The sparkles of the portal fade away, and for the first time in days, Chester is back in a human body. Now that he has tasted alternatives, it's oddly difficult to go back to.

In truth, all three of them seem disoriented. Ember feels… diminished somehow?… as a wolf, and seems to feel that way herself, if the prickly pink stirring up in the background of her aura is any indication. Chester wouldn't have noticed it without going through the portal with her, but the same is true of Holds-the-Fire. Like Chester, she's returning to her own skin, but blunted teeth and stubby fingers just don't suit her. (Not to mention, her coverings of animal skins seem ill-fitting and gratuitous now that he's seen the sculpted curves of dragon scales.)

It occurs to Chester that that diminishment must be how both of them feel all the time. Holds-the-Fire is a wolf in a body never designed for it, and Ember… by Chester's standards, her dragon form seemed impossibly imposing and dangerous, but then he met her father, and, well.

Holds-the-Fire stares around the world of forests—Chester is increasingly adopting that term instead of the oddly pedestrian "human world"—in silence, a jumble of colors swirling. He picks out the bittersweet combination of pastel green saudade and indigo relief before her emotions sludgily resolve into simpler brown and white. She throws back her head, boosts her voice with the sparkles of bloodstone power, and a howl pierces the sky.

Birds startle, at first, but then the forest falls into a hush as her predatory voice carries. It slowly drops in tone, then wavers and dies. And in the hush of its wake, a chorus of distant howls echoes her greeting back.

She listens attentively until the voices die away, then turns to Chester and Ember. The pack is half a high-sun distant, ready to meet me at the creek headwaters. She hesitates, her colors exploding into uncertainty. I… should rejoin them. Perhaps Flutter-shy's magic is stronger than it appears, but I suspect Howls-Off-Key has become intolerable in my absence.

And… she's going to leave, just like that.

Chester feels a creeping pain in his chest. Holds-the-Fire's eyes flick past his form, and she bleeds out cream. But she looks back away.

At least until colors whirl back and forth between her and Ember. Chester misses most of it except the final one: Ember bristling with pointed rose-pink reproach.

"Before I go home and talk with Thorax," Ember announces, staring at Holds-the-Fire, "I need to water a tree. That's not any tree nearby. Because. Um." She glances around, her pink wavering until an idea hits her with a spike of caramel. "Because I've heard you're not supposed to pee within fifty wingspans of portals. And I'm not leaving without saying goodbye, so nobody had better move from this exact spot." She whirls and stomps off.

Chester watches her pace around a bush at the edge of the clearing and vanish into the woods. He turns back to Holds-the-Fire, who has gone a distressed, vivid orange. They stare at each other.

Her orange builds.

"Well," Chester says, trying to break the tension without opening the conversation. "She has the subtlety of a thrown rock."

Ember pops her head back around the bush. "And I'm going to be gone a while!" she caramel-shouts. "Did I mention that? It's going to be an extremely lengthy pee."

She vanishes again, and Chester refocuses. Neither his joke nor Ember's interruption have dented Holds-the-Fire's distress. In fact, she's fanning herself now with a hand. (Some tiny voice notes that if she had to pick up a mannerism from Ember, at least she picked the most adorable possible one.) The orange strengthens, messy and roiling.

Chester, too, feels anxiety build. This is textbook Ember (yet more of their bleedthrough, apparently). This is where it's his job to prod her, pop the bubble, vent the fear. But he knows he can't. Visions of Chryssy dance behind his eyes, along with the whispering temptation of wrapping Holds-the-Fire around his finger. All he has to do is speak up, and he can fix everything, and she'll love him, and all it will cost is that he'll never again know if she would have gotten there on her own.

He clenches his jaw, gut twisting. He can't.

Her orange finally breaks—into pink, then red. Chester freezes—then realizes it's self-directed, and then realizes that's no better than her being mad at him.

She turns away, simmering in fury at herself, and abruptly drops down into a ball, hugging her knees and rocking. The red bleeds into pain, but her teeth are clenched this time—letting off a tight hiss that sounds more like a distant rattlesnake than a sob.

Every voice in Chester's head is screaming at him to intervene and become history's worst monster. His resolve cracks. She's hurting.

No. Comforting her is over the line.

An odd acceptance settles over Chester as she rocks back and forth. She's not ready. They'll probably see each other again in the future, but if a full week together didn't fix this, he has no idea how much time apart a full repair will take. If he just accepts things are over, he can do her a final kindness and let it rest there.

… Okay, maybe he'll allow himself one question.

