Lost Among The Stars

Chapters

Prologue
1 - Admit One
2 - Wake Up
4 - Echos of Remorse
5 - First Steps
6 - Hope
7 - Base of the Mountain
3 - And Smell The Roses

Prologue

---Daring Do---

I was on break. I had recently returned to my home in Trottingham from a foray into the Forbidden Jungle beyond the desert mountains of the Badlands to the south. Naturally, Ahuizotl was there to contest me. In short, he was defeated and I had secured a number of preserved scrolls from ancient chroniclers from a very large and overgrown fortress. One of many that dotted the ever more exotic lands closer to the viciously hot equatorial zones.

As I relaxed in my home, I imagined what it would take to reach the southern hemisphere to explore what might as well be a whole new world. We would need a way to survive the heat. The steam walls of the ocean and the magma flats each seem impossible to overcome without a lot of protection. Perhaps a ship with strong enchant- My ponderings were interrupted by a knock on the door. Mildly irritated, I hopped off my chair and flew over my furniture to the front door.

I opened it to find a pale blue unicorn mare with a dull brown mane in a black dress. Not a nice dress but one that spoke of gloom. My emotions had gone completely south.

The mare spoke, “Hello Miss Do, I’ve come with some rather bad news. Your last grandparent, Pursuer Do, has recently passed away. I’m sorry to say that his funeral was held last week while you were off on one of your excursions.” I was probably giving the thousand yard stare by that point, more focused on the rush of memories than on any point in space. “I am also here to deliver a package as requested on his will. I hope you don’t let his passing get you down too much. I know that he wouldn’t want that.”

The unicorn levitated the package off of her back and onto the ground in front of me. Seeing no response forthcoming, the mare decided to make her leave and was soon back on the sidewalk heading elsewhere.

I was sitting on my couch with the package. The red fabric was dark with tears that were only barely drying up. My memories of my grandfather rolled through my mind. He was the one that had passed on the Do name to his daughter and onto me. It was rare that ponies kept names across generations unless they meant something. I was the latest in a long line of explorers going back as far as the history books. He had introduced me to real adventure and had taught me the do’s and don’ts of life in the wilderness. My mother was not really the explorer type though, but she had become a professor in archeology. Regardless, my grandad was gone, but there was still the package.

Curiosity was what I was taught to believe in, and before long the object wrapped in brown paper had my attention. I considered ignoring it but I knew that he wanted me to have it. So I ripped it open.

Inside was the regular fare as far as really old books went. I quickly discovered what made it so special. It was a journal of one of my ancestors, a stallion named Inquirer Do. I flipped through the pages and learned that he had lived during the unification of the pony tribes. What caught my attention though was a passage about a certain city.

He was a part of the vanguard of ponies that had gone south to find freedom from the everlasting winter, when he happened upon a city not on any map. From a distance he could tell that it had a regular mix of ponies so rarely seen in that era. But what had really made it different was the gathering. From the nearby hills, he could see a massive crowd gathered together, all standing in a perfect circle several ponies deep. At the center of the space described by the circle was a single dark blue unicorn. Even at such a distance, Inquirer could see the mane and tail of white striped with blue shining across the frozen city. Magic was flowing from the crowd into him as such a rate that it formed luminous, sinuous rivers of light through the air.

The pegasus suspected something foul was going on, something dark, even though he spotted none of the signs of dark magic. He watched for half an hour, recording what he could, when suddenly the city lit with a spherical light, as if a sun had suddenly appeared around it. It was so bright that his vision was permanently stained with the image for the rest of his life whenever he closed his eyes. In the next instant, it shrunk to nothing, creating a crack of thunder so loud and a pit so deep that the land surrounding the area leaped into action, trying to fill the void in the world as air, rock, and water from a half frozen streams attempted to mend the wound in the world.

By this point, I had nearly forgotten my grief, stunned by the passage. I knew that I had to investigate, to find this lost city. The obvious challenge was that I knew next to nothing about such magic, but I remembered that I was in fact friends with a certain princess that could probably help. Before I rushed into action to prepare for my next adventure, I finish the page. It spoke of Inquirer simply trying to investigate the place himself, the only thing he could find was a wooden sign. It bore a name that had long been past down in myth and legends across the world, and Daring knew it well, but had never suspected that it was real.

Tamarelantis.

Author's Note

This story is the one I really care about. Constructive criticism is necessitated! Volunteer editors are also welcome.

This story existed in the writers version of developer hell for months until I realized that I needed to get this out there and not just rewrite it indefinitely.

This story is going to have a weekly post schedule and I've got a bit of a backlog all nice and ready to go.

Had considered just calling the story Tamarelantis or something but I realized that the eventual space theme needed to be clear.

1 - Admit One

---Twilight Sparkle---

I was lounging in my castle’s private study reading an adventure story. All other interesting reading material had dried up. No textbook, science journals, or anything of that nature was left where I could easily acquire it. Perhaps I should look into a method of sharing information faster across long distance. That would be interesting. Perhaps it could be based on dragon fire?

Suddenly I heard knocks echoing down the hall. Somepony was at the front door. I was split between annoyance and relief at having to save the story for later. It was a story about going to the moon without magic. Who would have thought of that? The knocking reached my ears again, reminding me that I had at least one guest to attend to. I quickly teleported to the front door and push it open with a hoof. All the time the action seemed to take less and less effort. Becoming an alicorn was always paying off more and more. Escaping my thoughts again, I realized I was face to face with one of my favorite authors!

“Oh hello Daring- I mean Miss Yearling, what can I do for you today?” Twilight greeted.

“Nothing much. I'm just in need of a magical expert. You know where I can find one around here?” She asked me with with a knowing smirk.

Excitement filled me at the sound of those words. The famous archaeologist was coming to me! Perhaps she uncovered some sort of ancient magical mystery! And I, Twilight Sparkle, will be the one to solve the mystery and save-

“Um, Twilight, are you okay?” Daring asked me, breaking me out of my thoughts

I quickly turned and gave my best mock salute to Daring. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. “YES! Anything you need, I am at your service!” I shouted in sincere jubilation.

Daring nodded and pulled a book out of her right saddlebag and allowed me to levitate it out of her grip.

She must have been bored out of her mind. “In that case we might want to go inside. I've got a book I need you to read.” I quickly let her in and led her back to my study. I was doing my best to keep my excitement contained but I suspect daring might have noticed.

In no time we had navigated the castle which I was becoming very familiar with. Daring was giving it a critical eye, probably comparing it to ruins she had explored. We soon found ourselves in a in a comfortable mini library with seating for few and books for many. In no time I had read through the journal. While I had been containing my astonishment, I was also making notes in a journal of my own. The idea of a lost city was familiar and this piece of information had my mind buzzing. Before I got too deep in my mental efforts, Daring spoke up.

“So Twilight, are you interested in helping me find them?” Daring Do calmly asked me. In the midst of my excitement, I couldn’t tell what she was bracing herself for.

I merely looked her way and nodded vigorously. “Of course! A missing city from well over a thousand years back that has never reestablished contact with Equestria? It’s our duty to either open relations with our lost kin or to at least remember their fate. But we will need some very specialized professionals to find them at all.”

Daring blinked at this. “Why would we need anypony else to find a city?”

“Because we need to examine the echos of the ley lines to figure out where it went. Huge magical events linger for a long time and anypony who studies the ley lines can feel them, but they can’t be examined without a known date and a known action. We have both. It can be done.” I explained as I began to pen a letter.

“Are there that many places a city like that could go?” Daring replied.

“Via a teleport powered by thousands of ponies? Anywhere. Combing the world for an extra city would take much more effort than needed, not to mention that it might be in the other hemisphere.” I casually informed Daring as I formed the dragonfire to send the letter.

Daring perked up at that. Perhaps she had plans to explore the southern hemisphere blockaded by the extreme environments caused by the sun being so close to the world. It was quiet for a moment before a new letter letter appeared out of thin air. I quickly unwound the scroll and read it. Daring, who had not paid close attention to the earlier letter looked on with curiosity. “What does it say? For that matter, who’s it from?”

The alicorn practically squee’d in response. “The princess says that we will make the recovery of the missing city a state project. She has asked me to lead the magical division! She has even invited you, although your skills probably won't be needed until we actually find the city.”

“What can I say to that?” Daring said with enthusiasm, “Count me in!”

“Excellent. I need to make preparations and write some letters. Then perhaps I should get my friends involved. Can you handle some of Rainbow’s attention for a bit?” I asked.

Daring Do grinned, I suspect she knew what she was getting into before she even started her journey to Ponyville, “Yup. I even brought a pen.”

One Week Later…

I was standing in a large domed room beneath the Canterlot Palace. There was a busy bustle of ponies moving around the room, examining the magic circle drawn underneath a glass floor of removable panels on a very dark marble floor. Celestia, Luna, Daring Do, along with the rest of her friends were also there, although none of them were actually inside the room, but instead in another room watching through magically strengthened glass.

Rainbow had spent some time catching up with Daring Do over the past few days while I had been in Canterlot making preparations and recruiting experts in the study of ley lines, transit spells, and circle crafting. All together there were fourteen unicorns with her in the room all dressed in lab coats and goggles.

There was a clock built into the wall on the other side of the circular room that I was watching closely. The experiment needed to happen on a very short time frame in order to work correctly. When it actually started was an arbitrary decision. So I, being myself, planned the start to be noon. Which was only fifteen seconds away.

I tapped my right hoof on the glass floor three times and everything went silent. Five seconds later I tapped twice, not uttering a word. As one, every pony in the room simply lifted their right foreleg, the signal that they were all ready. At five seconds I tapped once more and every horn lit. I was the conductor and they were her symphony. They each held a slightly different spell signature in their mind that should correlate to a teleport spell cast approximately thirteen hundred and fifty years ago. Whichever pony got a strong resonance with the echo in the ley line would be the one to carry them to the next step.

