Sweeping Up the Shards

Chapters

1 - Shattering
2 - Scouring
3 - Securing

1 - Shattering

"Husband not go alone," Yona had said, and the rumble in her voice had told Sandbar that arguing would be a bad idea.

So he didn't argue. It was his favorite sort of decision: an easy one.

Asking Sweetie Belle and Tender Taps to keep an eye on the Boutique had been an easy decision, too. They'd done it before when he and Yona had taken vacations, and everyone in Ponyville knew them. So it wasn't like he had to worry about that.

Which just meant he could worry more about the letter. Sitting beside Yona now in their compartment on the train, Sandbar dug through his saddlebags, wrapped his teeth gently around the scroll, pulled it out, and smoothed it open with his hooves.

"Dear Sandbar," it started, and that right there was enough to worry him. When she'd been Headmare Twilight, he'd had no problem with her calling him by name. But now that the absolute monarch of all Equestria knew who he was? That just didn't seem right.

After all, he'd never wanted to be anything special, had never really wanted anything till he'd met Yona and the others. Which had pretty much done it for him not being special: married now to the most beautiful yak in the world, the two of them full partners with Rarity in a fashion empire that seemed to be expanding every time he blinked, "not special" pretty much wasn't an option for him at this point.

He sighed and went back to the letter.

"I hope this finds you well, but I hope even more that you can take time away from your schedule to call upon me here at Canterlot Tower. I know you write to Gallus regularly, and I also know that you see Silverstream there in Ponyville due to her teaching position at the School of Friendship. But five days ago as I write this, Silverstream burst into the palace, evading the entirety of the palace guard including Gallus, and plunged straight into a magical artifact that I wasn't even aware she knew existed."

It gave Sandbar a chill every time he read that part. Silverstream tried pretty hard to make it seem like she was happy and goofy and laughing all the time. But anycreature who really knew her knew that she had a lot more going on than that.

"This artifact," the letter continued, "is a mirror built by Starswirl the Bearded more than a millennium ago. It leads to another world much like our own but inhabited by two-legged creatures called 'humans.' Ponies are transformed into humans when they cross through the mirror, but the question of what becomes of non-ponies hasn't been much explored. Spike becomes a dog, for instance, so we assume other dragons would as well, but since Equestrian magic is very unpredictable on the other side of the mirror, we try to limit crossings as much as possible."

That part deserved a chill of its own, and it definitely got it. He'd seen more than his share of weirdness in his life, but stepping through a mirror and turning into some two-legged creature? He shivered again.

"Husband cold?" Yona asked. She scootched closer and leaned till her whole gorgeous side was pressing against him, and that was more than enough to get things warming up.

"Thanks, babe," he said, thinking that maybe he should forget about the rest of the letter and just concentrate on Yona for the rest of the trip.

But no. This was one of those times when the easy decision wasn't the right one. So he went back to reading.

"Gallus wanted to go through immediately to bring Silverstream back, but I felt we should allow her some time if she needed it: I'd managed to catch a quick glimpse of her face as she'd darted to the mirror, and she'd seemed very upset. The next day, however, when Silverstream hadn't returned, I acceeded to Gallus's request. He felt certain that this was a friendship problem and that, by going alone, he would be able to help her and limit the human world's exposure to Equestrian magic.

"Since it's now been four days and he hasn't returned either, I have no choice but to ask for your assistance. I'll explain more in detail when you arrive, and thank you."

Princess Twilight had signed at the bottom, and the big swirls of her hornwriting would've made Sandbar shiver again except, well, that was pretty much imposible with Yona leaning against him. So instead he asked, "But why would she only send the letter to me?"

"Magic," Yona said in the same tone of voice she used when talking about the silverfish and weevils that sometimes got into the fabric at the shop. "World inside magic mirror run by human creatures. Husband becomes human when he goes into mirror because husband is pony. Griffin, hippogriff, changeling, they go through, who knows what they become?" She shrugged, sloshing Sandbar back and forth like a beach washed by a wave. "Except yak, of course. Yak always yak."

"Huh." Sandbar snuggled even closer to her. "When did a yak ever go through this mirror?"

"No need." Her little snort blew a gust of cooling air over Sandbar's front hooves where they were still holding down the scroll. "Is universal principle. Yak always yak."

And those three little words pretty much sent all his worries flying. Bending down, he tucked the scroll back into his panniers, straightened up, and set about doing his best to make sure that Yona knew exactly how much he appreciated her always being a yak.

That made the rest of trip blissfully worry free. It wasn't until he and Yona were disembarking under Canterlot's night sky, him carrying his panniers and her carrying the rest of their luggage, that his worries started creeping back. He did his best not to show them, though, but he did stay close to Yona during the whole trip up from the train station to the palace.

The guards who ushered them from the front gates, down the hallways, and into the throne room looked a little worried, too. And yes, Sandbar might've been projecting, but, well, their captain had apparently vanished into an alien world a few days ago.

Princess Twilight stood at the base of the ramp sloping up to her throne, but Sandbar could tell she'd been pacing just before the seneschal opened the door and announced them. Yes, she was a dozen or so hoofspans taller, but she was still Headmare Twilight through and through.

"Sandbar!" she exclaimed, her face lighting up. Then she blinked, her brow wrinkling. "And...Yona?"

Yona gave a slow shake of her big, shaggy head. "Not happening, Princess."

That got more brow wrinkling. "Not happening?" she repeated.

"Sandbar going alone through mirror." Yona smiled, as sweet and dangerous a sight as Sandbar knew. "Princess maybe remembers from school days how stubborn Yona can be sometimes?" Her smile vanished, and her voice slipped into the rich, Canterlot-accented tones she used when they had a particularly snooty customer at the Boutique. "Well, let me assure you in every possible respect, Your Highness: this is definitely one of those times."

Worried that the princess might get upset, Sandbar didn't know if he should get more worried when she smiled. Not that her smile was nearly as deadly as Yona's, but still... "It's all right," Princess Twilight said. "We're not sending him alone."

"Of course not," a familiar rough voice said, and Sandbar started feeling a whole lot better about everything. Smolder stepped from a doorway along the side of the throne room and leaned against the wall with her arms folded. "Because we're not idiots like Gallus, charging in by himself."

"To be fair," another wonderfully familiar but smaller and quieter voice said, and Ocellus slipped out behind Smolder, "the princess is talking about only sending you and Sandbar, Smolder. That's something I continue to raise reservations about."

Princess Twilight sighed. "The human world is a very fragile place. Even the slightest bit of Equestrian magic gets warped by the underlying physical laws woven into that universe. So honestly? I feel that our best option is to not break any new ground. Sandbar as a human and Smolder as a dog will look natural together—though you'll have to be careful not to talk, Smolder, unless you and Sandbar are completely alone."

Yona shifted slightly where she stood. "Not happening, Princess."

That stern look, the one Sandbar never liked, started flickering around the edges of Princess Twilight's face. "Yona—"

"Your Highness," Ocellus said, buzzing across the throne room to land beside Yona and Sandbar, "you and Gallus both thought that Silverstream was having a friendship problem. Well, if it's something that made her run off to another world, it'll likely take all her friends to help settle it." A blush spread across the chitin of her face, and she glanced downward, rubbing one front leg with the other. "Not that I'm trying to tell the Princess of Friendship how to do her job..."

