Third Try’s the Charm

Twilight Sparkle sheathed the enchanted blade and put her hoof on her chin.

“That should have worked,” the alicorn Princess said thoughtfully.

The mint green stallion facing her was still staring eyes agoggle, his white mane tossed from the startle he had received. Despite the cool air, he felt a flush of sweat on his skin. The princess’s grim athame, wielded without warning, suggested the memory of a cruel refrain, ‘along not across’. The residual ache—

“You see,” she interrupted his morbid flashback, “I expected it to cut between dimensions so you could slip through and return home.”

That explained her sudden shout, swearing to send him ‘where he belonged’. He had flinched as the blade passed past him, edging away from the sharp extremity of the ceremonial knife. There may have been some draw pulling him towards a world he had escaped, a clammy suction he had resisted.

“How was that supposed to work?”

“Do you know anything about higher dimensions?”

“Nah, I said I do numbers—” he shrugged towards his cutie mark “—but it’s accounting, not physics.”

“The higher dimensions are empty, but the dimensions we actually use are all crumpled up, and distant locations, such as your home world, are right next door if you can find a way to jump across. Does that make sense?”

“Sorry, no, I don’t follow that.”

“Okay, let’s use the string analogy.” She accepted a length from her butler, who silently bowed as he passed it over. “Say that this string is a one dimensional universe. If you want to get from one end to the other, you have to travel all the way along the string. But—” she wadded the string into a tangled ball “—now you can just jump across. Get it?”

“Maybe? And three dimensional space is crumpled up like that?”

Without a glance in his direction she returned the string to the butler who bowed again and silently departed before she could start her monologue.

“Well, the material universe occupies seven physical dimensions not just three, but yes, and according to a physicist I once knew back in Ponyville, she explained that the seven dimensions are crumpled up in an infinite number of higher dimensions. The more dimensions you fold into, the smaller the universe seems to get, so as the number of folds tends towards infinity, the size (and thus the distance between any two points) tends towards zero. The trick would be making the right cut, and I was expecting the enchanted blade to do that for us. Otherwise you could literally land anywhere.”

“Have you ever done this before?”

“No, I had to give it a try! I’ve never been to the planet Chiron, or else I could just open a normal portal and walk you to your own door myself. If you had stayed human when you came to Equestria it’d probably be a lot easier to track your home down.”

If he had appeared here as a human, he wondered, would the ponies would have welcomed him so warmly? Would they have taken him in to live among them as a friend and equal? He knew that the human culture on Chiron wasn’t evil, it just hadn’t worked for him, nor he for it. But this life did. He had received so much friendship, and found himself able to give it as well, that he truly felt that he was part of the community. After only a short year, Equestria felt so much like home he had come within a hair’s breadth of asking a mare to marry him. Instead, his case of displacement had come to the Princess’s attention.

“Uh, thank you for trying, your Highness.”

Maybe this escape was only temporary.

“Puh-lease, Vingent. With a Queen reigning in Canterlot, and me out of the running for the throne, there is no need to be so formal addressing a purely administrative princess. This is just an individual consultation, not a fancy ceremony with lords and ladies and titles and bullshit. You’ll know when it’s time to be formal: you should see me in a crown.”

“Sorry, uh, Twilight. The ponies of Greenburg really respect you a lot and I kinda picked up on it from them.”

The princess lost focus for a moment, staring dreamily into space.

How could this dorky mare, now zoning out with a half-smile on her face, be one of the great heroes he had heard so much about during his time in Equestria?

“Ah, they’re good ponies,” she said, snapping back into the moment, “I love them all. You picked a great place for a temporary residence.”

“What if it wasn’t t—”

“Now don’t you worry, I’ll have you back home one way or another! We’re done here for today, but I’ll have another spell ready, same pony time, across the same pony channel, tomorrow. Grimmle can show you out.”

As if by magic the butler had reappeared at the door of Twilight’s magic workshop, infinitely dignified despite the dirt in his mane and the basket of potatoes now balanced on his back. Apparently everypony at the tiny castle wore more than one hat.

—

“Don’t you worry,” the stallion piloting the small boat out into the greenish water of the lake boasted. “Even if today didn’t work out, once the Princess puts her mind to something, nothing can stop her!”

That, Vingent reflected, seemed to the the universal opinion. Nothing could deter their princess from her chosen task, and everypony was very proud of her determination. She certainly gave every indication that she was the type of fixer who gets her hooves on a problem and works it to death.

Ha, ha.

Death.

—

“You’re still here!”

Carren had been moping in her front yard when Vingent appeared at her gate. Absently snipping the buds off her rose bushes, she had left the faded blooms drooping where they hung. Dropping clippers, she ran across the yard to talk to him.

“Did she say if it’s impossible?”

“Impossible?” Vingent strove to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I don’t think Twilight knows the word.”

“The Princess,” she stressed the correction subtily, “is incredible, but does she really need to—”

“She’ll have another spell to try tomorrow. Nothing’s going to stop her.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, it just seems inevitable.”

She reared to throw her forelegs around him, held him with more fervency than she had shown on any of their dates. But he stiffened in her embrace – a moment later he pulled back from her.

“Why are you pushing me away?” she cried, eyes threatening to overflow.

“I’ll be gone soon! And if we get any closer it’s just gonna hurt you that much more.”

He turned away to hide his own tears.

“I’m sorry.”

Wilted petals drifted down, covering the clippers and buds.

—

“No luck?” the boss asked.

“Well, I guess it depends whose definition of luck. Do I still have a job? I’m not quite done fixing all your accounts.”

“Of course you do! However long it takes, you’re the best accountant I’ve ever hired. It’ll be a shame to lose you. It’s almost like you have some special talent for this.”

“Funny story about that.”

Cardale had been one of several ponies to mistake Vingent’s cutie mark for a landscaping diagram, and had offered him relevant employment. It was a step up, but having eventually traded in a shovel for a pencil and ledger, the newcomer had provided far more valuable service than that of a landscaper.

They shared a laugh at the memory of that mix-up.

“Er, what about you and—”

“I haven’t done anything dishonorable with your daughter, sir. I swear.”

Carren’s sire didn’t doubt Vingent’s word, to the best of his knowledge their dates had been quite chaste and proper. But only a fortnight before, he could also have sworn that he saw the younger stallion at the jeweler's shop.

The silence grew heavy and awkward.

Both had more to say.

Neither did.