in moss, I watched in absolute silence and concealment. Every splash and ripple left by those tiny hooves below made me wince. I wanted to go down and correct, and lecture, and demonstrate, but that was just impractical. My girls had never gone to formal schooling -what little existed in this world- and thus had yet to be truly introduced to the 'test'. I was knocking off points in my mind even as I prayed that they would pass.

But I had to prepare them to fight Discord.

And so I let them approach the bubbling spot of morass that held the creature that lay in wait, there.

Of course, I'd woven a half dozen protective enchantments over the two fillies, careful not to let on that they had been cast, and had three fittingly violent spells dancing literally on the tips of my wings.

I focused weather magic around my ears, creating artificial sound cones. It was a trick I'd picked up from some members out of a retired pegasus legion, some decades back.

"It's up here," whispered Tia.

"How do you know that?" asked Luna, wide-eyed and up to her chest in mud. Lucky girl- for all that she was getting more of it, fur was a deal easier to clean than her sister's wings would be.

"Because you can hear the birds, but nothing moving in the water," said Tia, gaze darting at every likely piece of detritus.

'Smart, observant girl,' I thought. She still lost points for not tying back her pink mane in a dangerous situation. In the damp, it kept drooping over one eye.

"There, Tia, there!" Luna pointed, stirring the mud as she lifted her hoof to point. I resisted the urge to plant my head into my forearms. Both at the noise she made, as well as the fact that she was pointing at the monster's tail. A tail with an outline much like its head, to confuse competing predators. Not as bad as chimeras, which did have multiple heads, but still bad.

I forced myself not to reach out and drag my girls back or strike down and flash-boil the creature in its own muddy shelter.

"Eats ponies," recited Tia, voice steady. The times had left my girls more jaded than I'd have liked. They idolized the founders in small ways- Pansy wanted to get them each a gladiolus.

"Amphibious," continued the preteen. "Has a sticky hide, clever enough for ambush tactics, draws in prey by looking like a helpless pony from the front forward. Like a seapony, but evil."

Obviously, she needed further lessons.

"Go high," said Luna. "If it looks at you, I can get close. It's... like a frog, sorta, right? I can make it cold."

Conflicted, Tia eventually nodded. "I'll be close."

She took off as quietly as possible, leaving Luna to sink down to her nostrils and creep forward. My breath caught in my throat. Rich military history or not, ponies simply lacked the predatory mindset. This wasn't right. They should have stayed behind, I could have given more lectures...

With a determined set to her face, Celestia made a short dive, twisting in midair to give a solid buck to the tree above the creature. Stupidly, it reared up and snapped at the rotting chunks of wood and shed bark that splashed in around it. Luna sped up. As the shower of debris eased off, Tia called down:

"Ugly! Look up- dinner on the wing!"

She dove, skimming horrifyingly close to the arc made by the leaping, angry creature. In its full glory, the kelpie let out a hollow bark and snapped upward.

Tia banks around toward its tail, cleverly circling away from Luna's closing presence. The kelpie turned in on itself, snapping its tail up to just graze the pegasus's passing hooves.

Luna, horn crackling with exactly the kind of elemental magic Clover had been schooling her in during their captured moments as teacher and student, stopped within the creature's striking distance. Too eager to not miss, too eager to mind the danger.

She cast.

Arctic air, stripping moisture from the damp air and carrying a thick wave of sleet, impacted the creature's side in an impressive area of effect. The kelpie recoiled, taking its eyes off its prey to focus on the little pony that dared injure it. Shocked by the cold, it flailed its tail wildly toward Luna.

Tia arced around again, and caught the tail's faux 'head' in all four hooves. She twisted her body like a helicoptering seed, using her wings to torque the limb in a direction it wasn't supposed to go. The kelpie's attention was drawn away, again, from its target.

As it brought its pained limb and the cargo thereon toward its gaping jaws, Luna let loose again. This cone of frost was narrower, and more focused. It was so fierce, in fact, that when Tia, still clamped onto its tale struck the thing's face, it shattered at the neck, leaving a stump.

The body couldn't even fall back into the water, given that the first cold spell had frozen its belly into the mud.

Staring and shaking, I all but fell off of the branch and glided down into the now-cold morass, grabbing up both girls. We squelched. Luna was never hit, and Celestia had all of a pegasus's normal resistance to impact.

'Tell them it's enough,' I thought. 'Tell them that they've proven themselves, and that this was enough...'

"My girls," I muttered, holding them closer. "Get cleaned up. Tomorrow, we're going to face a hodag."

For three more years, through the Inverted Spring, beneath the notice of the Chthonia Cyclopia, and in defiance of a mad, mad world, we traveled and fought as a family.

The day I truly began to count my failures, I was distinctly on edge. Discord, judging by my strange sense, had take to traveling. Rapidly. North. East. Southeast. Northwest. I think my girls were getting dizzy just watching my head whip back and forth.

We were systematically investigating the caves east of what I thought would one day become the Unicorn Mountains. The ground was honeycombed with abandoned mines, and natural systems blended seamlessly with them. Some days, we were underground for days at a time, keeping careful track of where we were. Not having spent much time underground before, I was coming to have a new appreciation for all the nasty things that could live down there. Including a rather nasty fungus whose spores left the girls and I sick for days.

It was only a week after that, that we came to a kind of nasty crater. It didn't really match the profile of the 'Titan Vole' that had been harassing unicorn scouting parties, but we wanted to be thorough.

"Mother?"

I glanced back at Tia, realizing I had let my mind wander again. Discord was to the east. Back on the Canterhorn, maybe?

My girls stood together, having sprouted up as ponies tended to do. They were beautiful, and confident. And frankly, some of the best educated ponies in the world- I couldn't help but let some human science and theory slip out, in between telling them this world's extensive lore.

My eldest's confidence warmed me the most, to be honest. On her neck was a deceptively plain pendant, one charmed to hell and back. She and I had shared, some time back, a very frank discussion over her approaching puberty. While not exactly fun, she reaffirmed her happiness as, well, as being herself. After my own clumsy attempts at psychoanalyzing her, I'd eventually agreed to charm the pendant with a spell much like I suspected certain other ponies already used. A number of simple, semi-cosmetic charms layered over one another and, combined with a natural grace that she certainly hadn't inherited from me, made for an appearance that suited her much better.

Luna was naturally lankier, and I think she would end up with my own height, eventually. Minus the alicornification, of course.

The two of them argued, allied together in the face of adversity and vegetables, and just generally lived as typical sibilings. Winter Whistle would be proud and amused. Mostly amused, I thought.

"Alright," I said, stopping outside the disaster area that was the cave's entrance. "Taking all bets. All bets are now final."

"Diamond dogs!" chirped Luna.

"Raccoons," Tia countered. "I'll bet two sugared plums and a shiny rock."

"I'll take your shiny rock and raise you a funny-shaped vegetable," I said. Half the fun in paying bets was hunting down the stakes.

"This is getting too rich for my blood," squeaked Luna. "I want two-to-one odds!"

"I never should have taught you two statistics," I moaned. "Fine. Let's go. And don't forget- at the first sight of zombie ponies, we run screaming."

"Aye!" came two voices.

And to think, the first time I'd told them that had been a joke.

"Details, girls?" I asked as we picked our way over the rim.

"Scattered rocks... mean an impact!" said Luna. "Or an explosion."

"The stone is weathered, which means it's been a while," continued Celestia. "But still sort of sharp- so they were broken."

"At impact or at the explosion?" I asked, for my little 'daily double'.

Luna tapped the ground. "It's all tillable soil, so... before! 'Cause the soil would have cushioned the debris."

I grinned as I cast an illusory ghost light to lead us in. "Good girls. Most cleverest, most adorablest, most... huh."

"Huh?" asked Celestia.

"Huh," agreed Luna, glancing around. "Diamond dog, but without that dog smell."

"That's what happens when you don't lock the doors on your house before going out for milk and bread," I lectured. "A titan vole moves in."

The cavern was filled with dust, collected over deep gouges in the stone floor that made our footing treacherous. Those were 'dog steps'. I couldn't read the markings particular to the diamond dogs, but it probably meant something like, 'shelter here' or 'next den: three days east'. Nifty- I felt the urge to write up a dictionary of sorts, sometimes.

"It doesn't smell like dog," said Celestia, glancing around and shifting her wings nervously. "But does it smell like vole?"

The three of us paused and realized not one of us knew what a vole smelled like.

"We must satisfy ourselves with visible evidence," Luna declared, then sighed. "I see no ginormous rodents," she admitted.

"Me neither," said Celestia. "Visible evidence: gathered!"

I gave them both a sour look, and they beamed back at me.

"Come on, then," I said. "Usual procedure in ancient ruins- let's get some rubbings of any carvings, desecrate any remaining urns..."

"Can I help? That sounds positively fun!"

I took in the horrified expressions on Luna and Celestia's faces. I considered how I'd more or less forced myself to ignore Discord's rapid movements over the last couple of days.

I considered how ridiculously like John De Lancie the voice from behind me sounded.

With a flurry of disorienting fog, I spun and readied a destructive spell. Discord, a flurry of mismatched animal parts, flung out his hands and cut through my runes.

The invisible runes, the ones that enabled my spellcasting.

"You look very familiar, you know?" said Discord, stroking his beard. "More interestingly, you knew exactly who I was, as if we'd met before, back on that mountain." His yellow and red eyes narrowed down at me. "What are you?"

A fireball caught the side of his head, sending him staggering to the side. A gust of wind picked him up and sent his body into the wall with a heavy, satisfying crack.

"Get away from our mom!"

I stared, and shakily began drawing more runes as my daughters stood side by side, standing as threateningly as two young girls could.

"Hmm..." The spirit of chaos smirked, removing his body parts and dusting them off in turn before replacing them. "The thorn in my side has thornlets!" He looked pensive. "Is 'thornlet' a word? It should be, I think. In fact, I declare it to be a word!"

My thoughts raced.

Luna could teleport, but only on line-of-sight. Celestia had good flight speed, but not with a passenger. Discord's range was, for all intents and purposes, unlimited. I'd thrown my most damaging magic at him, before, and only inconvenienced him. In an enclosed space with Luna and Tia, I couldn't even do that much.

"Girls?" I said, not daring to look back as I cobbled together what was probably a working spell. "Remember the story of Tripper?"

In hindsight, writing out my stories for them and incorporating various tactical scenarios was a bit paranoid.

'Tripper' was a unicorn who, much like I shamelessly stole from the Captain America cartoons, was trapped with his own enemy as a delaying action.

"Ma?"

Really, I mused in a horrified sort of way, this was a great idea. Earn my girls a couple more years to prepare, give Equestria some time to recover...

'If there are any gods in this place, let them give me a break, for once,' I thought.

I threw myself at Discord, opening the rune script to engulf the both of us, and-

"Nope!"

I gagged, his claws wrapped around my throat. My wings flapped uselessly, trying to relieve the weight.

Discord's eyes focused, not on me, but on the air around us. He ignored the thin streaks of lightning and fire being thrown off by my daughters.

"Curiouser and curiouser," he muttered. His eyes lit up. "Oh... oh, that's clever! That's a genuinely clever idea!" He grinned. "I think I'll steal it."

I felt the shell of magic shrinking, felt it... invert? But no, something else, something...

The spell which was supposed to cast the both of us ahead five years -hopefully- was twisted into something I couldn't recognize, but which was still being fed by my magic.

"Be sure to pick me up a souvenir," said Discord casually. "And don't be hard on yourself- that would have been a really neat trick."

Discord didn't let go, but I felt his grasp on me vanish anyways. Everything, in fact, was vanishing. Going dark. It wasn't unconsciousness, for all that I hadn't been able to breathe. I turned -awkwardly, as gravity seemed to have forgotten itself- and saw my girls staring at me with tears in their eyes.

I didn't know if they could hear me, but I screamed anyway: "Run!"

Before Discord, along with everything else, disappeared from sight completely, I released a focused beam of light that probably outshone most stars. I had to blind him, had to buy Luna and Tia time.

I had to...

Had to...

And then everything was gone.

'Had to...'

The Setback

Chapter Thirteen

"No."

The sound echoed through a bare cave.

"No."

Bare of monsters, bare of ponies, bare of Discord.

Bare of my girls.

I screamed. It was nonsense, but it carried in it exactly what I meant to express. The sound reverberated throughout the cavern, gaining strength and volume until dust was falling from the ceiling. I only became aware of that by feeling it settle across my head- the cave was utterly and completely pitch-black.

I lay there for... well, time didn't seem to mean much at all, in that place. There was no point in hurrying, after all- I was either far too late, or far too early, to do anything.

Because it had happened again.

And because this involved time travel, it was always going to have happened. I'd just never known the specifics, before that very moment.

Discord had toyed with me. Luna and Tia had gotten away, were meant to have gotten away, simply because he hardly took anybody seriously, let alone children. They would be okay. They had to be. Whether or not I was going off of what I knew -or guessed- about the nature of time, or if I was just hoping with all of my heart, they were going to be okay.

I'd drilled the two of them in what to do if I... ever wasn't around. They were smart and resourceful. Even if they just...

...just...

...saw their mother torn out of space-time by a cruel element made flesh.

"Can't wait," I mumbled, pushing myself up. There was still every chance I could get things right- I'd studied Starswirl's spell. Not as extensively as I'd have liked, but I had. Applying unicorn magic to my own system was something I'd done before. It was like trying to translate interpretive dance into ancient Sumerian, but it could be done.

I could even get the positioning right. I felt something that was, while not quite optimism, was at least relief.

First, I figured, I'd need some light. A little pressure put on the atmosphere sent dim static over the front of my wings. It was a neat but otherwise useless trick, good only for generating light. Pegasi used it at night for making more visible semaphore signals with their wings. I usually avoided it for what the static did to my coat, but then I was coated in sweat and dust as it was. Poofy fur was the least of my worries.

My eyes, now used to the dark, led me on a path back up to the crude altar. This was definitely an old diamond dog place- they were the only species that thought it remotely sane to cave in the entrances to a place of worship with no more thought than I'd give to shutting the door behind me.

And... I caught on to the largest change to the cave, and figured, they were the only species likely enough to worship that kind of gem.

At the top of the steps, and on top of the wide, crudely-carved block of basalt, I saw the shiniest damned thing ever. It was a gem of some kind, flat and wide, and larger than my head. It occurred to me that, a given amount of time from now, the cave had been open to the outside. Somebody had probably stolen it in the intervening time, or the diamond dogs had reclaimed it. Either way, the thing wasn't quite in my way, so I hopped up on the altar, stood to the side, and aimed myself at precisely where Discord would one day be standing. I had no compunctions about shooting that fucker in the back.

I spread my wings, took in a deep breath of stale air, and began scripting. I couldn't remain trapped in here forever- either the air would run out or I'd die of thirst. I'd be freecasting, doing it as I went along, and praying I didn't screw up badly enough to kill myself.

Worse, I was distinctly aware that I just might not have enough magic in me. The attempt could kill me, and some ground-dwelling predator could have escaped with my bones before I and my daughters came along in the future.

'Don't think that,' I ordered myself. 'It's not helpful.'

The first strains of vapor came easily. Starting a spell, targeting myself, and defining limits was an easy process, these days.

-Set target(self) not(not-self) exclude elements(extraneous(element(time))) within borders...

Spell-casting, or at least, developing spells, had gotten easier since earning my cutie mark. Sure, it wasn't writing stories. But it was writing, and I certainly had to be creative about it. And here I was writing out my most ambitious project yet, working on a prayer that I could define time in any way similar to how I'd previously defined space.

It was pretty ugly-looking, though, and I had to resist the urge to go back and smooth it out. Refining even a simple spell took just short of forever. I had no idea how Starswirl managed as many as he did.

-...deny extraneous(time-shape) set present define as local curve-versus-(not)local curve where curve equivalent to...-

I had to start a new line, the script gently curving around me and actually curving in over my head as I kept adding to it. This was new- and terrifyingly so, given how the more new elements I introduced, the shakier the process would be.

Sweat broke out over my head and my mouth went dry as the script lines met above my head and then, as I continued, crept down from the hemisphere toward my hooves. I was reaching that portion of spellwork where I had to split off sharply from how Starswirl had done things. Unicorn magic was all about interacting shapes of magic, like increasingly complex polygons hanging from threads.

-...create at(execution-command) conduit set feed(conduit) within parameters(manual(will)) deny case(false)...-

The lines of script were quickly becoming a sphere around my body. It was beautiful, or would have been, had I in a state to admire my own work.

-...preserve predefined-target(self) versus both not(self) and-also outside(defined(curve))...-

And then, for the first time, my script became truly visible. Not just visible to me as shadow-thin vapor, but glowing, iridescent symbols written upon the air.

That... shouldn't have happened. Not daring to stop, not daring to move, my eyes dotted around until they stopped squarely on the gem. The thing was glowing like it was Christmas. In my extensive experience of dealing with and defiling magical artifacts, that was a bad sign.

"Shoo! Move, you stupid ornament!" I growled, trying to nudge it with my hoof and completely forgetting the air of quiet reverence with which I'd treated it before.

And still, I couldn't let myself stop now. The pattern was working -which hadn't been a guarantee- and I had no way of recreating it by memory, because I could already feel the drain burning at my veins.

I was still writing the spell, but it felt like I was pushing against a spell that was writing itself, at the same moment. Just touching, just daring to reach out and interact with time, felt like I was staring into the face of something massive and unfathomable. And just a tad too much inevitable.

The cave disappeared. There was just me, the spell, and the crystal which had begun shining and singing. Beyond all that was just everything else.

Everything.

'I'm not supposed to be here I wasn't supposed to do this these are things that my eyes can't see I just wanted to see my girls and help them save the world...'

-...execute spell-

And then there wasn't light.

And then there was.

It was like having an ocean pushing against me, and then having the sheer audacity to push back. Existence carried a grudge against me for reasons I couldn't fathom. That was so damned unfair that my first reaction was to try to punch it.

Needless to say, things got worse from there.

I must have been dying, and I felt that I had been pretty unfair in dismissing all those who'd claimed to have seen their lives flashing before their eyes.

'I could see myself. I was small, an awkward bundle of shaggy red hair that dad kept trying to cut short, thick glasses, and an aversion to a school that relentlessly ground down on 'that one soft nerd'. My older siblings got into drugs, and alcohol, and there were pregnancies and arrests and it hurt just as much to see it a second time around. My room was plastered with pictures of beautiful, distant places and ancient ruins that looked like the settings to all my fantasy novels.'

'I was graduating. I prayed for the best, but had a travel bag ready when I came out to my parents and told them their little boy wasn't a boy. I left on a bus that very night, my ears ringing with insults and threats. I would live a meager, paycheck-to-paycheck life for four years, scribbling drawings and writing short stories whenever I had a free moment.'

'I had my own apartment. It was small, but the neighborhood came complimentary with three new friends who cared about me and used my correct name and encouraged me to start publishing. The night I earned my first three dollar sale, we partied long into the night and fingerpainted the walls for shits and giggles. The following cleanup was terrible, and we suffered together.'

'A book fell on my head, waking me up for a day where I'd meet new friends that paid proof to everything I'd secretly hoped for. Two of the best months of my life followed, and I secretly worked toward paying every moment of that back to the six new friends I'd made. Jill, Crazy Dan, and Linda all anchored me as I sent myself across an impossible distance.'

'I died, and woke to find myself further away than ever. I lived decades in a fantasy, staving off loneliness by throwing myself into learning all about this strange, strange world. I met lovers, lost them, walked the thin line of life and death and came out shrouded in the knowledge of things yet to come.'

'I set about making those things happen, and making them happen as gently as possible for all of these wonderful new people, ponies, who'd someday rise to be absolutely fantastic.'

'I loved, harder than I'd ever had, the first boy with whom I'd felt safe. We never had the chance to attract any others to our herd, but I was lucky enough to have two wonderful foals. Winter died, senselessly, and I proved myself every bit as capable of being the terrible witch that haunted pony culture as those who'd come before me.'

'The Paradise Estate was gone. There were thestrals, a whole people who needed my help. I carried them with me the entire way. I avoided my parents' mistakes in child-rearing, and managed not to make too many new ones. My girls were lovely and fated to be magnificent. I knew my time would be too, too short with them. I felt a new and fantastic hatred for a half-creature that seemed poised to ruin everything I'd gained and loved.'

'I was lost again, and adrift, watching as I watched myself in a place that wasn't a place, hooves standing on nothing, and then everything was so bright all of a sudden and I thought I was dying for a second time, but maybe it was a third time because I saw a terran moon above me as I lay bleeding a hundred years ago-'

And then there was light.

And then there wasn't.

I woke slowly, still in darkness. My last, panic-filled moments had been layered with the realization that I'd lost control of the spell, as if it had been hijacked by a great tide. Something new, yet at the same time horribly familiar, for some reason, had happened. Obviously, I was still alive, and I hadn't gone too far ahead since, though the crystal was gone, the cave was still closed-in.

I couldn't risk the spell again, since I couldn't be sure that I'd manage to control my timing any better for a second occasion. Running too far over would be worse than not getting there at all. I could be patient, but I certainly couldn't stand to miss my departure point entirely.

Really, I realized, the effort must have knocked me out for longer than I could have foreseen, since my mouth was drier than ever but I still felt well-rested. Better than well-rested, even.

I sighed. This place was completely cut off from the outside world, and had no points of reference for time travel in any case. I needed to re-work the spell, and be able to make discrete jumps. Find some natural cycle to base timing off of, set a certain number of cycles...

'I can do this,' I thought. But only if I got out of this cave, first.

Slowly, almost drunkenly, I made my way back toward where I remembered the exit being, in the future. If I had to make a guess, then I had been the one to make that exit. It was a painful sort of logic, but nonetheless made sense.

I lit static over my wings again. My magic must have been wobbling as badly as my water-deprived body, because it brightened the cavern a lot more than I'd have expected. My eyes turned to slits and I bit back a curse.

Then I realized there weren't any younger ponies I had to watch my mouth around, and felt free to curse like a sailor.

"Blood-fucking feathered fuck! My Buddha Christ forsaken eyes I can't even motherbucker!"

It was quite cathartic, really.

I came to the cave wall a bit sooner than I expected- there was a lot of digging ahead of me.

'Maybe... two Ghostly Hands? I could sort of pry at it... Keep a wind-shield ready in case of a collapse...'

I got to work.

If I were so unlucky as to be in a cartoon -Ha!- or video game cutscene, I imagined that I'd have been startled to get to look at the side of a hill exploding outward and shredding trees, strewing boulders into precisely the rivets that would remain there in years to come, to be discovered by a small herd of strange ponies.

More presently, I stumbled out into the open air with a hacking cough.

"...Because fuck rocks," I muttered, confusion making it sound much more witty than it probably was. Needless to say, I'd intended to very carefully, very safely, excavate myself a little escape route.

"This was not expected," I said, blinking in the morning light that filtered down through the cloud of dust.

A dirt clod was caught by the cruel whims of gravity and, much like a certain book had a long time ago, clocked me in the back of the head. I stumbled at the impact, drunkenly shouting, "Have at thee, fucker!" as I stumbled over clumsy legs into the ground, face-first.

And got stuck there.

And got stuck there.

I whimpered, pulled back with an audible 'pop!', and fell on my rear. I touched my head, through the thick layer of soil caked there, and almost cried. I glanced back at the cave, then back to myself, and then back again. That 'gem' had been a cut piece, I suspected, of cosmic spectrum crystal.

I'd pushed myself to do something new and nearly impossible with my special talent.

I'd nearly died, all to fuel one great work of magic, and done so while stepping on this world's strongest example of natural magic.

Maybe an hour passed as I quietly panicked. I may have cried. I definitely giggled like a madmare, and possible cackled like the witch I was.

'No wonder I was moving like a drunk,' my less useful thoughts went. 'My legs are about half a foot longer!'

I wandered for a long time. I was in no hurry, and despite how much my heart ached for not doing something right that very second, practicality ruled the day. Well, practicality and shock.

I was perhaps as tall as Winter, now. Not quite where the future Luna had been, and definitely not where Celestia had been. Had been... would be...

No language I'd yet learned could accurately handle time travel, sadly.

Equestria, or whatever it was, was in fact less wild than it had been when the ponies had first come over. The other races that I'd expected to see after first walking the land bridge were in full evidence. I watched from a distance as griffons roosted on Canterhorn mountain. Thin strings of zebras, far from their southern home, traded with diamond dogs and what looked like a species of pygmy dragons. And, of course, true dragons roosted high above as they'd always done. Those wyrms had never really given a damn about anything.

Other species, strange and beautiful in their own ways, appeared here and there.

One night, I came across a camping caravan of zebra traders. One of them went into the dark to relieve himself, and I was just the slightest bit too late to catch the dark, chitinous figure that came out of the shadows and snapped his neck.

Seconds later, the changeling, too, died with an expression of surprise on its borrowed, striped face. I left before either body could be discovered.

A massive, sprawling forest greeted me some time later. I thought I'd been hunting some strange trace of Discord.

Instead, I came across Linda.

It was the Everfree. Or maybe what the Everfree had grown from. I'm not quite sure what drew me there. Maybe I'd had lofty ambitions of leaving a message at the future site of the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. Or maybe I was just tired at watching from a distance those I couldn't actually communicate with, given the new and depressing languages barrier.

I just knew that I'd followed a rather unerring path toward a quiet place where sunlight filtered down in a cool, green cast. The air was cool and still there, and a stream bubbled just at the edge of my hearing. The place seemed so utterly devoid of movement that the rustling caused me to whip around as if expecting a dragon.

It turned out to be a sapling. Not... quite the threat I'd been expecting. Curiously, I prodded at it, expecting some small bird to explode out of it and give me a minor heart attack. Instead, I heard a giggle.

From behind me.

I whirled round again, only to see nothing at all. Again. The laughter, light and bell-like, echoed from absolutely everywhere, this time.

"Alright, you can come out at any time," I said, letting my voice fill the space.

"Hello, pony..."

"Yes, pretty prancing pony, prestidigitatang precisely, presently," I said, letting some simple script write itself in the air around me.

"Ooh... that was six! That earns you a cookie!"

My spell faded into useless mist. Shocked, I called, "Have you been following me?" The 'alliteration exercise' is one that I came up with a long time ago, subjectively speaking, to combat an old stuttering problem. Chancellor Puddinghead had once overheard me and demanded I teach her.

But that was a long time... from... now, I supposed.

"Don't be ridiculous!" the voice didn't quite snap. "Or do be... just be nicer about it. Being nice is important, I think."

"I'm sure it is," I answered back, and suddenly realized what had been weirding me out about this whole event, besides the obvious- the voice and I had been speaking English the entire time. It had taken me years of vocal practice and a little bit of creative wind manipulation to manage it with my current vocal cords, and now this voice had started out with a language I thought couldn't exist, here.

"How do you know English?" I asked. "Are you reading it out of my brain? I'll warn you- I find mind-reading to be very rude."

"I only have to read my own brain for that," the voice complained, sulkily. Then it brightened up. "Oh my gosh are you a princess? You look like a princess, just like the show!"

My mind stumbled over that unexpected road block, leaving me just enough off-balance that I happened to ask the most pressing question possible, without trying yet another useless topic:

"What's your name?"