At zero second I tapped once more and they each tuned in to the ley line, trying to hear or feel any reaction at all. Four seconds later, a dull red unicorn across the room from me got a reaction, the first sign that things were on track. The pony fed his spell into a smaller spell circle engraved on a small stone tablet. We all smiled as they felt the magical probe race from the spell work in a vaguely outward direction.

Tension in the room suddenly skyrocketed as the probe, which should have reported back instantly, took a few seconds longer than expected to report a success or failure, but in under five seconds they got a response on the magical frequencies that correlated to safe air, a safe temperature, the presence of land, and a successful anchoring for the probe to that point relative to the movement of its environment. Now the truly time sensitive step came, we had to open a portal.

---Frosty Davis---

“I still can’t believe that you enjoy standing like that. I would be driven nuts! Not to mention how I can only barely tolerate clothes,” Berry Sun exclaimed to me, the icy blue pegasus walking next to her.

“Hey, it clears my forelegs up to do things other than carry my weight. Besides, the leg support braces are comfortable and the shoes make balancing easy. Not to mention they put me on a more even level with some of my friends at school. Same goes for my clothes. You on the other hand always have so much gear strapped to your head I wonder how you lift it some days.” I said to the purple coated, yellow maned unicorn trotting beside me.

On that note, I felt as if something was wrong with my balance for a second but it quickly passed so I ignored it. “Well I like my music and I like the internet. Can you blame me? And they weigh next to nothing.”

A beat passed before I responded, “Whatever, I guess I can’t. But I think the same applies to me. It’s about fitting in. I’ve spent long enough being so different from the people I spend time with and hurting my neck to look up to my step-dad. And both he and mom are supportive so that’s nice. Maybe it would be different if my biological dad lived to raise me himself, things might have been different.”

Berry made no comment as we continued to walk through Arrival Park. I pulled out a cellphone from my pocket and started checking it. Helped in no small part by the standard dexterity enhancement made to my bracelet, and millions of others, that made a pony’s ability to grip things work more like human hands, conductive flesh and all.

Not a second later we both stumbled. It felt as if the ground was swaying. I nearly fell onto my flanks. “Um, are we having an earthquake?”

That was the cue.

The circle formation of unicorns and one alicorn were channeling their magic into the huge magic circle underneath the floor. Once it reached the power requirement it would connect to the anchor and open one side of the portal. Once a pony entered it, it would firmly establish a connection on the other side and create a spherical doorway.

It had been less than a minute since they started and the portal was already almost established. A white light appeared in the center of the room, an unavoidable byproduct of energy leaking from the spell. I cut my flow of magic and looked around. No ponies were giving me a stop signal and the princesses weren’t either. If things went well, the door would stabilize and Daring Do would quickly follow me with the materials in her saddle bags.

I, knowing that I had a better chance of surviving if things went south, had volunteered to go first and now was my moment in spite of my friends’ protest. I rushed forwards into the light and stopped for a second and looked back at my friends.

That was the cue.

In a split second the portal opened around me… and then it snapped shut with a thunderous report, taking me with it.

---Celestia---

We watched as Twilight disappeared. We barely had a moment for our eyes to go wide with surprise before the spell snapped. The collapse of a tunnel through space time was so violent that the black marble floor beneath the glass shattered, and a shock wave spread through the solid floor to the walls and ceiling. Luna and I quickly executed emergency plan A and teleported every pony out of the room along with ourselves.

In an instant we were on a nearby hillside outside Canterlot. Luna took to assisting a pony whose hide had been peppered with glass while I looked back at my city. A moment later we all heard rumbling and I noticed something very bad indeed and turned to my sister. “Luna! The structural wards are coming loose!”

Upon returning from the moon, Luna had been informed on various details on many subjects, including the method that the city used to remain perched so precariously on the mountain. The structural wards were pairs of massive stone slabs that had one in the ground at the floor of the valley and a counterpart embedded in the underside of the city. They were each engraved with powerful levitation magic circles that pushed against each other. This meant that there were basically invisible pillars stretching from the valley floor to support the city.

Now they were coming loose. The wards themselves would never move, but if they were no longer supporting the city, then they would remain still while the city fell down around them. Luna was nearly beset with panic but simply nodded at me instead.

Putting aside my stress and fear for Twilight’s fate, I teleported us both to the valley floor where all eleven wards were anchored. I immediately took a wide stance and lit my horn. The city above us that had just began to tilt over turned a golden color. Luna quickly followed suit and imitated my actions. The glow from each of our horns each grew from a sheath of light to raging maelstroms of magic and while the city slowed, it didn’t stop. We both had to push harder. Our awareness of the universe shrunk down to the need to push as our eyes glowed white and our manes and tails changed from a serene flow to something a normal pony would expect from the winds of a tornado.

It had only taken four minutes from the start of the experiment to reach this point. It would be seven hours before the city was resecured and we were relieved. After which we both immediately fainted.

Berry and I felt the tremors get worse. The trees in the park were shaking and their leaves were falling down. The pony statue in the center of the circular park was suddenly thrust upwards several feet, replaced by a white light hanging in place which suddenly grew to be larger than a pony. Then it vanished with a thunderclap that created strong shock waves that ripped through the ground. While this city was no stranger to earthquakes, a number of the nearest homes and businesses outside the park collapsed in spite of their anti earthquake construction.

Then everything was quiet, if not dusty. I saw Berry push herself back to her hooves in spite of her trembling and looked around. She came over me and helped me back up to my bipedal stance. We each took a moment to regain our senses before we noticed the new crater. Well, half crater. The opening into the ground curved around the foundation of the statue. In fact, the bottom of the foundation was visibly hanging above the bottom of the crater.

I was looking in when Berry pointed into the crater. “Frosty, there’s a pony down there.”

At the sight of the purple body down below, I was filled with confusion and my expression probably reflected that. I took some careful steps over the upturned grass and down the dirt slope as Berry watched me. Then I heard a sound that I didn’t like. I looked up and froze, before shouting, “Berry, the statue is going to fall!”

“What?!” Berry didn’t sound at all sure of what to do, but when she saw me racing down into the crater, she reacted. The statue foundation and the soil around it took on a pale yellow glow as berry simply tried to push it upwards. There was a dim flash of light that neither of us payed any attention.

Using her wings to push myself along, I reached the pony and immediately tried to wrap my hooves around them. I was surprised at how heavy the pony was and wound up wrapping my wings around the pony and trying to carry her out by walking. There was something wrong with the pony. She felt… wiggly even though it was obvious that she was unconscious, wiggly and wet. Regardless I pushed myself out of the crater, relying on the leg braces to carry a lot of the weight. I set the pony down on the grass the moment I was out.

I tapped my friend on the shoulder who was still keeping the foundation in place. Berry’s eyes flew open and once she saw that no pony was in the crater, she let go of the statue. The large block of concrete immediately fell down, impacting the ground with a loud thud as if her magic had been the only thing holding it up.

Berry sagged on her hooves in exhaustion, breathing heavily, before looking at me. I didn’t know her pupils and irises shrunk in fear. My cool blue coat, as I would later learn, was covered in blood. My outstretched red and blue and now red wings made me look like some sort of pony war hero rather than a high school student. My breathing was just as heavy.

“Well done.” A voice spoke from behind Berry. She spun around only to find that she was looking at somepony’s legs. We looked up to find the prince himself was standing before us. The cobalt blue stallion with the shining white mane mane and tail were waving in an invisible wind, the only known pony to have both wings and a horn, said to have been alive since ponies first arrived on Earth. He was even wearing an AR headset in front of his eyes, though it was a model I didn’t recognize.

“I’ll be taking you three to the hospital. I’ll have some questions for you once you get checked over,” Spark Eclipse informed us before teleporting all four of us away. Nothing was left behind except the sirens of emergency vehicles, the whirring of drone rotors, a large crater, and a lot of blood.

Author's Note

I did at one point choose to have this story be first person rather than third and changed the chapters I had finished before publishing. There may be perspective errors. Tell me about them!

2 - Wake Up

---Spark Eclipse---

While the emergency room a few doors down was a flurry of activity, this particular room was much calmer. I just had the recent events explained to me by the two young mares. I read the public information provided by my AR glasses while examining them for myself. Frosty, the pegasus who was sitting beside Berry on the hospital bed human style, was a light blue color with a solid light grey mane and tail with eyes that really did look like ice in spite of the warmth in them. She was a highschool student in her junior year that fell into the category of ponies that want to be more like humans. She had no mark. Berry on the other hoof was a dark purple unicorn with a black mane and tail, with bright yellow eyes. Her mark was an upwards facing yellow arrow that had a curved line that seemed to be pushed upwards by the arrow. Perhaps her skill was in her TK strength. That explains how she was able to lift the statue, not to mention work at the post office.

“So you are certain that there was no one around before the event?” I asked the smaller ponies once more, who each nodded in response. Berry was looking at me in intimidated reverence while Frosty was relaxed if not “Right, anyway, I sent a message asking someone to check on the duplex home you both live in. They have reported that your home… homes and families are fine. You two are free to go. I would like you to be back in a few days when they let the purple mare wake up. I imagine she would want to meet those who rescued her. I’ll also have something special for the two of you. Sound good?”

“...Sure. Works for me,” Berry said and Frosty nodded in agreement. She began to walk out of the room, but Frosty was unresponsive until Berry started pulling on her ear. Soon I was alone. I decided to head to the room the mystery pony was being held in. After a quick walk down the sterile white halls lit with calm yellow lighting. I sent my authorization to the hospital’s security servers and entered a moment later after the door slid out of the way.

Upon entry, I discovered that the bustle had calmed considerably. There were humans and ponies in equal numbers performing their duties. I could hear the steady beat of the heart monitor and see that the overhead light above the operating table where the purple mare slept was off and the telesurgeon units were stowed against the wall.

“James?” One of the humans fully dressed in the light green uniform turned to the face me. The dark man smiled when he saw me. “You have a minute to spare?” I inquired.

The human turned to the pony next to him, said something, and strode over to me. As he entered the half of the room that I was in, I saw the normally invisible pathogen shield light up where it touched him as he walked through it. In a moment he was through the magical barrier and pulled the hood of his suit back and the breathing mask down. Going from a view of blue eyes and dark skin to a head of brown hair and a well trimmed beard of a slightly lighter shade.

