A Shadow of Myself

"Goddammit! Why won't this stupid thing come off?! Are you actually tightening it?!"

"I'm trying to help! Give me a break, I not very good with my horn."

"Ahhh! Stop that! That hurts!"

"Sorry."

Andrea took a few deep breaths and looked at the hanging privacy curtain. The strap underneath her dress was practically cutting off circulation around her teets. Why had the dressmaker even put the strap over them?

"Go check to see if it's clear. I'm going to adjust my earrings and this thing should just fall off after I shrink down."

"You'll get tangled in your clothes."

"I'm tangled in them now! If this strap gets any tighter, it's going to rupture my internal organs."

"Jeez! Okay! I'm going to check. I'll let you know if it is clear. Stop being a drama queen."

"I'm not being a drama queen. It hurts!"

Charlotte went towards the curtain then paused and turned around. "Wait. How are you going to turn back to a centaur after turning into a pony? You said it takes forever for you to manipulate your earrings with your hooves."

"You can turn them," Andrea answered.

Charlotte gave her a skeptical look. "You want me to try manipulating those tiny little earrings with my horn? Do you want to have your ears bloodied?"

Andrea paused.Charlotte was right. She didn't want Charlotte messing with her ears. She might not have any ears after!

"Go find Sunset. She can do it," Andrea ordered.

"Sunset is tied up with the other guests," Charlotte reminded her. "You could turn human instead."

"I'll be stark naked!"

"There's no other humans here to care other than the creepy guy in the bird mask," Charlotte said, pointing a leg towards the curtain. "You aren't even going past the curtain for them to see before you shift back to centaur."

"I care. Go find someone else to come help me get this strap undone then!" Andrea snapped.

Charlotte blinked. "You want me to walk up to a total stranger and go, hey, can you please come undress my sister?"

"More or less, yes."

Charlotte rolled her eyes as she turned back towards the curtain. "Okay, I'll go see who looks most like a pervert. Be right back."

After her sister left, Andrea decided it might be best just to stand still. Moving around just made the strap dig in more. She hoped Charlotte could find someone fast. Charlotte looked the part of some noble unicorn, so maybe she could convince a unicorn who knew what they were doing to assist. Andrea could even tolerate the condescending attitude of the nobles if it meant not being in pain anymore.

It had started with her twisting around too fast and the strap moving. At that point, she had decided to forego the dress and try to take it off. There were plenty of these little privacy areas behind curtains at the gala, and she'd gone to the closest one. However, she had quickly gotten a reminder that her centaur form had additional downsides than just being big and being able to take permanent injuries; her ability to actually reach certain parts of her body. Her arms were only so long and her torso only able to bend and twist so much. Anything past about halfway back along her equine parts was just out of reach. That included her tail, anus, rear legs, and about half her undercarriage. She couldn't even wipe her ass in a normal way; she had to rub it up against something to clean it. Her lower forelegs were also primarily out of reach. The strap that secured her dress had been in one of these out-of-reach locations, and she had been foolish enough to try to nudge it along to try to get it in reach, but that had only caused it to dig into her. Charlotte's 'assistance' had only made things worse.

It took a few minutes for her sister to return, and the pony she returned with definitely didn't have a horn; she had webbed wings and a pith hat.

The pony blinked as she stared up at Andrea. "When you said sister, I was expecting another inept unicorn. So, which one of you is adopted?"

"Neither of us," Andrea said without thinking. "We're sisters; we're from Earth. Can you please help me get this strap off? It is underneath me. I can't reach it, and Charlotte isn't adept enough with magic to undo it."

The pony walked over and looked warily at Andrea's legs. "I can probably undo it, if you don't trample me. I don't like getting trampled by some evil mage's botched transformation experiment, it kind of ruins my day."

"I'm not an evil mage's botched experiment. I'm from Earth," Andrea insisted.

The pony lifted her dress and went underneath. She could feel the pony working on the strap with its wings. "That line might work on those stuck-ups out there, but I'm from New York, and I know Earth doesn't have abomination centaurs."

It figured that Charlotte would find an Earthling. "New Yorker, so that's your excuse for being rude."

"Nah, just rude. No need to bring New York into it. I could give you my tragic backstory, but nobody wants to listen to that. At least you're a little entertainment after a failure of an evening. Hold still."