"Why, it's Linda! Who are you, pony princess? Are you the sunny one?"

I sat down, hard. I tried to speak, croaked, and had to try again. "Linda Turpin? B... born in Seattle? Two sisters, two dads, afraid of bugs?"

"And dirt!" chirped the voice. "Sort of. Dirt's actually sort of neat! You're a very clever princess."

"I'm not a princess," I said, voice gone slow and dumb. "My hranme..." I had to stop, regaining the right muscle and air control to use my old speech. "My name's Tamara Whittle. I'm your friend, Linda. Do you... do you remember me?"

"Tamara!" The tree in front of me exploded, and something green and smiling stepped out of the bark. "Tammy! Oh my goodness it's been ages, I think!"

"You think?" I asked.

She, humanoid, but with skin glistening like a sapling stripped of bark, nodded. And then I realized that her skin was exactly like that. Plant-like.

"Hi, Linda," I said, feeling faint. "How'd you get in magic pony land?"

She shrugged happily, like herself in many ways, but with a lack of tension that had been eternally set in every line of her body for a long as I'd known her. "Not a clue. I haven't seen many ponies. None of your friends visit me, either. I was a tree a lot, though, so maybe I missed something."

"And... how are you a tree?" I asked. "You weren't a tree before."

The woman... dryad? She looked a bit smaller, and a bit less happy at the question. "Magic. Magic changed me. Or I changed me, and I was magic. Or there was a tree that was magic, and I became the tree..." She trailed off. "I think something bad happened, Tamara. I can't find my apartment. Or my phone. I couldn't call you. Did you go away?"

"By accident. You... remember that book? That magic book I had?" I asked. She nodded. "I did something wrong, and couldn't go back home. Now, where did the magic come from? Did... Twilight, did she come back?"

Linda sighed. "No. No, I saw her in the television, but she never came to say hi. And then there was magic everywhere, and..." she looked up. "I think I fell asleep. For a long, long time. I was in some trees, and then some other trees, then... maybe a mushroom?" She shook her head. "I didn't like the mushroom. The moon is wrong here, but the sun is extra delicious."

"Is it?" I asked.

"Yes. Oh, yes. The sun from home was not this good. Oh, Tamara, I'm so happy to see you!" Then she went and hugged me. That was extremely out of character for Linda, so I mentioned as such, and I felt her nod where her head was stuck in my mane. "People germs can't hurt me anymore. Bugs are still icky, but I don't think you're infested with beetles."

"Thanks," I said, wry grin tugging at my mouth.

"Oh, can I show you my special tree?" she asked, jumping back and bouncing. It did... interesting things to anatomy I hadn't seen in about a hundred years.

"Sure," I choked out.

I followed the dryad, my friend, out of the grove. Occasionally she would simply go through plant matter, and I'd have to circle a tree or thicket only to see her proceeding out the other side.

"Linda? Do you, I mean, have you seen the others? Crazy Dan? Jill?"

"They went away," said Linda. "Or I went away. We never game anymore, Tamara."

"I don't have my rulebooks with me," I replied, staring around at the twisted undergrowth as we went.

"And I don't have any dice," said Linda with a pout. "We should head to the coffee shop. Should, but the shop's gone. Everybody left..."

We reached a cave, and Linda went right on in. I followed a little more reluctantly, but couldn't bring myself to stop and take things in. That would mean leaving behind Linda.

The cave sloped down slowly, curling in on itself or crossing its own path entirely, if seeing my own hoofprints in the dirt was any indication. Eventually, though, we came to a stop before something beautiful.

I knew what it was without being told.

"Do you like it?" asked Linda, gently stroking the crystalline leaves. "Like the show! I used to make those little plastic figures, do you remember?"

"Yes, Linda," I said, swallowing. "I remember. They were very pretty. This is very pretty."

"Oh, good," said the dryad, looking relieved. "I think I was supposed to wait for you, but I got bored. Um... I've been waiting for a long time. Maybe... days?"

"Linda, I don't think you made this in days," I said, approaching just a smidgen closer. The tree felt like... like an endless wellspring of patience and compassion, if that could be a thing.

"Then it must be longer," she said, reclining against the actual Tree of Harmony and sliding down it. "Maybe a long time. Maybe the longest time." I came closer, and saw that she looked a little grayer.

"Linda, I think you need to get back out into the sun, or something," I said. "You don't look too good, for a tree person."

She looked listlessly at the discolored surface of her arm. "No. I'm done waiting, Tamara. It's been long enough, I think. I was supposed to be here for you, and now you're here!"

"And now...?" I asked, dreading just where this was going.

"And now I don't have to, anymore," said the dryad. "I missed you Tamara. Can I pet you?"

"I missed you too, Linda," I said, suddenly aware that her green, glinting eyes weren't focusing on me anymore. I trotted up and settled down next to her, curling up close. She'd never been able to stand this back before... back before this. "Go on ahead," I told her.

Her breathing turned more shallow, and she sighed happily as she slumped further. Her arm around my neck and her back against the softly-glowing tree were probably the only things keeping her upright.

Her fingers twined in my hair and played with my scalp and I was suddenly very aware of how Twilight had been pleased and embarrassed in equal amounts when I did that to her.

"I'm so happy to see you again, Linda," I told the other woman, eyes half-lidded and relaxed.

"Me too, Tamara." Linda's fingers slowed. "Can you say 'hi' to everybody for me, please?"

"Of course, Linda. Anything," I said. "Are you dying?" It seemed a stupid question- the answer seemed obvious.

"I think so," said Linda, not seemingly especially concerned. Just tired. "I'm done, now. And you're here."

"I'm going to miss you," I told her.

"Miss... you, too..."

I buried her at the roots of the strange, lovely tree, scratched out a message in an old earth pony dialect for the girls on a nearby stone, and left.

I was on my way out of the forest when I came across the scene.

Not wanting to backtrack over my own path, I'd turned westward. It was there that I found the witch.

Witch, in these parts, basically meant anybody who used magic that they weren't naturally born with. I could script spells atypical to pegasi, the old dragon of the Arbo Swamp could craft mud golems, the gremlin hag of the southern Paradise Estate was able to steal the youth of pony foals -and hadn't survived our meeting- and this bitch was just doing some frankly unsettling shit.

The massive stone pit, some sort of ill-placed quarry in the heart of the forest that had filled halfway with swampy water, was host to a zebra. She had painted herself with pigments I didn't recognize, had wreathed herself in bones that looked exactly like the kind you might find, for instance, in other zebras, and was waving a blood-drenched staff over the filthy pond.

I was not really feeling a great deal of good vibes coming off of her, is what I was saying.

The final nail in her coffin was the ring of corpses around the quarry pit. They were of various races, and all most definitely, unmistakably dead.

The zebra began cackling madly, swept her staff in an arc, and all of the corpses were drawn down into the water as if on strings. I watched, curiously, for several minutes until the water began to boil.

And out of it climbed timber wolves. Scores of them.

My eyes bugged out, and I couldn't help but mutter, "There's just no way."

Not feeling much like waiting to let her continue whatever kind of necromancy she was into, I wreathed myself in a soft illusion and went all but invisible as I flew up into the treetops, and then further up still.

The clouds here were... uncooperative. I guessed the Everfree had been an anomaly for longer than anybody had ever expected.

Still, if nothing else were true, my natural well of power was substantially larger than it had been. Maybe almost twice what it was. If I had to make a guess, I wasn't quite half the 'princess' that my girls would be, even when they first ascended. I did some rough math in my head as I circled and drew vapor in towards myself.

It took hundreds of unicorn mages to stabilize the path of the two celestial objects. Divide by two, and, even accounting for the power savings that came from having a talent geared specifically toward communing with said objects...

By that vague guesswork and pseudo-science, the girls would be at at least three times my current strength after ascending with the Elements. I chuckled and patted my belly.

"Magic uterus, right here. Two for two successes- suck it, ma!"

That was probably mean of me, but then I had plenty of virtues that I thought I could let forgiveness slide, just the slightest bit.

If, of course, one counted 'enjoys raining down thunder' as a positive virtue.

I stood atop my wide, disc-shaped cloud, aimed, and stomped. The water below went from boiling, which must have been the optimal temperature for arboreal necromancy, to flash-steaming.

The zebra mare's chuckles became a scream of shock and rage.

I dove through the cloud, which had given up the metaphorical ghost and begun shedding rain. The zebra, with the little blood-red flower at her lapel, shrieked up at me.

I knew that flower. A griffon mercenary, or follower, or something, had worn the same thing. I hadn't known why he had ambushed and slain one of the drakelings, but seeing that he'd been procuring the body for somebody else was... unsettling. Worse, that I had missed one of his fellows who must have been in the area, because I saw said drakeling arranged around the pool. It had taken me some time to recognize the coloring when the body had been... less than fresh.

Timber wolves continued to rise out of the quarry. To my satisfaction, though, no new ones were rising out of the roiling water anymore. But on the other hand, there were still dozens of the arboreal monsters in every size from 'intimidating' to 'horrifically large'. I think they might have topped the three I faced with Tia and Luna in tow.

The witch spun her staff, and a spray of crystalline mist hit me. My eyes shut on reflex, before I noticed that it wasn't some sort of exploding acid-breath spell. That was good.

Several dozen timber wolves froze, inhaled deeply, and turned on me as one with glowing eyes. That was bad.

'This really explains why they focused on me to the exclusion of all smaller, tastier ponies back in the future,' I thought, at once worried and satisfied that I'd solved that little mystery. Really, some questions don't actually need an answer.

I would have thought that flight would have made the zebra's efforts pointless. Unfortunately, these tree-formed monsters could, in fact, climb trees. Quite well. Not to mention that the shaman mare below was still a corpse-collecting danger, and apparently the progenitor of one of Equestria's nastiest dangers.

Instead of avoiding the newly-spawned monsters, I tucked in my wings and dove. Fast, but not so much that I couldn't wind back and forth, evading the outstretched limbs of the corpse-born horrors. I'd seen necromancy, faced it, before, but it never failed to creep me the fuck out. The rapidly-approaching zebra shrieked once she realized her fatal error, and once I realized it too.

Her 'children' were not allowed to attack her, but they were fast and not built for stopping quickly on blood-slicked ground. I only -barely- tugged at her with the Ghostly Hand, tipping her into the still-boiling water. A swarm of alicorn-chasing timber wolves poured in after her.

And then, to be certain, I gathered my cloud back up and pounced on the thing until every last ion had been stripped from it.

I reclined, tiredly, on a few fading wisps of vapor as those timber wolves that hadn't been flash-boiled circled warily below. Several had disappeared into the underbrush already- I'd never be able to catch them all. Even should I have tried, I knew through experience that I wouldn't, couldn't, be successful.

Still, I took a few potshots in the form of spells that wouldn't start an out-of-control forest fire before figuring that, either zebras could hold their breaths for more than fifteen minutes, or else the world was down one witch. I flew off to the western horizon.

I put off trying for another jump forward for several more years. In that time, I picked up dialects in zebra, griffon, drakeling and minotaur.

The minotaurs.

I have to mention that the griffons had always been a mighty people, civilized and honorable.

Certain cults, however, had embraced the predator within in ways that were simply horrific.

In a world with more than one sapient species, the concept of cannibalism became more... nuanced. It was, I believe, one of the defining points of griffon civilization that brought them to consider other sapients as not only equal to, but 'equivalent' to themselves, leading to the Thunder and Eyre clans to join the minotaur clans in repelling their own people from the flatlands.

I reached Smethfurt, the easternmost minotaur stronghold, traveling with a band of griffon merchants to supply the defending forces. I had the advantage in dealing with the griffons because of the experience that I'd had with them working with the pony tribe leaders, in the long struggle versus Discord. That meant that their language had stayed relatively stable during that time. I'd not had much to do with minotaurs yet, though, so mostly worked through interpreters.

Once the story was relayed to me, though, I offered my help against the Cult of the Red Beak.

Magic amongst most species tended to be subtle, and specialized. Witches, shamans, alchemists and the like could manage new uses with old abilities, but the tricks I had access to were so far outside the purview of those in the someday-Equestria that... I left an impression.

I shamelessly crafted illusions of Windigos in the clouds above the final battlefield, sending Saint Elmo's fire in a scare tactic which forced the enemy griffons down toward the battlefield. Minotaurs met them from below, while the allied griffon clans, forewarned against the specters, fearlessly dove from above the cover and carved into the cult members' backs.

I used my burning-dust wings to startle them and, low on magic, took them on hooves-first.

I killed five, but scattered the rest so badly that they flew into the waiting claws and blades of the other forces.

Shaken and tired, I followed my guide to the celebrating camps, some hours later. One of the minotaur chieftains bowed and, through the interpreter, asked what had drawn me to the fight.

I answered honestly: "To save my future daughters the trouble."

The chieftain seemed equal parts amused and appreciative. While they were passing around steins of beer that could have rusted iron, they broke into one of the compulsive little war-ditties that had been going on ever since their victory.

Tired, but curious, I asked my guide what they were singing about.

The griffon's beak stretched in a grin. "They're cheering you, their ally. 'The Mother's Fist', they call you."

I listened, trying to pick up on the sound of the words.

'Da Mati Faust'.

Faust.

I buried my head in my hooves. I might have groaned. It wasn't a matter of worrying that this would get out- I knew it was going to get out. Twilight had swore by my name on more than one occasion, presumably because it was less awkward than swearing by her other princess-buddies. Now, I'd sworn by God, Jesus, Buddha, Xenu and Tom Cruise and hadn't ever expected anybody to reciprocate.

"I've got to get out of here," I mumbled.

"Before the party's over?" asked my guide.

"...After the party. Give me another drink."

I could stick around for a bit. Really, how bad could these battles get?

Eventually, maybe years later, I made the long journey east to the Landbridge, then to Amaranth, then back to the Paradise Valley. I went covered in the illusion of a peach and orange pegasus, sans my normal cloak, and with an ugly, frumpy hat on the basis that I hadn't actually transformed, and so didn't want anybody putting their eye out on my forehead, on the horn they couldn't see.

I went back to the Auroch city on the mountain, on the basis that it had been the most stable point of civilization that I knew, before it burned. It also kept the best business and tax records with a kind of single-minded intensity attributable only to bureaucrats.

I was six hundred years before my first arrival in the Paradise Valley. Nearly seven centuries before my bad end at Discord's mismatched hands. Heaven knew how far ahead I'd leaped that first time in the cave, before stupidly casting while atop a cosmic spectrum crystal.

I wanted to go back home. Having not had one that wasn't a cart, not since before when I was still human, and not since leaving with Winter, that meant Luna and Tia.

I returned to Equestria and waited another few years as I planned for possible failure. I couldn't let that failure impact my doing everything I could to give Tia and Luna a leg up.

I visited places that the ponies during Discord's reign never themselves reached. I left messages and wrote stories. I charged a zebra, one responsible for a temple in his homeland, with the delivery of several parcels in the centuries to come, using magically-binding promises utilized off and on by his people.

Finally, I reached the Canterhorn, and landed on the long rock shelf I remembered from before it all went to hell. At the back I messily scratched a large message to myself to turn around and eventually to shoot Discord and, surrounding it, reminders to the girls to brush their teeth and wash their hooves. All in English, but it made me feel better.

I took wing to one of the nearby foothills, on the basis that if I exploded, it wouldn't ruin the scenery for generations to come.

The vapor script spiraled around me until it became a spherical shell of magic. Then a second layer. Then a third. Years of refinement went into it, all aiming to the one purpose of not fucking this up again.

I checked the area around me for suspiciously-shiny rocks, not wanting to find out what a 'double alicorn' might be, and-

-Execute spell-

There was Time.

There was a Barrier.

I struck it, traveling in a direction I could hardly perceive, rolled over it like a puppet with its strings cut, and fell into the darkness.

I woke up nearly twenty-three hundred years later, on the roof of a tavern, and in my exhaustion slept there.

Sisters And Footnotes

Chapter Fourteen

"Sister! Sister, we must go back! Tia!"

Celestia did her best to keep Luna pinned at the bottom of the gully, praying that the vegetation would muffle the filly's voice. Her mind was awhirl. They couldn't stay here and wait for their mother to return. The witch Tham'ra had always been very particular about what to do if they were separated- find a resistance cell and reach Starswirl. The 'old codger', though Celestia knew he was less than half of her mother's age, was trustworthy.

That was where their mother would go to find them, before starting a search if need be. The two sisters were well-taught, and capable.

Now the young pegasus had only to convince herself of that fact.

They would wait until there was no sign of Discord, and then a good few hours more to be absolutely certain, before heading off.

Two years. Luna was seventeen, now, and a curious young mare. She heard Tia talk to Starswirl as she reached the wizard's corridor to meet for one of their lessons.

"The magic will take years to have a permanent effect," she heard him say, warningly.

"I'm patient. Mother said she would come up with something, but never quite finished. I don't know how long my necklace will last, either," said her older sister. Luna rolled her eyes- so it was about that. Mama promised to fix Tia's problem, and she'd be back soon enough. She could do anything, really, being a powerful and clever witch.

"It's also only cosmetic. You won't... you'll certainly not have progeny, by the time it's done," continued Starswirl.

"Mother will fix that, if she can. Just... please, Starswirl."

"As you wish. Join me tomorrow night- I'll be rested and ready to cast, then."

Fed up with waiting, Luna knocked on the door and pushed her way in. With her, she levitated a parcel.

"Tia! We've got mail, I think," she said. The pegasus opposite Starswirl's workbench frowned, curiously, before taking a seat. The wizard nearby rolled his eyes.

"From where? Has it been checked? You know the kind of 'party favors' that Discord slipped into the western shelter last year, correct?" he asked, rounding the desk and staring at the heavy bundle of brown paper and string.

Luna coughed. "I may... not have checked it, no. A zebra arrived with it, for 'Celestia and Luna, daughters of Tham'ra the witch'. From one of mama's friends, maybe. I think he's already gone on with the last trading party to leave the outpost."

"Fool!" Starswirl swepped up the book in his own magic and began casting spells. Slowly, gently, he eased off and gave a troubled glance to the two sisters. "You... have the room to yourselves for a bit. I'm going to get some tea. Just a few protective charms on it, otherwise clear, and... just open it."

"What's gotten him all worked up?" asked Celestia as the two sisters found themselves alone.

Luna shrugged. "Don't know, don't care- we've got a present!" With all of her usual enthusiasm, and none of the grace, she tore open the package.

"Watch it!" said Tia, batting away wrapping from her eyes with a wing.

Luna ignored her and gave an excited shout. "Sister! Our patience has been rewarded! Look!"

There, on a plain paper cover titled in familiar hoof-writing, was the title, 'For My Daughters'.

Suddenly, Tia was literally hanging off of her shoulders. "Open it! What is it?!"

"Get off! Stars, but you've eaten too much cake!" whined Luna, shrugging the older filly off. "Let me put this down, first."

It was an anthology. Stories, local lore about the Equestrian territories -including areas their family certainly hadn't visited- and short personal notes to the girls themselves.

They sat there together and read through the night, until reaching the last passage:

I can't claim that this is wise, my loves, but then my wisdom is a medley of guesswork and good fortune, it sometimes seems. That you are reading this is a sign that my return to you may be a longer time in coming than I had hoped.

As such, I can only arm you with the greatest resource I have available: lore.

In the forest of the most wild of magics, south of the Canterhorn, lies a glade. I have marked it for you, in such a way as only you shall be able to recognize it.

Below it, under the earth, you shall find a tree.

This last, greatest work of a spirit that I had the honor and pleasure of calling friend has properties which represent the very best of the pony people. Truth, mirth, largess, fealty, sympathy, and glamour. Used in harmony, these elements will allow even the most humble to prevail against such forces as Discord.

So rarely have I felt true hate, but for this creature which has separated us. But for fate, which had demanded you go this challenge alone. I do not yet believe my fight to be futile- I'm still seeking a way to reunite with you once more.

Do remember to brush your manes, and hold each other fondly.

All of my love,

your mother.

In darkness but for a candle, the two sisters held each other.

"Elements used in harmony," muttered Celestia.

"Mother believes we may face the mad king," said Luna. "I wonder if other mares have such expectant elders?"

"Luna!"

Celestia stared into the silvery mirror, at the new mark that now adorned her side. She wondered at it. Her mother had waited nearly a century to get her own talent emblem- she and Luna had ironically despaired of getting their own in half the time, at the ripe old ages of twenty-three and twenty respectively. Wresting the sun and moon from Discord in mid-battle had, she mused, been probably a bit too dramatic a way to go about things.

"We believe you ought to stop staring, less it should fall off, sister," came Luna's teasing voice.

Celestia rolled her eyes. "What is this 'we' business?" she asked.

"Are we not now royalty?" asked the younger sister. "We ought to act the part. It is important to take one's responsibilities seriously." She sounded not a bit ruffled.

The older sister sighed, then offered a fond smile. "It's to your credit that you believe so." She brushed her newly-confounding hair away, but it settled over one eye again. Stars, but she hoped she found a way to hold it back! "I spoke to Starswirl, recently."

Luna brightened up. "About our suspicions concerning mother's displacement?"

Celestia nodded. "Indeed. With the last delivery, and the tests we were able to do on its age, it is clear she was sent to the past. By whatever means, she must be attempting to 'catch up' as it were."

"Right," said Luna. "From what I, er, we have been able to understand, she must have had foreknowledge of our battle with Discord- to appear before then would have invited 'paradox', I believe it was?"

"But with Starswirl's newest spell, we might even be able to see her again," said Celestia was a growing grin. "She might only need confirmation that we have finished our task. That she may come home, now."

"Precisely," said Luna, who then looked back over her -new- wings, toward the tent's opening. "They will be starting soon. A small amount of posturing, and then we shall be able to go see her."

"I look forward to it," said Celestia, demonstrating her penchant for understatement.

Years passed, but neither gave up hope. Finally, Starswirl came up with a solution of sorts.

Light crackled and fell away from the pair in waves.

They glanced around, overjoyed at their apparent success, before the scene around them finally sunk in.

They were upon a battlefield. Luna whimpered, and stepped away from what was clearly a griffon. Or what had clearly been a griffon, a short while ago.

Their efforts against Discord had shown them some gruesome things, yes, but rarely an out-and-out battlefield.

"Where is she?" asked Celestia, glancing around with a bit more composure.

Luna swallowed back bile, then with no small surprise pointed and shouted, "There! Oh, stars, sister! Look!"

The two siblings galloped over a dip in the savaged landscape, noting that the sounds of fighting had turned distant. This must, Celestia figured, have been a running battle. That thought was soon pushed from her mind as she and Luna skidded to a stop before their mother. Though their mother had never looked quite like this.

Aside from the slightly larger proportions, aside from the horn, the mare was covered in viscera. Some of it obviously her own.

"Lulu! Magic!" shouted the elder sister, not having had more than half her sister's time to practice her own talents. Luna, on the other hoof, had been an avid student of Clover the Clever for most of her life.

The blue alicorn frantically set to work casting diagnostic charms on their mother, while Celestia began banishing the battle filth away. The wounds on her body, once cleaned, looked only slightly less terrible. Worse was the dazed look in her eyes, and the thin line of blood dripping from the gash just under her horn. Clearly, Tham'ra had been knocked senseless.

"Need to... shielding cantrip. Guise of a... yeah." Their mother blinked at the distance. "Silly rabbit, swords are for kids."

"Very good, mama," said Celestia. "Look at me, come now- what has happened? What brought you here and... where do you go next? Mother?"

"None. Nothing," muttered the oldest alicorn of the three. "Bloody... Tartarus. Tirek. Chain him to a dog. Banished, will come from the east, oh Lulu. Lulu. Lovely girl, don't be angry. He was a fool, the night take him. It will be okay, I promise. Tia, she'll be so much like Clover. Her stars will aid Lulu's escape." A whimper, so unlike what the two young mares had never heard her make. "I think we were supposed to... supposed to see them all again. See you again."

"Some good news would be much appreciated, Lulu!" Celestia was getting very worried at her mother's rambling.

"I can heal the head wound- Clover showed me some simple aid," said Luna. "Just... a mere minute, sister!"

"I wonder if I'll be happy," said Tham'ra. "If I... live twice, too. My girls, my littlest, my..." Her eyes closed, and she slumped.

"That was supposed to happen," said Luna quickly. "The healing must take effect."

"We can't stay," said Celestia frantically. They had acted so hastily upon receiving the spell. They hadn't considered their options- by any measure, they had none. Even empowered by two alicorns, the magic could only stretch so far.

"We could take her with us!" said Luna, still working as fast as she could on the mare's wounds.

"No," said Celestia. "What comes back is only what was sent back. Lulu, this spell is one use only."

It was a credit to her little sister's concentration that Luna didn't halt in her casting, even as her expression drew back in a grimace. "There will be other options- there must be!"

The atmosphere filled with a familiar hum, and both siblings froze in place.

"It is too soon," whispered Luna. "Please, mother, wake up- tell us anything at all, please!"

But then they were gone.

"We were so close!" shouted Luna. "Fix the spell! Repair the stupid thing!"

Starswirl, face turned lined and elderly, glared. "It's not broken, you foal! How far do you think any one pony can bend time? It can change nothing -as I told you!- and all things must in their nature come to a full circle!"

He alone among many didn't flinch when the younger sister's magic flared like a corona of ultraviolet light, hair blowing in hurricane winds.

"Magic of a different nature, then," said Celestia, who was holding herself slightly more together.

"With all due respect," said the bearded stallion, "my other studies are already suffering. I gave Tham'ra everything she needed to return under her own power as it is. You've only confirmed that she is in our past, and is capable enough of doing so. She needs only move forward- a task infinitely easier than doing the opposite! As you see, I'm doing the same thing myself, if only one second at a time!"

The discussion did not improve much after that.

"She'll return when she can, Lulu," said Celestia later on that evening. Her eyes were shut against exhaustion and stress. "I have faith in her."

"Something could have gone wrong," said her relentlessly pacing sister. "You saw! Anypony could have come along and... and slit her throat!"

"She won't be brought low so easily," said Celestia. "Plainly, she managed to ascend herself, did she not? Our bodies are substantially more damage-resistant than they were."

Instead of answering, Luna turned to the latest batch of reports left by the palace academics. Not a night went by without one of them taking the Everfree road, bringing reports of small signs left behind by 'Faust'. Clearly, their mother had been busy. The sisters were limited in their time to look, governing from the small city that was their triumph over the wilds.

Up until there weren't any reports of her at all. One day -and accounts were too sketchy, after centuries of moldering, to tell the exact day- Tham'ra simply wasn't there anymore. Just accounts of a strange being from out of the east, who had savagely taken on early Equestria and seemingly paved the way for grateful neighbors to greet the land's liberators from Discord's reign.

Or as Celestia had heard from Starswirl, 'More of the mare's usual meddling'. Though he had said it with a certain amount of fondness.

'With any luck,' thought Celestia, 'she'll have made her way back before Lulu and I are old and gray.'

In the centuries to come, and as small 'care packages' continued to appear, the sisters had to wonder at just how prescient the witch had been, and how.

Not entirely prescient, though, since every gift was prefaced with 'if I have not yet returned to you'.