He walks slowly, deliberately, over to her side, and lowers himself to sit on the dirt alongside her. "Listen," he says, fighting to keep his emotions neutral despite his longing to comfort her—not certain whether it's alright to even let her see that. "I know I hurt you, back at the beginning, back at the boulder. If you don't want to talk, that's alright. I don't care what Ember says."

His words jolt her back to the beginning of the fear cycle. She marinates in orange again, freezing in her rocking motions but with her arms still clenched around her legs.

"I'll be here if you do. You can always find me at the ashram. But if we don't see each other again… I just wanted to say, thank you for everything."

Holds-the-Fire remains frozen in terror. But out of the corner of his eye—he doesn't dare look at her directly and ratchet her panic up even further—Chester catches a forced swirl of light blue. He's briefly confused why she would make a point of projecting vulnerability, until he realizes that's kind of a wolfy "yes".

His heart stirs. He crams it back in its cage. But he allows himself the question.

"Before we go," Chester gently says, "I'd like to ask one thing. It's okay if you don't answer, but I'd like to know. How come you helped me after you came to the ashram to find me?"

Colors start whirling against that orange backdrop. Chester sits in silence, letting her think. Long moments pass. He starts to brace himself for the possibility he won't get an answer.

But, finally, she stirs.

Because I did not understand, she orange-says.

Chester waits to see if clarification is forthcoming. Holds-the-Fire returns to rocking in silence. But this time, at least, the orange has been punctured and is slowly dwindling away.

"I'm not sure I do, either," he gently prods.

Holds-the-Fire rocks for a few moments longer, then closes her eyes and lets out a sharp breath through her nose. She slowly unfolds herself into a crouch alongside Chester's seated form. Her orange dissolves into white.

When you betrayed me there was no making sense of it, she white-says. It stuck as a bone in the throat. What I said was true—I came to see if you would perhaps exchange your… picture-box… for my fire. But in deeper truth, I came seeking answers. She finally turns to meet his stare, and her eyes are still pleading for them. Then I saw you, and you needed help, and… She trails off and looks back away, and once again, she seems disinclined to continue.

Love stabs Chester in the heart again. Of all the answers she could have given, that's the one closest to what he would have said in her shoes.

"You were born with normal out of reach, too," Chester says. "Everyone who's that way was born asking why." He chews his lip for a moment, and though he had told himself just one question, this one seems harmless. "Did you get your answers?"

I got my bloodstone back, she says, stirring up from white back into the whirling color maelstrom. And ever since, the questions have multiplied like fleas.

Chester nods, seeing if there's anywhere else she needs the conversation to go.

You requested an answer of me, so I shall request one of you, Holds-the-Fire says, her colors tentatively drifting into light violet. I made you pack, and you shared the secrets of your tools and your colors. Then both Ember and I cast you out. Yet you worked without rest to give us our bloodstones back. Why?

Despite her opening, it still feels wrong to put words to the truth: he loves her. Instead, he tries to say the same thing without the pressure.

"Because you deserved better," he says, and can't think of anything else to add.

Holds-the-Fire stands up—a bit of her orange returning, but not so much that she can't pace it off. The dam is broken, now, and she's starting to build up momentum.

I helped you with your challenge to Chris-sa in return, she says. She was a threat to us both, but the victory gave you a pack. To a wolf, this would reciprocate your gifts. But that feels… inadequate. Her colors shift to pink frustration. And I do not understand enough to know why.

"Listen," Chester says, "there's no need to—"

I am not done. She fixes him with a glare, orange spiking again, and tamps it back down. Ches-ter. I can no longer take you back into my pack. That comes with a brief tinge of yellow-gray regret. That would be an insult, now that you are a leader. That would be to say that my pack is greater than yours. But neither can I make the petition to join your pack—because I still have a duty to mine. And I can no more make my wolves human than you can make your humans wolves. Her pink frustration returns. There is no wolf solution to my problem.

Holds-the-Fire's colors begin to roil. Chester waits—this has the feel of her still not being finished.

He's rewarded by her shift into brown determination. But I see Ember learning from the ponies how to make her dragons greater, she says, and turns to face him squarely, staring into his eyes. So, I have not repaid your gifts and yet I must ask for more. I am sorry. But I beg you, keep teaching me how to human.

Chester's heart leaps. He orders himself not to read into it anything more than just what she said. But it means she still wants him around. That's far better than it looked like the conversation was going to go.

… Still might want him around. He reminds himself to keep this just about teaching, and forces himself to play devil's advocate.

"I would be honored," he says sincerely. "But are you sure I'm the best person for that? My color-sight makes me different. There's things about being human I'm still trying to sort out myself. I'm a changeling—I've just been disguised as a human for a very long time now."

