As she eased into consciousness, Twilight Sparkle yawned. She stretched her legs up into the air, ignoring the odd tickling sensation from her sides; she was feeling more refreshed than ever. She must have had a really good sleep last night… Strangely enough, she didn’t recall getting into her bed, though. Last thing she remembered was researching that spell. She must have fallen asleep sometime while researching it, and Spike must have brought her to her bed. She didn’t recall falling asleep, though…

After a few seconds of wracking her memory, she sighed. She didn’t have an eidetic memory, after all. Sure, it would have been convenient for memorizing books, but she preferred to read over them again than having to remember all of them all the time. Memorizing books completely would just bore her. Well, most books; she had to memorize some. Yawning again, a memory suddenly sparked in her mind.

After a few seconds of reviewing the memory, she shook her head. That couldn’t be right… According to her memory, she had managed to cast the spell, but it brought every pony in Equestria to some sort of astral plane. The princess had also told her something… she couldn’t remember exactly. Opening her eyes slightly, she looked over towards where Spike usually slept. She didn’t know why the young dragon preferred to sleep in a basket right now; he’d declined her offers to get him a bed, even.

Seeing that Spike was sitting in his basket, reading one of his comics, (Power Ponies, it looked like) she smiled; it was always good to see him enjoying himself. “Spike,” she spoke up, her voice somewhat hoarse. Spike stiffened, and quickly closed the comic, turning to face Twilight. “I had the weirdest… dream… What’s wrong?” Spike had a concerned look on his face. Why would he be worried?

“Uh, Twilight…” The baby dragon took a deep breath. He needed to break it to her gently. “That thing where you cast that spell and disappeared? Then some time later, came back as an alicorn? That… that wasn’t a dream.”

…Spike really hated his lack of restraint sometimes.

Twilight suddenly felt a lot more awake than a few seconds ago. “Wait a minute… you said that it wasn’t a dream?” she asked. Spike nodded mutely. Twilight blinked.

She looked down towards the foot of her bed, noticing that she was covered by her blankets. Her blankets that had two, very odd-shaped lumps poking up, directly where a pegasus pony’s wings would be in proportion to her body.

“I… I have wings?” she whispered. A huge smile spread on her face. “I have wings, I have wings, I have wings!” She jumped off her bed in celebration, almost hanging in the air for a few seconds, before she rushed towards Spike, holding him up in the air and almost dancing, before putting him onto the floor again and staring him in the eyes. “I have wings! Oh, Spike, do you know what this means?”

“Uh… you’re a princess?” he asked. “You do realise that getting wings… probably isn’t a good thing, right?” Twilight shook her head at that.

“No, it’s not a bad thing! It’s amazing!” she gushed. “Now that I have wings, I can have access to the library of Cloudsdale more often than just when I bother to cast a cloud-walking spell!” Smiling, she stared Spike in the eyes. “And besides… being an Alicorn means that I can study a lot more magic than I could before!” She looked up to the sky, or at least the roof, her eyes shining in excitement. “Age spells, actual transmogrification spells, more efficient and powerful teleportation spells… Ooh, even more potent time travel spells!”

“There’s just one thing I’d like to know, though…” Spike tapped his chin, looking up at the ceiling. “After you cast that spell, what happened? All that I could see was that you disappeared, and sometime later, reappeared, but with wings.”

“Um, well… Let me think…” Twilight put her hoof to her chin, piecing the events together before smiling. “A-HA! I’ve got it!” she exclaimed. Spike raised an eyebrow.

“I’m still not hearing any reason that happened,” he said.

Twilight chuckled nervously. “Right. Getting onto that…” She coughed. “Anyway, what happened was after I cast the spell, I found myself in this odd place. I think Princess Celestia called it… the Aether? Yeah, the Aether. And everypony in Equestria was there, I think… at least, that’s what Pinkie Pie and some other pony said. I’m still not sure why he popped up with Pinkie, though.” Twilight shrugged. “Anyway, Princess Celestia came and told me that whenever someone came to that plane, they would naturally turn into an Alicorn before being ejected from it.”

Spike nodded at her explanation, thinking it over, before his eyes widened a touch. “…Wait a second. You said that everypony in Equestria was there, right?” At Twilight’s nod, he continued. “And that everyone who went there was turned into an alicorn before being spit out from that place, correct?” Another nod.