After returning from their brief stint in the past, the sisters had long mulled over their mother's appearance. Celestia wondered if the 'alicornification' had been a new thing, or if their mother had always been more than she had appeared. Guiltily, the thought that the witch had always been some fantastical creature in hiding appealed to the eldest sister's sense of romance.

Before his death, apprised of their mothers' words babbled through a veil of pain and exhaustion upon an ancient battlefield, Starswirl had declared it all to be exactly that: babble.

Celestia had always been struck by a few words in particular: of living twice, of 'her' looking like Clover. She and Luna would often remark that so-and-so greatly resembled mares and stallions they had known in the past. It may have been coincidence, of course.

But then the princesses had broken the armies of Tartarus, and turned the underground caverns into a prison for the worst of monsters. Luna had set a dog to guard it, before the younger royal realized what she was doing.

Tirek had come out of the east, and eventually been chained behind the hound.

Luna, corrupted by Sombra in a hideous last-ditch attempt at revenge on the old sorcerer's part. She had, as their mother had claimed, turned so very angry...

Then, over nine hundred years after her sister's... departure, Celestia met a young filly. One who looked so much like Clover that to hear young Twilight Sparkle not chattering in ancient unicornian had been a shock.

Had their mother been a prophetess? Just plain lucky and clever? The protections hiding their old home were too strong for Celestia to research on her own in the greatest remaining collection from the ancient world's libraries.

The Element Bearers were six faces from the past. Luna had been so confused after being purged from the Nightmare, believing herself for a moment to be back in their childhood.

"Has she... has she yet returned, sister?" asked Luna. Around them, a festival in honor of the sun's return was still running at full steam.

Celestia ducked down and nuzzled the diminished alicorn. "Not yet. But given how many old faces we can see here today, I wouldn't be surprised."

Luna nodded, and parted her mane with a splash of magic. From nestled in her long, blue hairs floated a book.

"Is that..." Celestia swallowed.

"Yes," said Luna. "Seemingly written for me, personally. Delivered before our final battle. Even in my madness I... I didn't dispose of it. Have there been others, since?"

The elder sister thought back to the half dozen gifts and manuscripts carefully delivered over the past thousand years. "Yes. A few written 'for when my youngest eventually is brought back by familiar faces'."

"Confound her," said Luna, but fondly. "She knew. Or... or something. I'm not sure how to feel about this."

"We'll ask when she returns," said Celestia.

"You still believe she will?" asked Luna, eyes shining with hope.

"She can do anything," said Celestia. Luna didn't argue with her.

Eight years after the return of Princess Luna, six mares found themselves sitting solemnly in Twilight's old tower. The last of the six, an unusually somber Pinkie Pie, kept glancing back to the door.

"What were you up to, Pinkie?" asked Applejack. She, along with everypony else, had been struck by the way the two oldest princesses had stumbled, almost drunkenly, away from the ritual room.

Twilight tried not to appear to focus too tightly on the pink mare, but gave it up when the rest of the girls didn't even bother with subtlety.

"I... I tried to go see what was wrong, or invite them to a 'we found one of our human buddies' party, but..." Pinkie bit her lip and shook her head, cutting herself off.

"Pinkie?" tried Twilight.

"I could hear crying," said the earth pony. "I've never heard the princesses cry. I heard it all up the hallway, and the guards and servant ponies looked like they were going to cry too."

"Well. What do we know for certain?" asked Rarity, as taken aback as the rest of them.

"Well," said Twilight. "Just before the rift closed for good, Tham'ra..." Twilight winced, then sounded it out again with the harder English syllables, "Ta-ma-ra somehow did magic. Like one of my less likely hypotheses, she was injured by the high-magic environment. Canterlot is famous for it- in somewhere neutral like the Bad Lands, she might have been okay if she weren't so battered by her arrival. Then she did magic again -somehow-" she grumbled, "and disappeared."

"No, get to the important bit," said Rainbow. "That was her as a pony. A pegasus. How the feather-plucking heck did that happen?"

"I haven't the faintest," admitted Twilight. "But one thing was for sure. She was years in the past. Maybe... centuries." The circle of mares went quiet. "Girls, she... she might have already died a long time ago, maybe even of old age. The princesses... I think they knew her." She swallowed. "I don't know if I want to ask about it, though. Not when it had that sort of reaction from them."

"The poor girl didn't have a cutie mark," said Rarity.

"Were those seaponies?" mumbled Fluttershy.

"How was she doing magic?" asked Rainbow. "I mean, again?"

"I don't know," said Twilight. She glanced back at the door, eyes unfocused as if trying to see the distant suites of the royal pony sisters. "I just don't know."

1008 A.N.M.

Chapter Fifteen

Years of working out failsafes, exceptions and buffers, and it had gone wrong. Something beyond my understanding, outside of what my spell had been meant to handle, had gone wrong.

Centuries wrong.

I lay as if drugged, trying to find meaning in the pale face of the moon above. I watched, uncomprehending, as a train left a small water supply station and began its trek up the Canterhorn mountain. The only part of my spell that seemingly had worked right told me that I was, roughly speaking, within a decade of the time in which 'My Little Pony' had covered. Judging by the fact that there was no mare's shadow on the celestial sphere above my head, it was within a decade after.

Sixteen hundred years too far.

Sixteen hundred years failed.

Centuries in which the girls must have cursed my name, discovering first hand just how little a promise to return 'as soon as I could' meant, coming from me.

Countries had risen and fallen in that short step and tumble that I'd taken through time. For ten of those centuries, my girls had been without even each other. There weren't words to describe the sheer levels of failure to which I'd fallen.

I pushed myself, robotically, onto my hooves. Below myself, I could hear cheers and babble and singing by late-night revelers, all completely ignorant of the pathetic alicorn above their heads. I re-fastened my cloak over my body and hopped down to the ground, looking like nothing more than a lanky unicorn.

I should have run, or flown, or tried to catch my own train upwards. Instead, I walked. I couldn't not see them, and yet, I couldn't help but try to put off the inevitable exile. The great 'mother of Equestria', booted for child abandonment. There was a joke in there, somewhere.

The paths up the mountain were well-maintained, though saw little traffic at that time of the night. I was mostly alone, and went out of my way to avoid what little hoof and cart traffic there was. Eventually I sucked it up, brought my hood over my head and, voila, played the part of the pegasus. I reached the grand gate within minutes, and went back to being a 'unicorn' once I managed to duck out of sight. Wings were easier to hide, when concealing my face might do more harm than good. The last thing I wanted to be was hauled in over suspicion of criminal activity.

Even hours after nightfall, there was traffic. The city of Canterlot was beautiful, cleanly, and clearly fitting of the seat of Equestria's power. Celestia and Luna had built this. Or had, at least, refined it in the years since its founding. I was amazed and not a little humbled. All I ever managed was to stick my nose into situations that tended to bite at my nostrils.

A street wound up, gradually, toward the castle. I mused that, in a heavy rain, the entire shelf that supported the city must have reams of water pouring off the edge like an off-balance saucer. It must be a great savings when it came to street cleaning.

Towering, ornate stories rose above my head. It was like every fantasy story had been blended together into a beautiful, cohesive whole. It was at the gate that I ran into my first, and in hindsight most glaringly obvious obstacle.

"Name and intention this evening, citizen?" asked a pony at a small, open kiosk. It was a guard sans helmet. I winced, muddling through his unbearably thick accent.

"I seek... er, is the nightly court open, where I might politely petition the princess?" I asked. "I aim to gain audience with her personage."

He stared. "Right... Well, the Night Court is open, for another three hours. If you're lucky, there may be a small time slot available. What would your business be?" asked the stallion, levitating a quill.

"My business?" I blinked, and suddenly realized that, yes, the palace was a government building and I was more or less a hobo to these ponies. Proclaiming myself an alicorn or, 'your boss's mom' might turn out to be a less than optimal choice. Grinning, I was struck by inspiration.

I tucked my hoof under my cloak and brought out a thick manuscript. "I have, in my vary'd efforts, made plain a manuscript most ancient. It is my aim that I might show her self a thyng of her own early rule- a kindly memento, if you will it."

"A scholar," said the unicorn, making a note. Less audibly, he mumbled, "that explains way too much." Out loud again, he said, "Go on in. You will be expected to give your name to the majordomo, and will be... thirteenth on the docket." He put on a bright, strained smile. "Have a good day, ma'am."

It hit me- my 'Equish', the pigdin used by the pony tribes during trade, was horribly out of date. Goody.

"Kind tidings, gatekeeper," I replied, trying not to wince at what I must sound like. "It surely does a heart good, that she might be in good steading this eve."

I passed him, entered the gate, and followed a few gold-leaf signs into a short hall. Rings of cushioned benches formed small waiting areas. Several had groups of ponies already occupying them. I nervously levitated a glass of water from a nearby refreshment table and settled, alone, into one of those circles. Dim chatter filled the hall, and a thin sliver of the massive chamber beyond was visible through the cracked double doors. I couldn't see anything, and was afraid to peek.

"Hello! Is this seat taken?"

I startled, nearly dropped my glass, and forced myself to relax. "Oh, no, you may take your rest where you will," I said.

The young mare looked at me quizzically, but nodded and offered me a smile. "Thanks! So, if you don't mind me asking, what brings you here?" She tugged at her mane nervously. "Not that I'm trying to pry, or anything. I guess I'm just nervous and want to make small talk. You don't have to."

I smiled. "It's no burden to ask, and less of one to receive answer, I assure you. It might be said that I approach on family business, but truly, the topic is muddled but fiercely."

"Ah..." she was staring.

"I've been long away and for some time, alone," I explained.

She parsed that, then shrugged. "No worries. I'm Sweetie Belle! The princess is sort of a friend of my sister, so I thought I'd give her a ticket to my first performance." She gestured toward her flank, and the ornate musical cutie mark there. "The princesses have been really good to us, I guess I just wanted to show 'thanks', you know?" She seemed more than a bit embarrassed at the idea.

"It's a kind thing you offer, young lady. I'm certain that L- the princess should take the offer quite well," I told her. "Your sister, she would be lady Rarity, of Ponyville?" At Sweetie's wary nod, I added, "Do tell her that 'Tham'ra' bids her a good greeting, would you?"

"You know her?" asked the young mare.

I pointed at my bundle of parchment. "We did meet, on occasion, through her friend Twilight. She and I are scholars, you see. This, by mine hoof, are some small binding of poetry and tales from the world of old."

"Oh!" Sweetie turned warmer, perhaps less worried that I was trying to cozy up to the Bearers of Harmony. "Tham'ra, you said?"

"Near enough," I admitted. "Tell me, how long has passed since they did pursue knowledge of a 'magical rift'? Twilight did mention it to mine self, on sparse occasion."

"That?" Sweetie looked thoughtful. "Maybe six months? Thereabouts. If you don't mind, could I see some of that poetry? Like Rarity says, you never know when inspiration might strike you!"

Two hours passed, and suddenly, I found my number called.

"Oh dear," I said, tucking the parchment back into its binding. "Another time, may hap?"

The young unicorn nodded tightly. "Please! I'm staying with my sister, and I'd love to see anything else you have, alright? It's like something out of an old play!"

"I think it truly must be," I said, wryly.

I wandered up to the majordomo, presented the slip of paper with my name and number on it, and walked past him.

"Number thirteen, and... what the devil?" The bookish stallion frowned. "How am I supposed to pronounce it?"

'Not my fault you don't know old unicornian,' I thought to myself smugly, and pushed into the space between the towering double doors. At once, all humor disappeared from me and I ducked my head further under my hood.

"Please approach."

That voice. Older, more mature, but so unmistakable. I nearly missed a step as I proceeded toward what looked like a respectable distance from the throne. Of course, I could only see the very bottom of the structure, but that seemed like a fair guess.

'Look up,' I told myself.

"I hear you have come to present an ancient manuscript," said the princess.

'You coward, look up.'

"I do not believe I caught your name- was the majordomo still present beyond the doors? Guard, go check to see if he's alright."

"Yes, your highness."

I shakily took the bundle of parchment and held it out in one hoof. An azure glow enclosed it and gently lifted it away. There was a sharp breath from ahead of me.

"Oh my. Did... did you find this? Was it given to you? Were you perhaps charged to hold onto it until this date by some ancestor of yours?" The voice speaking the questions was tightly controlled, but insistent all the same.

"I..." My throat narrowed.

"I must insist you tell me everything you can. Was this sealed? I detect no enchantments on it, and yet others of its ilk have all been guarded very tightly."

"I'm sorry," I wheezed.

There was silence.

"Pardon?" she asked, finally.

"I'm... sorry. I hoped in my heart of hearts that I might provide it at a sooner date, but I... I only just put finish to it."

"I don't understand," said Luna. "Are you... mocking me?"

"No! Never!" I couldn't stop myself. Should never have tried to in the first place, perhaps. I looked up from under my hood, up at the dark, dazzling figure upon her throne. "I am just so very, very sorry I took so long. I... hope you like it, Luna. And Tia. And..." I froze.

Not even the flare of light from Luna's horn, nearly blinding me, could make me flinch. The pale alicorn still wrapped in a bedspread and falling onto her back beside the throne couldn't bring me to move a single inch.

"Luna! What in the name of all that's good-"

The disgruntled elder sister was roughly dragged up with telekinesis. "Wake up and open your eyes, Tia!" Luna aimed her sister toward myself, built a small cascade of magic, and my cloak was relocated with hardly a whisper halfway down the throne room.

Two sisters stared.

I hunched over. "I'm sorry. I tried to come sooner."

"Luna? What is- Is that...?"

"Just look at her!"

"I did my best, I'm sorry..."

I felt the air of two passing figures approach me, my nerves keyed-up enough that I could have noticed a single flea's path. I wanted to burrow down through the marble floor and sink into the earth forever. Words couldn't describe my failure, and deeds couldn't make up for it.

"I'm so sorry."

Two warm bodies grabbed me from either side. Two voices spoke as one:

"You came back."

Appointments had been put on hold. A near-psychic glance from Tia had sent several servants to prepare a sitting room filled with a roaring fire and more cushions than I'd seen in my entire life. I was squashed in a pile of them by both my daughters, who'd simply teleported us to the room as a group rather than bother with all that silly 'getting up and walking' business.

"I used Starswirl's spell," I croaked. "There was interference. I went too far forward, and... I knew it might go wrong, that I might even die in the attempt, so I sent books, first..."

"We got them," said Tia.

"All of them," said Luna.

"I, I knew," I stuttered, still trying to explain. "I had an idea, about how... with history, and all. I had plans. Mad, intricate plans to circumvent causality, if I had to. I swear, I'd have built my own Nightmare, spirited you away, Luna, let the world think you were away while you were sane and safe and... oh gods I'm so sorry I failed."

Luna shuddered and held me tighter. Celestia wrapped her wings further around the both of us.

"Please, please don't hate me. Be angry, be sad, don't let me have scarred you, you deserve better than that..."

"You came back," whispered Celestia. "You promised you'd come back, and you did. You did everything you could."

"Please don't go away again," said Luna. My coat was growing damp.

"Never."

Silence, broken only by the crackling fire, ruled the air for a time I didn't bother to measure.

"Did Starswirl take care of you?" I asked, breaking the quiet.

"Of course he did," said Luna, snorting. "He was too afraid you'd find out if he didn't."

"Damned right," I muttered, and Tia giggled.

"So." Luna withdrew slightly, until she could look me in the eye. She had my eyes. "We have put some of it together, of course, and a lot more became obvious during Twilight Sparkle's latest adventure, but..."

"Yeah," I said, grinning crookedly. "I was a human. I tried to follow my friends back across the rift, cobbled together something close enough to a real magic spell to make it work. It... it didn't work well, mind you. I think I left bits of myself on your front lawn."

"Mother!" Tia looked absolutely, adorably appalled.

I laughed. "Sorry. Right. After that I was... not at my best. I cast the quickest, dirtiest spell imaginable to try to adapt a human body for a magical environment. I don't know where time travel entered in, but I woke up with a tail and wings about eighty or so years before you were born. Alien, unaging body, alien environment... It took months just to learn how to fit in. I had a plan, you know."

"A plan," I repeated, sighing. "The whole knack for magic was a bit of an accidental discovery. I thought about something to safely transform myself back into a human, but that would have left me as an alien among strangers. I thought about finding what Starswirl managed, and just jumping ahead a bit before asking for help from, well, you girls," I admitted.

"I imagine you'd have been confused by our first reaction, were that to have happened," said Luna with a grin.

I groaned. "I can only imagine. 'Surprise babies' is not a thing they make greeting cards for. Not reputable ones, anyways. Back on topic though- I still didn't have a reference for when I was. That sort of left me with little to do but wander. Which I did. And kept doing. By the time I figured out when I was, I'd been a pony almost twice as long as I'd been a human, and couldn't say I minded it. I... I still wanted to meet my old friends, but knew I had a wait ahead of me no matter what. And then your father just... caught me off-guard."

"I'll say he did," said Tia.

I colored. "Celestia Minerva Whittle!" The mare froze. "This is exposition time, and you will hold all jokes until the end!"

"Yes, mama," said Tia, shocked by her own reaction. Luna went about things differently. Namely, she collapsed into laughter.

"Sister, your face!"

Tia and I both groaned. "Luna," I said, "I swear I'll have you re-shelving the library."

The younger sister looked appalled, all amusement wiped away. "Mother, I am a princess now. I am centuries older than you!"

I leveled a steady, uncompromising gaze at her. Her eyes widened, wet and sad, like she used to do to scam me into buying extra sugared plums.

"Good gods, mare, cut that look out! You're acting like I threatened to put you over my knee," I grumbled. "Re-shelving books is a joy, and I'm disappointed you never learned that." A thought struck me. "Oh dear, you're supposed to be holding court, aren't you? What's a princess's work week like? Can we, I mean, when you're free..."

'Perhaps we'll call you sometime,' a voice in my head filled in. 'You know, as soon as somepony invents the telephone. Enjoy your life, mother.'

I thought I'd cried myself out completely in that first embrace. How surprising, to find I was wrong.

Objectively better, I heard: "Don't be ridiculous, mother. Call it... an emergency, two-week holiday, Luna?"

"That sounds perfectly acceptable, Tia," said the smaller alicorn. "We should call up our friends- they will be glad to know that that rift turned out well, if... unexpectedly so."

Celestia brightened up. "Mother! I have adopted a dragon- you'll get to meet him! Twilight Sparkle did tell you of Spike, correct? He is absolutely adorable and... and, we have so much to tell you about!"

I grinned. "I hear I have some many times over grand-nephew, as well?"

Luna coughed. "Nominally, yes. He's... well, you have to know him to appreciate him, I suppose. The poor boy has gone through a lot, by what Tia tells me."

"I look forward to it," I said. "You're, um, we have a lot to catch up on. And apparently I speak in 'Ye Old Equish', too..." I added, since the girls had been nice enough to scale back their speech a couple of centuries for me.

"A translation spell for now, before I'm sure you'll want to catch up on your own. I think you confused my attendants a great deal," said Luna, cheerfully.

"We'll have to arrange a press release," said Celestia, thoughtfully. "A new alicorn walked into the Night Court, earlier- rumors shall be flying."

"Can't we just claim I'm a pegacorn?" I asked, plaintively. "I don't even use this thing!" I said, poking out my head ornament. "I'm a witch, not a princess!"

"I hate to point this out," said Luna, sounding not sorry at all, "but you are technically royalty by default. And a mythological figure. Our neighboring nations will want to meet you- it seems you made quite the name for yourself in pre-Equestria, 'Faust'."

"Tham'ra," I muttered. "Tham'ra Hwithle, is that so hard?"

"Yes," said Celestia, nuzzling me. She had to reach down to do so, which kept shocking me at all the wrong times.

"Daughter, you got your father's height," I said. "At least Luna's appropriately stumpy."

"I am not stumpy!" growled Luna. "A mare disappears for a few centuries, and suddenly the beauty ideal is long legs and large flanks!"

"Your flanks are lovely, dear," I told Celestia, patting her head and winking at Luna. "Oh, oh I really missed this. I half expect us to wander off and hop back into the cart and then little Luna would try to flirt with Midnight and try to get into his herd..."

Luna began banging her head into a couch, and I grinned. "Come on, Luna, it's normal for fillies to have crushes! Adorable, adorable crushes." Noticing Tia was sniggering too hard for her own good, I added, "Almost as adorable as Tia's moon-eyes toward Princess Platinum. Always hanging out with 'Auntie Clover' just to be near that prima donna. Really, given the freakish resemblance, it seems like your little drakeling is taking right after you!"

Now both mares were fighting embarrassment and laughter in equal measures.

"Speaking of my cart," I said, thinking of all my unfinished projects. Some of those manuscripts had been one-of-a-kind.

"Missing," said Luna mournfully. "Twilight Sparkle once mourned over the loss of 'the witch and the first bookmobile', I believe she called it."

Both mares turned surprised when I grinned wide. "The enchantments are still on it! I knew hooking them into that ley line would work- the thing must still be buried!" Ears flicked up, attentively. "I hid it under the Baltic... I mean, Baltimare. I have the coordinates. Girls, field trip!"

Cheers went up, and we called for cake and tea. And...

"Equestria has coffee?" I said, dumbly.

"Ever since trade opened with the zebras," said Tia. "They get it from their felid-folk neighbors. It's become quite the export."

"Truly," I breathed, reverently, "I am now home."

I'd ask not to be judged- five minutes is too long to be away from coffee, let alone decades.

I woke up in a sleeping pile. Well, most of one- Tia was burning scrolls that turned into glowing, ashy wisps as they disappeared through a window.

"Mm..." I groaned, and poked my head out from under Luna's wing. "Messages?"

"Emergency family reunion," said Tia, quietly.

"No need to whisper," said Luna, groggily. "I'm up. Is it breakfast?"

"It's breakfast time somewhere," said Tia with a shrug. "To the dining room, then. If I'm not wrong, we'll be receiving some guests via emergency-teleport within the hour."

"Salmon," I said. "On potato pancakes. And... is pineapple a thing?"

"Pineapple is a thing," said Luna, grinning into my neck. I laughed.

We strolled down the hall together, bumping into each other like grinning fools and confusing the hell out of the early-morning help.

"Hark! Potato pancakes and other sundries!" shouted Luna. Several of the servants got the general idea and bustled off. The three of us pushed into the dining hall which was... swank. There weren't really words that did any of this castle justice.

"You've really gone up in the world," I muttered, staring up at the still-dark but decorative windows.

"We have," said Tia, nudging me toward a deep, violet cushion. "This is your home, your country, too."

"Always wanted to see Equestria," I said, dust having gotten into my eyes because there was no other possible explanation.

The doors at the other end of the room exploded- possibly because they had a sense of dramatic timing. Six mares and a dragon poured into the room. At their head, Twilight Sparkle hopped around manically, a spell ready on her horn.

"Celestia, Luna! You said it was urgent! Where's..." She slowed down, glancing around the room and at its complete lack of bloodshed. She sighed. "I overreacted again, didn't I?"

"Duh!" groaned Rainbow Dash. "Seriously, who cut into my party time now?"

I guiltily waved my hoof. "Hi, girls. Long time no see."

"Who's this joker?" asked the speedster. To either side of me, the girls went red, their ribs subtly shaking.

"Geez, Rainbow," I said. "You steal my pizza, fall asleep in my bath tub, and shed all over my couch, and you still can't bother to say 'hi' to me?"

The pegasus fell out of the air.

Pinkie, vibrating madly and grinning, well, just as madly, hopped up onto the table. "Hi, Tham'ra! Ooh! You're an alicorn, now! And you have the same name as-"

"Spoilers, Pinkie," I said, and she began nodding and winking, in a conspiratorial way. Only about five times faster than seemed strictly necessary.

"What in every fresh hell?" muttered Applejack, wide-eyed.

"Twilight?" I prompted. "Your warnings about time travel were truer than you imagined. You've all, um, met my daughters?" I said, gesturing between Luna and Tia.

Fluttershy and Rarity fainted simultaneously, but in such a way that their bodies ended up supporting each other in a kind of furry, upright triangle. Pinkie began chasing her own tail. Out of joy, I suspected. Rainbow began laughing uncontrollably. Applejack pulled off her hat, looked in it for some reason, then put it back on. Twilight froze in place, eyes shrunken to pinpricks.

"Mother, you... pff! You broke my ex-student!" said Tia, trying to talk through a full-bellied laugh.

"Sit down, everybody! They're about to serve breakfast!" I said, waving them forward. "Ponies have coffee, now- isn't that great?" Their responses didn't change. I sighed. "Scuse me, girls," I said, extricating myself gently and wandering around the table. I stopped before Spike, who was poking gently at Twilight's shoulder. "Hello, grandson. I probably owe you a few birthday presents, don't I?"

He was taller than the show had portrayed him as- wide-eyed and handsome, for a drake. I prayed Tia had baby pictures.

"Can I get a hug?" I asked.

He looked from Twilight, to Tia, who was nodding eagerly, then to me. I was nearly bowled over as I was hugged by my first-ever dragon. Most of the drakes I'd met had been substantially less friendly.

"Tia tells me you've become quite the librarian," I whispered. "It's sort of the family business- I'm very proud." He grabbed tighter, and tighter. Or, I thought he did, until I realized that it was just that Pinkie had joined the hug.

"This is awesome! This is mega-super-triple-cake fantastical! We're gonna have the biggest bash since Luna came back, and we'll need balloons! No- hot air balloons! And they can drop cold-air balloons! It's gonna be balloon-ception!"

"Should never have shown you my movie collection, Pinkie," I said.

The pink mare, was busy with her attention turned elsewhere, already. "Girls! Get in on this- this is primo hug-time!"

Rainbow was first, then Applejack, and then Pinkie subtly nudged us over until Rarity and Fluttershy were unconsciously collapsed on us rather than on each other.

'I... guess that counts as a hug?'

"Twilight? Get in on this!" I called through a pile of scales and fur. "Pinkie already told you, it's primo hug-time."

A purple blob literally threw itself on top of our heads.

I managed to put off breathing for about five minutes until Luna caught our attention and announced that breakfast had arrived. I caught all seven figures in Ghostly Hands and dropped them around the table. I hopped back in between my daughters.

Twilight, who was responding to the outside world again, freaked out. "How are you doing that without magic!?" she asked as huge platters full of hot food were placed on the long table. Obviously, the lack of an aura had caught her off guard.

"I'm not!" I said, defensively. "I've only had a horn for, like, six years. I've been doing magic for over eighty," I told her, to explain the lack of obvious, colored magic aura. "I was the 'wicked witch Tham'ra' long before I was 'Fausticorn'. I have to go back and punch some minotaurs for naming me 'fist'," I added, grumbling.

"Oh mah gosh you're the baby-stealer!" called Applejack, freaking out.

I pouted, but Luna nuzzled me and said, "I got the same thing, after coming back. Applejack! Our mother did not eat babies!"

Rainbow laughed while the country mare did her best to disappear under her stetson hat. "I knew it! A real pegasus witch! Suck it, unicorns!"

I grinned, gathered some vapor script, and projected an illusion of my old human self over her shoulder. "That's 'ex-human turned pegasus turned alicorn witch, thank you very much."