There's a spike of purple at the start of his answer—and though that dampens when he hedges, there is no hesitation in her response. Then who better to teach me? You have had to learn how to be human too. Any human could teach me, but you are the only one who understands it from the outside.

Chester's heart is pounding in his chest. She wants him! There's no ambiguity there.

"Then I want you to keep teaching me how to wolf," he blurts out. His inner censor is shouting warnings, but she got quid pro quo when he asked his question—so now he gets to make a request too, right? That's how it works, this is justified. "Learning how to shapeshift in Equestria was incredibly eye-opening. When you can be anything, you have to understand everything. And I want to understand how to wolf. I want to understand—"

His inner censor finally regains control of his leash, screaming bloody murder. That one was about to go way over the line.

Holds-the-Fire spikes into blazing violet, then stares at him as an explosion of blues and greens stir up. Her eyes shift to meet his. Then, with a spike of orange, she slams a wall of gray down on top of everything and whirls away.

Damn it. She knows the word he didn't say.

"I'm sorry," Chester reflexively apologizes, but it's closing the door on an empty barn.

Holds-the-Fire stands with her back to him, and he can see ghosts of colors behind the wall of her gray. Orange makes an especially strong appearance for several moments. She instinctively raises her hand to fan herself.

Then she pauses mid-fan, and a half-peach, half-violet explosion batters through the wall.

Why? she asks without turning around.

Chester winces. He really screwed that one up. But it won't help anything to not tell her now.

"Because I've spent my entire life making people want love, for all the wrong reasons," he says quietly. "I need to know I'm not doing that to you."

Holds-the-Fire turns back to him, a surge of violet overtaking the surprise. You are hungry.

"Huh?" Chester says.

Holds-the-Fire's violet ignites into a blaze of blue empathy. THAT is why you have been acting so strangely! You are hungry and afraid to make me into food. I listened in the world of fire. I know what changelings eat.

Chester feels heat rising to his cheeks. "I don't think that's quite how it works? I mean, I eat human food like everyone else here." But maybe she does have a point? Ever since visiting the hive, he's been aching to just bathe in that love again, has been craving—no. Don't complicate this. "What it is, is that I know you can feel what I feel for you, and I don't want to sweep you away in it."

Ches-ter, she says. Your intentions are not in hiding. I have been harried by worries about what I did wrong that you suddenly started holding back so. Indigo relief joins her spectrum of violet-blues. But knowing that you are being changed by your changeling magic, the way I am being changed by the bloodstone—now it makes sense.

Chester wants to reject the idea outright, but he hesitates. She does have an outside view of him, and he can't see his own colors.

When their positions were reversed, she couldn't perceive the bloodstone's influence on herself until he showed her how it was changing Ember. Maybe that's just how it works for everyone—the things that silently control you all lurk in your blind spots.

But he has one last objection. "But I want to be in love with you. It's not just love, it's you in specific. You're amazing, and I want you so badly I… I can't trust myself."

Those words tumble out into the open before he fully parses them—and, oh boy, that hurts. But that's the truth of it, stark and bare. He has already hurt her once, and he knows the pain he's capable of inflicting. And now, on top of that, he's also a predator whose instincts are driving him to feed—

She crouches in front of him, and his spiraling panic is interrupted by a finger to his lips.

Then trust me, Holds-the-Fire brown-says.

Little shivers run up Chester's spine. Yup. Just as awe-inspiring the second time.

She slowly withdraws the finger. Your world of emotions is—the brown wavers, orange stirring up then getting repressed—not simple. I am often lost in it. But trust me to observe your hunger, and to tell you when it drives you beyond what is welcome.

Chester draws in a shaky breath as he returns to the moment. "It's scary for me, too," he admits. "I'm afraid I might make you not think straight, and that we would both end up regretting it. But… when you ask me to trust you, I will. You're worth the fear."

The sentiment stirs up a spectrum of blues in her. Then Holds-the-Fire seems to remember that Chester is watching, and orange spikes through. She shrinks back, wrestling with her fear. Lifts a hand to fan herself—then freezes it, curling it into a fist instead, then flexing her fingers.

Chester waits. Her fidgeting shifts into a full-body sway. Then the orange breaks, and she lunges forward amid a sudden bleedout of color, snatching his hand in both of hers.

You are too, she orange-says, squeezing his fingers before she locks up again, panting heavily for breath.

Chester smiles at her, and switches to bloodstone-speech for a moment of gentle rapport. Breathe. Talk through it.

Her eyes flick up to his with a brief spike of pastel blue, and she tamps her orange down bit by bit. There is… much to untangle, she orange-says. But I agree. You are worth the fear.