“Yes, that’s right; I did say… that…” Twilight trailed off. As much as she prided herself on her intelligence, Spike had some degree of situational awareness that she didn’t when looking at things in a vacuum, disregarding the times where he had gone through some odd phases of dragon puberty (she still didn’t know what he was thinking that day where the timberwolves attacked). Sure, he didn’t believe her when Cadance was replaced, but he didn’t know her as well as she did. Then there was the time where Spike thought that Zomponies had eaten everyone in the town, as well as other times, which were explainable; he was still just a baby dragon, after all, with an active imagination. But when his imagination wasn’t running wild, and his puberty wasn’t raging, Spike was usually the more situationally attentive of the two.

Possibly.

Sometimes.

So when Twilight realised what he was implying, her eyes widened. “But that would mean… Everypony in Equestria is an Alicorn now?!” Twilight’s ears perked up fully. This was going to be amazing!

“Yeah, this is gonna end pretty badly,” Spike summarized.

The sun rose over Sweet Apple Acres, the apple trees almost glowing with health. Applebuck season was near, and the Apple family was all sleeping peacefully. The idyllic scene was punctuated by the cries of birds, flying over the farm.

The farm’s rooster crowed, its loud noise floating through the home of the Apple family. Today, though, the rooster only woke one pony of the family: Applebloom, youngest of the Apples, and still searching for her cutie mark. She yawned. For some reason, she felt exhausted, but at the same time, refreshed.

Her stomach grumbled, and her eyes cracked open a little bit. “Wow… I’m starvin’…” she murmured, bringing her hoof towards her stomach. “Must’ve done a lot a’ crusadin’ yesterday.” She threw off her blanket and rolled onto her side, an odd squishing feeling coming to her, then onto her stomach.

Getting to her hooves, the filly yawned again, stretching herself around, when she felt something odd. Applebloom blinked, looking down towards her barrel. There was a small lump on the left side of her body. She paused, then looked at the other side. There was a second small lump. Holding up a hoof to one, she poked it. She felt it twitch as it shook out slightly, feathers fluttering in the slight breeze from the twitch.

…Wait, feathers? Applebloom poked it again in the same spot, and once again it twitched out, revealing feathers. She looked over to her other side, and hesitantly poked it in the same spot as the first.

It twitched, too.

After a few seconds of staring gobsmacked at the lump on her side, which she was pretty sure was a wing, she spoke. “I got wings…?” she muttered. Then, a grin the size of a mountain spread across her face.

“I got wings!” She beamed, jumping in joy. Her bed was bouncy, after all, and even though Applejack told her that it was a Bad Idea to jump on the bed because you’d hit your head, she did it anyway. “Yes yes yes yes yes-!”

Her celebration was cut short when she hit something on top of her head on the bed’s roof, and fell to the bed on her stomach. A searing pain reverberated through her head, but it was nothing that Applebloom couldn’t bear. After all, she was usually bruised and bleeding in a few places after a failed Crusade that was especially dangerous. What was odd, though, was her head wasn’t that high…

While she thought of this odd occurrence, she reached up towards her head to rub the pain away with her front right hoof, when she hit a stopping point. Literally.

In the center of her forehead, Applebloom felt a bony protrusion. She squeezed it with her hoof*.It was conical, at least…

Her hoof began to raise itself, moving along the conical protrusion, before reaching the top a few seconds later. It was a pointed top; not sharp, but blunt and round.

“A horn…?” Applebloom’s eyes widened to the size of saucer plates. “A horn! I have a horn! And wings!” She felt ecstatic. A day ago, she hadn’t even thought that something like that was possible. She still felt her Earth Pony magic within her, too, or at least her body’s strength hadn’t changed.

Then, it occurred to her. “Does that mean that… that I’m a princess?” she whispered to herself. Suddenly, her grin split her face from ear to ear. “I’m a princess?!” She bounded off her bed, and began to jump for joy, this time on the ground. “I’m A PRINCESS!” She was shouting now, her voice almost as loud as when she shouted the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ name for the world to hear.