The mare tumbled back out of her chair. My illusion winked and disappeared.

Fluttershy giggled. "Oh my, I think you got some details wrong... Tham'ra? Faust? Er... princess?"

"I think 'Tham'ra' is good," I said, good-naturedly, before frowning. "Did I? Get it wrong, I mean. It's... been a while." I brought the illusion back up and made it wave.

"You were... taller," said Fluttershy quietly. "Um... smaller eyes? And..."

"I get it," I said, dismissing the image and sighing. "No big deal. I'm happier as a pony- have been for a while. I was infertile as a human, anyway," I added, burying my head into Tia's side. "I got to see so many places, meet so many people... not having fingers still sucks a little, thought- all that sign language learned for nothing."

"But... but how did this happen?" asked Twilight, seemingly unaware that Spike was piling her plate full of daisies and waffles.

I winked at the drake, proud he was such a good friend. "I'm still working some of that out. There were a lot of coincidences and self-fulfilling prophecies involved, though." I grinned, wide. "Want to come dig up my library, whenever? The girls and I are going on an expedition. How many dialects do you speak?"

"You're talking about..." the young alicorn began hyperventilating. "The Estate Library? It's real?"

"We lived in it," said Celestia, building a pile of pancakes to truly impressive heights. "It's where I learned to read. We used to candy fruit peels over the little camp stove."

"You remember that?" I asked, unable to push away my grin.

"Luna and I still do so on our own, sometimes," she admitted.

"But citrus is... no, it's less expensive these days, isn't it?" I mused out loud.

"Princesses," Luna reminded me, poking my side. "We can afford to candy entire rare palm trees at a time."

"Ah. Right," I said. "So, who wants to see an ancient library full of forgotten lore? I managed to pick up a few volumes from and about the Hearths' Warming Eve crew. Commander Hurricane wrote an extensive treatise, and the Smart Cookie wrote about settling the... I guess it's the Neighagra area, now?"

Interested looks were turning toward me. I busily shoved slices of salmon and dollops of sour cream onto my pile of potato pancakes until Rarity cleared her throat. "Hmm?"

"Er, just like that, darling? Ah... Princess Tham'ra?"

"I'm not a princess!" I groaned. "And just like that, yes. Dang it, I'm a linguist! Like one of those crazy monks writing out manuscripts in their little religion boxes, but with nicer hair."

"Religion boxes?" asked Spike, grinning.

I shrugged. "It was more like in a tree, waiting for the wild panthers to stop trying to climb after me when I was stuck with a sprained wing. That was a bad summer," I admitted. "Unimportant."

"Commander Hurricane wrote stuff?" asked Rainbow.

"Well, yeah?" I said, confused. "She led the entire tribe for over four decades. She wrote about ambush tactics, and weaponizing lightning against the sea ponies before they, somehow, weaponized it right back at them... The girl was pretty hardcore."

"Princess Platinum?"

"Smart Cookie?"

"Starswirl?" squealed Twilight.

"Yes, yes," I said, pointing at the questioners in turn, "and he was like a crotchety little brother. He's where I got the time-jumping spell I screwed up on. Still, I got to see him conduct the unicorns in raising the outer spheres. That was beautiful," I said, mind going back to the massive, arcane constructions that ringed the Paradise Estate. They had lit the dawn and dusk sky in coruscating colors...

"I need to work on my illusions and show these things to you," I said, feeling my voice go distant.

"Speaking of which, sister?" prompted Luna.

Tia nodded. "From here, I think."

I watched, first with curiosity, then with growing excitement as they stood and separated, going to opposite ends of the halls. The rest of the diners went quiet at the same time.

Both sisters glowed, astral manes moving more fiercely as light glinted off them and was, in turn, answered by the dimming moon in the rest and the rising strains of dawn in the east.

"I've never seen it like this," I whispered. Something, some feeling at the base of my horn resonated with it. "Never..."

I began laughing, and crying, and wasn't quite sure why.

"My cloak is fine. My cloak is classic. I am a witch, witch means cloak, cloak means witch."

"It is literally made of patches!"

I growled, and leaned in. "Girly, don't test me! I've made entire platoons of battle mages disappear, all while wearing, gosh, my cloak!"

Rarity didn't look impressed. "They were surely distracted by your lack of style."

"No! Less is more, solid colors are good, and I had to keep at least one bit of sensible thinking from back when I had toes!"

The both of us ignored Applejack, who was laughing into her hat like a loon. Her criticism was not, in fact, constructive criticism.

"You're to be presented to the greater part of the population!" whined Rarity. "We can't have you wandering about like a transient!"

"I am a transient, Rarity! They didn't have luxury hotels for what is, for me, twenty hours ago!"

"You poor dear!" snarked the fashionista. "That they didn't have novelty tee shirts either!" She leaned in and glowered. "I saw your wardrobe, Tham'ra. Remember?"

"You destroyed my favorite Homestuck tee shirt!" I growled back, suddenly reminded of the event.

"I don't even know what that means!"

"Philistine!"

"Bumpkin!"

"Prissy!" I called back.

Rarity scowled. "Hipster."

I growled feraly, and Rainbow had to catch me in mid-air. Rarity didn't so much as flinch.

"Let me replace it... with a similar cut, in... red," she offered, primly.

"Dark red," I countered.

"Violet lining?"

"Fine!" I said, throwing out my hooves as Rainbow tried to gently place me back down. "But I want every one of my pockets in there. And..." I bit my lip, almost sheepishly. "Maybe more room in the hood?" I glared up, cross-eyed at my horn. "It keeps snagging."

"Deal," said Rarity, turning to a pile of fabric that she'd begged off of the castle supplies.

"What just happened?" asked Applejack.

"I'm dressing nicely for my walk of shame," I replied, sighing.

"So dramatic!" called Rarity over her back. "Would you like to borrow my fainting couch?"

"Try to dress me in a saddle and I'll beat you with a couch!" I called back. It was good to have my friends back. "Where are the other girls?" I asked.

"Around," said Rainbow, waving off the question. "Can you do that picture thing? With Commander Hurricane?"

"I suppose," I said, grin growing over my face. I pulled up a modified Illusive Illusion, which had gotten more refined over the years. This version pulled directly from my memories.

A weather-beaten, savagely grinning commander appeared, tugging her armor tighter with her teeth on the straps, adjusting her wingblades, and making sure her dull, rainbow mane was pulled back tight and out of her eyes.

Rainbow grinned, but shook her head. "No, seriously. What did she look like?"

I grinned right back. "Yes, seriously, this is her. You can ask my daughters if you want them to vouch for me. I think I've got sound down, too..."

"Maggots!" the illusion shouted, causing the other three ponies to jump. "That unicorn outpost is right under us. We're going to literally drop a village on them. Stallions and foals to the battlements, platoon leaders, you're about to shoot lightning out your parlors! Lady witch, if you interfere, I will chase you to the border! You can go fuck around with the sea ponies, you crazy bitch!"

"I totally interfered," I said through a set of smiling teeth.

"So... cool!" squealed Rainbow Dash.

"Um... can ya do..." Applejack tried to say.

I nodded. "Not a problem. This is... well, this is right after the Chancellor died, but before Cookie got voted in to lead the tribe herself," I said.

I had to square myself a bit before the entire scene came to mind, pushing my illusion to its limits. The room around us disappeared, and an image of me with the girls, and Smart Cookie at an imaginary doorway disappeared. All the other ponies watched solemnly as I tried to explain to Luna and Tia what death meant. It was my clearest memory of Smart Cookie, however.

"Oh. Oh..." said Rarity. "Those were... and that was... I never imagined they looked so small."

"After their father died, we walked into a world at war," I said, throat gone a little raspy. "Smart Cookie kept the revolution fed, after that. Even at our worst, we never starved. She used to sneak strawberries to Luna and Tia."

Rainbow tried to poke Luna's fluffy blue mane, but her hoof went through. "Dang, this seriously beats those baby pictures dad keeps around."

"Later on I'll show you newborn Celestia," I said, conspiratorially. "Only after we get Twilight in on it- her head will explode."

"Ha!"

The three of us stared at an embarrassed-looking Rarity. "What?" she asked. "Go on, the lot of you. I need peace to work!"

I dismissed the illusion and had to follow Rainbow Dash and Applejack downstairs, since the castle still seemed like a maze to me.

"You know," I told the earth pony, "I think I met some of your kin just about everywhere I went. I think the Apples have a longer pedigree than King Bullion's own line."

"Shucks, none of that ever mattered to us," said Applejack. "Always good to hear about family, though. You friends with any of them?" She paused. "You ain't mah granny's granny, are you?"

I barked out a laugh. "No! I only ever had two. Now, if one of my girls ever got a taste for country mare, well, I haven't asked about that yet." I sighed. "Got a lot of their lives to catch up on."

"Seems you at least got the most important bits down," said Applejack, nudging her shoulder to mine. "And look at you! Used to flinch if somepony touched elbows with ya, back when you were human."

"Elbows." Rainbow slapped at her own face. "Almost forgot about that one. Cripes."

"Too much time as a pony," I said, pretending to sound sad about the whole thing. "A whole race that can't help but snuggle anything in sight, you... we... are."

We had managed to reach one of the many halls of the castle, this one hosting my daughters as well as the other girls.

"Wait, hold on," said Applejack. "If you raised th' princesses... how much stuff around here is borrowed from humans that we didn't know about it?"

I stopped, mid-stride, as the hall went quiet. I blinked at her. "Nothing at all, that I'm aware of."

"Seriously?" asked the cowpony. "You ain't secretly changed history or nothin', just because?"

"Applejack, the girls never knew I wasn't born a pony. I sang pony lullabies to them, or wrote my own. I wrote books for them growing up, because the tribes didn't have much in the way of printing and even less in the way of childrens' literature." I twitched aside my -admittedly somewhat careworn- cloak and pointed at my cutie mark. "I got this after I had Tia, and promised to write stories that would help her and, later on her sibling too, to grow up to be good ponies. I was going to save the whole 'hey, you're half monkey' speech until later."

"She's the one who wrote, 'Between The Trees'," said Tia. "I have that one republished every fifty years, with the original woodcut drawings."

"Wow, really?!" said Pinky. "Granny Pie read that to me!"

"Oh? That's, um..." I swallowed.

"And 'Under Moonlight'," said Luna. My heart stopped.

"I never heard of that one," said Fluttershy. "Is it very old?"

"It never had a chance to be reprinted," said the moon princess, teleporting a slim volume into the space in front of her. A thin line of gray dust -from the moon, I noted to myself, quietly- ran off the binding.

"You got that?" I asked, voice strained. She nodded. "Oh. Good."

"Mother?" asked Tia, looking worried.

"I... she would have received it about... about one-thousand and eight years ago," I explained. "In case I couldn't change things."

"In brightest skies or coolest valleys, and where the sun never shows its face, true love is unconditional, and saves us with its grace," quoted Luna. "Shadowed as you mayhap be, in moonlight clear and bright, I await your step on our home's hearth, where family sleeps at night. Where strides grow longer in the dark, must we then faster run, to see another once again, in moonlight or in sun."

"And never," I finished, "did we wait, where waiting ever was a chore. Where Winter left us to ourselves, we met again once more."

In the quiet after we finished, there were some light sniffles from the peanut gallery.

"I should go finish that cloak," said Rarity, excusing herself.

"We need to help the kitchens," said Applejack, pulling along a bawling Pinkie.

"I gotta do a thing," said Rainbow, likewise leaving.

Only I, the three princesses, and Fluttershy were left. The shy pegasus patted Luna on the side, gently.

"She left that for you before you became Nightmare Moon, didn't she?"

"After, actually. She left messages everywhere, for the both of us," said Celestia. "Zebrican monks whom we never managed to track down delivered volumes, periodically. Notes were left in strange places, on monuments or in hidden spots that the kingdom's cartographers discovered only after Discord banished her."

"Just in case," I said, which sounded pretty empty even to my own ears. 'Just in case' was the case.'

"So!" I said. "I get to meet my highly confused and adoring public, right? How many of them think I eat babies?"

Four hooves met four faces.

"It will be fine, or else I start banishing ponies to the frozen north," said Luna.

"The frozen north is actually quite nice these days, Luna, what with Cadence and Shining Armor," Tia reminded her.

"Well, I do not wish to be utterly unfair," replied the younger diarch. "Would you like to take a bath first, mother? I'm sure lady Rarity should have your... 'transient couture' ready by then," she added with a grin.

"All these centuries and you still can't help but listen at doors," I said, with a sigh. "The girls and Spike are so getting your baby pictures."

Luna tossed her mane dismissively. "There were no camera devices at that time, mother."

I began walking away, dragging along Tia so she could point me toward a bath. Behind me, clear as day, the illusion of a tiny, cobalt filly with missing front teeth appeared in thin air, holding up a grasshopper.

"Mama!" called a tiny, illusory voice. "Found a bug!"

Twilight and Fluttershy began laughing. Luna began shrieking and trying to disrupt the spell matrix.

"I'm Woona, I'm three!"

"This is stupid. I don't do well in crowds. Sweet festering ancestors, this is bad."

"Mother, how much coffee have you had?" asked Tia.

I glowered. "All of it."

"I'm getting you some chamomile," she announced, trotting away.

"No!" I turned to Twilight, who was gazing through some tome that looked especially juicy. "Twilight, make her stop!"

The purple alicorn raised an eyebrow, but didn't bother looking up from the page. "She's your daughter, which admittedly still boggles my mind, and I'm still barely not her student anymore. You're on your own."

I whimpered.

Reluctantly, she looked up. "It will be okay, Tham'ra, it's just a small group. I know it can be hard, but this can't be harder than... gosh, you traveled a long way to get here." She sounded broken up.

"Wanted to surprise you," I admitted. "I thought it would help your research. You... you and the others were, pardon my wording, the first real bit of magic in my life. I suppose I didn't want to let you go so soon."

"Oh," said Twilight, looking shocked and not a bit sad. "You don't, you know, plan on trying to leave, now, do you?"

My head shook, violently. "Not at all! My family's here, my life is here, for as much in shambles as it looks to be."

"You didn't leave any family behind?" she asked.

"I hadn't seen them for a long time, before I met you. And they didn't want to see me." When she looked at me without comprehension, I said, "They kicked me out, Twilight. I was a step away from living on the street. Besides," I said, thinking back to Linda, "I've got reasons to think it didn't... wouldn't have worked, even had I tried."

"So you're staying?" she asked, stepping closer.

"Yes. Undoubtedly, utterly, completely yes. I guess we get to stay nerd-buddies."

"Dummy," said the mare, grinning. "It's been less than a year for me, but no matter how long it's been for you, you've barely changed."

"Are you kidding? I'm almost a grown-up, by now!" I complained. Twilight giggled and leaned in.

"I'm glad you're staying," she whispered in my ear.

An instant later she was back at her book, scrutinizing it with laser-like intensity as I tried to figure out what the hell just happened. I turned, and my wings nearly knocked over a lamp. I glared at them.

'No. Hell no! Stop that! I don't care if it's been... oh god it's been twenty years,' I moaned inside my own head. And this was Twilight- the mare I'd spent months talking to about magic and culture and the mysteries of the universe and I may, may, have violated one of nature's many orifices in my ill-fated attempt to follow her.

'I am an old woman and I should not be doing this. I should be knitting- Rarity must know some patterns.'

And because thinking of her must, somehow, summon her, Rarity walked back in.

"Finished!" she declared, carrying a box. "Despite my severe and unfair limitations, I managed to come up with something just barely acceptable!"

"No gems, right?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes and thrust the box at me. "No gems."

"Thank you," I said, flipping it open. "Gems make me nervous. Bump into one chunk of cosmic spectrum crystal and you start growing new appendages, you know?"

"Oh, I hate when that happens," snarked Rarity, classy dame that she was. "Come, Twilight dear, we need to get ourselves dressed."

"Oh! Right. See you in a bit, Tham'ra," she said, waving one wing as Rarity pulled her away.

"Mother, are you staring at- oh my goodness you're staring at-!"

I spun, wrapped Luna in a Silent Sphere, and glowered. "No I'm not! Why are you part cat? Stop sneaking up on me!"

Instead of looking properly contrite, the alicorn was grinning like a -ah ha- lunatic. I released the spell, and she squeed. "Are you dating? Are you going to be in a herd? I will not call her 'mother', but I will absolutely by rooting for-"

And... I put the spell up again.

Luna looked affronted. "Why so upset? This mare you chased across both time and space-"

"What?" I blinked. "Luna, what are you even..." Then understanding dawned. "No, daughter. I was honestly, truly just looking to not get cut off from my friend. I didn't even consider that sort of pursuit outside my own... that is, outside the human race until I myself had changed."

The taller alicorn frowned. "Whyever not?"

I decided not to go the route of explaining Earth's one-sapient-species circumstance, or how reluctant being a transwoman had made me in pursuing anybody at all. Frankly, my first-ever herd had been a result of stress, confusion, and some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, even if my 'captor' had been a planet full of alien cultures.

It was funny how, even in the light of long-earned perspective, I still didn't regret a single moment of it.

"Not the point," I settled for saying. "The point is... that it wasn't like that."

Luna shrugged. "Fair, and I won't press. But since that has changed -my existence being a fine piece of evidence- then why shouldn't you?" Her expression grew a devious grin. "And perhaps provide more siblings, somewhere along the lines?"

"Luna, no!" I glared around, insured that we were alone, and faced her again. "I just got you girls back, alright? I'm not about to go... go chase the tail of some friend I've not seen in over a century!" I hissed, then dropped the spell once more.

"Ah," she said, understandingly. "How long should one wait after such a dramatic arrival, do you think, before it is alright to chase tail, then?"

"What?" Suspicion percolated in my brain. "Luna! Who is it?"

"I'm sure it's of no importance, at the moment," said the mare, nervous.

"Who is he? She? ...Them? Daughter, I'm going to meet this person, at some point."

"Oh, look, it's Tia! Hello, sister!" shouted Luna, desperately. "Come see mother's new cloak!"

"It looks lovely," said Tia, bemused. "How do you like it?" she asked.

I tugged at it, and nodded. "Proper weight, fits all the necessities, and Rarity didn't turn it into a frilly nightmare. Quite nice." I leaned in, kissed Tia's cheek, and whispered, "Do you know who she's dating?"

"I've been trying to find out," she mumbled back. Both of us turned and stared at Luna.

"I shall go ready the refreshments!" she declared, and bolted.

"I say we chase her down, tonight," I suggested.

"Two mares can corner her where one has failed," said my eldest. "Before that, though, are you ready to go?"

"Unless you want to let your dear, elderly mother off the hook?" I tried.

Tia snorted. "In a pit fight between you and the dragon, I'd lay even odds on you either defeating him or converting him to your latest, crazy scheme."

"That's entirely fair."

Between Day And Night

Chapter Sixteen

"My little ponies," began Tia, in front of an assembly of nobles, statesmen, reporters, and busybodies. "Years ago, during the struggles against Discord as the three tribes sought to unify into a single nation, my sister and I were young and, in the scheme of things, relatively unimportant."

I fiddled with my cloak, suddenly, absolutely certain that the roomy, soft garment was choking me. Luna poked me.

"Nervous?" she asked, still riding high on our reunion. Then again, she'd dealt with the limelight for much longer than I.

"Terrified. I'm going to make you girls look bad. I'm using a spell so I don't sound like an archaic moron. Clover made speeches- I just set things on fire," I admitted.

"Put it this way," suggested my youngest. "Tia and I found out we were half monkey yesterday."

"As if that were a surprise," I groaned. "I had to chase the two of you out of trees all the time, and only one of you was a pegasus!" I paused. "Besides, I can't help but feel you two had at least some hints."

"Twilight Sparkle made a scrying attempt, some months after you disappeared in your human form," said Luna shiftily.

"Years before you were born, from my point of view," I said, thinking back. "You looked so... so desperate, all of a sudden, and I didn't know why."

"You bore no cutie mark that we could see under your garment," said Luna. "But we recognized you, of course. Sister told me to keep quiet, realizing we were dealing with time travel. I... may not have reacted well."

"What were the damage estimates?" I asked, curious, and prepared to be impressed.

"Oh, look, it's about to be your part!" declared Luna, pointing through the curtains.

I sighed, but forced myself into business mode.

'You're a witch. These are superstitious commoners, you hold all the answers. None of them know you're a young, messed-up woman who never had to grow up. You'll be fine.'

My pep-talks, alas, had not improved even over all the years.

"-who has pulled herself through time, set the arena for the future prosperity of all of Equestria, and finally come home. I present to you our mother, Tham'ra, of the Paradise Estate, witch of the long winter, and Faust of Equestria, as named by our allies of so many centuries."

"Love you, mother, you'll be fine," said Luna. She kissed my hair, then pushed us both out through the curtains.

I forced the familiar, 'wise traveler' guise over my face, let it seep into my body language. I took the rising sussurus of voices as nothing more than the natural background noise, no more worrisome than the hum of nighttime insects and owls. Hell, I'd argued with the owls often enough. During my more bored and lonely moments, obviously.

I forced a soft smile to my face, and stood between Tia and Luna, and wished -only for a moment- that my alicornification had come with the same stature as my eldest. Then I told myself that it would be stupid, and I'd bang my head on too many doorframes. No wonder my oldest baby was so serene- the brain damage must have built up.

"It's a pleasure to see you all, today," I said, speaking out to the crowd. "I'd seen images, heard descriptions, of this country. Of what the ponies I once knew would become. That I was able to have even the smallest hoof in making that happen, and that my daughters were able to lead it to its current age, makes me happier than you can ever imagine. The centuries have been kind to you. Standing here now, I can honestly say that the centuries have also been kind to me, as well."

No self-deprecating comments, no bad puns... I was on a roll.

"When I saw a kindly spirit pass the Tree of Harmony into this world, in the hopes of crafting something beautiful, I knew that the future was in safe hooves. When the Windigos swept over the three once crumbling tribes, only to be pushed back by those who learned strength in the full cooperation of beings made stronger in unity, I was relieved beyond measure. When I was cast through time by the forces of chaos, and had to live with the knowledge that my daughters would have to take their first steps into the world alone, I held fast to the knowledge that, in the end, they would thrive."

I stepped closer to the edge of the stage. "And I hope, as I take my first steps into this modern world, that you all have it in your hearts to welcome me here, among you."

There was applause. There was honest, heartfelt applause, and accolades. Twilight and her group stood to the side, watching and smiling.

Then came the questions.

"Were you the sage that gave Princess Platinum the map to Equestria?"

"I gave it to Starswirl, he did the hard work. He was a much-underrated hero of the early days," I replied.

"Little is said of the princesses' father, was he really a god?"

"He had a bit of an ego, but he was as mortal as anybody," I answered. I ignored Tia's near-silent groan- I guess she and her sister had gotten a lot of weird questions about their parentage. "I will always remember him fondly."

"Have you ever moved the sun or moon?"

"I left that to the unicorns, in the old kingdom," I said. "My daughters manage it quite well, now, and with less fuss."

"Did you ever meet a human, in the old ages?"

I grinned, just a touch madly. "No comment, but I did see where somebody, and I won't name names, imprisoned the Smooze."

I didn't go into details because, really, it was one of those little mysteries I'd gotten frightfully few details about.

"Have you ever met my ancestor?"

"The odds are pretty high, yes. I traveled the Paradise Estate pretty extensively." I frowned, and turned to my daughters. "How is that place these days, by the way?"

"A frozen wasteland, buried under glaciers," said Luna.

My eyes went unfocused. "So you're saying I owe the heir to the Apple family ten bits. I'll go talk to Applejack later. Or would that be her brother? Never mind. Next question?"

It went on, from the ridiculous: "Is that your real mane color?" to the profound: "Who were our progenitors?"

The answers were, respectively: "You'd better believe it." and: "I found traces of over a dozen civilizations and species that no longer walk this world."

"I think that's enough for today, subjects," said Luna, eventually stepping in. "We are putting all duties not related to the heavens on hold for two weeks, and affairs of state shall be handled by our cabinet."

"Afterward, we shall resume and send out ambassadorial envoys," added Celestia. "In the meantime, we shall be enjoying some family time and, should we be successful, be retrieving our mother's ancient library, which she wishes to share with the modern world."

There was an audible, shrieking cheer from one unnamed princess in the corner.

"Yes, Princess Twilight," I called over the crowd. "You get dibs."

The mare proceeded to faint back onto Rarity, who, annoyed, began looking for a nearby couch to take the burden.

There was some healthy laughter, and if Luna's was just a tad too obnoxious, I might have promised, with my eyes, to cast another Sphere of Silence on her.

Lousy little minx.

"Girls?" I said through gritted, smiling teeth.

"Yes?" asked Tia.

"I'm about to freak out and pull a Twilight. Can we go have cocoa?"

"Of course we can."

We had settled, at my insistence, in Luna's bedroom. The girls sat on the bed while I commandeered some scratch paper and was busily correcting some script.

"You know, mother, we didn't really expect you to come back with presents," called Tia.

"Sister!" Luna levitated her hot cocoa out of the way and began trying to bury the other princess's head in the comforter. "You speak lies! Lies and betrayal! Mother, shower us with as many gifts as you'd like!"

I snickered and sipped at my own drink, before asking, "Is the popcorn ready?"

"For whatever reason, yes," said Tia, getting the upper hand and binding Luna's wings with a sheet. A large bowl of steaming white fluff hovered off to one side, encased in a golden glow.

"The reason," I said, "is a little concept I'd like to introduce from your human heritage. 'Home movies'."

"But the theater is several floors down, in one of the darker sub-basements," said Luna, somehow having burrowed through the mattress to come out, head poking out from from under the bed. Tia leaned over the edge in astonishment.

"I'm not using film," I told her, blowing the ink dry and grinning at the final product. "Besides, home movies are private, and best viewed in a small, warm place with lots of comfort food."

"Understood!" said Tia, who dove under the bed to continue the battle. "What are we watching, then, and how are we watching it?" she asked, before getting an elbow in the mouth. "Lulu!"

"You bit my tail!" complained the younger sister. "Have at you!"

"Yes, well," I said, memorizing the script and burning the paper, "I've been refining this spell for a while. Luna saw it, but that was a rough version. This is more for her than you, Tia, given you've been around longer, but I thought you both might enjoy it. Dim the lights?"

Curious, both mares crawled out from under the bed and resettled themselves on top. I flared my wings and jumped in between them, burying myself in the strange-but-familiar sensation. Luna dimmed the few lamps set about the room, and I began to cast. The three of us watched raptly as the air before us took on color, and shape, and eventually resembled the dim interior of a property broker's office:

"Do you mind?"

I blinked, hard, and turned toward the desk placed furthest in the corner. A unicorn, ridiculously tall for his tribe and wearing a roughly-spun jacket was glaring at me.

"Should I? Mind, I mean. Can you get me a house?" I asked him.

"Father?" Luna craned her neck forward. Obligingly, I brought the grumpy pegacorn's face into clearer focus. "Oh. That's... he's so handsome."

"Moreso when he smiled," I mused happily. "It took me a while to get him to do that. Pegacorns weren't treated well in those days, as you remember, and it took me some time to talk him out of his shell. I started out just looking for a new friend to play mind games with. Then, well..."

