Taken

Twilight’s eyes grow wide. Oh shit. I really caught her off guard with my question. I didn’t really intend to do that…

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “That was probably too personal of a question-“

“Not really,” she says quietly. Her eyes are starting to slowly start going back to their normal dilation. “It’s natural for you to be curious…”

Something occurs to me. “Can ponies even fall in love with humans?” I hope this will allow Twilight to formulate a proper response, and it seems to be working. I can practically hear the gears in her mind turning.

“I don’t know,” she says, getting up and hopping down onto the floor. “Lyra would seem to think so, but then again she’s the supposed expert on all things human… Even though, come to think of it, she’s never seen one before…”

“Maybe she has,” I suggest. “You all have books in your world, don’t you?”

“Well, yes. I am Ponyville’s town librarian, and you can’t exactly have a library without books. I don’t think we have any human-related books though…”

I shrug. I’m at a bit of a loss. “Hey, hold on. There was a pony there with Princess Luna, that she called Lyra. She’s got a harp as her… what did Luna call it? A cutie mark?”

Twilight nods. “Cutie marks are basically physical representations of what each pony’s special talent is. For me, it’s magic; thus, the sparks that make up my own cutie mark.” Oh. That kinda makes sense. “And yes,” she continues, “Lyra’s cutie mark is a harp. She’s really talented at music.”

“So why is Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark a rainbow and lightning bolt?”

“Well, she’s the fastest flyer in all of Equestria, for starters. And the rainbow, I think, is indicative of how she got her cutie mark. She was able to pull off an aerial stunt called a Sonic Rainboom, which up until she did so, only one pony in history had ever been able to accomplish.” She chuckles. “Funny thing is, she’s done it once or twice since then, as well.”

“And Vinyl’s?”

She thinks. “No one really has much to do with her. She’s sort of the town oddball. She does a lot of DJ work in her spare time, her and her partner Octavia. I think her cutie mark is a reflection of that. And before you ask, Princess Luna’s mark-“

“Represents her role in raising the night. I kinda figured that much.”

She looks at me oddly again. That seems to be becoming more and more common as of late. “So you really did go to Equestria? You really did talk to Luna and the others?”

So she did have some doubt. “Yes, I did. Didn’t you confirm that with Luna or Celestia? Or have you not talked to them yet?”

“I talked to Luna for a minute, but she said she couldn’t stay long because she was coordinating the clean-up from the latest Changeling attack. She explained everything that she’d told you as well, though I think she was a bit more technical with me than she was with you.”

Fine by me. Technical shit confuses the hell out of me, anyways.

Suddenly, Twilight looks me straight in the eyes. “I don’t know, really…” is what she says.

“What don’t you know?” I ask. I think I know what she’s referring to, but in this particular case, I’m kind of channeling Discord a bit. I want to hear her say it for herself.

“I don’t know if I’m in love with you,” she says. “I… don’t even know what being in love feels like.”

This kind of surprises me. “You’ve never been in love with anyone? Not even Dash?”

“You keep mentioning her. Why? Is she in love with me? Did she tell you that?”

“Well not verbally, but she definitely was giving me those vibes. She even gave me a hug when I told them about how I’d saved you from that madman with the blade.” Something occurs to me. “Hey, speaking of… how is your side feeling?”

“No pain,” she answers, “but also no memories still…” A note of sadness tinged her voice.

“That’s really getting you down, isn’t it?” I ask. She nods solemnly. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Not unless that Flame of yours can restore memories…” she says as she looks around the trashed living room. “Man, he really did a number on this place…”

He? Oh. “Discord?”

She nods. “He just appeared out of nowhere. Just the force of his appearance trashed pretty much everything in here.” She starts using her magic to levitate everything back into its proper place.

I hate having to watch someone work and me just stand around, so I start helping her with the clean-up. Now that I’m involved, I also remember that I don’t like working in silence, so I ask her: “Do you think it’s possible? That Rainbow is in love with you?”

“It’s possible. She and I have known each other for a very long time. Besides, in our world, we don’t have any restrictions placed on relationships between members of the same gender. I mentioned Vinyl and her marefriend Octavia earlier; Lyra is also involved with another female pony, named Bon Bon.”

I smile widely. “That’s good… I’ve never had a problem with those sorts of things. Okay, here’s a better question: do you want her to be in love with you?”

“I don’t care whether or not she ever falls for me,” Twilight replies curtly. Shit, I think I hit a nerve. “Her feelings aren’t going to change the fact that I see her as nothing more than a best friend. Like I said, I’ve never had time for falling in love. My studies have always come first.”