Her sternness fading, Princess Twilight sighed again. "That's definitely a large factor on one side of this equation, Ocellus. But the delicate state of the human universe—"

The snort that Yona gave brushed Sandbar's mane sideways. "Yona know all about delicate." She seemed to catch herself instantly, and cleared her throat. "Which is to say, Your Highness," she went on in her high-class voice, "that I've learned a great deal under Rarity's tutelage concerning the proper care and maintenance of delicate items." She sighed then as well, her voice thickening back to normal. "Please, Princess. We all go, we all bring Silverstream and Gallus back."

The silence in the throne room was pretty loud, Sandbar thought, though he wasn't quite sure how that could work. Still, he heard it clearly when Princess Twilight gave another sigh. "All right," she said. "Come along, the four of you. I'll give you the mission briefing on the way."

"Yes!" Smolder leaped into the air, flapped over, and smacked Yona on the shoulder. "You can't beat yak logic, not even with a stick!"

Yona nudged one of her horns against Smolder's arm. "Yak just break stick," she said.

Ocellus giggled, and suddenly Sandbar felt a whole lot better about the whole situation. Yes, two of their friends were still missing on a weird, non-magical world, but with the four of them on the case, well, plenty could still go wrong, of course. But at least they'd all be there when it did.

Okay, so that maybe wasn't quite as soothing a thought as he'd hoped...

"Sunset Shimmer," Princess Twilight was saying as she marched ahead of them along some carpeted and gold-inlaid marble corrider that looked to Sandbar like every other corridor he'd ever seen in the palace, "is my contact in the human world." Light rippled around the princess's horn, and a book appeared floating alongside her. "I've been in touch with her about this issue, but unfortunately, she's not in their version of Canterlot right now. She and that universe's Twilight Sparkle are on their, umm..." A blush darkened her face. "Well, the point is: they're halfway around the world."

"Wow," Ocellus, walking with Smolder in front of him and Yona, more whispered than said. "The mixed flavor of all those emotions, I can't even begin to—"

"Anyway!" The princess's magic waved the book. "Sunset's been using a communication device called a cell phone to see if any of our friends over there are available to help. But Rainbow Dash is off at a tournament called the World Cup, so it sounds like it must be big thing, and Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie have gone to cheer her on. Fluttershy's out of town at a veterinary conference, but she said you can use her house as a base of operations. She told Sunset that the gate to her side yard is unlocked and that there's a key to the back door underneath a plaster hedgehog right there in her garden."

She looked over her shoulder, and the book folded open to show a map drawn on one of the pages. "Her house isn't far from the portal entrance on that side. You'll be taking a copy of this map along with you as well as a magical book similar to this one. Write any questions you have in the book, and I'll do my best to get you answers."

They'd been passing big, arched, closed doorways since leaving the throne room, following one corridor, then turning down another, then turning down another. But now, Princess Twilight stopped, aimed her horn at the nearest doorway, and sent her hornglow out to push the doors open. "We've moved the mirror here to one of my most secure workshops since SIlverstream first went through so we can keep a closer eye on it."

Sandbar followed her and the others inside, and had to blink at the contraption covering the far wall, two Royal Guard ponies standing in front of it. The mirror that Princess Twilight had been talking about was plain enough in the center of the thing, but all the pipes and tubes and flywheels around it kind of drew most of his attention.

"Wow," Ocellus muttered just as quietly as before. "That's the most intricate magical apparatus I've ever seen." She stepped forward, her compound eyes wide. "It is designed to distil mana from the aethersphere itself? Is that even possible?"

Princess Twilight tapped the floor with a hoof. "I'm afraid we don't have time to get into the theory and practice of tau particle valence shunting right now."

"Of course!" Somehow, Ocellus's eyes got even wider. "If this other universe is so devoid of magic, maintaining a link like this would require harnessing the power unleashed when tau particles explosively merge and disintegrate! That energy would easily—"

Smolder cleared her throat and poked Ocellus hard enough to make her wobble on her hooves. "I'm pretty sure the princess said we don't have time." Stepping past her, Smolder held a hand up to Princess Twilight. "So, other than that map and the book you mentioned, what do we need?"

"Umm..." That the absolute monarch of all Equestria looked uncomfortable brought all of Sandbar's worries crashing back into place. "It's just that, well..." A scroll peeled away from the floating book and drifted into Smolder's claws. "When you get over there, Smolder, Sandbar'll be the one walking upright and having hands, and you'll be down on all fours. So be ready for that."

This folded Smolder's head crest, but she took the scroll and just said, "Ah."

"But it's not a bad place!" Princess Twilight's scent took on a hot, dry edge that Sandbar recognized from her days as headmare. "I've had some wonderful times there with some wonderful creatures, though 'people' is the word they use since they've more or less only got the one sapient species. They've also got these vehicles they call 'cars' that travel by means of an internal engine sort of like a personalized train car, so watch out for those when you're crossing streets."

She set the book she'd been levitating into a rack among the tubes and pipes at the front of the machine, and various colored lights began slithering among them, the flywheels spinning to kick up tiny lightning bolts. "Really, everything about that universe is fascinating and worthwhile when, y'know, it's not convulsing under the onslaught of Equestrian magic..."

Taking a breath, she shook her head and continued in a more moderate tone. "Just be aware of your surroundings and don't be afraid to take your time. It's possible that hippogriffs and griffins become human as well on the other side. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that creatures other than ponies do: Diamond Dogs, for instance, if you can believe it. But consulting with Starswirl and studying his notes hasn't allowed me to reach any definite conclusion on the matter."

Her horn glowed again, and a small notebook appeared in front of Smolder. "Again, Sandbar, you'll have to do the writing when you get over there—with your fingers rather than your teeth—but anything you record on these pages will show up in my copy here." Another glow, and an identical notebook popped into being in front of her. "I can't tell you what to expect when you arrive, but I'll be right here if there's anything you feel I can do to help."

Smolder's head crest had slowly straightened, and she nodded. "Sandbar and me'll go through first since we'll look normal over there or whatever. We'll get the lay of the land, then write back when we're ready for Ocellus and Yona." She glanced around, and Sandbar couldn't help noticing that she met Ocellus's and Yona's gazes before finally reaching his. "That sound good?"

Weird, stupid thoughts fluttered through Sandbar's brain. Did Smolder look at the others first because she thought they were more important for the mission? Or had she saved him for last because he was the most important?

He shook his head to clear it. Stupid weird thoughts...

Smolder was blinking. "It doesn't sound good?"

"No!" He pushed the word out so hard, it sounded more like a sneeze than anything else. "It does sound good." He tried to get his brain in order. "I'm just realizing we've got no other choice than to do this."

"Yeah." Smolder's sideways grin jerked a little more than it usually did. "I'm gonna give Gallus a smack right in the side of the head once we find him." She turned to face the mirror. "So I guess we'd better get going."

"Thank you," Princess Twilight said, "all of you." She'd been examining some dials on the side of the machine, but now she turned back to face them. "When you emerge on the other side, you'll be wearing regalia that the magic deems appropriate. That means clothes for you, Sandbar, and probably a dog collar for you, Smolder. It's night over there right now, so give yourselves a few moments to get your balance, then make a note in the book, and we'll send first Yona, then Ocellus through."