I showed them more. His slow, painful lessons, guided by the occasional visit from Starswirl as he mastered what little magic he had access to. My confession to him, minus the naughtier bits at the end which still, sometimes, invaded my dreams. Next to me, as I explicitly told Winter my past, Tia went horribly tense.

I pushed aside her ridiculously beautiful mane and hugged her neck. "Yes, dear, I knew exactly how you felt, growing up."

"Calm yourself, Tia," said Luna, leaning over me. "Nopony cares, nopony knows, and it hasn't ever mattered. I'm proud to call you sister. Even in my madness, I never considered you any less a mare than you were."

"Because you were afraid of mother popping up and lecturing you," said Tia, giggling and blinking back wet eyes at the same time.

"I will not confirm that," said Luna. "Can we see Tia do something embarrassing?"

"Of course we can," I assured her.

"No!" whined the paler mare.

I woke up to see Tia answering the door of Luna's suite. At some point the two must have roused themselves long enough to usher in the dawn, but Luna had gone right back to sleeping on her back with all limbs tangled in the sheets.

I looked out blearily and saw Twilight and company at the door.

Rainbow waved. "Can Tham'ra come out and play?" she asked with a cheesy grin.

"You can, too, your highnesses!" said Pinkie.

"I think Luna might like to sleep for some time longer," said Tia. She looked back over, and I waved. "But we can head down to breakfast."

I stumbled out of bed, crashed, groaned, and scribbled a note for Luna before falling into step with the others.

"Did you all have a nice night?" asked Fluttershy.

"Last night's theme was apparently 'poke fun at Celestia'," groused Tia.

"S'alright," I said with a yawn, patting her side. "Tonight we embarrass Luna. First topic: little Lulu eats a bug."

"Thank you," said Tia.

The other mares stared at us as if we'd said something odd. I kept walking, sleepily, and nearly ran into a planter.

"Here," said Twilight, levitating a cup. "Half coffee, half cream, gritty sugar."

"You 'membered," I said, smiling foggily. It was lukewarm, too- the perfect temperature to chug down. I did so, shuddered, and fluffed out my wings. "Dang it, forgot my cloak. I need my cloak."

"No you do not," insisted Rarity.

"But my things are in it!" I said. "What if... what if I need parchment, or a piece of string, or an exotic poison?" There were more stares, and I began to mentally recount what I just said. "I'm still working a bit behind the times, aren't I?"

"Have you... needed to poison anypony?" asked Fluttershy, wide-eyed.

It occurred to me that I had done a lot -a lot- of things since last meeting these girls that I'd never have done as a human. I'd really gone all out, becoming a witch in every way that mattered, and some that really shouldn't have.

"During... during the resistance," I started, feeling a bit closed-in, "there were ponies so changed by Discord, or so desperate, that they were a danger to themselves and others. I... I... Tia? How accurate are historical textbooks?"

"Some knowledge is," she gnawed at her lip. "Not censored, truly, but most ponies deem things better fit for historians than school foals."

"Do they teach about Feather Rush?" I asked.

It took her a moment, before she caught on and winced. "I don't believe they do. You left us with Midnight, for that one, and came back a week later and simply... hugged us for a few hours. We learned later what had happened."

"Ah don't much like being talked down to like Ah was a foal," said Applejack with a snap. "Anypony want to explain the poison thing?"

"Feather Rush was a mare that thought Discord might be appeased by equine sacrifice," I said, blurting it out. Winces to outright blanched fur were the responses I got. "She... sacrificed entire groups, travelers who were camped out along the roads, while they slept, but had a special talent for disappearing, which she put to good use after each time. It took five days just to find her, kneeling over her latest group of victims and praying to Discord as if he were some kind of god. Wonder of wonders, he actually appeared before her. He shook his head, said she 'didn't get the joke', and disappeared again."

He'd been twenty feet away from me when it happened. I'd nearly broken cover just to get a cheap shot at him, but that would have been my second failed attempt, I had no doubt.

"I followed her," I continued. "Being told that drove her absolutely insane. Or, at least, less rational. It was safer to go ahead, find her hideout, and spike her water supply with a fast-acting agent."

"So yes," I said, summing it up, "I did a lot of things I... yeah. I lived a hundred years in a world of monsters, so I got really good at fighting them. Can we go get breakfast, please?" It came out more pleading than I'd like.

"Of course we can," said Twilight, looking unsettled. "Come on, everypony."

It took Fluttershy to break the awkward quiet. "Surely, if you traveled as much as you did, you must have seen some, um, beautiful things, too. Right?"

I blinked, thinking back. "A lot. Every week, or every day even, it sometimes seemed, there was something new. Discovering the thestrals..." I got incomprehension from half the group. "Bat ponies? Right, now you get it. I taught a group of them modern -at the time- Equish, and helped the whole tribe sneak over to avoid the Windigos. A group, which ended up as two small, happy herds ended up as Tia and Luna's caretakers."

"I really do miss Dawn," said Tia, grinning off into space.

"Sweet mare, short attention span," I offered. "And then there was the Frozen Grotto. It wasn't really cold, mind you, but had so many quartz crystals it was like walking though giant snow flakes. I first met the naga there... Completely unrelated, but did you know they traditionally hold orgies under every full moon? I sure as hell didn't. I turned right around and waited a day and a half for them to... cool off, before saying hi."

Good memories, tiny jokes, and silly poem lyrics spilled out of me in a rush until I had the Bearers and Spike convinced that the past wasn't an absolutely horrible place.

It was after we'd polished our way through plates and plates of food that Rainbow mentioned the obvious.

"Yo, girls? I've gotta get back to the training camp. I've got rookies to yell at and a Commander Hurricane outfit to correct."

The others reluctantly admitted that they had their own lives to get back to, as well. It didn't disappoint me as much as it could have, because as Fluttershy pointed out:

"You're here to stay, aren't you? If you, um, like, you can visit us too."

"I'd like that," I said. "Are you all okay for finding my old house next week?"

"So long as Twilight isn't rushing us out of our beds after midnight?" said Rarity sarcastically. "Then yes, we can make time for friends. I'll thank her to let me pack my bags first, next time."

"Sorry," said Twilight, cheeks brightening.

"Don't be so grumpy, Rarity!" ordered Pinky. "We got to see our favorite monkey! Ooh, we need to start a game! Dibs on bard!"

"I'll try to work something out," I promised. "It might take a while though. I can hardly remember-"

"I can!" Twilight coughed. "I mean, I sort of borrowed and never, um, returned your source books..."

"You filthy thief!" I said, grinning. "Good job."

"Would you ladies like chariots back, or is the train alright?" asked Tia.

"Train's fine," said Rainbow. "We got our free ride tokens -best things ever- and I can stop at home before flying back to Cloudsdale, that way."

"I can stay, if you don't mind me cluttering up the place," said Twilight uncertainly. "I still have lots of questions."

"Me too," said Spike. "I mean, I was ready to close the library for a few days, just in case..." He stopped, then slapped his forehead. "No, wait, I promised Rarity I'd-" He groaned, then looked uncomfortably between me and Rarity.

"It's alright," I said. "We'll have next week, and I promise to visit you bunch often. Don't break a promise on my account."

He nodded happily, and I began to plot.

"So we've got Twilight bumming around with us," I said, rubbing my hooves together. "This should be fun. Who wants to make some fireworks?"

Pinkie and Rainbow whimpered.

"Some of which we'll save and pass out to certain individuals as birthday presents," I added.

Pinkie and Rainbow cheered.

"Huzzah!" shouted Luna.

"I'll get my mortar and pestle!" declared Tia.

"Twilight?" I asked.

"Oh!" Twilight glanced around. "I have to pen a short letter, first, but I don't see why not. We're going to use these responsibly, right?"

"Of course," I swore.

"Why would you imagine otherwise?" asked Tia, innocently.

"Mwa ha ha!" laughed Luna, which... sort of ruined our credibility, so I smiled at Twilight and pretended not to have heard it.

"This is better than the second vernal equinox!" I declared, coat streaked with flammable powder and with bits of loose tissue paper caught in my mane.

"Tia! Oh, we should bring that back!" declared Luna, arranging tubes.

"We already have it," said Tia, trying to improvise a weather vane. She was using a surprisingly aerodynamic china set. "It's called 'Spring Fielding'."

"I remember no delightful explosions last spring," said Luna, frowning.

"The fireworks fell out of favor during an economic depression some two hundred years ago," admitted the older sister, licking her hoof and holding it up to the sky. That was... more than a little redundant, given she was part pegasus, but I gave her points for sheer class.

"Boring," I declared. "I will buy the common ponies their treasured explosives. Growing foals need vitamin 'boom', Tia. I have some treasure stashes around, still, if they haven't been found. How much are... dawn stones, aluminate, and devil's teeth worth, these days?"

"Mother, you may have money. We have piles of it," said Luna.

"We are fiscally responsible adults, Lulu!" Tia reminded her in a sing-song voice. Then she faltered. "Those things mostly don't even exist anymore. Ah... I think you could buy a fair-sized town, if you have those in any quantity."

"I declare myself retired," I said, and set the last thin sheen of glue over my latest creation. It was spherical, had a smiley face plastered on the outside, and I'd added safety warnings on it in Spanish in tiny lettering, just for authenticity.

"Is 'transient witch' something one retires from?" asked Luna, finally aiming most of her tubes away from the castle.

"Is 'princess'?" I shot back. "Hold on. Okay. I need matches."

"Luna reminded you that you were a witch not five seconds ago," said my eldest.

"Oh. Oh, right," I said. "Are the clouds ready? You girls wanted to do an accuracy trial, right?"

"Stationary artillery shall win the day," said Luna, waving the pegasi guards above off. Several of the off-duty guardsponies had offered to help, in exchange for watching their rulers wreck the skies. "We wait now only for our official scorekeeper. Why is she late?"

"I don't believe we gave her a precise time to meet us," said Tia thoughtfully.

"I'm here! Don't start yet!" Twilight galloped up and had to air brake when she reached us.

I grinned at her. "Ready to rate some explosions? Categories are style, impact, and collateral damage."

Twilight stared upwards. "Have... have they put together actual cloud houses?"

"Equestria's finest work quick when the task is suitably important," declared Tia proudly.

Luna sniffed. "Mine are better. They have fangs and their eyes glow."

"True," I said, rubbing my chin thoughtfully.

"Does this seem the least bit insane to anypony?" asked Twilight nervously. "Not to offend you, but-"

"No offense taken," I cut in. I dragged her closer, and studiously ignored Luna's giggles. "You're the magic princess, you ought to-"

"Princess of friendship," she corrected me, not for the first time.

"Princess of friendshippy magic," I continued, not missing a beat. "Sometimes friendship is magic. Sometimes explosions are magic. Therefore, explosions are friendship."

Twilight groaned.

"Let 'er rip!" I commanded.

"Hurrah!"

"Got you beat, Lulu!"

Rockets exploded. Mortars rose and impacted cloud structures. I prodded Twilight, and she dutifully pulled out a clipboard and began taking notes.

I might, possibly, have underestimated how many fireworks the girls could make when motivated.

Streaming bolts of red light, golden flowers, and plumes of green exhaust temporarily fought for attention with the sun. I grinned so hard it hurt.

As we neared the end of the sisters' stocks, they began using their largest munitions. The fake structures above us had long since been blasted apart, and my ears had automatically folded themselves back against my skull.

The very last explosions were more like the devil's own percussion instruments than anything else.

Twilight mouthed something. I stared, until I realized she was, in fact, shouting.

"Yes!" I said back. "It's great!"

She shook her head, rolled her eyes, and waved wildly until the girls trotted over. Their grins were about as wide as my own. Twilight shouted at them, and they shouted back. Nobody seemed quite certain about what was actually being said, mind, but we all seemed pretty cheerful about it. Eventually, Twilight facehoofed and simply wrote something out for Celestia. The taller alicorn nodded and began channeling a spell, and my hearing soon returned.

"You forgot to shield your ears, didn't you?" asked Twilight, likely repeating herself.

"Maybe!" I said. I hugged my own pile of munitions. "These are going to present a great deal of awesome when we all meet up again."

"Well, they are larger than ours," said Luna. "Some special trick, perhaps, in the making? A chemical reaction sister and I never learned?"

"Nope!" I tapped the highly volatile material. "I've been practicing my enchantments. Same like as I did for the charms I used to make for you girls. Only, more... explosive."

"You said you always had trouble applying your witchcraft permanently to mundane materials," protested Tia.

"Practice makes perfect. And I was tired of those unicorn crafters always showing off," I mumbled as an aside. "Anyways, the scores?"

"Oh!" Twilight let her eyes mill up and down the checklist. "Well, Celestia had a good idea with those easier-to-aim rockets, but... they didn't hold their course very well. Not as aerodynamic as they could have been, I don't think. Perhaps we could construct a wind tunnel..." I coughed, and she blushed and went on. "Luna's, while not the best for all that mortaring was an interesting concept, definitely did more damage on purpose. So... Luna wins by a narrow margin."

"I am the best! I am the greatest! I am best pony!" shouted Luna, who began... dancing.

"There, there," I said to Tia, who looked to be restraining herself from building a sister-seeking rocket. "Remember, you get to see her in diapers later tonight."

"You know... that does make me feel better," said my eldest. "Though perhaps I should schedule a meeting with the royal alchemists later. Just to... refresh my memory for the next time we do this."

"Go for it, love," I told her. "Now what?" I asked, talking over the roar of applauding pegasi which had gathered at a safe distance from the show. "Aside from ignoring the inevitable noise complaints from the neighbors, which I think is basically tradition."

"Well, if you don't mind, I have another friend who was coming through Canterlot that I think might like to meet you. Do you think she could come for lunch?" asked Twilight.

"Up to you girls," I said, looking to Luna and Tia. Luna broke off her dancing for long enough to nudge her sister.

Tia rolled her eyes at the younger and nodded. "Of course. I don't doubt Twilight's choice in companions, and I see no problem with introducing mother to some more ponies. I think it goes to say, but, no poisoning this one."

I stuck out my tongue. Twilight, however, just gave a quick cheer.

"Whatever. Food? Explosions work up an appetite," I declared. "And this era has so much more variety in its food. And coffee."

"Doesn't it just?" said Luna, who came the closest to knowing what I was talking about.

My most useful, or at least, most used skills, were in illusion. Sure, some would say I'd become a bit voyeuristic in my old age, and I'd... probably agree.

Point being, this little wall nook made for the perfect vantage point.

"Trixie has never actually been in the castle, you do realize?" asked the blue unicorn.

"Now's the time for it!" said Twilight, nudging the other mare as they walked in from one of the side entrances. A delightfully sly smile crept onto her face. "So... have you heard any of the news?" she asked.

Trixie adjusted her hat and scowled. "Everypony is shouting about some princess visiting. Is your foalsitter in town, again?"

"Not a princess," I muttered, but not loud enough to be heard. I softened the sound of my hooves with a spell and followed the duo as they passed.

"Nope!" said Twilight. "You remember what I told you about the rift, last year? That alien mare we met and who showed us around her world?"

"The tall... ape thing, yes?" Trixie looked thoughtful. "Did you manage to accidentally fall into an alien princess's living room, Twilight Sparkle? And she's visiting? The curious and intrigued Trixie is looking forward to this. You never bring Trixie on your adventures."

"You're always traveling!" said Twilight. " But yes. You're... sort of right about this. She... traveled a long way to see me, and I wanted you to meet her."

"Very intriguing. More so by the second," said Trixie. "Trixie imagines hopping between worlds makes for a longer journey than taking the noon route to Trottingham."

"Longer than that, even," said Twilight, clearly enjoying the build-up. So was I, to be honest.

"What's a couple of centuries between friends?" I asked, sending both mares shrieking.

"Twilight Sparkle, that is not a monkey! That's..." Trixie fell back on her bottom.

"My friend Tham'ra, witch of the Paradise Estate, Faust of Equestria, mother to the princesses..."

"I've probably got other titles," I added, "but they're mostly 'scourge of this and that', and so on. I died, ascended, spent a lot of time apparently feeding into the very same circumstances that would let me... to already have met my friends. I hate time travel," I said, feeling the usual headache that proceeded discussing causality. "And you already know Twilight, of course, the mare who apparently can't keep state secrets."

"Trixie's entirely trustworthy!" said Twilight, blushing. "And she's one of the best freelance magic theoreticians that I know."

"More that was left out of the serialization, I guess?" I prompted.

"I should hope so," muttered Twilight. "Anyway! Trixie will be in town for a few days. I figure if you have any free time during the, um, spontaneous national holiday, that we could go out and... hang out?"

"Trixie didn't agree to this!" said the blue mare, who looked to me and then began panicking. "Not that she is at all complaining about your presence, my lady! Who is the mother of the princesses. And a legend. And..." She stopped, and began hyperventilating.

"If I had my cloak, I could tranquilize her," I told Twilight matter-of-factly.

The violet alicorn rolled her eyes."You really haven't changed a bit, have you?"

"Of course I have, Purplesmart," I told her. "I'm, like, a responsible adult. I'm a cold stone femme fatal, just as always."

"I once saw you knock yourself out on your own icebox," said Twilight, flatly. "When you woke up, you panicked, stood, and ended up doing the exact same thing all over again.. Fluttershy was so panicked she nearly tied a tourniquet around your neck."

"I once flew through a forest of bloodthorn. If you've never heard of it, it's because I've taken care of it all." I forced the grin to stay on my face until Twilight's unrelenting stare forced me to twitch. "I knocked myself out on the elm tree. Afterward. Shut up."

"I didn't say a thing," said Twilight, looking far too smug.

Trixie's concern for Twilight obviously overrode her shock, because she grabbed Twilight and shook her by the withers. "Don't! Twilight Sparkle, I don't want her to smite you! She'll vaporize you with her horn!"

"I haven't smited... smote? Anybody in ages," I protested. "Objectively, I mean. Subjectively, it was like, last week." I tapped my head. "But I didn't use my horn, I'll have you know. I've never used the stupid thing."

"It's not stupid!" said Twilight through gritted teeth.

"But you're one of the most terrible-" Trixie stopped herself and forced a sickly grin onto her face, "most... wonderful figures in magical pre-Equestrian history!"

"She's a witch," said Twilight. "Non-tribal magic, Trixie. You're the one who reminded me of that definition, didn't you?"

"Trixie was explaining a foal's tale!" the pale-maned mare replied. "There are no witches!"

"There aren't?" I asked. "Damn. I probably hallucinated that, then. Oh, well. Come on, let's get lunch!" I said.

"I was probably imagining the whole 'magic pony land' thing, too," said Tamara, my illusory, human self. She was keeping pace with me. A little magical manipulation, and she pat me on the back consolingly. "Don't worry. You're probably perfectly sane, except for that 'thinking you're a pony' bit. My angels agree."

In tandem, a little Twilight and a little Rainbow Dash crawled out of her hair and onto her shoulders.

"She should trust her senses!" squeaked little Twilight in her angel robes. "Careful perception is the hallmark of good scientific procedure!"

"Wrong! And lame," squeaked mini Rainbow. She wore the patent red devil horns. "Obviously the girl's nuts! Crazy means she can't be held responsible, means she should just roll with it and have fun. Nopony can blame her!"

"I like where the blue pony is going with this," said human Tamara.

"Me too!" I said. We bumped fist to hoof, though it took some doing not to pass my limb through the illusion.

"How is she doing that! There wasn't any spell!" called Trixie from back down the hall.

"She promised we could study her!" called tiny angel Twilight to her larger self.

I and myself glared up at the shoulder angel. "Traitor!"

Real Twilight laughed, and hurried to catch up.

"Girls!" I galloped up through the dining hall, mares and illusions in tow.

"Mother!" said Tia, grinning. "You're being chased by a monkey carrying two pygmy Element Bearers. Is there a story behind this?"

"Not at all," said illusory Tamara. "Hello, adorable pony daughter."

"Dude, your daughter's hot," said mini Rainbow.

I growled, spun, and leaped for her.

Only to go right through, of course. The lousy punk chortled as I flopped under the table. Illusory Tamara shook her head.

"Am I really that dumb?" she asked.

Mini Rainbow grinned. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

Then mini Twilight slapped the back of her head. "Show some sensitivity. And don't hit on the princess!"

All three blinked out of existence as I got back out from under the table and shook out my feathers."Lousy Rainbow Dash, perving on my girl."

"Mother, I am a grown mare," pointed out Tia. "And... I'm not entirely certain where this conversation is coming from, given that it sprang from some sort of schizophrenic hallucination, but the point remains!"

"Are you dating anypony?" I asked, curious. "I mean, I know I'll have to stalk Luna until she spills, but I always figured you'd be more straightforward."

"Not currently, and not for some years now," said Tia. "Maybe in the future, though- things are calming down, and the workload has, literally, been divided up."

"I was just curious," I told her, smiling softly. "It's your own business."

"And why is my life not my own business?" asked Luna, stepping into the room ahead of the procession of platters and plates carried in by the castle staff. "Hello, Twilight. Twilight's friend."

"You made it a mystery, Luna," I answered. Annoyed, I walked over and yanked Trixie onto her hooves. "No bowing at the table. We didn't bow to Platinum over hot cakes, and you don't bow to us over... hey, pesto!" I ignored the stuttering unicorn and grabbed a pillow between my daughters. "So!" I said, "When do I meet this other grandson?"

"My descendant, Blueblood," said Luna, spooning some pasta. "It took some time to reconnect, to be honest, given the... distance I held from ponies just after my return. Still, I'm sure we should be able to call for him this week and he would be happy to visit."

"Fantastic. In the meantime..." I trailed off, thinking. "Wow. Um... what do normal families do, anyway? Or at least, recently reunited families in extremely odd circumstances? Maybe mini-golf..."

"There are the scheduled, annual wargames amongst the guard," said Luna, thoughtfully.

"The caverns below the capitol have not yet been fully explored," said Tia.

"You could explore Canterlot!" said Twilight. "It's not just cottages and palisade walls, anymore."

"Trixie approves of whatever the Great and Merciful Lady Alicorn wishes to do. Not that she needs Trixie's approval!"

I sighed. "Excuse me, girls," I said, getting up and circling the table. Twilight smiled softly as I approached the increasingly-pale unicorn, planted myself on the same cushion as her, and hugged her.

"Chillax. I was a nerdy alien that wanted to hang out with my adorable pony friends. I ended up having to wait for a while, so I wandered around and managed not to die long enough that I impressed the locals. I'm an awesome witch because I worked very hard at it for a very long time, and didn't burn off my eyebrows too much. I only got this far because I wanted to find my friends and family. I'm just a lucky commoner. So are my daughters! So is Twilight."

Trixie whimpered.

"This is the part where you hug her back," stage-whispered Twilight.

"Listen to purplesmart," I told the showmare, which got a gleeful snort.

"Aww!" said Twilight as Trixie slowly reciprocated. "Looks like being a pony made you real hug-friendly, Tham'ra."

"Shut up, egghead."

"Holy hell, that's mine! That's my sword!"

I couldn't help but bounce, a bit, in front of the display case. The curator who had awkwardly followed our group of five dropped his spectacles.

"Pardon, your highness?" He looked up and down the long hall of artifacts, then back at the sword. "This sword is nearly two thousand years old! It's-"

"See!" I pointed at the shaft. "I scratched a motto right there- I bought this off of a retired pegasus armorer, wanted to see if I was a suitable weapons user. Tried for five years before I gave up."

"My lady, those were assumed to be decorative markings!" The stallion said, astounded. "What is it they say?" He had a notepad levitating out in front of him in the blink of an eye.

Twilight leaned forward and, having a working understanding of English -given her insane dedication to knowledge- read it before snickering.

"Today is a good day for you to die," I quoted. "A little something from back home," I added mysteriously. "Don't feel too bad- I doubt there's another example of this alphabet anywhere in the country, unless I wrote it."

Instead of disappointment, I was surprised to see the stallion's eyes light up. "Please, your highness, come with me!"

Then, with a typical academic's excitable distraction, he ran down the hall. I looked back to my daughters, Twilight and Trixie, and shrugged.

"This should prove interesting," said Tia.

Twilight hip-checked me. "I told you the museum would be fun!"

"I didn't say it wouldn't be!" I complained.

Twilight colored prettily. "Oh. Right. Sorry, I'm used to trying to drag the other girls along."

"A sword, mother?" asked Luna as we began following after the curator.

I sighed. "I was young and foolish. And read too many comic books as a foal. Kid! I meant kid!" I growled. "Lousy infectious pony terms."

"Oh, look!" said Tia. "I donated that barding a few centuries ago- they still keep it polished!"

"Very nice." The group made appreciative noises.

"Couldn't fit into it anymore?" asked Luna.

Her sister sniffed imperiously. "Our flank simply cannot be contained by mere mortal sundries."

"They were doomed from the very beginning to be complete dorks," I told the two younger mares. "They never had a chance."

"Mother!"

To my surprise, we actually caught up with the curator -Dusty Relic, I think his name was- at a large door. He was manipulating a rather complicated lock with his magic.

"Just a moment, your highnesses! We found this material on a dig in the badlands, about, oh... eighty years ago. That was before the interdiction on travel there, of course, from both our side and the griffons. We had to clear out of a very promising site, and without further perspective, were unable to display these pieces with the proper information due such an important find."

With a resounding series of 'clicks', an unreasonably intricate and -dare I say it- nifty door opened inward before us. We stepped in as one, tentatively, as the magelights overhead blinked on in slow tandem.

"This is all rather exciting," said the stallion, though I was hardly listening anymore. "We had previously counted this as one of twenty known precursor civilizations, including those scant records we have pre-Equestria, but-"

"Oh gods. Freezing stars, Twilight? You see this too, right?" I asked, desperately looking for validation. I'd seen stranger, but the margin suddenly felt razor-thin.

"Tham'ra? I think so."

I stared at the large metal plate that had been mounted on a wooden plinth, surrounded by still more artifacts. On it was written:

Jillian Pratt Expeditionary Space

"The entire area, a ruined settlement of sorts, looks to have been entirely transplanted!" the curator went on. "Different rock strata, in a near-spherical shape, as far as we could tell. As if it were literally dropped from another place entirely!"

"It was," I said, voice quavering. "This is from..."

Home.

"Mother?" asked Luna, coming closer. I didn't realize I'd fallen to my haunches until she had to do the same to approach me.

"When can you go back?" I asked, voice hollow. "When can I go back?"

"The Badlands have been off-limits for-" started Dusty, but Tia cut him off.

"We can discuss this with the griffon party that will be arriving in two weeks. We'll make preparations. This is important to you, correct?" asked my eldest.

"Yeah, but, but you don't have to-"

"We will."

"Oh. Good." I forced myself back onto all four hooves. "Dusty, pay attention. Ladies, let's see if I can walk you through this. Um. These placards are written in 'English', my birth tongue. Those are -wow, um- those are 'solar panels', which..."

The Bookmobile

Chapter Seventeen

Baltimare was beautiful. More 'modern' than Canterlot, at least in the architecture, but somehow having kept the sleepy charm I remembered it having centuries ago as a tiny settlement, I couldn't help the small grin on my face.