“Anything I can do for you, sir?” James asked once he stood face to face me. Well, face to chin. He was taller than the average human, yet I was taller still.

Some of my mood drained at that word. “You know I don’t like it when you call me that.”

James smiled, “You don’t like it when anyone shows you any respect anyway.”

“No,” I insisted, “I don’t like formality. It creates social schisms around that can create mental instability. That path lies insanity for a pony that doesn’t die.”

James relented. “Okay okay, you win. So, obligatory small talk accomplished, what do you need?”

“I want to know about that mare,” I stated plainly, “Start with whatever you want.”

“Right,” James appeared to briefly recollected everything he knew. “Well, I can tell you that she’s stable in spite of the horrific blood loss. Her blood type is A positive by the way. Whatever happened inflicted severe blunt trauma throughout her body. We had to repair her lungs and sternum after setting everything back into place. Fortunately nothing else vital was damaged. Her legs are all mangled though, but if she can be measured against you, they may heal after a couple years. A respiratory blockage around her sinuses had to be cleared and the bone fragments have been set, but one of her eyes are out of commision until we can grow one for her.”

I nodded in contemplation. “Anything special about her? Apart from somehow being another hybrid like me?”

“Yes actually.” James replied. “I don’t have her DNA profile yet, but I can tell you that she’s not related to you. All of your descendants have kept your eye color of dark orange, except her eyes are purple, well, eye. Anyway, we found that the connections from her carbuncle to her horn are even larger and more well developed than yours, even though her carbuncle is smaller and doesn’t seem to be capable of stimulating such a result, and it seemed to have faced a lot more strain than expected. We don’t know what to make of that.”

I used my AR headset to send a general request for the DNA profile when it was available.

Meanwhile James brought another point up. “There is an issue though. If we leave her legs as they are, she will face a couple of long and painful years as a cripple. Someone needs to decide within a few hours if we should have them am-” James was cut off when a unicorn approached me with a page tablet and gave it to gave it over to me with her magic. We exchanged nods and the smaller pony went back to what she was doing.

I looked at the DNA profile I had just received and read its report. It took me only a couple seconds to realize that the pony that the staff and myself shared the room with was a very different pony then most. I used his headset to mark the document as classified. Immediately the page tablet blanked out with ACCESS DENIED written across its center. I had it exit the document and set it on an empty table next to some chairs in the corner of the room.

I took a breath. I hated doing this without her permission, but the decision had to be made. “I am declaring her a ward of the state. She is to be elevated to emergency high level treatment. I am going to sign off on the temporary limb replacement myself along with anything else that can make her more functional. I want to be able to talk to her as soon as possible. And James.”

James, who was about to set off to do his job, hesitated. “Yes?”

“Give her the room with the best view of the Pacific. I want to make this as comfortable for her as I can.” I stated, already planning out the next several days.

A little bit of mischief entered the eyes of James as he continued on. “Aye aye, sir!”

In response, I grabbed the page tablet with my telekinesis, rolled it up, and smacked the back of James’ head before he could retreat much further. The other staff that were paying attention attempted to hide their laughter at the treatment of their boss with low success rates.

Two Days Later…

---Twilight Sparkle---

Words were pushing their way into my consciousness. Words I didn't understand. I tried to rouse myself but couldn’t move my legs or open her eyes. I felt so weak. The experience of waking up this time was entirely unique for me, but not for long, because sleep once again claimed claimed me.

It was dark, but regardless I could hear a faint but irritating noise that would not leave me alone. I had managed to push me left eye open as consciousness returned for real this time. I attempted to get up but my body was still quite unresponsive which was very odd. I attempted to survey my room, but quickly realized that I was not in my own room in her castle. I tried to speak but my throat was as dry as salt. I did her best to wet it down and tried again.

“Hello?

It was when the irritating sound stopped that I recognized it in the first place. Quiet snoring. There was shuffling from behind me and then quiet hoof steps circling around to where I was looking. The first thing I saw was a dim white glow, then a mane and the head that went with it. Already I had some clues as to what I was facing, still completely unable to move. The pony also had some sort of device with a clear window curving in front of his head and over his eyes.

“Hello, it appears mine suspicions righteousness, eh. is righteous. Old words are stiff. Who art thou if thine may know?” The huge stallion said to me.

I swallowed nothing in an attempt to calm my nerves. The behemoth of a Stallion was new and unexpected. If he was any threat at all, the sheer fact that I couldn’t move made him dangerous indeed. “Twilight… S-sparkle.”

“Ah, name of interest… stop. Thine can see that thou hath feelings of tremors and fears. Thou shant want muscles to feel panic or the breaking of down. It is waste time and make it harder to make self into safety even if already are.”

The words actually helped me. Having the massive pony basically tell me to calm down made him seem much less threatening. So I forced myself to focus on breathing while a part of me wanted to find a grammar book to do violent things with, or at least teach grammar with. “Who…”

“Strength your save. Name is Spark Eclipse. Can see that bad words make you unhappy. I try to relearn language from you. Is alright?” The stallion gave me a comforting smile.

I had so many questions, if only I could get them out through my dry throat. “Water.”

“Hmm? Oh, very sorry! They said do water first. Forgot.” The stallion searched the room for a second before levitating over some sort of cup shaped container. I couldn’t tell what it was made of, but it had transparent sides and some sort of transparent straw.

A second later I was feeling much better, but my right eye still wouldn’t open and my legs were still numb. “Um, where am I?”

“Hospital,” the Spark quickly informed me, “better question is what you remember?”

A moment of introspection gave fuzzy memories so I attempted to talk through them. “A friend.. had a journal passed on to her, and she showed it to me. It told of a city that disappeared. I asked the princess for support in finding it. It took a few days, but we had a way to follow. We performed the experiment and I went first. And then… I don’t know.”

Spark nodded sagely in contemplation. “I not did know anypony knew of leaving. Thought we were forgotten after so long. It seems I wrong. I do say, you almost dead when came, caused very much damage. But we have way of making better. You may be in shock soon, but I have been in worse. If you like me, you will heal perfect after time.”

“If I am… like you? How?” I asked, not understanding how he meant it. I saw him smile from the light from his mane and slowly the lights turned on even though I did not see him use magic. It was then that I saw what he meant. In hindsight it was obvious, considering the flowing, luminous mane. Not to mention the wings. “You’re an alicorn?”

He tilted his head at the name. “Alicorn? Is not that what horn is made of?”

“No, well, that used to be the meaning a long time ago. After the princesses ascended, they took up the name. I don’t know the story. Sorry.” I informed him. On impulse, I tried to look down at the rest of my body. My head shifted but not enough to accomplish anything. A drop of fear began to spread. “Um, Mr. Spark, what’s wrong with my body?”

Upon hearing the worry in my voice, Spark Eclipse changed from casual conversation to ‘delivering the bad news and walking on eggshells’ mode. “Sternum, all leg, all need to be… to be… uh, replaced by machine that act like flesh. Eye can be just replace in few day. Body will still work but you different until regrow. What you say you see for self?” I was scared at seeing what was wrong with me but I knew it had to be done.

Using his magic, he grabbed a wide mirror that had been sitting on a table in the room outside of my vision. He lifted it and set it in front of me. My one eye went wide at the sight surrounded by an orange glow, matching his eyes. My right eye looked as if it had been sewn shut even though I couldn’t see any stitches.

Sparks words interrupted my analysis of my face. “Like I said, you heal over time. New eye be put in days. Will look, feel the same as old and you asleep when happens. Perfect fine. Legs need grow on own and that take times.”

I struggled with that statement for a bit, but relented and nodded. You couldn’t hide from your own body after all. The mirror shifted and another orange glow gripped the sheets and pulled them down. My good eye rapidly snapped from point to point, taking in as much as it could. My legs and chest told a worse story than my face did. Bronze plated surfaces imitated the musculature of the parts they replaced, but I could still see the black fabric like stuff in the spaces. It was especially disconcerting to see the gaps in my joints. I could see the white bed sheets through them. My hooves looked complicated, but the reason and purpose eluded me.

“I have control to make body work, no, make it ready. Need learn again walk because not same. You say ‘legs on’ and you feel and learn move. You say ‘legs off’ if need break or bad thing happen. Is rare but have if need.” He explained as best he could in spite of the language problem.

I was taken aback. Even with the most complicated and powerful spells, not even Celestia had such control as he said he had. Before I could formulate a useful question, he continued.

“I will turn on legs now. I say against doing with legs. You need rest. Lost so much blood when arrived and maybe there still bad parts that need healing beyond what can fix. Very strong ponies die from less. Those who don’t, wake up never again. You sleep only two days. Very fast to wake.” Spark said, leaning down to be more on eye level with me.

A feeling of moisture filled my eyes. I was partly mollified by the morbid discoveries, but the absence of my friends had returned to the forefront of my mind. I wasn’t sure if I could go on without them. “I… you tell me of amazing things, but right now I just want to go home.” I could feel moisture penetrating my fur in a path extending over and around my muzzle

“Just know,” Spark said as he spread his great wing across my body, hiding my legs and body from view and discarding the mirror, “that the fastest way home is to heal first. You can’t do step two before do step one. Okay? Sleep some. When feel up to it, you can try. I leave you alone now, but first-”

I felt a shock as sensations rushed out of my legs. My limbs felt heavy yet strong, but also completely alien.

“I leave what to do up to you. In morning I will come back with some ponies I think should you meet. But sleep now well. Heal is most important.” The alicorn stood up and exited the room while pushing the blanket back onto my body. The sensations from my legs vanished once more. “Good night.”

The lights dimmed to darkness except for a few small lights close to the floor, rendering the room to be not entirely dark. I might have protested, but I found that I didn’t have the will. A few extra tears escaped before I succumbed to my dwindling energy and slept.