"Clothes?" Yona made a deep chuckling noise. "Does mirror have sense of style? Or does mirror merely copy latest trends?"

Sandbar wanted to nuzzle her, but he knew that if he did, it'd probably take Smolder, Princess Twilight, and the two guard ponies to pull him away. So instead, he stepped toward the mirror, its surface flickering like a pond under sunlight. "My first note'll have a fashion report," he said, stopping beside Smolder. "I'll go first, I guess, in case any other humans are around. But I doubt you'll have to worry about knocking me down when you come through, Smolder, 'cause I'll likely have already fallen over." And before he could do any more thinking, he pushed his face into the mirror.

Even expecting that he would pass right through, he still had to gasp at the feeling. As thick as water but not wet at all, something pressed against his snout, but it also seemed to draw him in, pulling him deeper whether his legs were interested or not. His nose, entering the whatever before the rest of him, flooded with a smell that set his ears perking though he couldn't quite decide what it smelled like. Both warm toffee and cold rain water at the same time? That couldn't be right...

Then the stuff was wrapping around the rest of his head, and he swore he could feel it grab him, his hooves losing contact with anything solid. At the same time, lights burst out everywhere, whooshing past and swirling like he was diving headfirst into a whirlpool of glowing jellyfish.

Which would be totally awesome as long as they weren't the stinging sort of jellyfish. Of course, it'd be kind of hard to get the jellyfish to cooperate. They usually didn't swim around in circles, after all. Maybe if they were all floating in a big group in one direction and he got himself floating through the middle of them in the opposite direction, it might look a little like—

Everything snapped and shattered, and Sandbar tumbled onto a hard surface with darkness all around. Or not darkness, a couple blinks told him when he sprawled to a halt: the sky was dark, sure, but lights glowed behind windows across what looked like a street. There were even lights on poles along both sides of the street casting a weird orange glow everywhere.

"Sandbar?" Smolder's rough voice asked then. "That's you, right?"

Not sure he wanted to sit up, Sandbar gave it a try anyway. Surprisingly, he didn't fall over, but turning to look in the direction of the voice almost knocked him back down again. A dog was sitting there staring at him with Smolder's blue eyes, the short fur of its face and body her same oranges and yellows. But she looked like one of those racing dogs whose name he suddenly couldn't remember. Hayhound? Whumpet? Something like that.

The dog cocked her head, and that made her look even more like Smolder than before. "Yeah, that's you," the dog said in Smolder's voice. "I'd know that blank stare anywhere."

"Whoa." Hearing his own voice seemed to get his brain sparking again. "I guess it must've worked, then."

"I guess." Dog-Smolder raised a front paw and tapped a couple dark squares on the ground in front of her. "The book and map came through just like Princess Twilight said, but also like she said, I can't really hang onto them anymore..."

"Okay. Right. Yeah." Reaching out, he stopped at the sight of a thing that was the right color to be his front leg but that was wrong in every other way.

"It's okay, Sandbar," Smolder said, moving up so close to him that he could feel her warmth. "You've seen me use my arms and hands and fingers and claws and stuff before, right?"

Not trusting his throat, he just nodded, started his arm moving again, uncurled the fingers from the hand at the end of it—

And a leash dropped onto the concrete, a leash he hadn't even known he was holding, its reddish color matching the collar he now saw around Smolder's neck.

She was looking at it, too, and she made a little popping sound with her mouth. "How 'bout we put that aside for now and focus on getting the others over here, huh?"

Despite another nod, it took Sandbar three tries to pick up the little book. He opened it, bent his neck to grab the pen clipped to the inside cover, stopped himself, straightened up again, and after three more tries, got the pen sort of tangled up among his fingers. This all gave him ample time to look at as much of his new body as he could, though as he thought about it, it seemed like maybe he should be concentrating on one thing at a time...

So he pushed the pen's tip to the paper and wrote, Smolder and I are here. Fashion choices very middle of the road: I've got on a three-button collared shirt a little lighter than my hide with my cutie mark enbroidered on the pocket over the left side of the chest area and a pair of khaki-colored trousers with black shoes covering my hooves.

"Feet," Smolder muttered beside him.

And an instant later, Princess Twilight's writing appeared on the page below his: They're called feet over there, Sandbar. Stand by for Yona.

"Feet," he said, trying the word. "But I guess I'd better see if I can use mine, huh?" Pushing against the ground with one hand, he bent his knees, sort of flopped himself around, and found himself wobbling up onto his hind legs just as a weird, shadowy light started flickering all around him.

To his right and a few paces away sat a big square block of stone, one vertical side of it shimmering like the light that had pulled him through the mirror. And then something big and dark emerged from the stone, horns curving upward from the sides of a shaggy head, a head that, while very different, still clearly belonged to—

"Yona!" Lurching forward, Sandbar threw his arms out to catch her before he realized that she was a lot bigger here even than she was back home. That ended up being a good thing, though, letting him fling his hands up to grab her shoulder so he wouldn't tumble back onto the pavement.

She kept moving forward, Sandbar flailing his legs in more or less the same direction, till the whole massive bulk of her had emerged from the side of the stone. Then her head—half the size of his whole new body, he thought—swung toward him, and in the orange glow of the street lamps, he saw her big black eyes blink. "Yona like husband better as pony," she rumbled.

But Sandbar had never heard anything sweeter. He pressed his face into her furry side—and either the change had stripped almost all her scent away or his new nose was just about useless—and murmured, "Yak always yak."

"Husband ever doubt?" She shifted forward a bit more. "But Ocellus coming through now, and not even Princess know what she might—"

The silvery light was still shimmering along the stone block, and out of it suddenly began pouring first one, then six, then a dozen, then so many, all humming and buzzing and swarming, that Sandbar wanted his ears to fall even though they didn't move.

"Be," Yona finished, and Sandbar could only nod in agreement.

"I feel..." Ocellus's voice somehow emerged from the buzzing, and the swarm of bees formed themselves into the rough shape of a hovering changeling. "...unusual..."

Again, Sandbar could only nod.

"Okay," Smolder said, stepping forward, "let's not all panic at once."

"Smolder?" the buzz asked, and the bees swooped down to hover in front of Smolder. "You're really a dog! That's so...so..." The bees forming the head pulled back in a way that made the whole figure look like it was confused. "I'm having real trouble keeping my thoughts together. And what's that buzzing noise?"

"No panicking," Smolder said again, her ears almost flat. "But you're kind of a swarm of bees here, Ocellus."

How a swarm of bees managed to blink, Sandbar had no idea. But the bees that were huddled together making the eyes and eyelids of this Ocellus-shaped cloud shuffled themselves around so it definitely looked like a blink. "Umm," she said, the mouth bees moving though the voice really came from the whole swarm. "You're sure I can't panic about that? 'Cause I think I'd really like to panic about that..."

"No time." Smolder looked up at Sandbar. "We need to get inside and regroup. You've got the map?"