The strap came undone and the pony quickly skirted out from under the skirt. Andrea grabbed the fabric and yanked, pulling the whole dress off.

"That feels sooo much better," Andrea said with relief. "Thank you."

The pony grinned. "You can thank me by giving a tiny donation to the Hallowed Shades Restoration Fund. Would be my third donation on the night, after each of the princesses. I had hoped Luna would be here. I could have guilt tripped her and would have given a big donation to help clean up her mess, but no such luck."

"I heard Flurry Heart's advisor say something about Hallowed Shades, and we heard some nobles talking about it being abandoned. What happened there? Why was it abandoned?" Charlotte asked.

The pony looked away. "Luna slaughtered almost all the ponies there, nearly driving my type of pony to extinction. A big part of what the restoration team has been doing these past few years is trying to put names to the skeletons and bury them. There are thousands of them in those halls. It's a slow process trying to identify a body that has just been sitting in a pile for a thousand years, trying to match bones to the right skeleton, trying to find any identifying items on the body and match it up with stuff in any of the abandoned households. They were enemies of Equestria, but they still deserve a proper burial. We're also trying to repair damage to the structures, but sifting through the dead is the hardest part. Takes a lot of hours and a lot of ponies working on it. None of them want to do it, the task is grisly, so it takes a lot of pay to get them to do it."

"Why even do it if no one wants to be involved?" Andrea asked.

The pony shrugged. "I always had an interest in Equestria's ancient history. I spent a lot of time reading about it when I was a filly when I first came to the Crystal Empire. The Hallowed Shades had existed long before it fell into darkness. It is the oldest surviving structure of old Equestria, even older than the Crystal Empire and the foundations of Canterlot, and was a wonder of engineering in its day, it still is. What those ponies did late in its history isn't something to be proud of, but there was a lot of history before that. There are murals and inscriptions within the complex telling about parts of Equestria's history that have all but been lost, so in a way, it is part of all our history. My tribe deserves to have their ancestral home restored to them, and make it something to be proud of again."

Andrea actually found this interesting. "How old are we talking? Like ancient Egypt type stuff?"

"Older," the mare replied. "The reign of Grogar the Terrible went on for a very long time. We aren't sure how long, but it spanned multiple millenia. During his reign, wild transformative magic influenced the wildlife, and the proto-ponies were one of these species that was influenced. They grew more intelligent, and developed different characteristics in different regions."

"And the ponies of your tribe were one of those types?" Andrea asked.

The mare shook her head. "No, but one type, now extinct, which we'll call mountain ponies, developed wings. Early in their tribal development they had a choice to make. The monsters of Grogar were everywhere, and to find safety they had to choose whether to go higher up the mountains or down below them. The mountain ponies split, and what would evolve into my tribe went down into the caves while the others went higher into the mountains. The two groups developed in isolation from one another, honing different magics and skills, developing completely different characteristics and inborn magic from one another as the centuries went on. The tribe that went up the mountains became the pegasi. A comparable split happened with the unicorns and kirin from their shared ancestor, and there were other pony types that may seem alien to us due to their anatomy that didn't survive the Age of Grogar. Other proto-ponies were twisted into monsters, like the wendigos."

Charlotte raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You're saying ponies are related to the monsters that tried to wipe out ponies in the Hearth's Warming story? Do you have any actual proof of that? It seems like something most Equestrians wouldn't want to believe."

The mare pulled her pith hat down slightly. "Um, not any concrete proof, just what the inscriptions in the Hallowed Shades read, and those were made long after the fact. The Shades was occupied more than a thousand years before the first forms of their old script emerged to record their oral traditions. They are the oldest records of history we have though. Pegasi didn't start writing until Gusty the Great visited them from Unicornia, and that is late, because the oldest unicorn writing is just depictions of spell runes, and they didn't have a fully fledged writing system until near the end of the Grogar Era. The oldest earth pony writing is almost as old as the writing in the Shades, but that writing is universally receipts for business transactions– how many bushels of hay so and so got for so many carrots, not history. The oldest writing in the Crystal Empire also dates around the time of Gusty the Great, and we haven't even found kirin writing that predates the Two Sisters. The oldest texts in the Shades predate Gusty by several centuries."