---Spark Eclipse---

I had just left the recovery room and was riding the elevator down. My calming facade had collapsed. I have had many families over the past millennia and a third and I have met many ponies, but rarely have I ever met a pony with so many fresh wounds on her soul. She was lost to never be found, brutally wounded, thrust into a world she didn’t understand with nobody to turn to. I was somewhat reminded of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land but hopefully this situation would not turn out to involve any cannibalism.

Regardless, I resolved to help Twilight put her life back together. I’ve already had enough failures and mistakes to remember. I felt no need to add to the count quite yet.

4 - Echos of Remorse

---Spark Eclipse---

We promptly made our way to the elevator. Twilight looked at everything in fascination when she managed to not focus on walking. When the elevator doors slid open and we shuffled into the small room that was the elevator with the only exit behind us, she opened her mouth to say something just as I pressed the button on the wall for roof access where the helipad was.

Twilight obviously did not expect the momentary sensation of extra weight due to the acceleration and a moment later the door we had entered opened again. We walked out onto a flat surface surrounded by sky. It seemed that there were buildings in the distance peaking over the close horizon created by the edge of the hospital roof.

Frosty was looking around for a moment before speaking to me. “Why are we up here?”

I replied, “We are waiting for our ride.” Then I spoke to Twilight, “How is technology at you home?” I said in yet another attempt to speak to her in a language half forgotten.

“Well, we mostly focus on magic to fulfill our needs. Most of our technology is meant to assist arcane functions.” Twilight explained.

“I see. Very opposite here. Look” I pointed out into the distance and directed Twilight’s attention to a small object approaching us. It quickly grew to a very large size and slowed to a stop above them. Twilight obviously had no idea what she was looking at. The hover car was like a giant quadcopter and far quieter than the original devices. It still created a huge downdraft that washed over the group.

The vehicle set down on the surface ahead of us before the rotors on the sides quieted down until the blurs resolved themselves into the rotor blades spinning to a stop. The toroidal shells that held the rotors on the rear of the car stowed themselves on the back of the car while several doors opened outwards, revealing seats that could hold a pony comfortably.

Frosty ran forwards in excitement at having the rare opportunity to ride in such a vehicle in spite of being a pegasus. Twilight approached slowly, investigating the craft. I watched her look up at one of the front rotors as if trying to find magical components. Since most things built outside of the United States, Canada, or the Principality of North America had little access to ponies, they rarely involved magic in their construction.

She noticed that I was watching her in mild amusement. I was interested in her curiosity but we had somewhere to be. I gestured to the inside of the vehicle patiently. Twilight complied and climbed in and took a seat next to a window. The other two sat on seats facing towards her. I sent a request for the car to readjust one of the seats which extended and lowered a bit before sitting down.

“Lean back,” I requested. Twilight complied and watched as I pulled the seat belt across her chest. I inserted it into the buckle in the seat as she watched closely. “For safety,” I said.

I knew Twilight’s curiosity was on the rise but she didn’t voice any questions. She was watching as the rotors moved back into position outside the vehicle. The upwards acceleration pushed us all into our chairs. The building sank beneath us, quickly bringing the city down below into view. I turned my attention from Twilight as she gawked at the city below and then San Francisco just a few miles to the north, but I looked out to the ocean.

I was concerned about the mare. I could only hope that her curiosity would stave off depression long enough for her to accept her loss and form new relationships. The odds were that whatever space teleportation pulls ponies through was once again too agitated to allow travel between worlds for long enough for everyone involved to forget that is was ever possible.

Either way, the vehicle was moving towards the coast and Twilight’s observations didn’t have long to last before we approached a forested region down the coast away from the large bridge. We passed through the security barrier which felt like a torrent of magic that may as well have been a tornado for a second before it ended just as quickly. She looked disoriented but quickly recovered. She recovered quickly while the other mares had yet to recover. My main had been plastered against the seat and window behind me, creating the illusion of luminescent snow.

---Twilight Sparkle---

My curiosity switched from the outside world to the alicorn beside me. He was huge to start with, probably bigger than Celestia. The device he had on the far side of his head was odd. It had a small stalk of dark, smooth material that extended to the front of his eye. The end of it seemed to be shining a light straight into his retina. He moved his head in a manner that let Twilight get a better view of the thing. It had a large part that looked like a smooth rock stuck to the side of his head that the stalky part connected to transparent straps that extended only partway around the back of his neck and over his head. They seemed to have a rather strong grip on his coat. Those were almost entirely occluded by his mane though and she would have missed them if he wasn’t looking directly towards her…

“Twilight?”

I blinked as my attention was brought back to the present and my eyes refocused. I realized that I had been staring for a while and that we had set down on a grassy field next to a very interesting building which failed to hold my attention as I realized that I had been staring and blushed slightly.

“Ah, I was just looking at your… er-” I stammered out, pointing toward his head with her hoof.

The stallion raised an eyebrow in confusion for a moment before understanding dawned on him. “Oh, this,” he said, referring to the device on the side of his head. “Um, no words. Need teach first. Come, this my home. I host for now. Need teach you lot while can and have you meet first human. Okay?”

I nodded and followed him along with the other two off the grass field and into the small mansion. It was a sleek blocky structure that exhibited a lot of straight edges and open spaces. Some of the walls looked to be made entirely of glass but it seemed to be opaque on some panels. It was annoying trying to focus on objects while have no depth perception. I hope that the ‘replacement eye’ procedure went easily enough when it happened. I hoped to never see whatever it was that was in its place in the meantime because I could tell that my eye socket was not empty.

He led us all inside the building. I had not seen anything quite like it. Perhaps it resembled what I would call a normal home as it had all the things I would expect most homes to have but it was also neatly strewn with bits of technology and magical signatures that poked at her senses. Perhaps a local could pass by most of these things but every odd and end stuck out like a bent feather.

Either way I was a guest and I would probably get used to it soon enough. I just hoped he had a library that could explain these mysteries to me.

---Celestia---

I stood on a mountain. Not Mt Canter but an unnamed one in the southern badlands. While my sun baked my fur and fierce, dry wind tried to both dry and freeze my legs, I remained still. I missed Twilight. I had attempted to restore the connection to the destination a number of times in a safe manner, and each of those attempts failed.

When Rainbow arrived and accused me of not trying hard enough, I was on the edge of rage. Deep down though, I agreed with her. She had never told me that she looked to me as a second mother. I had never been a mother before. Luna had once adopted and cared for an orphan when we were nearly a century old. That line inflicted Blueblood upon the world but neither of us had blood relations beyond our parents. We had not been concerned with growing the family until well after the appearance of Discord led to our ascension. We then focused on holding Equestria together and it wasn't until several centuries later redo your interest in farming families. By then, though, he had sequestered ourselves too far from society.

But over the recent years I felt that Twilight was like a daughter to me and she deserves every effort I can give to return her home. I summoned my magic, pushing my mana levels so high that I radiated enough heat to melt the ground below me. Quantities I would dare yield while anywhere near civilization. I pushed all the energy I had into the spell into trying to force a connection to Twilight's destination. It overcame the resistance that had Twilight was taken and for a moment I felt I would succeed. Yet again it failed. This time it was far more dramatic a failure than it had ever been before. An earthquake echoed across the grounds of the desert and sinkholes formed in every place that had a cavity, cave, cavern, or otherwise empty space below the ground. The ground beneath me fell as rock slides slid down the side of the mountain lowering the peak by hundreds of feet.

I stood still for a moment before falling to my knees and weeping at my failure. I feared applying any more power into the spell because every time it increased the resistance the ether applied to any action I took. Even now teleporting would become more complicated even over short, terrestrial distances. I failed Twilight. If I went any further, it may become more challenging to perform basic magic or the destruction itself that I had been causing may create earthquakes so grand that the state of the world would be thrown into jeopardy.

I was a princess first and a surrogate mother second. I had been neglecting everypony else for too long.

5 - First Steps

Two Weeks Later…

---Twilight Sparkle---

“English is annoying.” I said in English. The language seemed to have many rules and even more exceptions at the same time. Sometimes there were even more exceptions to the rules than words that actually followed the rules! At least I had been able to focus once I got my missing eye replaced.

“I know,” Frosty sympathized, “at least you are learning really fast. Maybe I’m just an awesome teacher.” The adolescent pony had been asked by Prince Spark Eclipse to help me learn the language. She was all too happy to assist the ‘alien cyborg pony.’ It was hard to believe that the filly was the very same pony that carried my out of the crater I made when I arrived.

“Why not keep the old language?” I asked.

Frosty pull out her ‘phone’ device again and did something with it. A moment later she responded. “To make it easier to talk with humans, especially from the United States after that nation was founded, especially since humans can’t make all the sounds we can. This decision was made by Prince Eclipse back in 1822, a few decades after the first Europeans made contact with us.”

Frosty resumed using the device. I still hadn’t met a human, but it sounded like they played a significant role. I had spent my time here distracting myself from my own problems by learning the language, but it was about time I found some other books to read now that I could. I needed to. I needed to keep facing forwards. I-

“Hey, this is getting kinda boring. How about we go see a launch?” Frosty asked.

Glad to have my train of thoughts averted, I tried to understand what the Pegasus just asked. “A what?”

“C’mon,” She grabbed my metal hoof and started pulling me along, “This place has a private loop access terminal. We can be back before congress gets out, but we’ll only be on time if we leave now! Prince Eclipse won’t even notice.”

She dragged me through halls that I hadn’t explored before and down a flight of stairs. The whole area was very spartan in appearance. Nothing adorned the white walls and the carpet was a bland tan. We stopped at a tube shaped object. There was a door open on the side that I was pulled through. I could have stopped the filly if I had the mind to but her enthusiasm told me that she would go without me if I stopped and I was certainly curious. She sat us both down in the seats available.

She yelled to the air, “Destination, Cape Canaveral!”