For an instant, he had no idea what she was talking about. Then he remembered and spun to where he'd left the folded piece of paper. This time at least he didn't fall over, tossing his baked-potato feet out to where he was sure his vertical body was going to end up just in time for his legs to keep it from toppling over.

Feeling more like half a spider than anything else, he made it over to the paper and wobbled to a halt. Some thought got his knees to bend in a way he'd never even considered bending them before, and he squatted down to pick the paper up with his fingers.

At least with the map coming from Princess Twilight, a glance was enough to figure it out. He pointed down the road to their right. "Looks like we go two blocks that way, then cross the street and head up three-and-a-half more blocks." Looking at Ocellus wavering in the air in front of Smolder, he added, "Ocellus, how 'bout you settle all soft and gentle across Yona's back, okay? Pretend that you've changed into, I dunno, a blanket or something, then you can just lay there getting used to things till we get to this human Fluttershy's house."

The bees of Ocellus's head moved in a way that could've been a nod, and the whole swarm drifted toward Yona. "Soft and gentle," he heard Ocellus's buzzing voice say. "Okay, I'm changing and landing."

The set of Yona's ears told Sandbar she wasn't entirely thrilled about this, but she stood as steady as only a yak could while the bees flowed out of Ocellus's shape and became a blanket draping over her.

Yona gave a quiet snort. "Ocellus tickles."

That got a giggle from Ocellus, and Smolder padded over, the leash in her mouth. "Nice job," she muttered around it, then she dropped it and said a little louder, "Sandbar, keep that ready, but for now, let's walk with Yona and Ocellus between us, okay? And no talking, anycreature, till we get to where we're going."

Yona's mouth started opening, but she stopped, closed it with a grin, and nodded.

Looking back down at Smolder, Sandbar gave a nod of his own. She returned it and moved with slightly wobbly steps to Yona's right side. Sandbar took a breath, squatted to grab the leash, then walked more certainly to a spot between Yona and the street. More looks and more nods, and he started up the sidewalk, the things his three friends had turned into shuffling alongside.

2 - Scouring

The first two blocks went by easily enough, Sandbar thought. It had already been pretty late in the evening, after all, when he and Yona had arrived in Canterlot, and judging by the lack of creatures on the street—though 'people' was the word here, Princess Twilight had said—he felt that it must be close to midnight.

A few of the cars she'd mentioned went by, though, and Sandbar felt the need to rest a hand on Yona's big shoulder after the first one. But then a few of Ocellus's bees crawled over to sit on his fingers, so he wasn't sure if the whole experience was a net positive or not.

Still, they got to the corner where the map indicated they should cross the street, and Sandbar was glad to see that the humans had what seemed to be a similar system of stoplights and push button signals as he'd seen in Canterlot and Manehattan and places like that. He was less glad, though, to see another person on the other side of the street: a big, red, human male with yellow hair who looked a lot like—

"Wait a minute!" one of the bees whispered—or maybe it was a couple of them: Sandbar couldn't really tell how the whole Ocellus thing was working right now. "That's Big McIntosh, isn't it?"

And yes, it definitely was. The signal for the cross traffic was changing from green to yellow to red as Sandbar stood gaping, and the human version of Big Mac, a pony Sandbar had gotten to know pretty well since moving with Yona into the Carousel Boutique, was starting across the street.

But did that mean that this human Big Mac knew Sandbar's human version? Did Sandbar even have a human version? Every other pony seemed to have one, so why wouldn't he? What was he supposed to do if he met himself? Hadn't Princess Twilight mentioned something in passing about her human version being off on a trip with this Sunset Shimmer who was the princess's contact in this universe? Did this mean that the princess had met her other self?

Frozen by the sudden internal onslaught of questions, Sandbar could only watch as Big Mac got closer and closer, his weird flat face bunching up in a way that made Sandbar think he was every bit as confused by what he was seeing as Sandbar was. Because what he was seeing, Sandbar realized, was a human standing on a street corner with a dog and a giant, bee-covered yak.

Probably not the sort of thing people usually saw around here...

By now, Big Mac's steps had brought him to within a couple yards of Sandbar, and even with all the words flashing around in Sandbar's head, not a one was bringing him any closer to knowing what to say.

Until Ocellus's voice buzzed directly in his ear: "Smolder's a herding dog!"

"Yes!" Sandbar tried not to shout it, but it still came out pretty loud. "Smolder's a herding dog!" Grabbing the idea, he kept going. "We're practicing for the big, uhh, rodeo that's coming up!" He patted Yona's shoulder, hoping Ocellus would get her various pieces out of the way. "You never know what those judges'll throw at you, right? Sheep or goats or cattle or...yaks..."

Big Mac's eyes didn't narrow; he didn't fold his arms; neither of his eyebrows arched. He just stood there a long, long, long couple of seconds, then said, "Eeyup," and turned to head down the sidewalk in the direction they'd all just come.

Sandbar blinked after him. Did yaks actually take part in rodeos here? He knew there'd been some talk back home about bringing yaks into the herding and roping competitions, but the yaks kept complaining that Equestrian rodeos didn't have enough opportunities to smash things.

"Come on!" Ocellus's whisper was shivering his ear again. "We need to get off the street!"

The traffic signal still showed a greenish-white walking human figure, but it was blinking. So Sandbar shook himself, did a quick look up and down the street—deserted except for Big Mac heading away—and stepped off the curb.

The others followed so naturally that Sandbar wondered if maybe Ocellus had bees buzzing in their ears, too, and after three pretty dark blocks, they came to what the map said was their destination: a low, sprawling house set back from the street by a wide front lawn, tall wooden fences on both sides and large trees spreading out behind. "Okay," Smolder said in a low voice. "Looks like the gate's in the fence to the left of the house, and the princess said that the Fluttershy here left it unlocked. And a good thing, too, 'cause I honestly don't think Yona's gonna fit through the house's regular door."

With a nod, Sandbar started across the lawn toward the gate.

Beside him, Yona gave a huff of breath. "Everything here strange," she muttered. "Bigger but smaller at same time. Colors different, too, all washed out and peculiar. Or maybe that just orange streetlights..."

At the gate, Sandbar waited for Smolder to pull the string that he assumed would operate the latch inside, but when she made a throat-clearing noise, he remembered that he was the one with the digits right here and now. Shaking himself, he grabbed and pulled, pushed the gate open, and held it while the others trooped through.

Then he remembered that this was human Fluttershy's house. "Umm, you guys think there might be actual animals around here? Like, is there a version of Angel Bunny we hafta worry about?"

Smolder raised her head and sniffed. "There's a lotta scents, but nothing seems recent."

"That makes sense." Ocellus rose in a humming mass from Yona's back, little bundles of her streaking along the side of the house toward the deeper darkness that Sandbar guessed was the back yard. "Fluttershy's away at a conference, Princess Twilight said, and she wouldn't leave animals here unattended. So any pets she has are likely being boarded, and I'm not picking up any trace of movement or sound or— Wow, I can really spread out and cover a lot of space here, can't I?"

It was good to hear Ocellus sounding more like herself, and Sandbar found his mind moving more steadily, too. "Princess Twilight said there was a back door, too." He started in that direction himself. "Though if it's the same size as the front door, maybe there's a shed or something we can all fit inside. Ocellus?"

