Into the Twilight
by Fuzzyfurvert
This is a story about the sometimes hidden truth inside idioms. Those innocuous phrases we find ourselves uttering every day as a way to handwave details through metaphors and simile. This is story about a girl learning the truth embedded in one saying she’s heard hundreds of time before in a past life.
This is a story about Sunset Shimmer, on a bus ride into...the Twilight Zone.
~~~
Sunset dropped her backpack into the empty rear-most seat on the school bus and took her spot next to it. In front of her, the next three rows of bench seats filled with her friends and their own packs and instruments as everyone filed onboard. The students of Canterlot High chatted boisterously, alive with the very idea of the impending weekend starting as soon as they stepped back off this yellow transport. Sunset pushed her bag against the bus wall, under the window, leaning against it to get comfortable. Puddles splashed up onto the curb as the bus pulled away from the school before it gained speed and merged with the city’s evening traffic.
Conversation between the girls quickly turned from their last class to the study session that was likely to devolve into a movie night for them once the bus reached Applejack’s stop. Sunset let the chatter fade into the background and found her eyes drifting up toward the sky and the grey clouds that still hung wet and heavy overhead. Memories of pegasus weather ponies pushing and sculpting storm clouds in Equestria filled her mind as her math homework took a backseat in her brain. The rain was light at the moment and clearing up, blue sky peeking out between towering thunderheads.
If she let her eyes unfocus, she could imagine ponies up above, in those clouds, guiding rivulets of water that turned into airborne streams and rivers that cascaded through the mist until it was ready to drop. She could remember visiting a rain factory once, when Cloudsdale had drifted close to Canterlot. They were due an inspection by the Princess and she’d gotten to tagalong. The spell that allowed her to walk on the clouds tingled her hooves, but she could recall standing just behind the Princess, staring at the floating water while Celestia greeted the factory workers and asked polite, unimportant questions.
The bus turned off the Canterlot Turnpike, pulling Sunset out of that sad place as it trundled down the exit ramp. The asphalt switched to rougher surface streets lined with houses and tiny swamps for yards. Raindrops splattered against the window with ever shift of the wind, the droplets magnifying small parts of the cracked sidewalks and colorful passing cars. Sunset rocked along with the ride, her breathing steady as the rhythm of the wheels on the bus going ‘round and ‘round. There was another sharp turn before the first stop of the trip, and when she rocked back, Sunset’s gaze climbed back up into the sky where some of the blue between the clouds was starting to trend toward gold. The moisture up in the air was a visible haze, and when the bus turned, the sunlight caught there and split into its component colors.
She blinked sleepily at the rainbow, her thoughts dragged back to Princess Celestia, the motherly titan of ponydom. Back to the time when that name didn’t make her feel lost, but kept her warm and secure. Long before their falling out, before she abandoned Celestia’s path for her, Sunset would find herself hanging on the Princess’ every utterance. In part due to respect, but also partly to tease out every meaning. Celestia loved word play. It made her an excellent politician, and an even better teacher to somepony that wouldn’t rest until she reached the bottom of any mystery. Somepony who hunted for the hidden hints that would guide her to power and ever greater skill.
Ironically, it was one such utterance, Celestia commenting off-hoof about mirrors reflecting a pony’s potential that contributed to Sunset finding the portal to the human world. Of course, not every phrase of the Princess’ held meaning beyond the obvious. Sometimes it was just the Princess’ way of filling the air between them, or to prod Sunset on to her next point without being curt. But one ubiquitous phrase in particular had always struck her as peculiar in the way Celestia used it.
“My little pony.”
Sunset yawned, her jaw popping in her ears and turned the phrase over in her mind behind lowering eyelids. It was a simple phrase that spoke of both Celestia’s undeniably large physical stature. It referenced her position as a universal mother figure to all Equestria. Still Sunset felt there was some greater undiscovered truth she’d never been able to tease out of it. Something primal and powerful.
Sunset blinked slowly, watching raindrops pepper the window between her and the elements. The gears of her mind were turning slowly and not for the first time, she wondered what the human equivalent to the phrase would be. Translation was more an art than a simple one-to-one replacement of words to neighs and whinnies. In her time in the human world, Sunset had found the multiple languages spoken by the myriads of humans to be versatile and capable as anything pony-created. But try as she might, the best she could manage with that persnickety phrase was ‘My small people.’
Which didn’t really sound right to her ears.
The bus hit a pothole, sending Sunset tumbling off the end of her seat and onto the hard rubber floor between the rows of seats. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision of the doubles the fall left her with, catching the last flash of colorful hair as her friends thundered off the bus and left her behind.
“Must have fallen asleep for a bit.” Sunset pulled herself up groggily, wobbling down the aisle after the girls. The bus was eerily quiet now, all the other students gone, empty seats passing by at eye level. “I could have sworn we weren’t even to the first stop. I must have passed out harder than I thought.”
Sunset picked up speed as she went, trying to make it before the driver continued on along the route. The aisle stretched out in front of her like a track before reaching the cliff-like steps that led out into the world. The white lined edge of the stairs loomed a mile-wide when she reached it, the floor dropping out of Sunset’s sight into the mists below.
She craned her neck out over the edge, scanning for purchase on the smooth surface. Nothing stood out to her and she looked back up into the huge doorway. Beyond it, Sweet Apple Acres was a smear of colors, the details hazy and undefined. She could still clearly make out her friends though, entering the farmhouse one by one, conversation buzzing between them.
“Why are these steps so high?” Sunset shivered, glancing back down. “How will I ever catch up to them?”
“That’s for you to find out. This is your stop, Miss Shimmer.”
“What?” Sunset turned around cautiously, looking up into the clouds at the bus driver. Wavy rainbow hair poured from under a slightly off-white cap, filling the air around a face as bright as the sun. Bus Driver Celestia smiled that soft smile of hers and leaned down from her high seat. Up close, her face filled Sunset’s view.
“This is your stop. Go be with your friends. You don’t have to hang on to me any longer, my little pony.”
Sunset knit her brows and looked down at herself. At her tan coat. At her hooves. They were barely big enough to keep her from falling into the ruts in the formed rubber floor mats of the bus aisle.
“This is truth, Miss Shimmer.”
“That I’m a pony...the size of a guinea pig?” Sunset fell back on her dock, and looked back out after her titanic friends as they vanished into the house one after the other. “Are we really this small? I always thought...that maybe it was a more one to one scale? Is this what you meant? Literally?”
“You are only as little as you let yourself be.” Bus Driver Celestia nodded after the other girls. “You have never been one to let something like size keep you from your goals. I love that about you, Sunset. So stop holding yourself back. Go be with the people that call you their friend and be as big as you can be.”
The bus shook violently, hitting a pothole. Sunset jolted upright, reaching out to grab the back of the seat in front of her. The bus came to a stop a moment later and her friends started grabbing their bags. Sunset blinked a few times, realigning herself with a world suddenly smaller. She gripped her own backpack and followed the rest of them to the front of the bus. The stairs were a lot shorter now.
Sunset walked down them, the last in line among her friends and took a deep breath of wet, fragrant air. The rain had stopped at some point, the sun breaking through the clouds to paint the sky in reds and gold. She shook off the last hints of her dream, focusing on the here and now and not her past. Sunset turned, looking back over her shoulder at the bus and gave the bus driver a smile.
She got a tip of the cap and a flash of rainbow colored hair in return.