The vehicle closed its doors and smoothly accelerated forwards. I could feel it gently turning and before long it accelerated more. I felt the magical field wash over us and further acceleration. The objects on the walls lit up. I knew that they weren’t windows but they were somehow showing the outside. We were now above the ground and silently sliding along over trees hills until we approached a tangle of tubes ahead of us. I could hardly focus enough to ask about what I was seeing. The window device showed a number and some letters. I could read it but I didn’t what know what it meant. At the moment it was holding steady at 80 MPH.

We slowed and the number went down as we entered the jungle of tubes that seemed to disappear when we got close. There was a number of other objects that looked like the one we were in, also sliding along. After only moments we were pushed into a tube that was perfectly straight. The number fluctuated quite often, sometimes going as low as 10 MPH but now it was getting higher and the sensation of being pressed into my chair was increasing. The windows showed landscape flowing by. I was completely out of my element.

“Frosty, where are we going?” The number had increased to 322 MPH.

“You’ll see. We will be there before too long.” She happily replied.

I could see the landscape rushing by even faster. Fields of tree farms and forests and rural homes became ever more difficult to focus on. I was becoming scared. It already looked like we were going faster than I had ever flown. The number had increased to 817 MPH and still grew.

The humming I heard suddenly went perfectly silent and I felt myself sink even further into my chair. Frosty had given up on using her device and was paying attention to the trip itself. “I heard that this part actually uses superconductors instead of air pressure to push us along. This is the fun part.”

I doubted her greatly. The number had grown to 1572 MPH and even with my pegasus nature the view was nauseating. The extra weight seemed to fall off as the number stabilized at 1600 MPH.

I was breathing heavily but my stomach was settling down. I did nothing but watch for a few minutes. We were entering a mountainous region that had greenery in the occasional valley. We went past the north side of a huge lake and past a decently large city that had an unexpectedly large number of trees for being in a desert. It was behind us in no time and we continued to follow the roads below. The feeling of motion returned occasionally as we curved to and fro but generally took a south eastern path.

It was a while into our trip when Frosty spoke. "Um, Twilight? Can I ask you something?"

The rambunctious filly was almost never this timid so the contents of the question was probably something to be concerned about. "Yes?"

"I was wondering," she started, "why you haven't gone home yet? I mean, I think it's cool here, but I thought you would have gone home already, at least to tell everyone that you are okay. You have been trying to hide it, but I can tell you are very sad."

Well, my worry was justified. I took a deep breath to prepare myself and to buy time to think. "I basically made the attempt a few days ago. The first step is to cast a spell to find your destination and see if it's safe. It was that connection that allowed me to find my way here, but when I tried to make the same thing to go home, it fell to pieces. My theory is that magic has its own space that is like an ocean. When your ancestors came here, it was still and you all made it safely as far as I know. But when that stillness was broken it became violent and wild. That's why all past attempts for you to go home failed. I made it here barely because it had time to settle, but now it's once again too turbulent to travel through. I don't know what to do."

"Oh." She quietly replied. "Hey, what if we had a whole bunch of ponies or even the prince help out? Maybe he could make it work?"

I sighed. I didn't want to think about it. "While I was trying to see if I could go home, I could occasionally sense my mentor's magic reaching out to me, but barely an instant later there would be another storm of magic. I think that the amount of power you would need to use to avoid causing problems is much less than the amount of power it would take to open another portal. I don't see a solution. Can we not dwell on this so much? Please?"

"Okay... sorry."

"It's fine. Don't worry about it." I tried to calm bother her and myself.

It was an hour and a half before we started to slow down again. I had asked Frosty what MPH was and she explained the measurement system concerning distance and speed. Apparently we had been traveling at twice the speed of sound out of The Principality and across the United States. I was incredulous but accepted her words. The vehicle slowed gradually and it was not long before we disembarked into an area that was not unlike the city we had started near. Getting out of the terminal took little time but it was an adventure. I saw my first human then, well, maybe my first fifty. There was a number of tall bipedal creatures with little to no fur except for on top of their heads. There was also a number of ponies too that were bustling about, getting in or out of objects like the one we had just been on. None of the other groups payed any other much attention.

When we got out, the smell of sea salt wafted through the air on a breeze. We quickly boarded yet another transport, except this time it traveled on wheels on the roads I had seen. We were quickly shuttled to the coastline and dropped off. Frosty pulled me along on her two legged gait until we reached the edge of the grassy area that gave way to large boulders leading into the water.

“What are we here for again?” I asked, not seeing much of interest.

Frosty just pointed ahead of herself towards another piece of land a little bit to the north. It seemed to have a couple structures upon it along with a tall tubular object that said SPACEX down the side.

“I don’t see what’s so special. Is something supposed to happen?” I inquried further.

“Oh yeah, we have less than a minute to go. We were almost too late.” She stated intensely.

I looked back again to see that one of the structures had leaned over at least thirty degrees, leaving the central object alone. It was hard to make out many details, much less how large it was. It looked like one of those buildings that Frosty had called ‘skyscrapers’ except it was round and bulbous and had a number of cylindrical structures supporting a fat white part that tapered to a point on top.

“What’s happening?”

“Watch!”

I did as she said just as the bottom seemed to catch on fire. Instead of falling down, it started to go… up. The behemoth object raised itself upon an inferno of light and smoke.

“...What.”

The tower rose and seemed to tilt over. The smoke traced its path upwards as it shrunk to just a spot that receded into the sky until it seemed to be traveling parallel to the ground before winking out minutes later. I had so many questions.

“Where is it going?”

Frosty seemed happy enough that the… object had caught my interest. “It’s carrying the Alpha Point probe into orbit. Where it will spend a few days doing systems checks and then rocketing off to study the Alpha Point.”

I blinked. “I don’t know what you said.” I stated plainly.

Frosty finally seemed to realize that I was nowhere close to being on the same page as she was. “Okay, why don’t we talk about it on the ride back. If I know anything about you, I think you’ll love it!”

Once again she was urging me to get a move on. I ordered my legs to cooperate and they behaved like I would have expected real legs to. I could almost forget about what I was missing. It was not long before we were traveling again. The other seats were as vacant as last time.

Before we could even leave the city I made a mistake. “I wish my friends could have seen that.” That was all it took before the fresh wounds reopened and tears began to escape. The thought of all those that I was dead to led to restrained sobbing. This wasn’t the first time that I had broken down in front of Frosty. She reached over to put a wing behind me, granting all the comfort she could. The vehicle accelerated faster like it had before yet my emotions hadn’t stabilized.

I heard a pop, but not really. I was too distraught to notice. The vehicle was soon moving at a constant rate and I had recovered. I made sure to lean forward slightly from the upright position the chair held me and and was confused when Frosty never moved her wing.

I looked back and too my horror I saw wing bent in a manner that wings shouldn’t bend. While we were both pressed back into our seats by the G forces of the acceleration, her wing was pushed forwards by the contours of the chair. It looked as if some of the bones were dislocated.

“Ah! Frosty, sorry!” I quickly cast an anesthesia spell before doing my best to right her wing. I resorted to casting Inner Sight. Normally, it would be used by a unicorn to see their heart-like carbuncle generating mana and pumping it through the mana capillaries. I had to adapt it to seeing into another pony on the fly but I managed well enough.

I reset the bones. Meanwhile the only time I heard I a peep out of her was when I put the bones back. With a pop, she had use of her wing once more and she released a breath she was holding. A trickle of fell from the bite marks on her lower lip.

“I’m so sorry, are you okay?” I quickly followed up, concern for Frosty overriding my personal issues.

“Yeah,” she took a deep breath, “I’m fine. I should have known better.”

I sat back again in relief. “Perhaps it would do us some good to get both our minds on a different track. So you said you would tell me where that thing was going?”

A ghosts of a smile returned to the lips of the pegasus. “That story starts about ninety years ago back when the US and the USSR got into something called a cold war…”

---Celestia---

I walked down the length of my throne room towards my sister and past the line of petitioners arrayed down the room. I made no fanfare and did little to acknowledged the sighed stares directed at me. Perhaps it was the state of my crown, peytral, and shoes. Rather than the shine of brilliant gold plating, they were dull and scratched like a poorly maintained brass instrument. Perhaps it was the state of my hair. My mane and tail are still floating in the way they do, but were tied back and weighed down with debris. My coat was even worse. Where once there was sweat or tears, now there were disruptions and tangles held together by salt and dirt.

I stopped when I was beside Luna, “I just need to tidy up. Are you fine holding the throne for an extra hour?”

Ignoring the murmur of the crowd, she smiled lightly, “Nay, I will stay for the remainder of this day. It isn't hard when you realize that you can just intimidate the nobles. It lets me get to the sensible petitions faster. You should try. Tomorrow. Rest today.”

I gave a fatigued smile. “Thank you, sister, I will take your advice.” I continued on, I was not in a big hurry so I had yet to exit the back of the room when I heard Luna speak again.

“Today will be different. Instead of scaring all of you off, I want each of you to secure me a package of coffee. The one that brings me the best coffee will secure my patience enough that I will hear your whole petition before kicking you out. Wait, not regular citizens, just the nobles…” I had shut the door behind me but her actions had left some thoughts lingering in my head. Perhaps there was a way to wield the minds of the nation to help me find Twilight.

I felt spark of flame return to my heart. Maybe I can still have hope.

6 - Hope

Author's Note

The chapter is pretty short but after the long wait and how nicely I thought it wrapped itself up, I figured it would be okay. Thanks to those who checked up on me and said nice things. They are the ones who deserve credit for this not turning into a two month or two year hiatus. As always tell me about errors like you're throwing bricks through windows.

6 - Hope

---Twilight Sparkle---

They have weird fans here, I thought to myself. I was laying on the bed in the room lent to me by the Prince. Suspended from the ceiling was a fan that just looked like a hoop of metal painted white. It was attached to a panel on the ceiling by three hydraulic pistons in a manner that allowed it to point straight at me. A cool breeze that perfectly compensated for the heat of the sun coming through the window blew over me and through my fur, rustling my mane and the red unmade blankets beneath me. The room was a mix of warm colors with abstract artwork on the wall, a closet I had no use for, and a desk in the corner.

