Terramar.
“Earth and sea.”
It had to be some sort of joke.
He was still wet from his enthusiastic burst of shapeshifting. Shivering, Terramar stood at the edge of the festivities that every other hippogriff seemed so eager to take part in.
“We're sorry if we ever made you think you had to choose between worlds. That wasn't our intention, honey.”
His mother’s voice still ran through his head like it was the shorebreak in the storm; or maybe it was more like thunder echoing in Harmonizing Heights; or perhaps it was like something else entirely. It hurt his head like both, yet felt truly like neither at all.
He had walked with them down the wavebreak for a moment before his father had excused himself to rejoin a race above the beach. Princess Twilight Sparkle had even joined in on that one after a moment, it seemed. Oceanflow stayed with him for a bit, and he had hoped that she would say something about it to him.
All she said was “I love you” before reaching up to give him a side hug from the shallows and sinking beneath the waves to swim back to her friends.
That was it though, wasn’t it? They hadn’t made him choose between worlds; the choice had already been made.
The deception was if he should choose between Mount Aris and Seaquestria. The truth of that matter was that his parents were right. He didn’t have to choose between these two. He could go back and forth between them as he pleased.
What he couldn’t go back and forth between was the world he had lived in then, and the world he lived in now.
There was no physical separation there—in fact, he had stood here on the beach in this exact spot so many times before. He and his parents had traveled along the shoreline exactly as they just had so, so many times.
The separation was the time he could never go back to.
The two worlds were the one he had gotten used to, the one where his parents still nuzzled one another and laughed and talked and when their eyes met, you could feel the electricity around them. The one where they rested together, nestled in a bed of kelp and trying to keep themselves quiet while he and his sister played in the rooms beside.
And the one where it had all been faked, the curtain drawn and the show over, the actors taking off their costumes and breaking character at long last. Where the truth of it was that nothing is forever, and that the supposed magical and eternal constant was dependant on an ephemeral chemical whose potency began to fade the instant it was metabolized.
Maybe it was the curse of his age. He knew through logic that it wouldn’t actually last forever. He’d grow used to this in time, and it would fade into the background.
Terramar hadn’t been kidding when he told the Cutie Mark Crusaders that no one really had problems here. Even minor squabbles seemed almost non-existent since the defeat of The Storm King—hippogriffs and seaponies had come to embody a very docile and easy-going nature, for the most part.
It was that, perhaps, that he could link his troubles to. It would be so easy—as he watched Princess Twilight twist and cavort around the sky alongside his father, he could feel a terrifying swooping sensation in his gut as if he were spinning and twirling right beside them. She had brought the Storm King down, not moments after she had stumbled into their world to begin with. Without her, none of this change would have ever taken place.
Terramar also knew that this was a ridiculous thought, yet one he could not help having. He knew that his father, despite his jubilant nature, had always yearned to return to his hippogriff form. Long before Twilight had appeared. He had told him stories when he was still freshly hatched, about how they used to soar through the sky on fantastic wings; used to echo their screeches off the highest heavens; and used to be able to practically arc around the circumference of the earth.
Asinine exaggerations—he had loved them when he was younger.
Now, having seen the price for having a fraction of them brought to life, Terramar wanted to punch himself in the stomach as hard as he could for being stupid enough to have loved them at all.
He still could blame Twilight for being the catalyst. He couldn’t blame her for how his mother had never shared his father’s enthusiasm for the sky. How, once given the ability to, they naturally drifted apart like foam on the water.
How everything changed.
No one really had any problems here except him. Sky Beak loved the mountain as a hippogriff. Ocean Flow loved the ocean as a seapony. Silverstream—well, he didn't want to think for her. Or about her. Or how it made her feel.
Because if it was half of anything he felt, that would break his heart.
Maybe they were all hiding their problems, or focusing on better endeavors. Being so self-centered only made him feel more alone, after all. And yet, there was something oddly validating in submerging himself in this mire of self pity.
At least there he had control.
But no matter how he tried to explain it away, he was still here. Still in the moment. Still watching his life slowly pass by him and change into something he didn’t recognize.
And it hurt.
His hooves hit the sand first. His talons fell against its soft caress, familiar and grounding, soon after.
The sand now was disgusting underneath him, the tiny granules rubbing him raw like a thousand urchins’ needles.
He looked first to his father, and then his mother, an elated grin and a swelling, swooping sensation in his gut like he hadn’t felt in so long filling him with warmth.
He looked behind him for just a moment, and instantly regretted it the moment he saw the small dot of his father gallivanting and soaring with the others around Mount Aris.
“So we’re a family again,” he said, hardly believing the words as they came from him.
A burning in the back of his head and a nearly overwhelming desire to smash something into billions of tiny fragments overcame Terramar. How could he have been so stupid?
Ocean Flow and Sky Beak glanced at one another. Still running wild from the high of excitement, Terramar barely registered the otherwise palpable unease that filled the air when the two met eyes.
He stared deep into the placid shorebreak, willing the waves to grow in intensity and the tide to surge forth with a wall of whitewater that better befitted his emotions. It refused to come; Terramar hadn’t expected it to.
“Terramar, sweetie...”
They never had to say anything more than that.
And yet—
“We never meant to make you choose between worlds.”
Earth.
“That wasn’t our intention, honey.”
And sea.
“That wasn’t our intention, honey.”
And sea...
“Terramar?”
Sea.
“You know we both love you more than ever, right?”
He didn’t.
“We both love you—”
‘I don’t need you to love me,’ he thought as the small waves continued to collapse on over each other and into the sand, the fluff of jetty brushing up against his talons. ‘Just each other.’
“That wasn’t our intention.”
Two worlds. A choice that was never his.
“We love you.”
He clenched his jaw and exhaled with so much force from his snout it hurt. The anger was a gale now, so intense that he paradoxically couldn’t even fully focus on the sensation of it.
“We're sorry if we ever made you think you had to choose between worlds.”
They hadn’t, but not because they hadn’t split him between worlds; it was because he hadn’t been given a choice.
He sighed. The fury faded.
Terramar looked around.
Here he was, alone: hooves in the sand, talons in the spray—stuck between two heavens, still dying.