Ocellus's voice came from the bees that were drifting in circles around him. "Yeah, the back door's the same size as the front door. There is something like a little stable, though, but it's pretty dark back here. I don't think any creature's inside, though—or any animals or whatever they have in this world that would live in a stable."

"Okay." Sandbar looked down at Smolder, trotting along beside him, Yona a step or two behind as they rounded the corner of the house. "I'll use the key to get inside and see if I can find a lantern or something to bring out. You guys check this stable and see if it'll be big enough for us all to fit in so we can get a little sleep."

"Right." Smolder pointed her nose at Sandbar's hands, and he realized that he was clutching the book to his chest. "Maybe ask the princess what sort of lanterns they have here. 'Cause I'm betting they don't have the regular firefly kind." She shrugged, something Sandbar didn't think he'd ever seen a dog do before.

They came around the corner of the house then, and Sandbar squinted through the darkness at a space of maybe not quite an acre—he'd never been that good at judging area, and the orange lights from the street were getting blocked by the big trees that lined the outside edges of the yard. As near as he could tell, the tall wooden fence ran along just on the other side of the trees to surround the whole place, which was another worry off his mind: the neighbors probably couldn't peer in and start wondering what was going on.

"Hold it," Ocellus said. "I think I found a light switch just inside the stable door. I'll see if I can—"

Something snapped quietly, and lights began to glow through a couple windows, marking out a wall a dozen paces away, a sloped roof above it and a small enclosed area of dirt in front of it.

"Not stable," Yona said behind him. "Chicken coop."

"Oh!" The bees that made up Ocellus were buzzing around the windows and the door that Sandbar could now see as he moved across a brick patio toward the gate in the wire fence around the front of the coop. "I guess it is!" Ocellus was going on. "There aren't any chickens in here, though, and I couldn't quite tell what I was seeing in the dark and with all these eyes."

Smolder was looking back and forth between the coop and Yona. "I don't think we're gonna fit in there, either."

"Is fine." Yona waved a forehoof at the grass between the coop and the trees along the far side of the yard. "Is nice night, and Yona not mind sleeping under stars." Her voice started to slow, getting lower in tone and volume with each word. "All alone. In strange...alien...universe..."

Sandbar shook his head. "I'll head inside and grab whatever pillows and blankets I can find. Then we'll all set up out here. You guys find a good spot, and I'll be right back."

"Got it," Smolder said, and Sandbar squinted at the flower beds around the back of the house, looking for a ceramic hedgehog.

Waking up the next morning surprised Sandbar a little. He hadn't expected to get any sleep at all.

But here he was, blinking at a slightly cloudy sky instead of the starry one that had just been there. His face felt damp from dew, but his back was warm where Yona lay behind him, his front warm where Smolder lay curled in front of him. Poking around Fluttershy's house—familiar in some ways from the times he'd been in her cottage back in Ponyville but completely different in others—he'd found a couple big blankets for ground covers and some sturdy-looking pillows. He'd set them all out, then snuggled against Yona and dropped right off the way he always did.

His human body, though, didn't seem to be built for sleeping like this, and he couldn't help a little grunt as muscles all up and down his back twinged when he shifted. That got Smolder shifting along his stomach, her eyes when he looked down fluttering open.

Her unfocused gaze met his, then everything about her sharpened, and she gave a yip, leaping away and onto her paws on the grass.

"What?" Ocellus cried, and bees rose buzzing from all over Yona. "What happened?"

"Nothing!" Smolder barked—and while Sandbar didn't like thinking of her making that noise, well, she was a dog right now, and the way she pushed the word out really made it sound like a bark. "I mean, we're fine, Ocellus! All of us! Waking up after a good night's sleep, right?" She shook herself so hard that her narrow yellow ears flapped. "Right?"

Yona grunted and stirred behind him. "Bed make better bed than ground," she mumbled. "Must be why different word."

Feeling her muscles tense in a way he recognized, Sandbar sat forward just as Yona stood, stretched, and yawned, a sight he always enjoyed. "Did I mention," he asked, "how glad I am that yak always yak?"

"Husband did." She swung her big head around, and while the mouth on this body didn't seem like it was built for smiling, Sandbar could tell that she was. "Right now, though, we eat, we wash, we get out onto streets and find friends."

"Umm..." Ocellus's bees again spun into more or less her regular shape. "I can probably do that part the easiest, and since bees eat nectar and pollen and stuff, I can just grab some from around the neighborhood."

"First," Smolder said, padding back onto the blanket to pat a paw against the book, "let's get a map of the area from Princess Twilight. Then Sandbar and I can take, like, a quarter of it, and Ocellus can take the rest." Her ears fell, and she glanced up and over at Yona. "Gonna be honest here, Yona. I don't know if you oughtta go out until maybe after dark. If we knew where Silverstream or Gallus were and wanted to get their attention, you'd be perfect, the way you stand out so much. But till we find them..."

"Yona agree." She sighed. "Yak may always be yak, but yak never inconspicuous." Settling back onto the blanket, she nodded toward Ocellus. "Maybe Ocellus can leave some bees here to keep Yona in loop?"

"Hey, yeah." Sandbar tapped his weird new fingers on his weird new knees. "If you send some bees with us, too, we can all know if any of us finds anything! That's totally awesome!"

"Umm..." Ocellus said again, a sort of a shudder passing through the bees. "I'll give it a try, but, I mean, being a bunch of bees is just really, really weird."

Smolder gave a panting laugh. "Weird's our speciality, though, right?" She patted the book again. "So let's get this whole weird thing started."

Sandbar wrote to Princess Twilight asking for a map, then he went back into Fluttershy's house to see what kinds of food she had. Dog food was easy, the bags clearly marked among the cat food, fish food, bird feed and everything else in the floor-to-ceiling cupboard right inside the back door. Human food was easy, too—whatever was in the refrigerator, he assumed. Yona found some bales of hay stacked up behind the empty chicken coop, and Ocellus said the stuff in the flowers around the garden was surprisingly tasty and filling.

The first note in the book from the princess said that a map would take her some time: she would have to get in touch with Sunset first and then redraw whatever Sunset sent her it to get it over to them. But just as they were finishing breakfast, the book hummed and glowed, and when Sandbar opened it, there was a neatly labeled gridwork of streets with Fluttershy's house marked with a circle and the portal marked with an 'x'.

Thanks, Princess, he wrote, then he looked at the others. "I should prob'bly hang onto the book in case we need to send any notes, but you'll be able to see the map, right, Ocellus? If you leave some bees with me and Smolder?"

"I guess." She still sounded really unsure.

Suddenly really unsure himself, Sandbar glanced at Smolder.

Smolder sighed. "I know this is hard, guys, but Silverstream and Gallus are out there somewhere, and we're the only ones who can help. We don't even know what kinda things they might be right now, sure, but—"

"Gallus a tomcat." Yona snorted. "And Silverstream a big pink bird: not flamingo but more like cockatoo or parrot. What else could griffon and hippogriff be in place like this?"

Again, Sandbar really wished his ears could move. As it was, all he could do was blink first at Smolder, then turn and blink at Yona.

She was blinking back. "Well?" she asked. "Species obvious when think about character of both specific individuals and stereotypes of each original species. It like looking at pony and knowing they look better in tail coat than in morning coat."