"That's a lot of stuff that I don't care much about," Charlotte muttered, then looked at Andrea. "Hey, isn't Phobia's wife really into history? Sounds more like her thing. Maybe this pony should go talk to Phobia, so she has something to do other than terrorize me."

"Well, the most recently put out to pasture Dreamwarden isn't here, and that was my best pitch I could give for the historical significance of the Hallowed Shades. Ready to donate?" the mare asked.

"You were doing good up until just now. Do you always end your pitches like that?" Andrea asked.

"When I don't think I'm getting any cash," the mare replied in a dejected tone. "You two don't seem like you have any more money than you've got common sense. Tonight's been a waste. Could have gotten the princesses' donations without attending the stupid party."

"Aren't their donations enough?" Charlotte asked.

"Little known fact, the princesses don't actually have that much money," the mare said with a laugh. "I mean, everything they have is paid for by Equestria. They don't need money. Aside from the three of us, they're probably the most dead broke ponies at this party."

"So can't they just have the government fund your restoration thingie?" Andrea asked.

The mare shook her head. "That falls under government philanthropic spending, and they have given money from that. There's all kinds of rules about what types of organizations can get what amount, and mine is not classified as one that can get larger sums. I got enough from them to pay my workers through the season, but come winter, I don't have a clue how I'm paying them. I could let them have the season off, but workers who are gone a full season tend not to come back."

Charlotte pursed her lips thoughtfully. "You know… Sunset might be interested in helping. She's always interested in anything odd that others might dismiss. She also has a way of making things happen."

The mare blinked. "The fancy magic school's new headmare? Why would she have any interest in something that doesn't involve unicorns and their magic?"

"You'd be surprised," Andrea said with a chuckle. "She once spent two months reading every book and scientific paper on dendrology that she could find, and got mad at us if we interrupted her. She spent another six months, every weekend, going over star charts and math with this famous physicist that's her niece, but she still can't name a constellation other than the Big Dipper. I also saw her reading a book once that was all about sweating blood. Sunset gets weird about what she takes interest in."

"That does seem to be a rather eclectic group of interests," the mare replied. "No harm in asking, I suppose."

Andrea noticed her sister was frowning and seemed lost in thought. "Something wrong, Charlotte?"

Charlotte shook her head. "Just thinking about something The Marshmallow said. Feels like there's a bigger picture that I'm missing, and I don't know how to put the pieces together." She gave a frustrated stomp. "I wish I had Sunset's mark. She'd figure it out without even having to work at it."

Andrea smirked. This was rich. "Here I thought you were going to spend your life trying not to be like Sunset; now you're wanting the same mark."

Her little sister glared at her. "I have no desire to have a Bible on my flank, thank you very much, but yeah, I'm jealous she can figure out things that I can't! Are you happy? I said it!"

Andrea raised her hands in a calming gesture. "You know she has a lifetime of experience and learning you don't. Even counting just the years she's been a pony, she still has more years than you. I can assure you, there is no way she could have figured out everything she can at your age. You probably actually have a heads up on her in terms of where she was at your age."

"I know I implied you are a stupid loser, and I haven't ruled that out, but even I wouldn't expect anyone at this party, except maybe the princesses, to have more magic knowledge than the headmare of the unicorns' special school," the other mare added in.

"It isn't just magic, it's everything," Charlotte said, breaking down crying. "Every single thing, she's better at it, and every single day I get the constant reminder that I'm crap compared to her. If she had been in that hall with Kristin, Kristin would be alive right now. If it had been me in that hall, I would have just been an extra grave. I'm useless! I can't even undo a damn fucking strap on a dress!"

The curtain swung aside and revealed Sunset, looking dour. Behind her, ponies were staring. Charlotte must have gotten too loud.

"I know this looks bad, and I can make ponies cry sometimes, but I had nothing to do with this," the webbed-winged mare said quickly, cringing behind Andrea.

Sunset looked at Charlotte then looked at Andrea. "Andrea, Jimsonweed, go to Flurry Heart and await my return."

"I said I had nothing to do with this!" the mare protested again. She then stuck her head out from behind Andrea. "And you know my name?"