“Darn it, Applebloom!” the filly heard Applejack shout; the words were muffled, but she could understand them. “Would ya quiet down? I’m tryin’ to get some sleep here!” Inwardly, Applebloom groaned; Applejack would stop her from having her fun, as usual when she did have fun. The youngest member of the Apple family did love her elder sister, but she could be annoying at times.

…She wondered why Applejack wasn’t saying anyth-

“WHAT THE HAY?!”

Applejack had awoken about an hour ago; oddly enough, it was before the sun had risen over the horizon. She had felt almost exhausted then, but she’d managed to pack some more sleep in. She’d gone back to sleep quickly after, after Twilight taught her about healthy sleeping practice (not that she was really an expert on that, after all; she knew Twilight had gone without sleep for a day at least 2 times before). So, when Applebloom awoke her with shouting, she was grumbling and grunting.

Fortunately, though, enough time had apparently passed for Applejack to wake up and feel great. This was a good time to put on one of her trademark hats, and prepare for a wonderful day of applebucking.

Applejack was an observant mare. This is, of course, the reason why when she put on a Stetson and heard a tearing noise, she took it off, and observed it.

There was a hole in it. That wasn’t really surprising; she had lost several Stetsons by a hole being torn in them.

The surprising part was both how it had been ripped so early, and where the hole was. It was in the center of where her forehead would be.

She reached up to her head, feeling a cone on top of it, with a rounded point.

Her eyes widened and something on her barrel shot out instinctively. She looked towards where she felt the odd feeling on one side to see a wing attached to her body. Her eyes widened, and her head whipped around to look at her other side. There was another wing there.

Her ears flattened. Then, she shouted.

This, of course, was an hour prior to what we are seeing at this moment.

“What the hay is goin’ on, what the hay is goin’ on, what the featherin’ hay is goin’ on,” she said underneath her breath, looking at her wing, then looking back at the other again. She was an alicorn, and like all little fillies, knew that transforming into an Alicorn made you a princess. It was something she had been taught at school, after all; it was taught in Tribal Dynamics, in Ponyville High School, a mandatory subject. It was one of the first things anypony learnt.

But she had dropped out of Ponyville High soon after alongside Big Mac, when they were more than a few years older than Applebloom, when their parents had… died. Applebloom did need someone to take care of her, after all. She winced at the memory; it still stung, her parent’s death, even so many years after it had happened. Sometimes she just woke up and wished that they were here again, and would take over the farming responsibilities again. Speaking of farming responsibilities, that was one of the reasons that Applejack couldn’t be a princess, she had a job that she needed to do, and she had important responsibilities.

A lot of them. She needed to take care of Applebloom; after all, Big Mac had a lot of responsibilities and a lot less time than she did, and Granny Smith’s old age was showing itself more every day, so she had to take care of Applebloom. Then, there was Winona. But if Applebloom was a princess too, and what she was just saying wasn’t a game of pretend… Applejack shuddered. She didn’t even want to think about the sort of things Applebloom would need to do.

Then, she thought about it for a minute, and grew a very hopeful, and desperate, smile.

“I know, this’s just a dream, an’ I’m gonna wake up an’ find everything’s alright,” she said. ”It’s just a dream…” Applejack was an awful liar, especially to herself.

First, though, she needed to confirm that it wasn’t a dream. Holding up a foreleg, she gulped, and brought it to her face. “This’ll tell me whether or not this is a dream,” she muttered. Opening her mouth, she brought her foreleg close to it, and bit. It hurt, and she pulled back, hissing slightly from the pain.

“So, it ain’t a dream. It ain’t a dream.” Applejack grew a forced smile. “I know it ain’t a dream. I know; I’ll go to Twilight. If anypony can fix it, then she can.

Applejack got up, almost tripping over herself a few times, before finally standing up properly. She began to walk. Twilight would fix it; she knew she could. And if she didn’t, well… she didn’t know what she would do.

So she walked.

Author's Note

* A pony’s hoof is a particularly odd and wondrous thing; at the end of their front legs, they have 2 squishy, hard, jelly-like piles of flesh inside 2 indents. They can extend these piles by a few centimeters, and use them to grasp, grapple, or stick to certain objects. They’re even dextrous enough to pick up objects like forks and use them, although many do not use pencils after picking them up, as that would be the equivalent of taping a pencil to the end of your fist and trying to move it in a legible manner.