And the more he thought about it... "When Silverstream came through," he said slowly, "she was all upset, Princess Twilight said. She would've been confused by the portal and her transformation, flapping and probably screeching up a storm more than talking. And if some human around here saw a big pink parrot doing that—"

"Fluttershy," Smolder said. She jumped onto all fours, her tail wagging. "Back home, that's what you'd do if you found a big weird bird. But Fluttershy's at that conference, and if these humans are anything like ponies, every single one of them in this neighborhood probably knows that their Fluttershy's away. So next after Fluttershy when you've got a big weird bird—"

"Zecora!" Ocellus shouted, her bees whirling into a cyclone. "She knows so much about everything that you can't go wrong asking her!" The cyclone juddered to a halt and retook Ocellus's shape. "But do they even have a Zecora here?"

Sandbar grabbed the book and the pen, and ten minutes later, another mark appeared on the map Princess Twilight had sent: a 'Z' to mark a spot two blocks south and one block east.

"Okay." Smolder stepped back from where she'd been standing beside Sandbar. "Ocellus, you wanna head over there first and see if, I dunno, there's a big pink bird tied up in her back yard?"

Ocellus gasped. "You really think—?"

"No," Smolder cut in quickly. "I mean, you know what Silverstream's like." She glanced from Ocellus to Yona and again ended up with her gaze fixed on Sandbar's. "We all know. If something got her so upset that she's run off to another universe, she won't wanna go back. That's gotta be why Gallus is still here: he's trying to convince her to go back with him, and she's being all stubborn."

"Except," Yona murmured, "wouldn't Gallus go back to tell princess what happening?"

Smolder's mouth went sideways. "Okay, new rule, Yona. You only get to have big insights that fire us up from now on, not ones that bring us down."

Which made Sandbar shake his head. "We've gotta be ready for anything. So me and Smolder'll go out as a human and a dog and see what's going on at Zecora's house. Ocellus, you send some bees with us, leave some bees here, and use the others to scout the rest of the neighborhood in case we're wrong about this." He looked around at the others. "That sound like a plan?"

They nodded, and Sandbar picked up the leash.

"Fewmets," Smolder said. "I'd forgotten about that thing..."

They practiced a little inside Fluttershy's side yard, Sandbar and Smolder walking up to the gate and back with him holding the leash and her wearing it. "I swear," Smolder muttered more than once, "if my brother ever hears about this..."

Ocellus buzzed overhead. "Do more sniffing," she said. "Dogs're always stopping and sniffing things when I see ponies walking them around Ponyville and around the school."

The look that Smolder shot at Ocellus, well, it made Sandbar glad it wasn't aimed at him. "Not gonna happen," Smolder said, emphasizing each word. "Can we go?"

"Actually," Yona said from where she stood beside the chicken coop, "if Smolder sniffs, Smolder can maybe find Gallus. His scent probably not changed all that much..."

Smolder sighed, her ears tight against her skull. "Fine. But he is gonna owe me big time."

"Okay." Sandbar looked at Yona, so familiar but so very, very different, then moved his gaze to the cloud of Ocellus and finally to Smolder sitting at his feet. "Let's be careful, everycreature. Keep us connected, Ocellus, and, well, I can't think of anything else to say."

Nocreature else offered anything, either, so he turned and started for the gate, Smolder trotting alongside. "Oh," she said as he reached for the latch, "I've noticed ponies talk to their dogs all the time even though the dogs don't talk back. So anything occurs to you while we're out there, go ahead and say it. If I come up with something, I'll tug hard on the leash so you'll know to squat down and check my collar. That way, I can maybe whisper it to you."

His chest tight, Sandbar just nodded. Because these weren't gonna be ponies on the other side of the fence. He patted his pants pocket to make sure Princess Twilight's book was there, then he flicked the latch and pulled the gate open.

That was the moment he realized that he hadn't looked closely enough at the map to know whether they should go left or right after crossing the lawn to the sidewalk. "Uhhh," he said, reaching for the book in his pocket again.

"Turn right," Ocellus's tiny voice said in his ear. "We go back toward the street we walked down from the school last night, but we go two blocks instead of three before we turn left."

"Thanks," he more breathed than said.

Smolder gave him a dirty look over her shoulder and headed definitely for the right side of the front yard. Sandbar let her pull him, glad that his friends knew where they were going.

The houses along the two blocks all looked pretty much the same, he thought: fancier than in Ponyville but not as fancy as in Canterlot. Not as many humans were moving around them as he would've expected back home, but with the cars, passing on the street or pulling up along the curbs in front of the houses, he supposed humans could go longer distances more quickly than most creatures could.

Weird thoughts started percolating in his brain—if he had his own personal little train like these cars and could go anywhere he wanted to, where would he want to go? But as much as he wanted to talk to Smolder and Ocellus about it, he kept quiet just in case any humans might be in earshot.

Fortunately, they moved pretty quickly down the two blocks. As she'd said, Smolder didn't stop to sniff anything on the ground, but she did have her head raised, looking around and sniffing the air. He noticed a couple black spots in the short orange fur of her head, and a squint showed them to be bees. Not hearing any buzzing beside him, he glanced sideways and saw three more bees sitting on his shoulder, so that was all right. Creepy, but all right...

At the end of the two blocks, though, the bees on Smolder stirred. "We cross the street here," Ocellus's voice said in Sandbar's ear, and he assumed they were saying the same thing to Smolder.

Stopping, he turned, looked up the street, down the street, and back up in again, Smolder doing the exact same thing, he noticed out of the corner of his eye. Fortunately, no humans seemed to be around to notice...

He and Smolder stepped off the curb at the same time, too, crossing the street easily enough and starting down the next block. "Okay," Ocellus buzzed. "We go one block, then this world's Zecora lives in the second house on the next block on the other side of the street. Oh, and my other bees haven't come across any sign of Gallus yet. And Yona just asked if we should ask the princess if they have animal shelters here like we do back home. I'd guess they do since Princess Twilight said Fluttershy's a veterinarian here, and, I mean, veterinarians and animal shelters go together, don't they?"

Smolder shook her head, her ears flapping. That launched the bees sitting on her out and away, and Ocellus made a little squeaking noise. "You're right," she said even more quietly than before. "I'll stop talking before I maybe get us all in trouble..."

They passed more of the square and nondescript houses, but Sandbar could already tell which house on the next block belonged to the local Zecora. The tree towering up behind and looming over the house made it absolutely unmistakable: it was as if some bigger mirror had transported a little slice of the Everfree Forest to this land of overcast skies and close-cropped lawns.

Crossing the next little street, he tried to keep his eyes on the house without obviously staring at it. That made him dizzy, though, flicking his gaze back and forth, so he had to stop.

An instant later, he had to stop not just rolling his eyes around but actually moving forward, too: Smolder gave a yip, jerked her head back, then jammed it down against a section of the parkway between the sidewalk and the curb. The sounds of her sniffing came loud and frantic to Sandbar's ears, and the way Smolder planted her paws, he didn't think she was likely to be going anywhere for a while.