"Flurry Heart was talking about you. I have business with you later. Go to Flurry Heart and wait for me. I will attend Charlotte," Sunset replied firmly, gesturing with her head to scat. "Out! This is no concern for anyone but me and Charlotte."

Andrea hesitated briefly, partly concerned for her sister, partly unsure if she should grab her discarded dress. It was only briefly since she decided the dress could burn for all she cared, and Charlotte and Sunset really did need to have a talk. Jimsonweed didn't hesitate; she was already out from the private area and into the crowd.

"Please, help her sort herself out," Andrea said as she passed Sunset. "She's the only sister I have left. I don't want her miserable."

Sunset didn't say anything. She just nodded, and Andrea left, hoping that Charlotte's older self could talk some sense into her.

Charlotte didn't know why Sunset had made everyone leave if the unicorn was just going to teleport the two of them somewhere else. Almost as soon as the curtain had closed, Sunset had lit her horn, and they were suddenly standing in a private sitting room with a few small couches and bookshelves. Where this room was and how Sunset knew it would be unoccupied were mysteries. The shiny walls and furniture were all crystal, so they were still in the Crystal Empire, and it all looked expensive, which probably meant they were still somewhere in the Crystal Spire.

"Take a seat," Sunset instructed, but not harshly. "Crying is easier when you're laying down."

"I don't need to cry," Charlotte said defiantly, wiping her eyes.

"Horseshit," Sunset snapped. "We all need to cry. Crying is important. It helps release stress that we are holding. Do you think it is baked into our biology and psychology because we don't need it?"

Charlotte sneered at her other self. "Hypocrite, I never see you cry."

The older mare sighed. "I do. I cry daily. It's as routine as my prayer. You just don't see it. It's okay to avoid crying in front of strangers. Crying, like prayer, is a highly personal thing. Something you shouldn't make a public spectacle by doing. I have taken you somewhere private. If you prefer, I will turn my back to you so I don't see, but you need to let yourself cry."

Charlotte reluctantly climbed onto one of the couches. She was tempted to pull the necklace off, no one was around, but if getting tangled in human clothes was a pain when switching from human to pony, it was probably even worse switching from pony to human while wearing pony clothes. Due to the size difference she might strangle herself or cut off her circulation rather than just get tangled. Taking her dress off would resolve that, but that was just too much work right now.

"Yet another thing you can lord being better at than me,'" she muttered as she put her head down on the cushion.

Sunset groaned. "Do we really need to have this conversation right now? Maybe we do."

"Yeah, tell me how much of a disappointment and failure I am," Charlotte said, starting to cry again.

Her other self climbed up on the couch beside her, sat down, and touched a hoof gently to Charlotte's back. "You are not a disappointment or failure. You're young, and have a chance to live a much better life than me. Whatever the future holds for you, it has to be better than the life I lived "

"By opening portals and letting intradimensional invaders in?" Charlotte questioned bitterly.

"We're aware of the issue and we're dealing with it," Sunset replied, then started stroking her back. "I'm always so surprised you don't take the time to learn about the life I lived."

"I know about the whole Shimmerist thing, and Tonya, and why all those radicals hate you," Charlotte muttered.

Sunset nodded. "So you do, and that should be bad enough to say that you will never make those kinds of mistakes, but what about before all that? I had a whole life before I was a pony."

Charlotte honestly didn't know much about that chapter in Sunset's life. Documentaries didn't focus too much on it. They spent most of their time talking about her life from ETS on.

"I know you were a Sunday school teacher. You were married to a man. You had Phobia Remedy with him," Charlotte listed off. Those were mentioned frequently.

"My husband's name was Tom, Tom Gilmore," Sunset replied in a quiet voice. "I did love him, even if I was never truly attracted to him. I might be a lesbian, but you can't spend decades with someone and share so many moments together without developing some form of bond. He was a good stallion before he passed, a better stallion than he was a man, and a good father to his three daughters. Aside from Tonya and Mèng, I've never cried so much when someone died. He wasn't my husband any longer, and hadn't been for decades, but he was still an important part of my life."

"Okay, so why is that important to me?" Charlotte asked.