The lethargy I had been experiencing was not something I was used to. At any other time in my life I would have been in a rush to learn everything I could. I knew, I had been taught how to use the wondrous device across my room which had access to more information than a hundred million royal libraries, yet it was not on my mind. I had been demonstrated the use of the internet and even given a course on internet safety but that was a while ago and the details escaped me. The only thoughts on my mind were that of my friends. Did they know that I was still alive? Was somepony taking care of Spike?

I had no idea, and it hurt. I was never going to see my niece grow up. I forced myself off the bed and stood upon the floor for a while before trudging over to the computer. I sat in the chair. It was large and low to the ground. Big enough to allow me to comfortably sit on my haunches and leave my front hooves free to do other things, like use the keyboard. That was an interesting machine on its own. All the buttons had letters in English in the middle, but while the versions I had seen before were just a bunch of small rectangles, this one was row after row of arching buttons made to be pushed by a hoof without hitting any others by accident. The curved surfaces were placed in tiers with the qwerty row slightly higher than the asdf row and so forth.

As nice as it was, I didn’t do anything with it. I leaned back into the red cushions and did nothing much at all. The motivation wasn’t there. It was a low point of the last few months. It wasn’t long after that trip with frosty to see the launch that the Prince finally introduced me to the local press. I think they found me to be underwhelming. The basic story was shared, I filled in some questions from both ponies and humans wielding pieces of technology I was unfamiliar with, objects with large lenses floating behind each of them with perfect steadiness, stocky cylinders with either some kind of foam or a metal mesh on the ends held as close as they could get away with. They asked about who I was, what the state of pony politics from home were. They listened with some interest as I explained the unification of the old nations but other questions focused on our technology. The were disappointed. I also told them about my mission to find the old city that went missing and how well that went. In the end, Spark dismissed me. I didn’t feel very strongly one way or the other about that. I heard him say that he suspected me of suffering from ‘Herd Expulsion Syndrome’ which didn’t sound terribly accurate since I wasn’t in any herd, but I could just look it up. Well, could have. I never did.

It has been, what, a month or two since then? I was starting to see progress in my limb growth. The part they had in my chest had been removed and my flanks were almost symmetrical again. They had to occasionally bring me back to the hospital to refit my legs.

Otherwise nothing was happening. I knew what would motivate me. I had read a fair bit on pony psychology. If there was some way that I work, some productive thing I could do to reconnect with my friends and home, then that’s what I would do. As much of a loner as I had once been, as much as I once would have tried to learn, nothing was going on.

Then there was a knock on the door.

“Yeah?” I reply, unwilling to put the effort into any more eloquence than that.

Frosty Davis poked her head into the room. “Hey, Twilight.” Twilight didn’t quite understand what kept bringing her back but she was welcome. “There’s something going on that I think you’ll want to see. C’mon!” She then scampered back into the other room.

I got to my hooves and exited the room. It was a challenge to avoid the loud thumping sound that my heavy weight and metal hooves made against the floor. I didn’t even try. This room was also one of warm colors with a wall of floor to ceiling windows showing off the Pacific and the wilderness around us. Down the hill closer to the shore sat some city or suburb or something. Frosty was there on the couch. I wondered why she was around so much, in the home of what I assume is the head of state. Celestia’s counterpart. Spark Eclipse was around more often than I would have expected him to. Doesn’t he need to run a country? Regardless, he was lounging back in a chair in a sort of side room that had no wall separating it from the living room I was in now. He was facing away towards a hoard of screens arcing around and above him. While they didn’t show anything that I could see, he clearly could. I still never learned what he was wearing over his eyes. He might have explained it once out of an effort to engage me in conversation but that was certainly not a day to remember.

On the wall was a huge display, rich in colors and detail that didn’t get much use. Right now though, it presented a human speaking into the camera. I wondered if it was like the ones I had pointed at me back… a while ago. On the other hoof, Frosty was exceptionally excited. She wildly waved me over. I made my way and casually lay on my side with my heavy metal hooves hanging off the edge and my head held up by the cushion.

“Remember that launch we saw? The probe reached its destination last night and the NASA guys have been looking at the data. They’re going to tell us what they found!” Frosty Pinkied at me, I mean said to me ecstatically. The information she had given to me about the space race and how the country next door landed people on the moon was one of the last things I was able to pay attention to with vigor.

In spite of being down in the dumps, I listened as well as I could. The man on the screen spoke of the journey to start with, giving details that mostly flew over my head. VASIMR was clearly an acronym for something but the man on the screen moved right along with his speech. “The alpha point lies on a direct path from the sun to the trinary star system of Alpha Centauri. The optical and radio telescopes on board the probe are receiving unexpectedly clear images of the star, while they are not providing new data or outperforming the James Webb telescope, they are vastly more effective than what would be expected for their size. On the other hand, the magic sensor prepared by unicorns employed by NASA for this undertaking is also returning unexpected data. While all of the magic sensors in use several months ago have picked large amounts of interference coinciding with the earthquake in Tamarelantis of the Equine Principality of North America, the alpha point seems to be a volume of exceptional calmness. While the magic field remains present, the agitation it usually exhibits is nigh nonexistent.”

I considered his words as he continued on talking. I was pretty certain that the reason I couldn't go home was because of the very same interference he was talking about. Perhaps the portal could get me to the next star, but what good would that do me? I can't go further without finding another point. It's not like I can just bounce between stars all the way home… can I?

With a moment of ‘too good to be true’ thoughts came a deeper analysis. Can such a thing even work? I would need to get way out there in space in the first place. Humans have been exploring the other planets here for a long time right? Some of them live on Mars I think. And where is my home anyway? There was so much I didn't know, but it seemed to be possible. I figured I was with a couple knowledgeable ponies so they would be the first to ask.

My eyes regained focus and I realized that I had sat up at some point. Then I noticed that they were both staring at me.

“What?” I asked in confusion. Was I doing something wrong?

“Oh, nothing.” Frosty said, “You actually don't look dead inside for once. It looks good on you. You should try it out more.”

I glared at her. I brought my attention towards the other alicorn in the room. He was looking at me with a knowing smile, the exact same kind that Celestia use when she was expecting me to figure something out. “What is that face all about?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You seemed to have an epiphany so innocent old me just wants to know what you’re thinking.” He said not-innocently.

“I think you know exactly what I’m thinking.” I lightly accused

“Really? Tell me what I’m thinking then.” He implored.

“Well,” I started. “There’s a way home.”

“Exactly.”

7 - Base of the Mountain

The last of the large space corporations including SpaceX will be decommissioning the last of their chemical launch systems by the end of the quarter. They will be replaced by VASIMR plasma engine equipped spacecraft. Some predict that not many will be constructed due to the recent progress in fusion propulsion technologies heavily reported on last year…

The world's first AI citizenship was granted in Canada this week. With the spreading opinion of AI’s being real people, the age old fears of robotic uprisings will gradually be replaced with peace and respect for the newly acknowledged people of Earth…

The automated facilities on Mercury have, after many technical delays. launched the first hematite mirror and solar collector. The energy from the project will be redirected back into it, vastly speeding the process. Due to the exponential growth the project will experience, the planet will likely be entirely deconstructed somewhere between seventy and a hundred years from now...

Asteroid 2027c71 has finally entered geosynchronous orbit above Kenya. The asteroid, recently renamed ‘Seed’ as the result of a moderated online poll, will begin conversion into the first ever space elevator. The carbonaceous asteroid will appear to grow towards the world over the next several years as the most advanced techniques of carbyne/carbon nanotube production are employed. If successful, the next elevator will be deployed in Ecuador in approximately eleven years. Even though the country is unlikely to pass seismology tests, it is suspected that the United States is prepared to spare nearly unlimited funds into any geoengineering project needed to stabilize the mountain range…

Today, on the ten year anniversary of ExxonMobil’s bankruptcy, the climate change crisis has officially been declared to be resolved. While world temperatures are falling and several major cities are expected to be recovered, we can still expect fierce storms for several years. Ice reclamation projects are expected to be mothballed and wildlife organizations plan to recover thousands of species from extinction over several decades as ecologies are repaired…

The first viral genetic treatment is underway. As opposed to the standardized process of creating designer children while they are embryos, a virus was used to modify the DNA of every cell in a man's body. If it goes well, multi stage treatments will undergo testing, possibly bringing treatments to the previous generation. Cosmetic changes may become available to the masses in a few years…

Five Years Later…

---Twilight Sparkle---

“Why are we here?” I asked. Spark Eclipse dragged me out of the lab he had set up for me yesterday to board an airplane. I was right in the middle of my latest project too. When we landed in a place called Africa, we got in a car which took us to a seemingly random plain. He had the vehicle stop when we came into view of a quartet of tall structures. They were equally massive and strange. They stood in a triangle and angled away from each other. They seemed to resemble scaffolding more than they did actual buildings.

“You'll see.” He said unhelpfully and got out of the car. I plodded out of the vehicle on my heavy legs. I had expected us to go to the complex ahead, instead the prince of all ponies in the world and the oldest living pony I had ever met pulled a blanket out of the car and sat on it. I stared for a moment before simply following and sitting down beside him. His gaze was directed upwards towards the overcast sky. I stared at the same place yet nothing was happening. Meanwhile my thoughts began to drift.

It had been a long time since I was injured and trapped in this world. I wish I had fought a little harder to stay focused on positives. Perhaps it would have been better to lie to myself and just insist that there was hope when there was none. Luckily hope came around anyway. It was similar to my first encounter of Discord. I was hopeless then too until I read the friendship letters that Celestia was spamming me with. Poor Spike.

Regardless, I had been slowly adapting to the world. I learned the word ‘spam’ for example, and about email and the internet. Yes, the internet was explained to me once already but I had no retention of that event. From there it was days long journeys through wikipedia. Some of the things I’ve found have been quite messy and disturbing while others were great. You can always trust the cats.

As disheartening as this world’s history was, I was equally confronted with my own world’s history. Slavery, war, close calls in destroying the planet. Earth by nuclear weapons and climate change and Equus, as it is called in English, by Nightmare Moon, Discord, and possibly other times that I don’t even know about. Luckily things are okay on those fronts. I now feel thankful that my biggest concern is how I miss my friends and family.