Sandbar blinked down at her in confusion, but then he remembered the signal she'd mentioned just before they'd left Fluttershy's house. "What is it, girl?" he asked, trying to sound like he'd ever had a pet and knew how to talk to one. He squatted down beside her, and she jammed her snout into his ear.

"In the front window!" she whispered, her breath against his neck. "In the cage! D'you see her?"

Not sure how to do it inconspicuously, Sandbar glanced up...and forgot that he even knew the word inconspicuous. Because the big pink bird sitting in the big black cage visible through the front window of the house, her crest feathers drooping down the sides of her head and her wings sort of hunched up to meet those crest feathers, couldn't've been anycreature other than Silverstream.

"Guys?" a wispy but nasally and way-too-familiar voice asked behind him. "Is...is that you?"

It took some effort for Sandbar to tear his attention away from Silverstream across the street. But the bedraggled blue cat with the patch of yellow fur along his chest that was creeping out of the hedge between the two houses closest to him on this side of the street got his head turning so quickly, he almost knocked himself over.

"Gallus?" Smolder said way louder than she should've. She realized it right away, though, the way her ears and tail fell, but then she was jamming her face into the side of Sandbar's head again. "Grab him! We've gotta get back to Fluttershy's and regroup!"

3 - Securing

Heading back seemed to go a lot quicker even though Sandbar didn't think he was walking any faster. Of course, carrying one of his best friends in the world the whole way might've made a difference, especially since he could tell that Gallus had really wanted to talk. Instead, Sandbar found himself babbling things out loud that Ocellus was whispering to him. "It's okay, Gallus, you poor kitty cat. You just hang on, and we'll get you home and warm and something to eat and everything."

Ice rippled along Sandbar's back to see Gallus completely exhausted, burrs and mud in his fur, his ears tight against his head, his paws shaking where his claws were digging into the front of Sandbar's shirt. Then Fluttershy's house was ahead, and Sandbar almost sprinted across the grass to push the gate open.

Yona was standing right inside, her eyes wide, a halo of Ocellus's bees whirling around her head. "Husband bring Gallus in, set him on blanket, then get cat food."

"Water first," Gallus said, still a tight ball in Sandbar's arms. "Cold to drink and warm to wash in. Then we gotta get back out there."

"But what—?" Sandbar started.

"Inside," Smolder growled. "This neighborhood's weirdly deserted, but knowing our luck, some human'll come walking by right when we're all yammering."

Sandbar nodded, realized he was still holding her leash, dropped it, stepped through the gate, and pulled it closed behind him. Another dozen or so steps brought him to the back yard, and he carried Gallus over to the blanket, the swarm of bees getting larger with each passing second. "Ocellus?" he asked. "Is there...more of you now?"

The bees swirled into her shape the way they had before, but there were a bunch left over. They sort of squeezed in, though, making Ocellus almost as big as King Thorax. "I think so?" Ocellus's voice went up at the end, turning the answer into a question. "Some of the local bees are getting caught up in whatever magical field is keeping me me. And with what Princess Twilight said about Equestrian magic tangling things up over here, that might be bad."

Sandbar could only nod.

Then something big and furry pushed against his side. "Water, please, Husband," Yona said. "Cold and warm in separate bowls like Gallus asked."

"Right, right, right." Sandbar went into Fluttershy's kitchen, rummaged out three metal pans, used the 'hot' and 'cold' taps on the sink—good thing that was also the same as back home—grabbed a can of the cat food he'd seen earlier, pulled the lid off—these finger things were definitely neat—and dumped the fishy-smelling stuff into the third pan.

He grabbed a towel from a rack in the kitchen and stepped back out onto the brick of the patio with everything somehow balanced in his arms in time to hear Gallus say, "...spent that whole first day tracking her scent, but I found her just after nightfall. She was already in that cage in the human Zecora's house, and it took me another day to figure out how to get inside—Zecora's got two dogs, see, a big green one and a big red one—"

"Please don't be Garble," Smolder muttered.

Gallus gave a chuckle that almost sounded like one of his regular ones. "She calls them Gostir and Razer, so no worries there. At least, no worries unless you're a cat trying to sneak into their house. Oh, thanks, Sandbar."

Sandbar set the pans down beside the blanket, and Gallus ate and drank while going on with his story: "When I did finally manage to crawl in through a loose screen in one of the attic windows, I only got, like, half a minute with Silverstream before the dogs chased me out. I told her I was gonna get her out and get her home, and she didn't even look at me, didn't even open her eyes. She just said, 'I don't have a home anymore.'" He paused, stepping into the warm water bowl and combing mud out his chest fur with his claws. "I mean, we've all seen her feeling down before. But this?" He shook his head. "This was something else."

Sloshing out of the water much cleaner but dripping, Gallus rolled around on the towel, but in the end, Sandbar had to use his hands and fingers again to rub Gallus dry, something that made Sandbar's face heat up. Gallus kept talking, though: "I asked her what she meant, and she finally looked at me. 'Go back,' she said. 'I'm staying here.' I blinked at her and said, 'I'm not gonna leave you!' And then, well, then there was barking and jumping and running and maybe a little hissing and slashing, but I crashed out through the same attic window without getting more than shaken around a little."

He sighed, lapped at the drinking bowl, then slumped onto the blanket. "I thought about heading back to Equestria and getting help, but, I mean, Silverstream was just so out of it, and I didn't want her to think I'd abandoned her. So I hung around in the bushes across the street and waved whenever she looked up. I tried a couple more times to get into the house, but Zecora fixed that one screen and none of the others were loose. And the princess gave me a direct order not to contact the humans if I came through the portal as an animal."

With a shake of his head, he sat up again. "I knew Princess Twilight would be working the problem from her end, so yeesh, am I glad to see you guys." He looked around, ending—Sandbar once more couldn't help but notice—with him. "But what're we gonna do?"

Blinking back at Gallus, Sandbar couldn't think of a single thing to say.

Fortunately, Yona was there. "Silverstream say no home anymore." She swung her big head from Smolder to Ocellus. "She get news from Mt. Aris or Seaquestria lately? Her family okay?"

That got Smolder blinking. "She didn't mention anything."

A group of bees roughly Ocellus's regular size had settled at the far end of the blanket, but more formed a cloud above and around her. "Silverstream gets letters all the time from her mom and dad and Terramar, but she only ever shares funny stories in the teachers' lounge." A shudder dislodged some of her upper bees, and more swarmed in to take their places. "Still, guys, I think we really need to hurry here. I'm kind of losing track of which bees I came with and which ones I'm picking up..."

Sandbar's back did more shivering. "Okay." He pulled the book from his pocket. "I'm gonna write to the princess and see if she can find out what might've happened with the hippogriffs that got Silverstream so upset. I'll leave the book here with you guys to wait for the answer, but in the meantime, me and Smolder'll head over to Zecora's."

He swallowed and reached for the end of the leash still attached to Smolder's collar. "I'll try to convince Zecora that Silverstream's my pet bird who escaped at the same time that Gallus did. We were out looking for them this morning, found them both, brought Gallus home—in case, y'know, she saw us in front of her house earlier—and now we're back for Silverstream."