“Oh yeah,” I reply, “your studies with Princess Celestia. What exactly does she have you study?”

About this time, she’s finished with the living room, so she goes to the couch and sits back down. I go and sit next to her. “In the beginning,” she says after a moment, “it was just the basics of magic. How to control my abilities and what not. When I relocated to Ponyville, my studies shifted to the power of friendship and how it relates to magic.”

“So in your world… Friendship is magic?”

She nods. “In a very real way, your relationship with your friends directly influences how strong your magic is. At least, that’s one conclusion I’ve come to.”

It’s only at this point that I realize that what she’s saying is really starting to piss me off. “So what, do you think that those who don’t have magic can’t have friends or something? Or that friendship can’t be magic to those who don’t have your kind of magic?”

“No, no…” she says hastily, “that isn’t what I intended to imply at all. I was just trying to say that in our world, friendship strengthens our magic. Besides, you have magic, too-“

“What, my Flame? Like I said, it can’t do anything offensive. It’s pretty much useless, don’t you think? I meant it when I said I wanted to protect you, and if I can’t do anything about that-“

“Being defensive can be just as protective as being offensive.” She sounds a bit exasperated. “Your healing me allowed me to regain consciousness. If I wasn’t awake, and Discord had attacked you, something could have happened to you… You could have died.”

I stand up. “If I’m weak, I might as well be dead.” I walk outside before Twilight can respond, and shut the door to be able to have some privacy. I reach into my pocket and pull out my cigarettes, lighting one up. I need to quit these things; I’m smoking way too much lately.

A voice echoes in my head: “Oh, you need that? You need to waste my gift to you?”

Discord… Fuck. Maybe I can communicate with him the way I did with Twilight. Telepathy, was it called? “It’s not a gift. It’s a death sentence. If I don’t die from the creatures, or from the cold, I’ll die from lung cancer from smoking so damn much.”

Discord laughs. “I didn’t tell you how much you needed to intake, nor did I even force you to partake in the first place. I just provided them for you. You could have turned them down.”

It’s a hard thing to admit to myself, much less Discord, but it needs to be said: “I’m weak.”

Discord ignores this apparently, instead choosing to ask me, “So how comes the transformation? It seems like my work is being done even in my absence.”

That reminds me of something I wanted to ask him. “So how are you here in this world, if your statue in Ponyville isn’t broken? Can you project yourselves across dimensions?”

“Oh, I can do much more than that,” Discord answers, “but that is not how I am appearing to you now. It is no magic at all, well not really. Indirectly, yes; directly, no.”

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

“So you think I’m getting closer to your goal?” I ask. “Shouldn’t that warrant a celebration like last time?”

Discord is silent for a moment, then he responds: “Not quite yet. However, I am willing to answer one question for you. Any question you’d like.”

My answer is immediate: “Where did you take Twilight and I? Where are we?”

Discord sighs. “You just will not let up off that, will you? I’m not going to tell you that. What I will say, is that your question doesn’t need to be ‘where are we?’ It needs to be ‘when are we?’”

That doesn’t make any sense. “Right now, of course. We can’t be any other time.”

I get the feeling that Discord is looking at me right now with a visage of pity. “Think about it,” he says. “I have to go. Happy trails.” I feel a sort of a severing of a link, and I’m pretty sure he cut off our telepathic link.

Once again, my cigarette’s burned down to the filter, so I flick it out into the yard and go to light up another one. I’ve got the cigarette to my lips and am about to fire up the lighter, when there’s movement from the woods in front of me. I stop for a moment and look up.

Wolves. Motherfucking wolves. Quite a few of them, too, from the looks of it. They’re coming out of the woods in droves. They’re fucking huge, too. Like, the size of Great Danes, huge.

Fuck my cigarette; I’m going inside. I hurry inside and close the door. Twilight greets me with, “You saw the wolves, too?”

I nod. “How are they that big?” She shrugs. “Great…”

Twilight looks at me with big eyes. “We have a bigger problem to worry about, though. Come look what I found.” She leads me into the kitchen and shows me a newspaper sitting on the countertop. “I was trying to make a sandwich but I dropped the knife, and when I reached into the trash can to get it… I found this.”

I look at the paper. It looks relatively old. “Okay, it’s an old newspaper. So what?”

“Look at the date,” she replies. I look at it, and immediately ice flows through my veins. Was this what Discord was talking about when he said I should be asking “when are we?”

I look at Twilight with fear in my eyes. “This has to be a joke. There’s no way this is real.” I swallow unsteadily.

“There’s no way we’re in the year 2073…”