"Thank you," Chester says, trying to leave her the space to decompress her thoughts.

She takes a long breath through her nose. I would not have you hunger. But it would be far simpler were it anything but mate-feel. That is a haunch I have several times bitten but cannot rend. Her colors punctuate that by destabilizing back into a whirling mess. You would mate with me if I offered, I think?

Boy, does that one run screaming right into the minefield. Chester is entirely certain that the answer is self-evident, but there's two halves of him which disagree on what the answer is. It's her—but on top of a lifetime of the Holy Mother's conditioned self-denial, it's also the great-grandmother of all irrevocable decisions.

He forces himself to remember to trust her.

"I, um," he stammers. "Gosh. If you were sure of your decision. Yes."

She scrutinizes him in silence for several seconds, the tenor of her whirling colors changing, but no closer to resolution. I think, despite your fear, that is true, she says with pale orange caution. I am not certain I could say the same.

Relief floods Chester as the nightmare scenario—both of them waffling their way into a step they can't take back—recedes. He mutely nods.

I keep chasing my tail on mate-pairing, Holds-the-Fire says, fading to black. It is curious. I trust that you wish the best for me. I trust that you would make a good mate, I think. And yet… I still fear it.

"Makes sense," he says, once again falling back on trying not to push. "It's a big step."

No bigger than leading a pack, or journeying into the world of fire. Holds-the-Fire abruptly stands again, pacing out her orange. What is to become of us is a question I struggled with often during our journey. I understand now why you acted as you did. I know now that it was an error to treat your defense of Ember as a betrayal. If something like it were to happen again, I would trust you and yield. And… I do wish you to continue teaching me, which means it is not unlikely that such a moment will come up again. Her fear spikes, but she talks through it, taking refuge in brown. I ask you despite that fear. That is how I know that my trust in you is certain.

Chester, too, climbs back to his feet, dusting off his robes. "What you just said is pretty important, I think. You're right, there are things about the human world which are likely going to force you into uncomfortable situations. And it's not wrong to acknowledge that. You can trust and fear at the same time." He blinks. "Actually, you kind of have to. Trust doesn't mean much when there's nothing at stake. It's the scary times when it's really important."

She acknowledges that with a short flash of light blue, but returns to whirling colors. But all of that is about teaching me to human, and we were speaking of— She spikes violet, eyes widening. No. That is it!

"What is?"

Why I hesitate on mate-pairing! Holds-the-Fire, still violet, wriggles her hips, which strikes Chester as an awkward way to punctuate the statement until he realizes that she's doing a tail-wag without the tail. Now that I have a taste of the worlds beyond the forests, I need you to teach me to be something I am not. There is no way to know where that will lead. And… I fear… The excitement of her epiphany fades back into an unsteady orange as the feeling coalesces into words. That the bloodstones, or the human world, or a thing I cannot now name, will change me so that I do not return your feelings. I fear that everything you have done for me, I will repay with pain. And I cannot let you trust me with your heart while I cannot be certain what I will do with it.

Chester reaches for her hands. She hesitates for a moment, orange again spiking, but stills herself and reaches back out to let him take them.

"Thank you," he says, smiling and looking in her eyes. "It's hard to articulate how much it means that you care about me like that. So I'm glad you can feel what I feel."

Holds-the-Fire's orange dissolves in a wash of purple. Her hands clench his, and greens and blues stir up to join it.

"For now we'll focus on teaching you how to human," Chester says. "Then, if you still want to, we'll talk about mate-pairing again when you've figured yourself out more. If this is meant to be, it's worth the wait."

Yes, she purple-says. Thank you. Her eyes shift focus to his mouth, and she curls her lips up in an almost-human smile clearly mimicking his.

Chester smiles back. "But I want you to promise to tell me when you are hurt," he adds. "Because we're both in new territory here. Sometimes I might screw up. And if I do, and screwing up hurts you, I want to be able to fix it, instead of having you assume it was necessary."

Holds-the-Fire steps in to him, toe-to-toe, and rests the side of her head to his collarbone. Subconsciously, Chester shifts his arms to loosely embrace her torso, tilting his head down and savoring the earthy, musky scent of her hair. Strong but intoxicating, just like her.

I promise, she says, cerulean blue. And I am a wolf of my word.

* * *

When they go to find Ember, she is lying on the bank of Canter Creek, staring into the shallows. Her walls of gray—she apparently blocked her link to Holds-the-Fire to give them privacy during their big talk—are formidable, but not enough to conceal a vibrant, agitated orange. She is dipping her paw repeatedly in the water, spooking tadpoles and watching them dart back and forth.