"Because one of the earliest things I did wrong as a pony was try to ruin his life," Sunset said bitterly. "Oh, I could have tried to justify it under my old Shimmerist beliefs that being a pony was better for him, but it doesn't hold water. I had happily let the Equestrians do their rehumanization to others. If someone didn't want to be a pony, they clearly weren't worthy, or at least, that's what me from back then would have said. Him, he had a chance to be one of the early test subjects, and I completely fucked it over for him for no other reason than spite. Being a pony might have worked out for him in the end, but my goal was to make him miserable. That's the kind of person I was."

"You just said you cared so much about him," Charlotte replied in confusion. This wasn't something that made it into the documentaries. "Why'd you do it?"

Sunset shrugged. "I was angry, and you should know that we can be cruel as hell when we're angry. Well…I can be. I've seen you get nasty, but not nasty like me. That wasn't the worst thing I ever did when angry, and that's a very shameful thing to admit. Did you know I once tried to pressure one of my best friends, one that was trying to turn her life around after a life of crime, into committing murder? That doesn't make it into the histories either. The details of that crime are sealed by the wardens. Sha'am Maut herself presided over that case, and ended up pressuring me into a bad deal to get Tonya off the hook for a crime that was ultimately my fault."

Charlotte hadn't heard that one before either. Murder? Cover-ups? Why were the wardens even involved with that trial? What deal had been struck with the most infamously vile of the old wardens?

"I am off track," Sunset said before Charlotte could ask. "I was a horrible human who became a horrible pony. The things I did to Phobia when she was young…and to Tonya. The hateful things I said. The dumb decisions I made. I became a human-hating Shimmerist because I saw my life as the template for humanity, and I despised myself. Because I projected my faults on humanity, I decided to hate humanity."

"You mentioned getting an abortion before," Charlotte said.

"Yeah… that set me deep down a self-hating path," Sunset said mournfully. "It was a path I already was on, but that's when it got really bad. I can say that's what led me to find God, but that's a lie. It led me to surround myself with people that did the same blasphemy I did– using the Lord's name to condemn others while I lived a hateful life. I didn't find God until Tonya died. I prayed all the time before then, but they were the prayers of one who didn't know him."

Sunset looked down at Charlotte, tears in her eyes. "My dear, naive, young me, you have your moments of rage, but you're not as cruel and nasty as I was. I cry daily because I have so much to repent for, and so much that I have done that I can never make up for. I know you feel like a lesser version of me, but I got where I am due a never-ending stream of shameful and regretful moments and mistakes, moments and mistakes I hope you never have. When you reach my age, I want you to look back and see a life that you can be proud of, not a mountain of sin to atone for. You may be an angsty teenager, but I was that too, once upon a time. Be better than me. Don't bury yourself in self-hate. You inevitably end up projecting it on everyone else."

Charlotte turned away, crying more now. "Kristin is dead because of me. If I had-"

Sunset cut her off. "If I had just been quicker to get into that hall. Don't think for a second that you aren't the only one wishing they had done something different. Nightjar wishes she could have kept my grandson happier, so Mèng didn't feel the need to go upstairs to get that silly stuffed animal. Your parents and my sister all wish they could have gotten Kristin alone to talk to her so she wasn't wandering around the house like she was. I wish I had been a few seconds faster getting into that hall and that I had just sent everyone away. Why didn't I do that? It was so stupid! Don't blame yourself for what happened. It will only lead to you blaming everyone else for what happened too, and we're all hurting."

Charlotte buried her face into Sunset's flank and cried more heavily. "I…I don't even know the last thing I said to her. I think it was telling her I would go check on you, right before the funeral, but I'm not sure. I should have said something else. I-I should have told her I love her."

"When our loved ones are present in our lives, we fail to tell them daily how much we value them. When they die, we tell empty rooms on a daily basis how much we miss them and need them. Such is the irony of love," Sunset said in a low voice.

Sunset then bent down and kissed Charlotte on the forehead. "I love you, and want to see you live a good life. Stop comparing yourself with me. You shouldn't ever want to be as much of a failure as me. Make sure you tell your parents and your sister how much you love them, because you never know when the last time you'll get a chance will be. Can you do that? Not for me, but for yourself?"

"I can do that," Charlotte whispered. She was going to tell Sunset thank you, but the words caught in her mouth as another round of sobs escaped her, and she instead kept her face buried in Sunset's fur as the older unicorn continued to soothingly pet her.

And so they stayed that way for most of the duration of the gala.