Over the last few years I had been mostly focusing on magical studies, attempting to devise a way to travel the stars with the help of human technology. Spark had asked me to forward results and conclusions to him before moving on to something new. While I did so, I couldn’t tell if he was doing anything with it. He seemed to run his nation almost entirely through his headset, only once in a great while would he go somewhere in person.

I still didn’t know why we were out in Africa somewhere. The buildings ahead looked impressive, even among other feats humans and the local ponies have performed. Perhaps if I paid more attention to the news. We were clearly waiting for something.

It was that very moment that I spotted a large group of pegasi fly up into the clouds and begin pushing them out of the way. As the blanket of grey was pushed towards and over me, I saw something begin to poke out. As it was exposed it grew upward and upward. It seemed to vanish into the distance, and it was being lowered.

My eyes grew wide. I recognized the object in front of me, but I hadn’t realized that it was being built. With stunned amazement, I watched as a dark, perfectly straight line lowered itself towards the ground. It was quite close before the clouds were moved, so it was only a couple minutes before it was level with the tops of the towers it seemed to be sliding between. It was another several minutes before it reached the ground. Part of me expected it to stop and another part expected disaster, yet it just kept going. In hindsight it made sense. It would make for a good foundation. With ponderous slowness and precise movement, it came to a stop and the four towers leaned inward, eventually contacting the elevator and firmly anchoring it. Also, I later learned, thousands of tons of concrete were poured into the hole it was inside of as a cherry on top, or on bottom I suppose.

After things settled down a bit, I saw several massive vehicles crawling over the terrain toward the thirty thousand mile pole in the ground. “That was interesting, but I still don't why we are here.” I complained.

He smiled. “Merely interesting?” He said as he stood up and threw the blanket in the car. “What's more interesting is we are taking it for a ride.”

I was silent as I followed him in, not really comprehending how he could have meant what he said. While we traveled closer I used my own headset to lookup what I could on the elevator. As the vehicle approached the base, I saw the massive vehicles tilting objects up and onto four spaces between the ground towers. It quickly became clear that two of them were quite similar to multi story hotels while the other two were simply large tanks with doors. Probably for the exclusive use of cargo.

“It's not finished yet, right? We can't just use it.” I queried.

“Actually, it is done. There's going to be a city around it soon but right now it's ready to go based on the reports I'm reading. I've got a reason to get us up there anyway.” he explained.

It wasn't long before we had improvised our way onboard one of the hotel-esque units. I assumed he was in constant communication because there was no law enforcement or other government agents coming out of every crevice like the movies I’ve seen show.

I felt my weight increase as the whole thing accelerated upwards. From what I understood, we would be out of the atmosphere in a few minutes and at our destination in a few days. Meanwhile there was one other thing that I wanted to ask.

The stallion in question had instantly made himself comfortable on a lounge seat facing a huge, nearly panoramic window. As I approached I could see that his eyes were still more focused on reading text on his headset more than on the world below.

“Spark, I can accept that there is something you want to show me. That's fine. It's a privilege to be on the first ride up the elevator, and it's pretty exciting to be going to space. It's like I'm already getting closer to home, but I don't know why you are here with me.” I asked at length.

He stopped what he was doing and looked me in the eyes. It was somewhat disconcerting. I've almost never seen him without his attention split.

“Fine,” he said, “I'll tell you. The reason I am supporting you so much, giving my country's resources to back you is because I am selfish. The well-being of the ponies of this world is not my number one priority. It's my number two priority. The thing I want the most is to go home. Even just for a few days. I won't throw other ponies lives away to do it, but it's what I want the most. If it's all the same to you, I'd appreciate it if you would keep this to yourself.”

He turned away and walked away towards a stairway. “Wait!” I shouted before I could think about what I was saying, “It's okay, actually you need to be like that!”

He stopped in his tracks and looked towards me. “And why is that?”

My thoughts raced for a second until they settled down on a plan. “You need to be selfish enough to take care of yourself. If you go over the edge, the whole world would be in danger. I told you about Princess Luna right?”

His focus returned to his headset. A moment later he nodded. “So you did. Thank you for reminding me. It seems fair to say that achieving this trip is in the interest of just about ten billion people.” He moved to the stairs before pausing. “Thank you. On another note, I did spill that I was backing you with a lot of resources. I'll say that the surprise involves that. I'm going to be turning in early tonight. I didn't get any sleep last night.”

I watched him head up to the private rooms above. I sat down on a chair and looked back out the window. I was quite happy that the issue was diffused. Celestia would say that it was quite diplomatic of me if she had seen it. I wondered how she was doing as I watched Earth seem to sink below me.

---Celestia---

I was quite frustrated. I had attempted to leverage the nobility to little success. Well, the effects on the nation were terrific, I wish I had thought to do it a long time ago. Simply put, I dangled favors and concessions in front of the nobility in exchange for setting up schools for the mundane and magical sciences and funding research. Essentially what Luna did with her coffee idea. The problem was that it did not seem as if we were any closer to finding Twilight. I realized that it wasn’t quite reasonable to simply expect somepony to find the answer in a couple months or a couple years, but one could hope.

Luckily we know that it’s not too late. In the past, whenever a bearer of an element died or lost connection to their element such as myself and Luna a thousand years ago, the gem would turn to stone. It was Miss Pinkie Pie’s idea to check the tree to see what the state was. It was with both joy and worry when we discovered that Twilight’s element was dimmed. Not stone, yet not as luminescent as it normally was. It was reassuring though. If it was in perfect condition, one could suspect that it didn’t need its connection to ponies anymore and that it was simply fine, but its dimness demonstrated that Twilight was either quite distant, injured, or both. I returned to it frequently. It had grown brighter in the early weeks but now it was just stable.

With that in mind, my drive to motivate my nation to think of new ideas was endless. None of them were dedicated to finding Twilight per se, but simply the growth and maturing of knowledge in the sciences would help some of us think of things. Just the other day I had been watching an experiment in which some ponies were attempting to construct a wagon propelled by magic instead of other ponies. Due to some instability caused by my sheer magical presence, containment of the energies failed, sending the wagon soaring across the university’s property and over several blocks of a light commercial district. I plucked the earth pony out of the air with my magic, but the wagon sailed right into Donut Joe’s restaurant. I paid for the damages.

Perhaps one day, as I sit it my study doing paperwork and peering distractedly out my window to the city below, I can have her back.

Author's Note

I decided to read the first book a bit so I could figure out what sorts of accelerations I was looking at. Early in the story it mentions some ships in pursuit of others and how some small ones were reaching .1c in a very short amount of time, leading to my estimate of ten minutes based on the context. I was like, 'Wow, that's crazy. Let's calculate how many gravities of acceleration that is.' Get this, it wound up being on the order of three hundred thousand gravities of acceleration! That's some science fantasy there!

So I figured that there was only three ways for that kind of acceleration to happen: antimatter, low speed warp drives, or kugelblitzes. So I decided to focus on figuring out the kugelblitz. Based on some numbers I found that one could accelerate a ship to .72c in five years. So using that I calculated that it would take two million kugelblitzes to accelerate a ship a those rates, not to mention trying to dampen the inertia or compensate for the acceleration.

I've read a few books over the past handful of days, the Tory Rising series you can find on amazon. An excellent scifi story to be had there.

I'm not super thrilled with the chapter and I'm unsure how it will be received, but it's better to put it out there rather than sit on it indefinitely.

3 - And Smell The Roses

---Twilight Sparkle---

I woke up again a few hours after Spark Eclipse left. It was still dark except for the minimal illumination from the dim lights on the walls. It took a second before the recent events flowed back into the forefront of my mind. Having nothing else to do, I spoke the words, “Legs on.”

Another shock, slightly weaker than the one I was given last time I was awake, struck me where the mechanical limbs connected to my torso. A pained whine escaped me this time. The feelings of pain left me after a moment, replaced with sensations that were rather confusing. Regardless, I tried sitting upright. Instead of the easy motion I expected, I got a flurry of random leg movement. I even accidentally kicked myself. I didn’t feel any pain, but I certainly felt the impact.

I sighed and decided to focus on relearning how to walk. It was a good distraction from anything else. I didn’t want to think about home right then.

---Luna---

Things were not well in Equestria. While a number of state sponsored projects were underway to find methods to protect Canterlot from ever again coming so close to destruction, I knew that Celestia had been holed up in her room for a number of days now. She had skipped court several days in a row and was entirely missing from the public view.

The gentle clip clop sounds of my hooves against the hallway floor accompanied by the flap of Rainbow Dash’s wings had come to a stop. It was nearly noon when I knocked on her door. I knew that she could hear me and that she knew it was futile to ignore me. It always was. I knocked again, patiently waiting for a response. “Princess Celestia? Are you there?” Rainbow Dash called through the door. “Celestia?”

“Sister,” I spoke out next next, “you can’t stay in there forever. You need to talk with us-”

The door’s lock noisily unlatched and the door began to open slowly. From my position at the door, I could see my sister upon her bed watching us.

“Sister, you still lead a country, you need to-” I was interrupted by the venom in Celestia’s voice.

“I declare you solar regent. Go away.” Celestia quickly penned a note across the room on her desk and sent it away in a green flash.

I was stunned. I had not expected to be treated this way by my sister after all that has happened, much less to just toss her responsibilities aside. Rainbow on the other hoof became angry. “How could you.” She said darkly. She walked closer to where Celestia was lying, emotional force in her hoofsteps. “How could you turn your back on her, them.”

While Celestia’s expression was one of a highly controlled deadpan stare, the approaching pegasus allowed hers to worsen.

“Twilight looked to you like a mother. Now you’ve abandoned her! What do you expect us to think about that!” Rainbow shouted at the embodiment of the sun.

Celestia was quiet. I watched with mild worry as she got off her bed and stood up. Rainbow took a breath to say something more but her words were cut off as a golden aura snapped her mouth shut and abruptly lifted her up. Celestia, still silent, began marching across her room toward a door seldom used.