It had been a week since Twilight's impromptu 'cultural introduction' session, and the discovery that there was an entire settlement of -possibly- human origin here in magic pony land. The thought was sobering. Mostly, for the implications that despite the existence of said settlement, humans were mere myths to every known society in the world. Maybe their situation had been much like mine, cast along through time and space, or dimensions. My magical experience wouldn't have given me any better of an idea about the rift than Twilight had, and that project had long since been put on her backburner, so to speak

I was patient, but the expected time frame of months, just to re-open the dig site, weighed on me heavily. And those were under ideal conditions. Really, all I wanted to do was find out what had happened to my friend.

'There are no trees in the Badlands... a wisecracking boulder, maybe?'

Our trip toward eastern Equestria was marked by fanfare, given the party included four alicorns, various national heroes, and my awesome dragon grandson.

"-and that's how I figured out how to melt steel with my firebreath!" he exclaimed.

I swept him up in a hug. "I am so very, very proud! I have the coolest grandson ever!"

"Aw, shucks," said Spike, proving that dragons could blush.

"We're there!" called Rainbow, flitting back to the carriage. "I mean, here. Here is where we are!" She grinned under a pair of goggles, suited up in full Wonderbolts regalia. She'd insisted on being part of the guard escort. "You said by the old town hall, right? 'Cause Tia's paperpony said records put it in the north district!"

She signaled the pegasi pulling the carriage and took the lead, angling us off slightly to the left.

"Anything yet?" asked Rarity, who was adjusting her sunhat.

"What, yet?" I asked, letting go of Spike.

Twilight rolled her eyes. "You said you had a locator spell!"

"Oh! Right," I said. "I mean, I sort of have one, and I should be within range, hopefully..." I focused, and drew up a piece of vapor-script I hadn't ever had cause to use before.

To my joy, a thin beam of light lanced upward into the sky about a half mile in front of us.

"Oh my gosh we have to make a rave party with this!" squealed Pinkie. "Can you write my name on the moon?"

"Maybe," I said, listening to Luna sputter behind me.

We touched down in a courtyard that was fenced-in and filled with ivy. A thestral, of all things, was standing outside and glaring at the beam of light. It was probably stupid of me, but I felt a little giddy. I hadn't actually had the opportunity to meet with any of the palace's thestral employees, guard or otherwise. Part of the upcoming 'wargames', I'd been told.

Tia and Luna exited first, stepping out ahead of the procession. "Pardon us, sir, but could you tell us where we are, precisely? Who owns this property?" asked Tia.

"This is a Celestia-damned disaster area is what it is!" shouted the thestral, not even bothering to look back. "Look at this! It went right through my bed- I have to be awake in another six hours!"

"That is a problem," I volunteered, ignoring the snickering from behind me as I walked up next to the girls. "Is this a private residence? Public? Maybe a, uh, business?"

"It's my furry little plot! Go away- I have to call the... guard?" He finally chose to turn around, trailing off as he saw the entire group. "Oh... aw, dang."

"Bwa ha ha!" Applejack.

"Hello!" I waved. "I think my house is under here- mind if we take a look?"

The basement to the Baltimare Historical Society was large, but not large enough to hold the crowd of ponies that had crammed themselves inside. I was happy to sit back and sit with the sleep-deprived stallion, maintaining the beacon.

"Please say you'll be willing to give a talk here at some point in the future!" he pleaded. "Nearly every family in my tribe can trace their lineage to the Great Escape- your actions are entrenched in legend!"

"Neato!" I said, keeping an eye on the ever-widening hole in the floor. Dirt was being carefully banished to a spell beacon out in the courtyard. "Sounds like it could be fun. I can just picture the look on old Artemia's face..."

"Artemia... of the western mountains?" asked the stallion.

"Yep, from right above the town of Amaranth. I taught some of her flock- they were really great kids. Great babysitters, too."

The stallion began hyperventilating, so I pat him on the back and wandered over to the massive hole in the floor. I gasped, and grinned. "There it is! That's my chimney!"

Tia, Luna, and I were all carefully circling the wagon, restraining spastic grins.

"Look, look at-"

"I see, what about-"

"Do you remember?"

"Can we-"

"I remember this!"

Cue, then, three adults trying to fit into the doorway at once. Celestia and Luna instantly banged their heads on the door. I shamelessly ducked and crawled from under their barrels.

"First!" I called.

"No fair, it has gotten smaller in our absence!" said Luna.

"Girls, just do the thing!" I said.

"The thing?" asked Celestia.

Luna grinned, concentrated, and appeared at normal pony dimensions. Her older sister followed suit, and they both crowded in next to me. Frankly, doing the same myself wouldn't have resulted in much difference at all.

They had gotten it right, though- it was smaller. Before they and I had parted ways at Discord's hands, we hadn't seen the inside of our home in ten years. Ten, plus thirty, plus eighty, plus...

It was introspective moments like this, I decided, when I realized that I had no interest in calculating my own age, anymore. Time travel had made a hatchet job of it, anyway.

"This is the library?"

The three of us turned, awkwardly, but were able to see Twilight standing in the narrow doorway. The mare looked decidedly underwhelmed.

"All six thousand volumes, four hundred transcripts, three hundred theses, and one or two tax records I accidentally pulled from a burning city," I informed her. Twilight's eyebrows rose. "Magic," I explained, in lieu of explaining anything.

"Oh. Oh, my..." The purple princess went cross-eyed.

"Your highnesses?"

The four of us peered out at the guard that had addressed us. He saluted.

"Yes, Captain?" said Celestia.

The stallion nodded briskly. "We have a ten-nine-six. Asking for the Bearer of Kindness."

"Oh, shoot," said Celestia. She and Luna glanced back at me.

"What is it?" I asked. Without waiting for an answer, I stepped out of our first home and hopped out of the hole, back into the large basement.

"Mother, really, it's unimportant-"

"Mother, why don't we just leave this to Fluttershy, she will-"

"Why is everypony upset? Celestia? Luna? It's only-"

I heard the protests, but everybody's voices just... faded away. I felt it again. That pull. That damned, familiar pull. I darted forward, past the Bearers, past the guards, past the thestral who took care of the building.

I found him lounging against a fence, polishing his claws with an industrial sander. He didn't even bother to look up.

"About time, my dear Fluttershy. I found the most interesting peanut this morning, and I just had... to..."

He finally looked up, and his eyes went wide.

"Discord."

My well of magic had deepened. My control had been refined in the decades since I had been banished from my girls and needed to fight my way across primeval Equestria. My reflexes had improved.

My first 'God Killer' spell took him in the chest at an angle, tearing his body out into the open air above the city and vaporizing several tons of masonry. I took to the air at speeds that nearly burned my eyes, only to catch up to his flailing figure. He was too disoriented to fight back.

Good.

"Wait!" he gasped. "Wait, we can talk! We should talk!"

"Don't want to," I replied. A shock web sprouted out of the air behind him, capturing his body in a tangle of electric currents. The voltage usually wasn't lethal, but modifying it was easy. The mad god went charcoal black, and comical eyes blinked out at me in surprise before he crumbled into a pile of ash.

I was neither fooled nor amused.

The ash slid through the web, allowing him to escape and reform below me. But he wasn't bleeding. Not yet. I wondered if he could.

I remembered the show. I remembered Twilight and my late night discussions over the real events behind the cartoon. I remember Fluttershy discussing her 'roommate'.

But none of that was really real. Not when I remembered the chaos he brought to the tribes just when they'd settled into peace. Not when:

"You took me from my girls!"

I channeled my magic, pegasus and otherwise, into the loose clouds and sent them crushing his body from three angles. I forced the water free of its natural magic, split it into its constituent gasses with electrolysis, and ignited the entire thing.

Something like a small, orange sun blossomed for several seconds as I went into a dive, angled up, and let loose with another God Killer. Then a Starry Spiral, which I'd never used on a flesh-and blood creature before.

He tried to split into dozens of little versions of himself, running in a panic on thin air to get away from where I'd smashed him to pieces with the God Killer. Luckily, the Starry Spiral sent hundreds of tiny embers out in a target-seeking cloud. Each little Discord clone, whether one or all of them were really him, were penetrated by the embers before they ignited him from the inside out.

I remembered that he had been petrified before. Feeling clever, I began sapping heat away from the spot of sky with the legion of miniature Discords, forcing my magic to bring the space into the single digits -Kelvin- and air was liquifying and flash-boiling around the space's perimeter.

"Seriously! We could just talk. I'm reformed! Let bygones be bygones?"

I grinned. Just like I had figured, he had disappeared from -or perhaps never really been- where I'd been attacking him. I forced the air along my primary feathers into an icy, razor edge, and spun.

The smug bastard had been floating right behind me.

We both were completely still. I hovered, buoyed by the thermals as he reached up and touched his cheek. His claws came away and the demon glanced down in complete shock to see a smear of his own blood.

It was the thinnest of cuts. I'd gotten off worse from skinning my knees, back when I had them.

It was a victory, for somebody who hadn't been certain he could bleed.

Pupils shrunken, eyes wide, he glanced back up at me. "...Tamara? Don't you remember me?"

"Of course I do," I told him. My vision blurred, slightly. "I figured it out after I saw Linda die."

He was too shocked to react when I hammered him down with a crackling field of force, sending him at bullet speeds into the distant pavement below.

I dropped fast, but not quite as fast as he had. My legs nearly buckled when I touched down, and I could hardly bring myself to notice the figures clustered around the courtyard. They maintained distance from the chaos god and I, as I plodded forward toward the messy crater that had pulverized half of a decorative fountain.

"It sounds the same as it does in English," I rasped. "Discord. The syllables don't really work for ponies. They probably thought your name was supposed to be as chaotic as you are."

The chimera, still bleeding from his shallow scratch, forced himself up on his elbows. He still looked like he was in shock.

"Can you imagine what I felt like when I realized it was a pun?" I asked. "Something only four or five people anywhere could have figured out?" I lifted my head and looked him in the eyes. "Derry ISmuth CORDry. No fucking wonder you wanted us to call you 'Crazy Dan'."

He looked horrified. "But you knew... And you just..." He pointed up at where I'd done my level best to vaporize him.

"Because you knew, too," I said. "And you took me away from my daughters. I don't care how you got to Equestria, or how long you've been here. My friend," I spat, "left my little girls orphaned. You fucked with the minds of six mares who thought you were their friends, selling out to a centaur who ought to have stayed dead."

Discord blinked, then looked back at the Element Bearers. "I did? I did. Please, I didn't remember, it's always so hard to-"

I screeched and rocketed at him through the air. With a sharp crack, I found myself tackled to the ground by three bodies.

"Mother, please stand down."

"Please? Can we not talk?"

I froze, not too far gone as to thrash against Tia, Luna or Twilight to try to break free.

Several feet ahead of me, Fluttershy was already at Discord's side, trying to help him up. The demon wobbled, still staring blankly at the streak of red drying into a tacky mess down one side of his face. He looked at the little pegasus with a perplexed expression.

"Did I know you? Before, I mean?" He frowned. "I don't remember that." His body flickered, and suddenly, in his place, was a tall, broad human. "Do you know this face?" Fluttershy was too shocked to answer.

The eyes were still red on yellow, but it was the same man. Same short, frizzy hair. Same raggedy trench coat. I saw that the wound was still in the same place, too, as he turned back to look at me. "Linda died?"

I sneered. "After creating the Tree of Harmony, yes. Why the fuck was she a tree-person? Did you do that to her?!"

Discord blinked. "Wait. Wasn't she always like that? No, I mean..." he frowned again. "That was a long time ago. Why don't you remember?"

"Remember what?" I asked, suddenly feeling worried.

"I remember, now," said Discord, flickering back to his normal, chimeric self. "Tamara, you were the one who did, well..." he threw out his arms. "Everything! You kick-started it all!" He searched my face, looking for something which he didn't find. "I suppose if anybody could do it, it would be you."

"Do what?" I asked. There was no madness in his eyes. That bothered me more than anything.

"Go back, of course," said the chaos spirit. "I'd ask you to say 'hi' to myself, but I'm sure you'll have other things in mind after traveling twelve thousand years." He pointed to one of the bodies weighing me to the ground. "Sparkle herself picked up on the time rift. I can still feel it. The origin can't be more than..." He brought up his wrist, as well as the Rolex that was suddenly ticking away there. "Two weeks from now. I guess we should hang out together while we still have the time, right?"

"Two weeks, I... I don't..."

Discord shook his head. "You came back a month after you left us there at Jill's, all different and... changed. Wow, it's really all coming back!" He smiled sheepishly. "One of the downsides of existing in a state of madness: the past comes and goes. I guess I shouldn't tell you anymore, since even I can't stop the march of causality."

He turned back to the side. "Fluttershy, dear, I'm going on a short vacation."

"Oh, no, you just couldn't!" said the yellow mare. "What about our picnic? And... and you need to have that scratch looked at..."

Discord smiled. "I'll make up for it." He turned back to me. "I'll be there to say good-bye, I promise."

And just like that, and with a snap of his claws, he was gone.

I wasn't aware of how much time had passed when I came back to myself. Between one moment and the next, I found myself on a cushioned bench, with my daughters rubbing my forelegs as if to stave off the symptoms of shock.

Which, I would admit, was probably pretty appropriate.

"Here you are, Tham'ra," said Twilight, levitating over a large, open book.

"Here I am what?" I asked, glancing at the pages.

"An almanac," said Twilight. "You said you wanted one," she added, kindly reminding me.

"Oh, yes. Thank you. Maps weren't very accurate beyond the valley, back in the day..." I looked down. It was the known world. Not the world in its entirety, but... enough of it. I could make educated guesses as to what filled the blank spaces beyond.

"It doesn't make sense," I mused aloud. "The sun and moon alone are all wrong. The stars are wrong. Twelve thousand years shouldn't have done this much to change the landscape. There should have been signs, creatures... races of intelligent beings don't come out of nowhere..."

I pointed at the map. "These were the Great Lakes, once the largest freshwater bodies in the world. Now they extend east to the ocean, separating Paradise Valley and Equestria. California to the west, the fault lines shouldn't have left it its own island. The badlands would be... east of the Rockies?" I swallowed, tracing my hoof down the page. "Florida's gone. The seas are too high."

"I know this is all very confusing, mother," said Celestia. "Especially since I haven't the faintest idea what you're speaking of."

I looked up, and caught the eyes of the three mares. "I had a bit of a running debate with old Starswirl, back in the day. Does anybody remember it?"

"As if he didn't pretend he was still arguing with you, years after your banishment," said Celestia. "The notion he held that parallel worlds were just that- parallel, and not intersecting at any point."

"And I thought I was living proof to the contrary," I said, then gave a sickly smile. "Because really, where else could I have come from? Except, and I thought to myself, surely 'it was Earth all along' was too obvious. This," I waved a hoof. "This is nothing like Earth. Which tells me that something completely outside my experience effected the planet I once knew."

I would have said that it was all so obvious, but really, it wasn't. Twelve thousand years is hardly enough time to have the shore recede, let alone re-order mountain ranges.

"I'm trying to put it all in order," I said. "Over twelve thousand years ago, I woke up to find a magical book." It was then that I saw I'd caught Twilight's attention. "Yeah. It... sort of recorded spell patterns from Twilight there. It also served as a kind of 'magical fuel source'. I'd have said something, but I wanted it to be a surprise. Surprise!"

Twilight, kind mare that she was, awkwardly chuckled. "That explains how you followed me. I was going to ask, but..."

"It slipped my mind, too," I offered. "Long story short, I jumped to this present time with the book. Then, I accidentally jumped back to the time of the Paradise Estate. Discord chucked me back in time from then, nine thousand years after I found that book, until I found Linda. A sweet woman who somehow became a tree person in the nine thousand years after I left. Humans don't live that long. I think..." My gaze went unfocused. "I did an anchoring spell, so I could pull myself back. Only I never did. Linda, Jill, and Crazy Dan went on living. Because of me, I think." I only had theories, but they were fitting too comfortably for my comfort. "And by then, at least one of them was immortal in their own right, so I stayed immortal, too."

Luna coughed. "So what you mean, is that, until you became an alicorn, your longevity was because Discord kept you alive?"

"Him and maybe Jill, but I haven't seen her," I said, throat gone dry. "Linda herself claimed to be waiting for me. Chose not to die, in fact, until I stumbled across her. No injury, no illness, she just lay down and stopped."

"And the... other things that Discord mentioned?" asked Celestia.

And here I narrowly averted going back into a daze, again. "He implied that I started everything. That whatever I started, it means that there are no more human beings around." I put up a hoof quickly, forestalling any arguments. "Or maybe it was something else." Not that I believed that. "He and Linda both remembered me being there... after I left with the book. He thinks it means I go back, again. Only this time it will be all the way back. And that I'll be leaving in two weeks."

"Then we shall simply do nothing at all," said Luna, sounding smug. "We will barricade ourselves in yon rumpus room and relax until the danger has passed."

A sharp pain went through me, at the thought that it might be so easy. I smiled at her. "The last time I thought I would coast through an avoid troubling with temporal mechanics, I ended up carrying you and your sister, Luna."

The alicorn wilted. "We may be wrong. You may change things."

"Everybody changes things," I said. "Only, in this case, the change itself may have been inevitable. Will have been, I suppose." I did my best to sound reassuring, and added, "Don't worry, I'll have another twelve millenia of practice. I'm sure I'll just spring ahead again -more accurately this time- and pop up seconds after I've left. It might be... a bit longer for me, but you won't miss me for more than a minute. You two have already had to wait longer than I have, after all." Apparently, my expression betrayed more than I had thought.

"That is not the way to go about thinking these things," said Celestia. "Distance is distance. Just because Luna and I were waiting for as long as we were, doesn't make another twelve thousand years a fair wait for you. And... and coming back after what seems like minutes to us doesn't make it any better."

"Time marches on," I muttered. I closed my eyes, and centered myself as best as I could. "Tia, I think we'll need to make that trip to the Bad Lands sooner than we thought. Can you and Luna make that happen?"

"Naturally," said Luna, who deflated moments after making the remark.

"Tham'ra," Twilight swallowed, then went on, "we don't have all of the information we need. You're relying on Discord... Dan's... testimony for a lot."

"Which just means that uncovering the truth is that much more important," I countered. I thought of my plans for changing things the first time around, staging the world's greatest production to make it only seem as if the Nightmare had taken Luna. Lying to the world, for her sake, would have been the easiest choice I ever made.

And... and she wasn't really that good of an actor, but maybe we'd done some creative memory rewriting? Or something?

Maybe this time I could make it work.

Likely, I couldn't.

"The problem with digital media," I said out loud, "is that it degrades. I guess we finally went paperless, at some point."

"Are you saying these are somehow... books, mother?" asked Luna.

I sent a small disc, some descendant of the DVD, spiraling through the air into a pile of its siblings. "All the information in the world," I corrected. "Or maybe just lots of high-quality pornography. Honestly, this stuff clearly came from after my time. A couple years, going by the dates stamped on some of these pieces." Or very many years, going by a couple of others.

"I don't see how a couple of years could render your... old civilization incomprehensible," said Celestia, who was browsing through several machine casings and the writing thereon. Heavy use was being made out of translation charms, all around.

I snickered. Twilight coughed. My daughters stared at us in confusion.

"Your dear old mother's generation was pretty extraordinary," I explained. "I mean, dang, I still remember seeing laserdiscs when I was a kid." At the continued incomprehension, I added, "Suffice it to say, there wasn't much the gods of our own legends could do that we couldn't, in a roundabout way."

"Neato!" said Pinkie. She and the other girls were digging through the mountain of artifacts in the Canterlot museum's back room, while the curator Dusty watched over with trepidation and excitement in equal measure.

Twilight was the least awed. As well as having walked the Earth in my own time, she among the six Bearers had gotten a good grasp of human technology. "They were terribly advanced, for a society without magic." She winked at the two other princesses. "I think this tops any of the other origin stories going around about you two. Children of the very first precursors, no less!"

"I'm so sorry to hear about Linda," said Fluttershy. "She was always so kind when we visited. And she made the Tree of Harmony, too!" The pegasus smiled softly. "She always made such pretty things. I have that model she painted for me, still, at home."

"You call that a surprise?" asked Rainbow, tossing aside a hubcap. "Discord's the same guy who borrowed my Daring Do books. Then he went and attacked Ponyville. That is not what a bro does."

I tuned out, perusing my own pile. It was infuriating. Only the most hardy things, and the least informational, had survived. And that, I suspected, was only because the Bad Lands were so desolated that the elements that would normally rot the remains physically couldn't exist, there. There were warnings against types of radiation that I didn't understand. An advertisement for Deluxe Twinkies which, if the plate was to be believed, had been the size of my head.

A plaque had been pried off of the Jillian Memorial garden. Dedicated to 'Our last angel'. Apparently, at some point, Jill got famous.

But it still looked like the entirety of the ruins had been teleported, which further confused the issue.

"We've got permission to go to the source at the end of this week," I said, not bothering to look up. "Remnants of when the Bad Lands were a sort of demilitarized zone, only nobody wanted to pick it back up, after hostilities had ceased. That's probably why the changelings were able to gather power there, a few years ago."

"The griffons and minotaurs gave permission, yes," said Twilight. I could feel her disapproving glare. "On the assumption that you'll attend a summit the week after that."

"It could happen," I said, without much feeling. "And if not, then I'll have an excellent excuse."

"You used to be a lot more enthusiastic," said Twilight, coming loser and speaking in a lower tone to avoid being overheard. "I always got the impression that nothing could bother you."

"I worry plenty," I said, feeling a little surprised to hear that tidbit from her. "I'm only fatalistic when it comes to time travel. The last few times I pushed through time, I ran face-first into the limits of the universe. And not the physical ones, either. It's like..." I gnawed on my lip a while, thinking. "It's like the first time you ever see the ocean. Only, instead of only feeling like it must be infinite, I know it must be infinite. Whatever will happen will happen. Not because of some ridiculous concept like 'destiny', or whatever, but because it's already happened."

I chanced a glance, and saw Twilight literally droop. "I know," she said. "Is that what it will take to get you out of this mood? Will getting out of this 'loop' do that for you?"

"I hope so," I said.

The situation was complex.

As near as I could tell, I was doomed to some day -soon- travel back into the past. There, I would be part of whatever caused humans to fade away. I was seeing the future, right now, and would go back to cause it. Like the time traveler in H.G. Wells's book, only I wouldn't be able to stay in the future with my Eloi. The ponies. I would be part of it. Maybe not voluntarily, and maybe -despite what Discord had said- only as a bystander of sorts. But I would be there. Linda had said that I had come back after forging ahead to Magic Pony Land. Discord had confirmed it, for all that I didn't consider him a reliable witness.

On the other hand, I wasn't sure what would happen, and had happened, then. Me being me, I'd expect my future self to tweak my nose a bit. Leave clues here and there. Only I hadn't. Was future me preserving the timeline? Had she really skipped ahead, to reunite with my friends and family as soon as she saw that I, her earlier self, had left?

Had she died?

That notion should have bothered me more. Except, I had already long surpassed any human lifespan. Except, I had already done so much. Ever since pointing Starswirl towards Equestria, I had felt as if I'd truly done my part for the planet, if not for my original species. Or maybe I would do that, too. Maybe human kind had just... left. Gone into a fantasy reality like Twilight had visited through the mirror. Certainly, Starswirl had banished plenty of 'undesirables' there, the lazy bastard. Or they had wiped themselves out without my triggering input. Or all just turned into tree people.

Fanciful thoughts went through my head. Maybe the human race had uploaded their brains into a massive crystal server, and Linda had just been the last caretaker of the last open node- the Tree of Harmony. Maybe I was just in a mad coma dream. That wouldn't have been too bad- certainly, I'd had a better sex life as a pony than I had as a human.

'Insert laugh track, there,' I thought. Most of that was due to the sheer time scale, anyway. What was the old phrase- even a blind squirrel finds an acorn, eventually?

"Tham'ra!"

I jumped. "Bloody feathers what?" Six pairs of eyes were on me.

"Ah, it's almost dinner time, darling," said Rarity. "The princesses are awaiting us at the castle."

"The girls left?" I asked, bewildered.

"Ha! You're really out of it," said Rainbow. "What was going through that red head anyway?"

"Wondering how many humans had turned into trees," I replied, savoring her confusion as I brushed past.

"She is so random," I heard Pinkie say as I trotted toward the doorway.

The dining hall was grand, but much smaller than the one we'd been eating in before. I'm guessing that was because the girls wanted to be able to hear more without worrying about the staff overhearing tales that referenced my previous species. It would probably blow their minds.

"And that's why you never offer wine to an auroch," I said, finishing my latest story and quickly mopping up the rest of my soup with a torn piece of bread.

"That was the most horrible thing I've ever heard," said Twilight.

I scoffed. "No it isn't." A long silence lingered. "Wait, was it?"

Celestia coughed, trying to draw attention away from my tale of larceny and the accidental revolution I started in an earth pony commune back when I was fifty.

"Luna and I actually had a bit of a surprise," she announced. Looking closely, I saw the telltale signs of an alarm spell going off, no doubt with a trigger switch held by one of her guards or servants.

"Is it cheesecake?" I asked. While it probably wasn't, a girl could hope, couldn't she? I didn't know how to make it, and I hadn't seen the stuff since coming forward to this time period.

"Like... cheddar?" asked Luna, looking a bit queasy.

"Never mind," I said, sighing.

At that moment, the doors to the dining hall opened, and a pair of vaguely familiar ponies stepped through. My memory was probably better now than it had ever been as a human, but it still took me a moment.

"Shiny! Cadence!" Twilight bolted out of her chair and grabbed up the couple enthusiastically.

Luna leaned in. "To my understanding, sister adopted her into the family."

I grinned. "Another grandchild?"

Luna, I figured, probably knew exactly what she was doing. Of course, the small tweak of her lips told me that more than anything.

Still, I figured I would run with it.

"Granddaughter!" I hopped out of my chair and bowled the group over.

Now I would just have to hunt down Blueblood, and I'd have a full set of three.

"Wait, what?" Poor Shining Armor looked more than a bit concussed. With some input from my daughters, I had just given an abridged version of my story. Much more than the public would ever get, I suspected.

"I am one of the ancient and venerable precursors," I said, sticking out a hoof. He took it out of reflex. "I was a cartoonist."

"Oh stars, it makes so much more sense, now," he said, blinking rapidly.

I grinned at Cadence. "He's a keeper, alright."

The pink alicorn nodded rapidly, wearing a goofy smile. "Isn't he just? So! Tell me, what was 'grandpa' like?"

The group as a whole were relaxing around the dining table, occasionally reaching out to snag some of the desserts. It was nice, really, to have so many people wanting to hear my stories without treating me like a crazy sage. It wasn't as if nobody had ever tracked down the 'fearsome witch' for advice, help, and so on.

"Winter Whistle." I brought up an illusion of him. His form shifted from one hoof to the other, and he gave the kind of embarrassed smile he only ever gave when we were alone.

"He was an alicorn?" asked Twilight, awed. "I thought that Celestia and Luna were the first."