Swallowing again, he turned to Ocellus. "Are the bees still under your control? Can you put, like, three in my hair to whisper to me whatever Princess Twilight's answer is whenever it comes through? Then maybe I can figure out something to say to Silverstream that'll convince her to come with us. If Zecora'll even let me in..." He set the leash down, opened the book, and started writing an update and his question.

"Okay," he vaguely heard Smolder saying. "Gallus, can you use the pen with your claws? Or Yona? Have you tried mouthwriting like you would at home? 'Cause the princess might need more info after we leave."

Yona's snort washed over Sandbar, the wonderful sensation nearly enough to distract him. "Pen too small," she said. "Or Yona too big. Either way, pen likely end up down Yona's throat."

"I'll try," Gallus said. "Maybe I can prop it up against my chest and use both front paws to move it along the paper."

"Good." The shadow of Smolder's dog head moved across the book. "Are you still holding it together, Ocellus? Can you send a couple bees along like Sandbar asked?"

"Yeah, but it...it's almost like I've got too much control, like I'm overriding their natural instincts and making them leave their hives. I even think I'm starting to feel ladybugs and grasshoppers and ants and crickets wriggling around the edges of me. It...it might be better if I head back to the portal right now before I take over more of the ecosystem."

Sandbar scrawled a question mark at the end of his entry and pressed the book down onto the blanket with the page open. "We need you to keep us connected, Ocellus, so hang on, okay? Hopefully, we can wrap this up in, like, the next half hour, then we can all get back home." He wrapped his fingers around the leash again and nodded to Smolder. "You ready?"

She leaped onto all fours, her tail wagging. "Let's go get Silverstream!"

The bees crawling over his neck kinda held Sandbar's attention during the brisk walk back to human Zecora's place, but they finally settled into the shaggy hair above and behind his right ear. "Okay," Ocellus whispered. "Princess Twilight wrote that she hasn't heard about anything major happening with the hippogriffs, but she's checking with the diplomatic corps and will get right back to us."

"Thanks," Sandbar muttered. They were still maybe a block-and-a-half away from Zecora's house, but the big tree in her back yard was growing closer with each step. Unable to keep quiet, he lowered his voice and went on. "Mostly, I'm just gonna go with telling Silverstream how we're with her no matter what, how she doesn't have to run away to a whole different universe 'cause something bad's going on, and how we can work through any problem if we just stick together. That'll be a place to start at least."

At the other end of the leash, Smolder gave a sharp nod, something that made Sandbar feel better. Because if she thought he was being stupid, she would definitely let him know.

Swallowing, he stepped off the curb, then remembered to look for any cars coming. None were, so he kept going to the corner, then turned right and crossed again so he was on the same side of the street as Zecora's house. The house itself wasn't all that much bigger than the others around it, but the tree looming up from behind it really made him feel like it was crouching there, waiting to leap down and grab him. And seeing Silverstream slumped in her pink parrot shape behind the bars of the cage in the front window got him shivering again. Considering what Gallus had said—

Something tugged him forward, almost pulling him off his feet. He blinked, realized he'd stopped on the sidewalk. Smolder was looking back at him and jerking her head—and the leash—in the direction of the house.

Right. With another swallow, he picked up his weird feet one after the other till he reached the little stone path that led from the sidewalk to the house's front steps, turned to start up it—

And barking burst out inside, a frenzied sound like nothing Sandbar had ever heard before.

Smolder, stretching a front leg out in front of her, stopped, pulled back, and kind of curled the leg against her chest. She shook her head, though, put her paw forward again, and Sandbar, fighting the urge to turn around and run in any other direction, followed her to the stairs.

He climbed the three steps to the porch that reached along the front of the house almost to Silverstream's window and noticed for the first time the three or four wooden masks hanging from the walls. They didn't seem nearly as friendly as the ones he remembered from the couple times he'd visited Zecora's hut back home, but he crossed the porch, picturing a tornado of teeth on the other side of the door, extended a finger, and poked the doorbell button.

Or at least he assumed it was the doorbell button. Knowing his luck, it'd be the switch to open the door...

Some chimes rang inside, so that was good. Except that it got the dogs even more riled up.

But a whistle went off somewhere in the house, high and sharp enough that Sandbar swore he felt his frozen human ears move, trying to block the sound. Smolder's ears clenched to sides of her head, and she actually took half a step back, something she hadn't done even when the dogs started barking.

At the whistle, though, the barking cut off like scissors had been involved, and the rattling clatters that came from the door made him think locks were getting undone. He glanced down at Smolder, but she was staring at the door, every part of her radiating discomfort. Sandbar thought seriously about just grabbing Smolder and breaking for the sidewalk, but then the door was opening, a human woman about his same height standing there.

She was Zecora, all right. Of course, he'd never met any other zebras, but her dark skin, gray-and-black patterned hair, and gold bands at her neck, ears, and forearms spoke volumes. Her voice seemed really familiar, too, after she looked him up and down for a long moment and said, "Good morning, sir. How can I help? And please forgive my doggies' yelp."

Two things struck him immediately. She hadn't called him by name, so the human version of her didn't know the human version of him—if there was one. And she apparently still spoke in rhymes here.

The second one seemed odder than the first, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. Zecora was pushing the door open a little wider, and the two monstrous dogs squatting with their teeth bared on the floor behind her pretty much grabbed every ounce of his attention. Like Gallus had said, one was red and the other was green, both sleek, well-muscled, and about as scary as anything Sandbar had seen all year.

Something started twitching at his hand, and he almost leaped backward with a cry, thinking one of the dogs must've grabbed him and was trying to pull him inside. But both the dogs were still sitting behind Zecora, and a glance down showed him Smolder looking up at him and tugging on the leash with her teeth.

Ah. He'd been standing and staring again. So he cleared his throat even though there wasn't anything there to clear and said, "Yeah, okay, thanks, Ms., uhh, Zecora, isn't it?"

Her eyes maybe narrowed a bit—Sandbar couldn't manage to look away from the big dogs for long enough to judge. "My reputation must precede, for that's the name I'm called indeed."

Ocellus's voice buzzed in his ear: "Introduce yourself! We're still waiting on word from the princess!"

"Sandbar!" He hadn't meant to blurt it, but, well, it was too late now. "I'm Sandbar," he went on in what he hoped was a less-panicky voice. "I just— I was out looking for— Some of my...my pets escaped a couple days ago is the thing, and when I found my cat Gallus in the bushes across the street this morning, I saw Silverstream, my, uhh, my pet bird in the cage in your window." He tried to smile, but he felt it going wrong almost before it started. Trying to stop whatever his face might've been doing didn't work at all, and he had no idea what sort of expression he ended up aiming at her.

Her eyes definitely narrowed this time. "So Silverstream: is that her name? You brought a way to prove this claim?"

He wanted to step back, look along the porch to his left at the big picture window, and see if Silverstream had responded at all to the sound of his voice and him mentioning the others. But most of his body seemed really uninterested in taking his gaze away from the dogs. "I, uhh—" And even as the words that formed in his brain shot out over his tongue, his arms started twitching, trying to fling his hands up to cover his mouth. "Could I come in and talk to her? I know she'll respond if she hears and sees me."

Zecora stood with one hand resting on the door frame and looked at him for what felt like twenty or thirty minutes but was probably only a couple seconds. "Your dog respects commands you gave? She'll hearken? