Old Mind, New Body

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.”