“Sister!” I yelled and began following them, fearful and unsure of what my sister planned.

She threw open the heavy stone door and cold misty air flowed out past her hooves. In just a moment they were both inside. I quickly caught up to see what was going on. At first it looked like just a stone box of a room. Rainbow was nearly shoved against a wall that seemed to have one half a darker shade of grey than the other.

“Do you see them?” Celestia spoke softly, but the volumes of restraint bode of bad news.

Rainbow, who looked slightly scared in spite of her everlasting tough front, looked confused at first until her eyes went wide in some sort of understanding. I followed closely to get my own look and discovered that rather than a plain stone wall of a slightly different shade like I thought, but an ocean of densely packed text. I quickly realized that it was all names and cutiemarks.

“They all deserve to be remembered.” Celestia spoke slightly louder. “But their lives were easy to dismiss. They were all the ones that mattered to me but I let most of them out of my mind without too much effort.”

“There has only been one exception, and now there is a second.” Celestia’s voice was losing its silky smooth nature and was moving towards a worn, gravelly sound. Rainbow had no words of course, but at that moment she squirmed as Celestia’s tears escaped her eyes and fell. Drips of boiling hot water were landing on her right wing. Before Rainbow could try to struggle, I saw my sister’s magic brush the dangerous fluids off. Rainbow was set down and released onto the floor of the small stone room. Celestia quickly made her out. She had stopped by me and in a whisper not audible to Rainbow, “Take care of things for a while, okay?”

As Celestia exited the room, I noticed a trail of boiling drops of water on the smooth stone floor marking the sun princess’s path. Then she was gone. A quiet pop of a teleport and a dim flash to go with it shown throughout her bedroom. I sighed in defeat.

“Let us leave, Rainbow. Best to not linger.”

---Spark Eclipse---

The sun was only just rising when I returned to the hospital. I flew north of my home, detouring over the misty Pacific waves before curving over the urban sprawl of Tamarelantis towards the hospital which stood alone surrounded by residential areas. I timed myself to land at the entrance at exactly 6 AM. I was pleased to find Berry Sun and Frosty Davis where they had been dropped off by an automated government car. In no time we were in the elevator ascending to the newcomer’s room.

Nothing had been said for a moment before Frosty’s curiosity got the best of her. “Mr. Eclipse, um, did we ever find out who that pony was?” She asked. I noticed Berry give her a subtle kick in attempt to tell Frosty to be more respectful, but both she and I ignored it.

“Yes actually.” I started, glad that the young mare was less timid around me than the average pony. “I can start by saying that The Wait is over.”

While Frosty waited for an explanation, Berry probably almost had an aneurysm. “What! What do you mean it’s over?!”

Frosty nearly jumped out of her shoes at the outburst. “Would someone explain what this wait is?”

I turned around and fiddled with some controls on the back wall, which quickly became transparent. The wall was now a window overlooking the receding ground and city and the Pacific ocean beyond. “The wait for our ancient cousins to find us. We aren’t native to this world as I hope you've learned in school. That pony you saved has very little genetic similarity to any pony in the world, yet the mare we are going visiting is another like me. I could sense it. Yet she is probably only Berry’s age.”

“So she’s an alien pony?” Frosty interjected. I looked at her for a second before laughing lightly.

“Well, you aren’t wrong. Keep in mind that she speaks a dialect of our original language rather than English. Also, she had to receive some heavy modification to preserve her ability to walk. Since she is another hybrid pony, she will recover fully regardless. I spoke with her a little bit last night. She called me something that I believe translates to 'alicorn'. In both languages it means the material that horns are made of, but they seem to have adapted it to refer to ponies that are a mix of all subspecies, like me,” I explained.

The conversation trailed off for the last few seconds of the elevator ride. A gentle bell sound announced our arrival to the top floor. We shuffled into the short hallway. It had only a few rooms for patients along with one for storage and another for a teleportation locus for emergency purposes. We approached destination door when we heard a loud thump.

I hesitated for a split second before quickly entering the room. The two mares chased me in to see what the commotion was. Before us we saw the purple mare whose limbs had been replaced with high quality prosthetics. Rather than resting in the bed like a sensible pony, she was spilled halfway onto the floor, face first.

I immediately moved to help her up while Berry and Frosty stayed in the back of the room standing awkwardly waiting to see why I had brought them. While berry was looking closely at her augments, Frosty appeared to be self conscious about her bipedal stance and the fact that she was wearing clothes casually. After checking to make sure for a second that Twilight was fine I turned towards them and started gesturing towards the two of them. “Berry, would you say hi and wave?”

Berry did so. “Um, Hello.” She waved for a second before turning towards me. “I thought she didn’t know English?”

“She doesn’t, but greetings work either way.” I informed Berry. I turned to Frosty. “Would you do the same Frosty?”

Frosty appeared to be distracted for a second by her thoughts before she realized what she had been asked. “Oh… hi.” Frosty waved. Twilight just stared at her, further agitating her self consciousness. She shifted nervously on her back legs that were stilted off the ground by the shoes made of black plastic and carbon mesh materials. Frosty held her smile and stopped moving, not knowing what to do.

---Twilight Sparkle---

I had been attempting to practice with my legs for nearly an hour before Spark Eclipse and the other ponies had arrived. I was relaxing on the bed from my self taught rehabilitation when a small mechanical device on wheels rolled into my room and up to my bed. Its top surface was raised up on top of a hexagonal scissor lift with a telescoping pole in the middle. On top of the raised surface was some kind of container made out of a material I wasn’t familiar with. It was a white substance that was flexible yet stiff, if those contradictory descriptions made any sense. It was easy enough for me to use my magic to open it to the welcome sight of food in the form of carrots, beans, and a salad.

At that moment I had a small emotional relapse after the reminder that I had been separated from everything else I had ever known, but at least there were ponies here that were friendly and food I recognized. I used my magic to feed myself before I realized that I needed to use the bathroom. I carefully got off the bed, moving one leg at a time as I maneuvered myself onto the floor. I telekintetically pushed the curtain to the side and looked through the window to the ocean beyond. I had looked out once already but one look down at the city below and I backed off. I didn't want to contemplate the alien architecture right then, even though it was made by ponies. The curiosity simply wasn't there. This time my needs propelled me toward the room which had a sign on it with a paper attached underneath that said ‘bathroom’ in my language in perfectly written script. I found it odd how perfectly the text was printed, not to mention the sign above it with alien text engraved into it, probably saying the same thing. Regardless, I had more pressing concerns at the moment.

Several minutes later I was slowly trudging back toward the bed, thankful that the equipment in the bathroom was so easy to use, yet surprised at how different it was from what I was used to. I had arrived at my bed as I realized that I faced a challenge in its height. It was a challenge I had faced already, but I had cheated and used my wings that time. This time I elected to try walking around the room for a while longer to further get used to walking again. I had a new direct sympathy for ponies that had been injured greatly.

A while later I decided to attempt to get back onto the bed. I scrabbled up as best I could but my last effort to leap on top put too much much momentum in my movement that I could not counter with my wings in time and fell off the other side. What would have been a hard face plant turned into a heavy thud when I landed on the injured part of my chest that had been replaced with protruding metal parts. There was not much pain to be had but I felt a headache develop anyway.

At that moment the alicorn, Spark Eclipse, that I had met the previous day entered the room and quickly came to my side. “Hey. You okay?” He said before helping me back onto my new hooves.

“I’m fine. Having an armored chest can be convenient.” I attempted to feign emotional calmness. It was immediately obvious that Spark Eclipse saw through it but he didn’t do anything about it.

Instead he stepped aside and introduced me to the ponies he came in with. “That’s good. I’d like introduce you the ponies that saved you back the other day when you came. You were in bad spot and very bad condition body and actually in hole in ground under a statue. It almost fell if not for fast action by these two.” He explained. I was surprised that things could have gone even worse than they already had. “First is Berry Sun. She stopped statue falling.” He spoke to the pony who said some sort of greeting I assumed and waved. I waved back.

Spark then brought my attention to the other. “This is Frosty… eh, last name not translate, but she carry you out. They both is hero.” I only then really noticed the light blue pony with the white mane and tail with the icy eyes who stood on her back legs. The oddness quickly gave way to intrigue towards the items she had on her legs that seemed to allow her to stand in the odd manner easily. And the clothes seemed odder still. She seemed to be wearing a small garment made of tough, light blue material on her legs. It seemed to be analogous to pants that some higher class minotaurs would wear in their capital. She also was wearing some sort of basic shirt that was a darker blue that covered most of her torso except for her midriff.

I battled with myself for a moment about whether it was rude or not to ask about that but I decided that I may as well make my mistakes in a controlled environment. “Why is she standing like that. We have nothing like that at home so this is confusing.”

The taller alicorn nodded in understanding. “This because she spend time with many humans. Step father is human and many friends are human as far as understand. I suppose you have not seen any yet, but they have many nations over rest of world. I will have you meet one, but they stand tall so some pony learn to stand like them to make relating easier.”

I nodded in consideration. Spark continued. “I want try to make you know this place and may use their help again if want. Help you learn language and help me learn you language in case need sometime. I want give you place in my home so I can keep eye for while. Press wants to know about what happen when you came and want to make you ready. After maybe possible to find way home for you I think.”

I briefly pondered the situation before going with the one path available to me. I took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes. That seems to be the best way to deal with this.” I went to move closer but the fact that I wasn’t focusing on moving correctly nearly led to me fall over once again but I was caught in an orange aura cast from Spark Eclipse.

“May also relearn walk. These two mare can maybe help me if you like. Make friend, help learn, and keep company while I away sometimes. Sound good?” His Equish was decaying as he spoke, likely resorting to trying to just speak efficiently. Regardless, I was the Princess of Friendship. What better way to get a start in the world than by making friends?

“Yeah. Sounds good.” For the time being, the intellectual side of my mind was engaged. Successfully distracting me from the pain inside.