"Pegacorn," I corrected. "And technically, I was, by a few years, if you match our timelines together. Moreso if you don't. Winter was..." I ran through my thoughts. "He was kind, when it counted. And snarky as anything the rest of the time. Self-conscious but sweet." I couldn't help the grin that stretched across my face. "The only stallion I ever loved. And great in bed, once I trained him up some."

"Mother!"

"La la la I hear nothing!"

I carefully didn't look at either Celestia or Luna. Scarring the minds of one's children was a family tradition, after all. Or maybe it was just the tradition of all families.

"Auntie Luna looks so much like him!" said Cadence, reaching out and poling her hoof through Winter's insubstantial wings.

"Like Celestia does me," I said, and looked at my eldest's face. "Except for how we sort of switched eye colors."

I expanded the illusion, and added dimension to it. Off to one side of the dining table, Winter and myself -eight months along with Tia at the time- were walking down a dirt road between the buildings of Amaranth.

"And I'm telling you that it's impossible," said Winter.

I shook my head. "Nope! I really did it. It was... thirty years ago? I was bored, the village was on fire, and I had three apples. Balanced them all on my nose."

"What was that you said?" asked Winter, worried.

"Three apples, and I was bored," I assured him. It wasn't as if I'd started the fire myself, after all. "I once had an assistant that could do four. Terrible actress, great acrobat."

"No, seriously, you said a village was on fire?!"

I sighed, and dismissed the illusion. "See? He was a bit of a worrier."

"There was a village on fire?!"

I sighed again. "Really, Twilight?"

My Expansive Illusion was soon becoming my favorite spell. Being able to literally bring to life the past for all of my curious friends and loved ones was almost intoxicating- I had to stop myself after the desserts had been finished and the table cleared.

"Now what?" asked Twilight.

"Now you girls go home until we head out," I said. "You've got families and obligations, and I won't pretend I don't want a little bit of alone time with my girls."

The group eventually agreed, and with an overabundance of tearful good byes and promises to be back soon, we were alone.

"The cart's secure?" I asked, speaking over my shoulder and not looking away from the castle's main exit.

"Yes, mother," said Luna. "In the second barracks garage- we've had it cleared of anything else."

"Excellent," I said, nodding in satisfaction. "That thing's a piece of history. Feel free to get your stuffed animals out of it before the historians descend upon it like rabid wolverines."

Time to pick up a few things, then.

Waiting until the girls were asleep was easy. Hating myself for hoping that they would get worn out by the day's excitement wasn't.

My pack was assembled, my new cloak -I left a thank-you note for Rarity- was donned, and my body buzzed with expectant magic. It was a shame I never managed to adapt the teleportation spell, but experience had made me over half as fast as Rainbow Dashin the air, by my guess. No mean feat. It would be enough.

I wasn't completely surprised to see the two tall figures waiting on me at the castle's western, servants' entrance. After all, I'd trained my daughters well.

"Go small," I reminded them. "Tall alicorns attract attention."

Celestia looked nonplussed. "Er... isn't this where you claim to not have been doing what we suspected you were doing?"

"Or," chimed Luna, "trying to convince us not to follow you?"

"You picked up your cleverness from somepony," I said, deliberately using that fun, ethnocentric little pronoun. "Besides, this will be just like old times. Tia, take point- you were always the strongest flyer."

The older sister tilted her head. "With how skilled you are?"

"I said strongest," I corrected. A moment later, I was holding them both. "Come on. We've got six hours before we have to break and let the two of you take care of the heavens."

"I'm a bit baffled as to why we're not taking our friends," said Luna, mumbling into my neck.

"I still think we can pull this off," I said. "And it will be like nothing's happened in the interim. Besides, this is family business. You two deserve to know what happened as much as I do, more than any pony alive."

"The whole matter is still a bit much to fit my head around," said Celestia, finally breaking the embrace. "If we'd been born without you coming forward, what would we have been like as humans?"

"You'd have been born angels," I said without thinking. "Gifts from heaven. More than I could have hoped for, and every answer to my unspoken prayers." I frowned. "Wow, I've become quite the poet in my old age."

"Mother, we have centuries of age over you," said Luna, a tinge of laughter bubbling in her throat.

"You're not too old to put over my knee," I groused, despite not having knees, per se.

"And then what?" asked Celestia, grinning. I'd never once hit the two of them.

"A long lecture," I replied. "Or I could just tell you about the night you were conceived." Celestia flinched, then I pressed on. "By that, of course, I mean the week. Pinning it down to a single day would be hard, what with everything your father and I got up to during that-"

"Okay yes fine you win!" whinnied my eldest, ducking down to hide behind Luna's frame.

"I always do," I said. Then the levity went away, and I swallowed. "Let's go, girls."

We chose to walk to the edge of the city, the girls in their guises as normally proportioned ponies. I was the one who first broke the silence, stopping in front of a shop window that had long since gone dark.

"Hold on," I said. With a little bit of 'slight-of-hoof', I broke in and snagged one of the items in the front window, replacing it with a bag of bits.

"What was that?" asked Luna.

"One last thing on the checklist," I told her, then refused to say anything more.

Author's Note

A/N: The most hilarious thing, the most wonderful part about writing, is when your characters act on their own and get something wrong, even if you didn't intend for them to.

But sometimes, you have to just roll with the stupid.

Closing The Circle

Chapter Eighteen

The three of us were sprawled around a small campfire, about three hundred miles north of Los Pegasus. We were beyond the desert, near the Unicorn Mountain Range. Soon, we'd cross over into the badlands.

I myself was on my back, over the spread edges of my cloak. The night sky burned clear above me. There, to the west, the Ursa Minor. To the north, was Firefly's Fall. Different constellations, as clear a map as anything put to paper. It was funny, back as a human, I'd barely tolerated the 'great outdoors' as anything but a necessary evil for the world to store its supply of trees. Now I could forage with the best of them, and survive months in the wild.

"Mother?"

"Yes, Luna?" I stretched my head back to look my youngest in the eyes.

"Did not Discord say it would be a couple weeks before... whatever happens comes to pass?" she asked.

I grinned. "He was lying. It takes having known him since he was a human, but his eyelids scrunch up a bit." I left it at that- knowing that my 'immortal enemy' had been one of my three closest friends had left me... conflicted, to say the least. I'd been avoiding the thought for quite some time, after all, and denial was a powerful motivator.

"Most of my little ponies couldn't imagine me showing fear," said Celestia, who was similarly staring at the sky. "Though I'll admit that I am very afraid, right now."

I knew what she wasn't asking out loud, and said, "I'm not. I haven't been afraid since you two were young. Since Discord banished me to the past, really. It's odd how very unafraid I've been, since becoming a pony."

"And yet you left yon Miss Sparkle behind," teased Luna. "One would think that the sights you've had of her backside were enough to hearten anypony."

While Celestia sputtered, I glared at my youngest. "Girl, don't even try that nonsense. I haven't 'taken in the sights' since your father passed."

"Maybe you should," said Luna. She frowned, turning serious. "We're big girls, now, mother. We pieced together a great deal of what you did after Discord banished you to early Equestria. The fact that the griffons consider you one of their 'war spirits' is a telling one. You've done your part, and you are much loved. Now is when you should be happy."

"I am happy," I told her, believing it from the bottom of my heart. "I saw you again, didn't I? I've kept all of my promises. Now I just have to do it again." I smiled. "Maybe I'll settle down after that. Or maybe I'll get to see how the world has turned out, again. Only this time, I'll have a home to come back to."

I looked back up to the sky. "Maybe I'll figure out why the stars are so different after a mere few millenia. Or why the sun and moon are so different." Or answer a host of other questions.

"Or finally get around to teaching us witchcraft," said Celestia.

I stared at her. "You're the most magically powerful creatures on Earth... er, Sola, and you want to learn witchcraft?"

Luna nodded frantically. "I can make fireballs now."

"And I can throw storm clouds," said Tia smugly. "I believe those were our conditions. Besides, isn't it the family business?"

"Fair enough," I said. "Hasn't anybody else managed it, though?"

"The art died out," said Luna. "Yours was the last generation of witches, and none left apprentices."

"A thousand plus years and nobody picked up the knack?" I asked, feeling a bit bewildered. I certainly hadn't been the first, after all.

"What is 'the knack'?" asked Celestia.

"The first lesson to witchcraft," I said. I chuckled. "Might as well start your first lesson now, then. Fine. Witchcraft is all about the fact that everybody has magic. Got that?"

"Well, yes," said Celestia, looking confused. Given how I knew she'd taught hundreds of mages herself over the years, I wasn't surprised. "Every tribe and species has its own magic."

"Wrong," I said, restraining my laughter. "Everybody has magic, full stop. Their bodies just add the... uh, 'flavor', if you will. Bypass hooves, wings, what will you, and use your magic directly. That's witchcraft."

"But you cast with your wings!" said Luna. "You told us- showed us, even!"

"I only write runes with my wings," I said. "Because it's quick and easy. Here."

With my hoof, I traced out four runes and a dirty sketch of a half circle with three notches. It was the shortest spell I'd ever developed.

I grinned up at them. "Here. I'll power it with my nose." Unrefined magic only needed physical contact, after all. I pressed my muzzle to the sandy earth and squinted. Tiny witchlights danced up from the soil- they would continue to do so for about five minutes, until the power ran out.

"It's literally the most efficient magic possible," I said. "The only problem is that you can't use it on instinct- all spells have to be written out each time. I only have... twenty spells, I think, that I could cast as fast as a unicorn sorceress could." Not that I'd ever let an enemy know about my 'preparation time'. Invisible spells could be written ahead of time, and without the glow that gave away unicorn magic. In short, my magic seemed instantaneous.

"That's it?" asked Luna dumbly.

"That's it." I motioned them both close. They scooted over eagerly. "Here. Tonight, we'll build a light spell. Tomorrow, we'll do simple levitation. That one will be tough- you're effectively matching gravity's acceleration with a lift to negate weight. Movement is a free-range pointer, that can rotate in three hundred and sixty degrees by three hundred and sixty degrees. Plus you have to have a braking capability... that one is about three hundred symbols over a diagram forty times wider than this one..."

"My goodness, what's this?!" asked Celestia, flying backwards in front of her sister. Witchlights danced out in front of her. "Magic, but without using a horn? Madness! Have you seen the like, little sister?"

Luna grumbled, then sent a fireball at the other alicorn's face. Celestia blinked around coal-rimmed eyes.

I grumbled. "Luna, you were born a unicorn! You've had to unlearn a few things, so don't feel bad. Tia, stop being a twit or I'll magic you neon green. I haven't taught you to dispel witchcraft, either. It will last weeks."

My eldest pouted, and cleared the ash from her face. Thank goodness alicorns were hardy. And that they had grown up as normal ponies. Half-indestructible youngsters would have been hell to teach. I'd gladly take having to kiss scraped fetlocks and put cool cloth over blackened eyes.

Luna magicked out a sheet of much-folded parchment and conferred with it briefly, before drifting on the wing until she was next to me.

"Three thousand bodylengths ahead, mother! We should be seeing the beacons from the old archaeological team, now!" she called over the wind.

I nodded, and gave the wing-twitches first put into use by the old pegasus military to lead the both of them down with me. It was as fine a semaphore system as had ever been developed.

We coasted down to where the Bad Lands became a distorted, broken landscape. Faded orange markers, long since having lost their magic but not the distinctive colors, guided my path to an outcropping.

"Oh my," said Celestia.

"Yup," I agreed. "It really needs a good coat of paint," I said, looking at the massive, dark mouth of a cave.

"Er, no. I meant this letter from Twilight."

I looked back. Luna was reading over her sister's head, hopping on the toes of her hooves to get a good view.

"It seems she's aware of your little trick, or else has deduced it," said Celestia with a small, proud smile. "She and the girls are quite put out with us."

"Good thing we have a lead on them," I said. "Ready?"

"But of course," said Luna.

We passed into the dusty entrance, each of us casting a strong magic light. Halfway into shadow, I stopped.

"Is something wrong?" asked Celestia.

I shrugged. "I think that we're in Idaho," I said, which meant nothing to the girls. "A province famous for potatoes."

"How times have changed," noted Luna.

I rolled my neck, and we proceeded.

The cave floor angled down sharply. There were enchantments -ones so old and alien that I could hardly feel them- that had kept the place open over the ages. Occasionally we had to press by barriers that stopped low-mass objects such as air and particulates.

Half an hour of descending, and artificial structures started to show wherever the walls had worn away from the cave. It was definitely human construction, if slightly different than what I knew. At one point, Luna held us up to puzzle over a set of golden arches that just barely poked through the ground.

"What strange art was this?" asked my youngest.

"The human equivalent to 'Hayburger'," I told her. Celestia broke out with laughter.

Shortly afterward, I froze. The girls did likewise.

"Danger?" asked Luna.

"Worse," I groaned. "Come out, Discord."

A sigh echoed through the cavern. "It's no fun if I can't sneak up on you, you know. And... and you could call me by my old name."

Something like anger flashed through my blood. Then an altogether more solemn feeling. Finally:

"Alright, Dan. Pax?"

"Pax," said the chimera, who tunneled up through the dirt. He was wearing a hat, which he tilted jauntily around his antler. "Do you like it? I always wanted to be a Mouseketeer."

I hummed the old Disney theme song, and he chuckled. Then the levity disappeared, and I said, "I thought you weren't going to bother saying goodbye. Or at least, I figured you'd change your mind."

He shrugged. "It seemed... proper. Or at least, it does now. My memory comes and goes, you know. It's in my nature. It took Fluttershy telling me all about her 'new alien friends' to remind me of... of what we were, before." He gnawed on his lip with his single, great fang. "I can't tell you everything, of course. I don't remember you telling me everything myself, back then, you see?"

"Of course," I said.

"I forgot ever having friends," he admitted, walking with us as I lead the group further on. "I forgot so much."

"It was the same with Linda," I said. "She thought that we had all been together just days before." I coughed. "If you lose it again, I'm still going to have to kill you."

"Got ya," said the draconequus pleasantly. "Friends?"

"Friends," I said.

"To think, if you had been able to stay around longer, we might have put Discord in his place so much sooner," mused Celestia, bright eyes darting between he and I.

"Not a chance," I said, then chuckled. "I'm probably the weakest alicorn in the world. Twilight had more power on me back when she was a unicorn."

"Pull t'other one, it has bells on it," said Luna.

"Really," I said. "I did the math. I'm actually pretty low on the power scale."

"Managed to make me bleed," grumbled Discord.

"That's only because I'm sneakier than you," I told him, patting him on one misshapen shoulder consolingly.

"Are not!"

"Children, please," said my eldest.

Crazy Dan and I stuck out our tongues. His lashed out about a foot further.

I stared, and said, "Fluttershy must be a lucky mare."

At that, he started choking on said tongue.

"So," I said, pressing my advantage. "Am I getting any nieces or nephews, soon?"

"Argh!"

I suddenly felt so much better.

The space was vast. Discord -and really, it was just easier to call him that- kept popping everywhere, rummaging through the rubble and coming up with knickknacks that he stored... somewhere. He wasn't wearing pockets, so I really didn't want to know.

This place was entirely held up by magic. It seemed to be an odd mixture of military base and cliff dwellings, like those once built by the Pueblo people. There were rusted spots that had once held street signs. Gaps where hinges had held up doors. Only stone and metal remained, and more of the former than the latter. Occasionally we passed hoof tracks, remnants of the old exploration team that had gone unchanged in the decades since.

Our final destination was obvious- at the far side of the chamber was a great, rising pyramid. Its sides were carved with channels that literally glowed with magic. At times it steamed up out of the ground, taking physical form in a way I hadn't thought possible.

"I wish I had payed more attention to those old reports," said Celestia, scanning the ground with a spell. "These ley lines are more potent than those running through the crystal caves under the palace. More organized, even, if that's even possible for ley lines."

Discord remained suspiciously silent. Heaven only knew what was going through his head- I had a feeling that whatever had changed him so thoroughly had made it so that even his mind wasn't like that of a human's, anymore. Not that I could claim different for myself, either. I knew full well that being a pony had changed me in a number of subtle ways.

"Come on," I said, starting up the pyramid.

"What makes you so certain that this is our destination?" asked Luna.

"Narrative causality," I said snarkily, drawing a chuckle from Discord. "Seriously, if there's nothing up here, we can use the vantage point to search the cavern."

Luna looked up the incline and quirked her brow. "You do realize that all of us here can fly, correct?"

I stumbled, just slightly. "Nobody likes a smarty-pants, Luna."

"Yes they do!" she replied, skipping ahead cheerfully.

I sighed. She was, of course, absolutely correct.

The ground itself was so highly charged that it felt like roiling silk under my hooves. As if it could throw me at any second. We couldn't have been more than a mile or two under the surface, but it felt so much deeper than that.

"Any spoilers?" I asked, eyeing Discord.

The draconequus shrugged. "Honestly, it really is all fuzzy, for me. And I haven't seen the... other instance of you in well over ten thousand years."

I nodded. That put more weight on the likelihoods that I had either died or skipped forward in time, again. It wasn't much, and I didn't want to be too pessimistic, but I wouldn't fool myself either.

Once we reached the top of the incline, there was a circular doorway. It was covered in a veil as opaque as cloth. Discord gave it a good, hard look, then walked through.

I did likewise. It was like pushing through a bubble with a hundred times more surface tension. Something... some kind of mental impression, perhaps, flashed through me. As if the strange magic was searching for something in particular. I saw a familiar bipedal figure flicker in my mind's eye.

After crossing through, I stumbled, before turning around. It took nearly half a minute for Luna and Celestia to push through. They were much more tangentially related to my old species, through me, but evidently something must have sparked the ward's recognition. It was probably a bit odd of me, but I felt a subtle pride. My girls were a credit to two species. Not that I'd ever doubted that, but it made me feel smug to see some outside vindication of it.

Or maybe I was just reaching- not that I cared. They were my daughters.

The four of us finally inside, we turned as one to take in our environment. It was a roughly square chamber, with a vaulted ceiling. A much smaller pyramid sat in the room's center, and light rippled off of the walls like we were in an indoor pool.

I stepped toward the incline.

Light flared, and filled every inch of space, blinding me. I heard three distinct voices cursing. Were it not for what I heard next, I would have joined in.

"Hello, me."

I blinked frantically, until I could see again. Until the figure was visible.

If nothing else, I'd always had a realistic body image. Never had I ever been so beautiful as this, as a human. She stood tall, proud, and graceful. Beatific, even, as if she had stepped out of some cathedral fresco.

She was also transparent.

I swallowed, and rasped back, "Hello." There wasn't much else to say. Was this the version of myself who had already skipped back after returning to the past? And why the fuck was she transparent?

"Why the fuck are you transparent?"

And it seemed that I had just lost my mind-to-mouth filter, to boot.

She smiled down at me. Even with the minor boost in height granted by my ascension, my normal stance hardly put my eye level to her rib cage. I could hardly believe, confronted now with the image of a human being, how alien it felt. The redhead was garbed in a plain, white dress.

"Because I'm not really myself. Or yourself, I suppose," said the human, tilting her head. "Not anymore. I left this image behind. The loop hadn't yet been closed, you see- I had the feeling you might yet come by."

Discord, of course, immediately tested this out by marching a head and sticking his arm through her -my- head.

"I wish you wouldn't do that, Dan," she said.

The chaos spirit chuckled nervously. "It's not often somebody can claim to have gotten in your head- you can't blame me."

"You're more than an image," I said, picking up on the important bit. "An artificial intelligence? Built from magic."

She lifted one shoulder and let it drop. "In a way. More than that, though. I'm sort of a fully sapient ghost. A clone of you with a short half-life."

I bit my lip. "How literal is that ghost thing. Did... did you die?"

Her eyes narrowed at me in confusion. "Obviously not. Or else you wouldn't be here."

"Mother? I'm not sure I'm following all of this," said Celestia, stepping up to my side with her sister in tow.

"Mother?" asked my ghost self, looking at me. "My, you have been busy."

"Shove it," I said automatically. "Wait, why don't you remember that? How limited is the intelligence of this image? If this was what I came up with at the end of a stable loop, I ought to have added enough background awareness to hold a real conversation." I frowned. "Though that's probably too much effort to put into talking to myself, I suppose."

"What stable loop?" asked the image of my human self. It was strange, to still so easily read her human expressions. Confusion, uncertainty, frustration...

"The time loop," I said, getting a little frustrated myself. "I haven't gone back yet, obviously! Whatever history I haven't played out with my human friends, whatever happened to the human race, it hasn't happened to me yet. Can we cut the cryptic comments and get down to business? I've got to take the long way around, this time, and I'd like to get it over with!"

Realization flooded her face, then... pity?

"I think I understand the cause of your confusion," she said. "You think you have to go back. Only, you've already gone back. Approximately seven months ago."

"No," I said. "Really. Cut the cryptic stuff."

"I was hoping it wouldn't come to this," said the image.

It disappeared. Moments later, the world stopped.

I was twenty-five years old. Three days ago, I had... slipped, I suppose. Mentally. Really, I figured, in that strange sense of detached calm that so often cradled the thoughts of the suicidal, it had been a long time in coming. Not good enough for my family, not good enough for me... I had been walking the knife's edge for long enough.

A bitter, sarcastic thought in the back of my mind mused on whether the medication had stopped doing its job. Or maybe it had carried me as far along as it could, further than I might have otherwise have gone. Either way, this was it.

The deciding factor had been leaving home at the beginning of the weekend. I had asked for some time alone, told my friends not to wait up, and disappeared into the forests of Washington state. The scenery was beautiful and quiet. Perfect for introspection. Perhaps less perfect, really, for somebody who oughtn't to be left alone with their own thoughts.

Days later, tired and with almost nothing left of my supplies, I finally came across 'the perfect spot'. White water rapids fed, here, into a massive basin. The water swirled, deep and cold. Anything that fell in would be drawn down, down, to be forgotten. I hoped I would be forgotten. I hoped it would be quiet, down there. Or maybe the noise of the rapids would drown everything out, leaving it quiet in my own head, if nowhere else.

I smiled.

I stepped out into thin air.

I fell.

It hurt a bit more than I had suspected, trying to breathe water. The gash to the back of my head from being tossed into the side of the basin wasn't doing me any favors, either.

That had been stupid. I should have just weighed my clothes down with rocks and found a calm lake, or something.

'Ah, well,' I thought. 'You live and learn.'

Other thoughts echoed, demanding my attention. Self-loathing, the old fan favorite, took pride of place. Disappointment at never having finished reading 'The Sandman' was there, too.

And for some godawful reason, I worried that I'd left my coffee maker on.

Time slowed. Likely because my brain was shutting down. I'd worn my contacts that day, so even tumbling end-over-end, I was able to make out the way the bubbles outlined the current in the water. Seeping from my open mouth, fluttering over my eyelashes, outlining...

...outlining...

A single moment, then, stretched on forever. I saw a pattern underneath everything, above everything, supporting everything. The solid world existed upon a tumbling layer that was at once a fluid and a solid. Light spilled like molten silver. Images of impossible things made possible assembled themselves like sand did upon dunes in the desert.

Everything I'd known was so very incomplete. I saw the world, and the pattern. I saw how easy it would be to reach forward and, by changing the pattern, change the world.

And then time continued, and I was drowning again.

I woke up alone, and in a dark place, and everything was horribly cold. Though I did not know it, the end of my world started there, with me, and with that cold that crept and filled every cell in my body.

It took me a while to come back to myself. To remember what I had seen. Somehow, I'd clawed myself up, out of the water, somewhere downstream. I vomited, nauseous and with a pounding in my head. Blood trickled from the tips of my fingers where they'd scraped raw against the rocky shore, and it took me a moment to realize that some of it had come away from where I'd reached back and touched the tender spot at the back of my head.

I didn't remember much after that. Some campers brought me to a nearby town, I later heard. I was so focused on that spark of inspiration I'd seen at the moment of my near death, I hardly heard the jokes passed around by the hospital staff about the 'stupid tranny hiker'.

At no point did I say what I had been doing out there. At no point, perhaps negligently, did they ask. At some point, a doctor came by and warned about lasting damage, and permanent changes to my personality. But my insurance wasn't the best, and I was able to show I could still count to ten and understand English, so I eventually got out.

Back in Seattle, my friends were waiting for me. They seemed relieved that I was there, but concerned that I hadn't remembered being there a full two months after I'd obviously already left. I put that mystery away for another time. Linda, always so understanding and hesitant, made them let things lie.

With time -how hadn't I lost my job in those two months?- and space -everybody acted as if I hadn't been gone at all- I built the node. It was absurdly simple. I won't claim to have known the science behind the arrangement of crystal, brass, and lenses, but I saw the shape of the thing which would let me alter the pattern.

There was no switch. As soon as it was fully formed under my fingers, it was active.

For the first time, in all time, there was magic. And it was mine.

There was more. There was so much more. Even as the images flooded my mind, some defensive instinct wove a new spell, a purely mental one. I walled it off, all of it. Impressions were left-

-I moved the world I was a goddess-

-but that was all I needed. All I wanted, really. I had my answers. Anything else was just-

-I wrote everything, the laws were put in place, my word became reality-

-superfluous.

I woke up.

I blinked, and breathed. My ghost was still standing there, eyes distant and inscrutable. I pushed past -through- her, up to the tiny pyramid at the room's center. Peering over the edge, I saw a deep, brightly-lit well that led to nowhere. At least, to nowhere that existed anymore.

Blindly, I reached back with a Ghostly Hand until I found the saddlebags I'd discarded. Out of them came a novelty. I had seen it in a shop on our way out of Canterlot. It was a stupid, touristy thing. Canterlot was the unicorn city, after all- mystical-seeming trinkets were exactly what they passed onto tourists.

This was a journal. A thick one, with fine pages and a stylized series of runes around a star.

"Ghost," I said. Though she didn't make any noise moving, I sensed her at my side moments later. "How much power do you have left?"

"Enough for one more impossible thing, I believe," she said. "Impossible as the locals measure it, at least."

"Enchant this," I said, waving the book. "Make it a consumable, spell-casting aide. Make it render nearby spells as runes." I didn't bother to say what runes.

No small wonder I'd had such a smooth time learning magic. I'd relearned it. I'd written the runes I'd learned from the book.

"Also... add a weak fascination field. Key it to ourselves." I'd carried Tom (short for tome) around with me constantly for a reason, after all.

The book glowed.

"Done," said my ghost. "I expected something that consumed more power, or was maybe a bit more challenging..."

"Don't be a show-off," I mumbled. "That's very unattractive in ghosts." I turned to her. "Send it back a few seconds after I went back, plus... four feet in elevation." After considering the bruise I got, I corrected myself, "make that five feet."

"This is purely to maintain the time loop, and not out of some sort of deep-rooted masochism, eh?" muttered the ghost as the book glowed a brief, furious white.

"You'd know," I snapped. "And I wouldn't! Past me was an asshole!"

"True," said the ghost glibly. "Toss it in."

I looked into the well. "Paper and water, the perfect combination." Nevertheless, I chucked the book into the luminescent water. It sank, slowly, until it disappeared just a bare distance before it should have gone out of sight.

The ghost flickered, then glanced down at its hands in surprise. "Looks like that's it for me. Quick, give me some appropriate last words."

"So long, suckers?" I tried.

She... it... grinned. The ghost turned to face the room's three other occupants, then called, "So long, suckers!"

And then I was alone on the dais.

Silence stretched until I realized that a pressure in my mind had disappeared. It must have been there... forever, I supposed. It didn't matter, now. The time loop was closed. Mankind was gone. Sort of? Its children, and more specifically my children, had inherited the Earth. Sort of.

I shook it off, turned back toward Dan and my girls, and said, "Let's go home."

"So, what was it?" asked the chaos spirit.

"I don't know," I answered, passing them and heading to the entrance. "I just had to wall off twelve thousand years of memories to stop my head from popping..."

"How literal is this 'popping' business?" asked Celestia, staring back at where the memory had been standing.

"I don't want to find out," I said. "Now, I'm going to forget this all in about two minutes, so I'm going to give you the gist of it, so you can tell me after."

"After what?" asked Luna.

We reached the bottom of the pyramid. I turned, stuck one hoof into the stream of living mana, and started writing the spell.

It was a work of art. The thing was so madly intricate, it was a wonder I was able to do it automatically and still be able to talk.

So I told the girls what happened and executed the spell, opening a rift far enough back in time and space that-

A woman, sensitive to magic but born too early to learn it, woke up with a story in mind about friendship and harmony from a far-off world.

Another, years later, glanced up into the sun shimmering through white water rapids saw the shape of the universe.

-that it did what it had to.

"Poor little emo pony," crooned Discord.

I glared at him. "Said the guy who turned into a chaos spirit for, and I quote, 'the stability factor'."

He mimed being shot. Confetti came out of the exit wound.

"I'm twelve thousand years old," I said. "Closer to thirteen, maybe. I just sent my past self the inspiration for using magic. I didn't make it- I just saw it." I decided not to share the circumstances behind my vision, since that would be opening a can of worms. "That younger, inspired me shared the idea. First with my friends, then others. Soon enough, there were thousands of us up and down the western coast." I smiled. "A real magical society." The smile faded. "But magic damages those who don't have the knack. We could never have given it to everybody, in time for everybody to survive it."

I swallowed, staring at the ground as all but the most important details were already slipping away. I'd purposely forgotten them all once already, after all.

"But we didn't have limits," I said, a little more softly. "We hadn't grown into it. We could, and did, do everything. Big things. Catastrophic things. So I made a judgement call, gathered everybody up, by force when necessary, and shunted us all to the nearest world with a safer environment. An old, old world. Earth, under different circumstances."

There was so much more to it. I knew what was wrong with the stars, and the celestial bodies.

"I slept through most of those millenia," I admitted.

"A few months ago, though," I continued. "I woke up where I was sleeping in that creepy well thing -Rarity was right, I have no taste- and sensed a time spell. One cast by me. I remembered my friends had told me that I had been, from their perspectives, in two places at once. And because paradoxes are bad, I went back in time to just after I... left home without telling anybody. The spell was big enough to make the rift that Twilight first explored."

"Meaning, after I woke up from being hit in the head with that book," I said, waving back to where I'd tossed it in the well, "I was over twelve thousand years old. Only... I guess I wanted a blank slate? Or something? Which is why I didn't remember." I felt my eyes cross. "So... I'm technically about twelve and a half millenia old, though I only remember two centuries."

"So what you're saying is, you don't have to go?" asked Luna. Clever mare, picking out the important bits.

"I don't have to go," I replied, smiling. "Been there, done that, got the tee shirt, and-"

I was bowled over by two laughing, rolling bodies. Discord, the bastard, just pulled out a camera and made patronizing cooing noises.

We stumbled out of the ruin. I didn't care about it anymore. They could explore it, melt it down, or whatever.

What I did care about was facing half a dozen angry mares.

"Ah... false alarm?" I tried. The girls didn't look impressed at my answer. "Donuts are on me?" Still nothing. "Um... your sun's an artificial, magical artifact?"

"What?" asked Twilight. That, it seemed, had cut through the mood.

"Oh, yeah," I said, nodding gamely. "This planet went out of its orbit millions of years ago- some clever species here set up a new source of daylight and gave it a dozen different orbits that they could adjust as needed. If they weren't guided, the sun and moon would hop onto any old track. Humans did it for a while, but... yeah."

"What happened to them?" asked Pinkie, uncharacteristically quiet and staring at the ruins behind us.

"The worst thing possible," said Discord, warming up to his idea of what made a good lecture, I guessed. "Immortality."

"Really?" asked Luna, looking miffed.

The chaos spirit rolled his eyes. "It was the method. You turn thousands of beings into demi-gods by handing them cosmic powers, and a few of them are going to get 'good idea' that they just 'have to try'." His claws made quotes that hung blackly in the air. "A bunch of them cast a planet-wide spell affecting anything remotely human. Every now and then, all these poor little hominids would be set back to factory standard, after a certain amount of damage."

"Age counted as damaged, by the spell's reckoning," I chimed in. "And it reset their bodies to perfect health indiscriminately. Including brains, and even that wasn't perfect."

"So, apparently, did pregnancy count as too big a shift from normal 'health'," said Discord, eyes half-lidded. "No new humans. Anybody that were damaged too fast for the spell to heal died without any possible replacements."

"Sometimes, you'd get those who forgot everything after gaining magic, including memories of anywhere other than Earth," I said. "Stories of us popping up from another world throughout history were true... from the human's perspective. They'd just been home yesterday, as far as they knew."

Celestia stared at Discord. "And so some of you left your human shapes behind completely, to avoid the spell's effects."

"Right on the nose," said Discord, offering the mare his nostrils in congratulations. She declined.

"It's a long story," I said. "I'll write it down later -the important bits- before I lose it all, but..." I stopped and stared at the landscape. "Can we go home? I just really want to be home, right now."

"Dang it, we just got here!" said Applejack, stamping a hoof.

"I got this," said Discord. "We'll call this one of the twelve thousand Christmas presents we owe each other."

He snapped his claws, and we were gone.

Twelve of us, friends and family all, stumbled down to breakfast that morning. Rarity was the one who decided we weren't waking up fast enough, apparently, and showed this by shrieking loud enough to spike the adrenaline levels of all those at the table.

"Your horn!" Her pupils were like pinpricks.

I stared up at the weight that had finally disappeared after far too many decades, and nodded. "Oh, no. I'm not one of the special ponies, anymore."

Celestia and Luna merely snickered. I'd told them myself what I expected to happen.

"Welcome back to the team," said Rainbow, nodding. "And... condolences, I guess?"

"You're not panicking," said Twilight, eyes narrowing. "Another prank?"

"Alicorns are hyperthaumic beings," I said, turning my attention back to my waffles and the tureen of warm syrup in front of me. "My body's been fueling a time rift of insane proportions for centuries. All of me, across time, was feeding the magic into that one event. Rift's gone, but the paradox closed with certain side-effects."

"Not to worry!" said Discord grinning. "So long as she doesn't give into the urge to kill me, we're tied together. And since I'm immortal... You know, I saw this in a cartoon, once, I think..."

"You can't just unalicorn! Dealicorn?" Twilight's eyes crossed. "It's... it's anti-apotheosis!"

"Of course I can," I said. "And given I still have more limbs than I was born with, I'm not terribly worried."

"What about Jill?" asked Fluttershy, worrying at her lower lip, nervously.

Discord and I met gazes. "Dead. She fueled the spell to drag up several thousand humans, plus a chunk of the desert, and translocate it onto the next universe over. No wonder she ended up as sort of a saint."

"Nothing about that woman was saintly," mumbled Discord, wiping at a tear.

"So... is that it?" asked Applejack, glancing around. "End of story?"

"Of course not," I assured her. "The story doesn't end 'til you're dead, and that won't happen until I inevitably lose patience with Crazy Dan, here, and smite him."

"I give it six months," said Discord, nodding thoughtfully.

Next: Epilogue, eighty years later...

Author's Note

Oh sweet merciful Christmas, this has taken forever to push out of my brain.

To the kind comments, thank you. The constructive ones especially, and the ones with poetry, well, that was just a nice little discovery! For the confusing and transphobic comments... no thank you, I guess? Seriously, you guys criticized everything but the actual story...

Loopless

Chapter Nineteen

An epilogue...

"We are walking piles of plutonium, is why," said Jillian. "You tried to contain it, Tamara, and it didn't work."

"Point." The redhead frowned, then glanced out of the window. One of the nigh-eternal storm systems over the planet -Earth, but not Earth- was raging. "I still wish I could have found somewhere less terrible for us to go. I'm not sure why this world was so easy to get to..."

"Of course you don't," said Jill, scowling. "Your brain is swiss-cheese."

"Your face is swiss-cheese," grumbled Tamara, almost sounding like her old self for a moment, to Jillian's ears.

"Almost like one of us has..." Jill cut herself off before she could say 'been here before'. Instead, she changed the subject. "Linda got some of the astronomy geeks together. This planet is on its way out."

"Out of its solar system, and possibly out of its mind, yes," said Tamara, still eyeing the storm. "It was almost perfectly like Earth, environment-wise, a few millenia ago, according to our scrying efforts."

"A terrible place to build our version of Hogwarts," Jill acknowledged. "It's going to turn into what Crazy Dan calls a 'rogue planet', chucked out into the space between solar systems. And then it's going to freeze like a chicken wing that fell into the back of your freezer."

Tamara shrugged.

Jill grit her teeth. "So yeah, our choice is between going back and irradiating everybody back on our Earth, or freezing to death. Why aren't you worried?!"

The woman opposite her, still not looking away, shrugged again. "There's a lot of background magic here. It holds patterns pretty well. All we have to do is ignite the second moon."

Jill nodded. "Of course. We'll just ignite a moon." She kept nodding, as if she weren't about to lose her mind. "What moon? How? Make some goddess-damned sense."

"There's..." Tamara waved a hand. "There's another moon. A small one. If we hook it up to a ley line, it can sustain a spell putting out the same light and heat the planet would have got from a real star. Not a full star, but the millionth of a percent that normally reaches it. Set the 'normal' moon as a counter-point, and there we've got a day and night cycle."

"The sun and moon going around the planet," mumbled Jillian. She could still hardly believe just what they could do these days. "How very 'Ptolemy' of you."

A small grin tugged at Tamara's mouth. "You paid attention back in school, huh?" The grin disappeared. Odd, fun Tamara hadn't seen much of the light of day for a few years now. "It will work. We can make it adjustable- give it different paths it can 'hop rails' on, come a little closer for every year the planet orbits further away from the true sun." The woman sighed. "Can we... take a walk? Somewhere? I haven't seen the newest part of the shelter yet. They say the natives -some sort of cow, person thing- keep coming by and offering to trade."

"I can't."

It was as simple as that.

"Jill?"

"I'm holding the door," said Jill. "I can't move half a mile from this..." she gestured around at the little amphitheater they'd built, "...spot."

Tamara glared. "So we'll walk half a mile."

Jill snickered. "Fine. Might as well stretch my legs..."

They walked, through the hallways under the land slowly undergoing 'desertification', as Linda called it. Linda was the builder. She studied and saw to the domestic needs of thousands. Dan and his little following of odd-balls were exploring, disappearing for days at a time and coming back with careful notes on just how odd-ball the rest of this Earth was.

And Tamara...

"How's your think-tank doing?" asked Jill, looking up at all the cliff-dwelling style apartments. There were no windows down here, in this section. Not near the 'temple' where Tamara's group played with the threads of magic that crisscrossed the world.

"Fine." Tamara shook her head. "I'm more worried about Linda. This place has at least five speaking, thinking species and she wants to uplift more of them." She paused, then brought up a hand. Light exploded forth, resolving into an image of a rainy plain. Over it, dozens of ponies were living. "Look- she says Dan found them. 'Natural terraformers', she says. See the normal ones in the middle? They're keeping back the 'super-weeds' that have been taking advantage of the decay of the natural orbit."

Jill blinked, and leaned in. "Let me guess. The flying ones are making a pocket of stable weather, and the ones with horns are zapping at any wild magic that gets into the pocket."

Tamara grinned. "Exactly!" Then her face flattened out. "You're still going on about that cartoon?"

"Of course not. That would be crazy," said Jill, rolling her eyes.

She, Dan and Linda were the only ones to have caught the implications. Humans wouldn't last, here. Linda had put her full support towards making the world as stable as possible before moving on. Dan wanted to catalog everything. And Jill was keeping the door open -had been for six years, now- for when they wanted, needed, to try the next world over. Really, she was just waiting for Tamara to unknowingly come up with whatever bit of magic they needed to find a world that wasn't so close to their home Earth.

'Imagine why this place was so easy to get to,' mused Jill.

Their walk, conversation, and general states of mind completely broke as light burst out of the step-constructed 'temple'. It washed over them. It might very well have washed over everything, everywhere.

Tamara screamed.

I woke up. As expected, it was in my quarters in the palace. I spent all of half the days of the year, here, when I wasn't out playing 'ambassador'.

Quietly, I rolled out of bed and wandered out past the guards that were far too overprotective of their charges. If anything ever managed to take me by surprise and kill me, then kudos to them, right?

The Palace of Canterlot wasn't entirely dead at night, but the inhabitants kept a respectable hush near the midnight hour out of tradition. Luna was probably taking her 'dinner' about now, so I set off in the direction of the dining room.

My 'memoirs' bobbed alongside of me, an ongoing effort of years reconciling what I knew with what I'd learned in the Badlands. Likely, the public would only ever read the highly edited version, but just writing it made me feel better.

"Good evening, mother!"

I grinned up at the night-blue mare sitting with a couple of her closer court staff. "Daughter. Having fun tonight?"

The mare shrugged, feeding another tidbit to her possum. "Well enough. We're wrapping up for the evening. There will be some more tariff proposals to take with, when next you visit the sea ponies."

"I'll bring my nicest hat," I assured her, giving a sigh. Brushing back my mane, I saw the first few streaks of gray. Not bad, for a mare entering her third century. Not quite a sign of old age so much as advanced age, the way I'd understood it.

My youngest glanced away innocently. "Twilight mentioned that she would like to accompany you..."

I made to berate her, before noticing the selective silencing field between us and the other hungry inhabitants of the table.

"Really? It's been eighty years," I grumbled.

"And ten since Miss Lulamoon has passed," Luna continued primly. "Twilight isn't getting any younger-"

"Or any older, yes. I get the joke," I finished for her.

"So I suggest, as a daughter who wants nothing but the best for you," said Luna, as if she'd never been interrupted, "that wanting to rub elbows with a good friend might be in your best interests."

I was tempted, then and there, to find the world's fastest geriatric pegasus and kick her ass for never letting that joke die.

"Whatever you say, daughter."

Dinner, or maybe just a midnight snack on my part, went along quietly. Pleasantly, though. For as much time as I spent out of the city keeping busy, home was still... home.

Linda worried. It was what she did, really, and she was good at it. Right now she was exercising her talents to the fullest.

Dan and his group had come in at all speed, flying or teleporting or using whatever method they had cooked up as individuals. The organization of any given 'witch or wizard', as they'd taken to calling themselves, was tenuous at best. You either figured out a way to make magic work for you, or traded spells with somebody who already did.

"It was Terry," said John, one of Linda's own group. The normally withdrawn man was bobbing back and forth with nervous energy. "He... you know he got a bit 'off' after his brother died in the storms?"

"Yes, I know," said Linda.

"We just... we need more accountability," said John, mostly to himself. He was staring down at his shoes. "There was nobody else watching out for the guy. There are no rules other than 'don't mess with the projects of others', and... Just, damn."

Linda nodded. That was all there was to it.

Dan, at the other end of the amphitheater, waved her over. "Linda, did you pick up on it? Lucy wrote up some documentation but-"

"I don't need it," Linda said, walking over and bringing a hand up to the center of her chest. "I felt it. I could measure the effects on myself. You know diagnostics have become a specialty of mine..."

"Right, right," said Crazy Dan, tightening up his calf-length coat. "Some sort of restoration spell, right? Or regeneration. The guy got paranoid about our safety and-"

"No, Dan." Linda shook her head, then glanced around at the growing crowd. She led him on with a gesture to a more quiet corner. "It's a persistent spell. One I don't know we can break... it's as woven into the nearby lines as Tamara's 'clockwork solar system'. It's bad, Dan."

John gave a tight nod, summoning a simple scroll covered with chicken scratch and penned diagrams. "The magic... it forces a 'genetic normal'. As in, you're stuck with whatever your genetics say. Reconstructive surgery got undone. Norman Trent, over in topside group, had a spontaneous resurgence in that muscular disorder. Healers can't do anything since his body considers it the 'healthy norm'. We..." He winced. "We've had three spontaneous abortions. Nobody's sure if it's the mother or the fetus, or if it was just 'in progress' pregnancies or... or if the same can be expected of future ones."

Dan let his forehead drop to the table in a heavy thud. "Find a way to test that which won't give me nightmares, then come back to us."

Acknowledging him, John made a note and ran off.

Jill stumbled into the room after him, moving very much like she was drunk.

"Persistent threads," she gasped.

"Huh?" asked Dan.

"I'm shutting the door," said Jill through gritted teeth. "Otherwise this fucking piece of magic is going to attach itself to the ley lines back home. I'll be ready in two days."

"We... thought it would be unlikely, ever going back," said Linda in a faint voice. "And I'll make a wild guess and say this problem would follow us going forward to any place else?"

Jill nodded.

"What's Tamara got to say about it?" asked Crazy Dan.

"Tamara says we're in a pile so deep we're all choking on it," came the voice of said 'founder'. She walked into the room, hands jerking around a tangled weave of magic.

Linda hissed. "You're wearing an illusion?"

The redhead gave a shudder. "Of course I am."

"What's... oh. 'Genetic normal'," said Dan, eyes widening.

Grinning harshly through the false image that mimicked how she'd looked just days before, Tamara said, "Of course. I'm physically perfect right now. Just like everybody else."

"Oh, Tamara," said Linda, reaching out with a hand, only for Tamara to jerk back.

"No touching. Nobody touches me right now," hissed the other woman, just a touch frantically.

"Right. Okay."

"We've got worse news," said Jill.

"What could be worse?" asked Tamara.

Reading through a report, Jill first mentioned the issue about the gate back 'home'. Then, "The spell shook people up. One of Dan's people tripped off of one of the balconies and got an... extensive head injury. It healed up almost immediately, of course, but..." She glanced up, unhappily meeting eyes. "She thinks she's fifteen and back on her old horse farm. Doesn't remember magic, doesn't know how she got here... Miss Williams might be the start of a pattern."

"Oh. That's worse, then," said Tamara quietly.

"Aw, what's a few accidental lobotomies between friends?" asked Dan, sketching out details for a 'safety helmet' to be worn at all times.

"We'll figure it out," said Linda, determinedly. "We'll fix it, or... or else we'll find a way around it. We'll be... we'll be fine..."

Quiet reigned.

"Discord."

"Tamara."

We ignored the horrified and, or, awestruck looks from the beings around us as we sat down in a cafe in Manehattan. A passing cab puller saw us through the window, went off course, and ran into a light pole.

"Happy birthday," I said, shoving a box across the table. "You have no idea how much math it took to figure out Earth-standard dates."

"Hmm." Discord stroked his beard. "Mostly I just assign random days for birthdays -they're all equally as likely to be right, right?- but thanks!" He passed over his own box. "Happy birthday!"

I rolled my eyes, but took the box. He opened his first, revealing the ugliest possible suit in existence. Making it glow-in-the-dark plaid would have been an improvement.

Opening my own box, I found... an identical suit.

"Well..." Discord hummed. "We certainly can't wear them at the same time- that would be tasteless!"

Chuckling, I put the box by my hung cloak.

The chaos spirit lifted a claw. "Oh, waiter? We'll take the menu. And everything on it."

Watching the slightly terrified barista try to lever the blackboard full of drink choices off of the brick wall, I sighed. "That's going to go straight to your hips, you know."

"It's my birthday, apparently. I'm allowed," said Discord, crossing his mismatched arms.

"Fine. How's the cottage doing?" I asked.

"The animals have formed a republic," said Discord, grinning. "Angel the Twenty-First is in the running for mayor." He gave a bit of an awkward cough. "Also, the grandkids come around and help sometimes..."

I frowned. "Question. Did you ever actually wind up with offspring before? During those twelve millenia, I mean."

"Er..." Discord frowned. "You know I still don't remember a lot... and there were those four centuries I spent blind drunk..." He waggled a claw. "Call it fifty-fifty. Pretty sure griffons didn't exist before that last bender in Norngarten Square..."

"Did not want to hear that much detail," I murmured.

"Ha, yeah, probably not!" Discord grinned. "I'm taking a vacation, Tamara. Call it a century or two. I wanna see what new and interesting monstrosities exist in the local Australia equivalent. Maybe topple a few annoying governments. Whatever comes up."

It was a testament to our regrown friendship that the thought bothered me. "Well... take care of yourself, then. And visit."

"Of course." Discord threw a lazy salute, and began spreading mustard over his menu as a stream of waiters and baristas began delivering mug after mug and plate after plate.

"I don't remember how we met," said Linda, arms crossed over herself.

Tamara stared down at the grave marker. "Pike Place. You were trying to buy exactly two hundred jelly beans and insisted on counting them all, one by one."

The other woman giggled. "Yeah, that sounds like me." She bit her lip. "Seen Dan?"

"He's been locked up with those high-energy experiments," Tamara said. "Last I heard, a swarm of ferrets blinked into existence on the north atrium... which I assume he had something to do with." She lit another stick of incense, and patted the soil over where Jill had been lain to rest, after violently snapping apart the door between worlds. "I've got the solar pathways worked out. They just need some maintenance... a little nudge, to correct planetary albedo, now and then." Looking over, she said, "You've been spending more time in the greenhouses."

Linda self-consciously touched the sprig of ivy growing around the curl of one ear. "I've been... looking into options. I'm scared of forgetting more, Tamara. And there are fewer of us every year to remind me about how things used to be."

"True, true..." Tamara lifted a hand, which for a moment flickered transparently. "A lot of us are taking third options, so to speak, these days. Or just going out to wander."

Linda hissed an inward breath. "Something like that, yes." After a long moment, she asked, "Wasn't magic supposed to fix things?"

"Things, not people," said Tamara. "It all went too fast, I think."

A longer silence passed.

"I miss her."

"Me too."

I kept my eyes on the tea set.

Twilight stared at the wall with a grin tugging at her lips.

"Knitting not going so well?" she asked.

I looked over, faking a casual glance at the needles embedded in the stone wall with bits of yarn trailing from them. "It's a work in progress. Trying to get into old people habits."

"I heard you got into a bar fight during the last diplomatic mission with the griffons."

"Left a few scars," I said, glancing around innocently. "And hoping I didn't make any accidental marriage proposals. Griffons, am I right?"

I grumbled as the alicorn laughed hard enough to draw tears.

"Here," I said, shoving over a scroll. "I did some more quartz-vein transmission tests. I figured you'd like to see the results."

Twilight brightened up and pounced on the roll of paper. "Yay!"

I set another pot to steeping as she got straight to reading. An unreasonably short amount of time later, she finished.

"Very interesting!" she declared. "Have you tried other relative purity levels in the mineral?"

"Step two," I admitted.

The other mare nodded happily. "Great! So, I've been invited to the new Crystal Orchestra hall. Want to be my plus one?"

"I'll pencil it in," I said, just before a message appeared in front of the princess in a flash of flame.

Snatching it and, with visible annoyance, reading the missive, Twilight huffed. "Got to go. I'll pick you up at eight."

She bounded around the table, kissed me on the cheek before I could protest, then disappeared in a flare of teleportation.

"About time," said Spike, ducking to fit through the doorway. "She asked Luna and Celestia for permission months ago."

"What?" I asked, blinking stupidly.

"I mean, you two have been unofficially dating for about twelve years..." the drake said, picking up several recent arrivals for the library downstairs.

"No we're, wait, what? Have not!" I snapped. "I'm elderly! Too old to date- see this mane?!"

Spike gave a slow, reptilian blink. "You charm it that way. I swear you're the worst immortal ever."

Gaping in horror, I asked, "Who told you that?"

"Pinkie." The dragon snickered. "That's what you get for letting her get her hooves on a time machine. She said she's due to arrange you girls' tenth anniversary."

I felt a vein twitch on my forehead. "Damned, damned time travel! Who attends their own fucking funeral?! She catered!" Letting my head impact the tabletop, I moaned. "Not dating. Put that idea out of my head years ago."

"Predetermination," Spike sang.

Sighing, I stumbled out of the room in search of something to set on fire.

She slept. Sometimes she woke. Mostly, even that had more resembling sleep than anything else.

An unlikely number of years later, she opened her eyes and saw a familiar sight. It was a bubbling, dancing, light-filtering scene like had once been visible to her below the deep, cold waters of a long-ago forest.

She observed it, tracing a unique path along indescribable directions. She saw an empty bed, surrounded by a... vaguely familiar pile of clutter. Almost as if she could reach over and touch...

"Huh." The first word spoken in that space in thousands of years of sleep was... less than profound.

Unseeing, but for the window into the past that hung at the outside of her senses, she took a step.

Paper crinkled.

Tamara Whittle found a card on the ground. It was cheerful, and written out in bright, eye-searing crayon colors.

'Your horoscope for today: Congratulations, signs are positive for a new direction in life! A sort of sideways-backwards-spinwise direction, through a corridor of unintended consequences! Your lucky number is number negative twelve thousand, one hundred and fifty-three! Your lucky color is mauve!'

"What fresh hell?" the woman -these days more magic than flesh- muttered.

She took a look back at the pool in which she'd submerged herself for her long, long slumber, then back at the vision pinging her magical senses.

"That... is a fine-looking mattress," she thought out loud.

The corridor was already pulling at her senses, and at the threads of magic which bound her to existence. Perhaps she could just... sort of shrug them off, step forwards, and lay her head down. Just for a bit.

Several minutes later, a very relieved amnesiac woke up after being struck in the back of a head with a book.

She screeched, rolled over, and tried to stave off her imaginary attackers with an alarm clock.

A little over thirteen thousand years post-arrival of a slightly too-eager band of humans, Pinkie Pie stuck out a hoof.

Grumbling, Discord handed over a bag full of bits.

"A pleasure doing business with you!" said the mare, still spry at the age of sixty-two.

"Yeah, well... I sort of owed her," mumbled Discord. "Keep this quiet, would you? I have a reputation."

"Pshaw." Pinkie shook her head. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go trade places with Chancellor Puddinghead for a week and see if anybody notices."

"So long, Pinkie Pie," said Discord, before blinking. "Bring me back a souvenir."

"Okie dokie, lokie!"

And they all lived happily ever after, except when they didn't. Because time travel is messy, as is, coincidentally, living.

Author's Note

To one and all...

Dear, sweet, festering Shatner I finished a story. I experimented with writing a bit of erotica -two whole scenes!- and don't think I'll be doing it again. I managed a semi-coherent time loop... swirl... double reacharound? Whatever.

And all you wonderful people liked, read, and reviewed!

I'll be throwing up another project soon, something I did in my spare time and not one of the ones I've hinted at, which I mostly wrote as stress-relief.

Then... further projects, I suppose.