I can't quite pin down the exact moment that I started to properly realise who I truly was. If I had to pin down a start date I would have to say that it was the day that I got my cutie mark for accidentally inventing an entire new field of physics by using show and tell day in class to demonstrate the induction of electricity using magnetism. Specifically, when Miss Flask asked me to demonstrate my generator to several university academics who proclaimed it as such, I had a little magical flashback moment where I realised that I kept solving things by thinking of a solution that nopony else had considered, and a lightbulb sparked its way into being on each of my flanks.
The realisation properly started, however, when they asked to see the notes I'd made when coming up with the device, and found it to based on work that nopony had ever done and that I had apparently just made up out of nowhere. Equestria, you see, had never had any equivalent of Faraday, Coloumb, Tesla, or any other electrical pioneer, and so their electrical engineering was based entirely on magic shortcuts and they had no idea of the connections between electricity and magnetism. While creating the device, however, I had clearly remembered being taught the material that I had used. Going over the material that night and trying to figure out where the ideas had come from, I realised that the school and lessons that I was remembering were ones I didn't recognise, the names strange and the language one that I didn't know and yet could completely understand, and most of all the teacher, my fellow students and I were all not ponies.
My past that was not didn't fully come back all at once though. It weaved its way into my conscious mind slowly, spinning and shining to the forefront of my mind when I lived up to my name and mark, and slithering darkly in the background as I slept, my dreams half-formed messes of both lives. It was starting to have some worrying effects though, with the other life affecting me subconsciously as well. I started acting differently, talking differently, being surprised at things that were normal, expecting things that wouldn't happen or weren't there, casually mentioning people and places and things that weren't real, or simply couldn't be.
And it was one of these small instances that ended up killing my parents.
They were lovely folks, my parents. Happy and supportive and everything you'd want parents to be. I was still young at the time, barely fifteen. I was riding high on being invited to study arcanophysics and arcane engineering at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, and we were going out for a meal to celebrate. I had left an experiment going at home and by the time we were were getting home I had forgotten about it. However, I hadn't properly accounted for the interactions with the local arcane fields, and so when they opened the door and switched on the lights, the surge of energy was just enough to start a chain reaction. Lagging behind slightly as I was was the only thing that shielded me from the brunt of the blast, though my own survival was a narrow thing by the time I got to the hospital.
As I lay there, mind and body broken, I picked over everything I could remember, desperately trying to figure out what could have caused it. It was a slow process, my mind hampered by the drugs and spells and pain and by the knowledge of the other place deserting me.
And as I lay in my stupor, I heard a voice. Echoing from all around and yet from inside my head like the voice of my own thoughts, it came unbidden.
“Well. This isn't any of the potential afterlives that they promised. I suppose MLP is better than nothing, probably. At least I can finally speak to you, Novel.”
I swung my head wildly, trying to discern who was speaking.
“Could you stop that? It's quite dizzying when you aren't expecting it, though at least I don't have worry about my motion sickness anymore.”“Where are you?!”“I appear to have been reincarnated as a voice in your head.”“What!?”
“Well I was sitting at home having a perfectly lovely day. When I went to make myself a sandwich I found that my roommate had nicked the last of the butter, so I went to go buy more. I was just crossing the street to get to the TESCOs and my phone binged. Got distracted and fell face-first into a speeding bus. I woke up a few days ago, but you were a bit comatose for a chat. Gave me a nice bit of time to come to terms with this died-and-came-back-in-another-universe-as-a-voice-in-someone's-head business. Then I figured that it sounded like someone trying to put a new spin on an HiE tale, so I set our author up for a cliffhanger and set up our introductions nicely.”