At the noise of their approach, her head jerks up. And the instant she sees them, both orange and gray dissolve amid a flood of indigo relief.

"Fewmets, that took you two long enough," she grumbles, her indigo intense. She leaps to her feet and shakes her fur out. "You almost blew my entire plan apart."

"Your what?" Chester says.

Ember peach-freezes. Then cream swirls up, overwhelming her renewed spikes of orange.

"I… uh. I might have wanted to tell Thorax that we need to be together because the other us are," she cream-says, fidgeting.

"Ember," Chester gently starts, "you don't need an excuse—"

But her momentum rolls on. "Except you two have been so weird at each other lately, and I thought what chance do we have if you're like that? And you did so much to fix everything, I would have felt awful if I had gone home without trying to fix you back, even though I'm absolutely useless at emotions—"

Holds-the-Fire kneels down next to her, and blue floods from girl into wolf, stilling Ember's increasing agitation. The wolf takes a long breath.

"Thanks," Ember says, marinating in borrowed calm. "It's just, I finally have a future again—"

We, Holds-the-Fire inserts.

"—yes, we do, but it's more than that for me." Ember looks back at Chester. "When I first came back to your world it was to run from my problems, and without you, I would have. So I'm glad I could at least make you two talk." A vivid and familiar orange spikes, and even amid artificial blue, Ember starts locking up. "I… you… you deserve better."

Chester smiles as her colors dance. So that's Ember's love—raw, skittish greenish-blues, wild beasts in an alien landscape, requiring patience and gentleness to coax out of hiding. She and Thorax are going to be just fine.

He throws his arms around the wolf and hugs her tightly. "You too. Thank you for helping to save my world."

Ember tenses at the touch. Then she chuffs, pressing the side of her head to his neck, letting both her artificial calm and her underlying fear dwindle away into pastel blue gratitude.

Finally, she steps back, disengaging from the hug. "Yeah, I did, didn't I?" she purple-says. "But how else was I going to get a chance to visit you both again?"

Chester grins. "I'll hold you to that."

He and Holds-the-Fire walk Ember back to the portal, say their goodbyes, and watch her leap into the cliffside. Then the two of them stand in silence, Holds-the-Fire swirling with the greens of their mutual longing as the idea of parting creeps closer to inevitability.

I will visit the black-teeth in three days. But until then, we both have much to do with our packs, she finally says, light yellow reluctance threading through the green.

Her mention of departure makes Chester smack his forehead. "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I almost forgot. Before you go, I've got something for you."

She spikes violet as Chester rummages through the side pocket of the pack he took to Equestria. He had kept putting this off—hoping that they could get things between them sorted out before he muddied the waters with a gift—but even if they had parted on poor terms, it would have been downright irresponsible for him to have left without handing it over.

Chester gestures for her to hold her hand out. Her violet lightens into curiosity as she complies. And Chester grins as he closes his hands around hers, setting a cool rectangular lump of metal in her palm.

She shifts into blazing purple delight as she holds up the brand-new lighter. She pries open the cover, flicks her index finger down the flint wheel while holding it in both hands, and purple-yips as flame stirs up from the center of the windscreen. She closes and reopens the lid, tests it again, and then turns it around and around in her hands in an intense joy bordering almost on disbelief.

The engraved lettering on the side of the case catches her attention. These runes, she asks, light violet breaking through momentarily. This is not the…

"Lighter."

… the light-er you took from me to refill?

"No," Chester admits. "I never did find it after Anton dragged me back to the ashram. But I got you another one that I hoped would remind you of how far you've come. Don't worry, it works exactly the same."

What do the runes mean?

Chester grins. He walks to behind her shoulder, clutches her index finger like a pencil, and runs it across the words as he slowly says them:

"Thank you."

She turns to him, almost vibrating with pastel blue. She pockets the lighter, and her hand curls around behind his head, gently tugging their faces together.

Chester closes his eyes and lets his mouth drop slightly open. He can feel her hot breath mingling with his. He brings his arm loosely around her back, feeling in their press of bodies colors he doesn't need eyes for.

Then her tongue slips deeply past his teeth and licks the roof of his mouth. And they both know exactly what it means.

Author's Note

And that, finally, is that, with Chester and Holds-the-Fire finally finding their new normal.

What a ride it's been. Thank you for joining me on it!

A quick reminder that a dead-tree version of this is also available via Ponyfeather Publishing. Titled The Other Me, the collection also includes Administrative Angel, Devil May Care, and Fang and Flame, for 450 glorious pages of Equestria Girls and MLP characters confronting the reality of their other selves. And now it's time for me to blow the dust off of Hard Reset 2...