“meep.”“Now I gave this a bit of a test run while you were out, so let's see if I can get us-”*“Out of here. Right, that's the voice working, let's try the limbs. Might need a bit of help here, I'm used to a two-up, two-down system based on imbalance rather than an all-four-down like around here.”“*What in Celestia’s name is going on!?”“Well you needn't think so loud. It's not like there's anyone else in this head that might need to hear, I checked while I was up there. Like I explained earlier, some sort of cosmic accident after my unfortunate death in another universe has lead to us sharing bodies. Probably some wayward magic from around here. This body is more than well enough for a little excursion, so we’re going to get out of here and visit a library, unless there are any free newspapers. I need to catch up on some things.”“What kind of things?”“Mainly, when and where we are. After that, we can get some proper planning done for our future together.”“What do you mean, planning?”** “Well depending upon what year it is and how closely this world is to the one that I know, we can exploit my knowledge of various events to get ahead in the world and change it for the better. Hopefully we're pre-Luna so we can sort everything, and the tech I can see means that we can't be too far back, but another part of the timeline wouldn't be that bad.”I, or rather my body, loped out of the room. Rid of the various leads and monitors, the nurses didn't pay us much attention, and we were quickly out into the bustling streets of Canterlot. We moved along reasonably smoothly, and as the other one played quite the tourist, I had chance to think. While the sort of magical accident that he mentioned didn't sound impossible, it was also entirely possible that I was just suffering some after effects from the magical blast.Apparently the tourist-y look that my other self had adopted was not entirely by accident, as he had piloted us over to a patrolling guard and had begun interrogating him about navigating the city, the existence of public transportation, how to get to the local library from our present location, and how one might contact the Princess, should it become necessary. “Why are we heading to the library?”“Because that's where you should always go in situations like this. I'm a loner with a boring life and a boring job, I've had a lot of time to think about things like this. The first step, in a situation such as this, is to do research. Learn the lay of the land and a series of basic skills, as necessary, so that you can pass for a normal citizen. This head injury of ours is actually useful, since we can easily use it both to excuse strange behaviour and to elicit sympathy, should we need to get people on our side. For example, if the librarian asks why I'm looking up children's books on magic, I can mention the head injury, and say that I'm making sure nothing's gone missing when it comes to my knowledge of how to use magic, when in actuality I will be learning how to use an entirely new set of physical laws to my advantage. Oh look, we're here.”While my body began to explore the shelves of the Downtown Canterlot Public Library and practicing basic spells, I began to think about whatever was currently sharing my brain. Based on what it had said, it was from some sort of four-limbed, bipedal race, had never before used magic, if it even existed wherever it was from, and yet was familiar enough with Canterlot and with pony society to be able to blend in and convince everypony that it was simply a tourist from some far-away village that had decided to take a trip to Canterlot and sightsee. This meant that whatever they were, they were apparently capable of blending in to pony society without arousing suspicion extremely well, had been for enough time that even someone who seemed to be an average citizen knew a lot about us, and were capable of some advanced mind magics, capable of inserting an entire new mind into an occupied one without being detected and with no trauma.“You realise that I can still sense your thoughts even when we aren’t conversing, right?”Oh horseapples. It can read my internal monologue.“Yes, I can. And for the record, I’ve never used magic because my species disproved its existence ages ago, none of us have ever visited here as far as I know, and I’ll explain my knowledge to you later when we aren’t in public. Speaking of which, where do we live now that the house blew up? What’s floated up from your memory leads me to believe that we haven’t legally hit the age of majority yet, and all our ID went up in smoke, as did our valuables and money, so we can’t get a cheap hotel room until we sort out permanent arrangements, which leaves us with somewhat of a dilemma, doesn’t it?”“Oh. I suppose that would be a problem. I guess… I guess we can stay at Uncle Crate’s for the next couple of months until we can go to the School for Gifted Unicorns and stay at the dorms there, then by the time we graduate we’ll be legally an adult and we won’t have anymore problems.”“Right then. I’ve got a rough handle on light and telekinesis, probably some muscle memory bleeding over from you, so you can have your limbs back for now to get us there. I have some thinking to do and it would be helpful to not be distracted by having to operate anything.”“Oh. OK then, to Uncle Crate’s.”**
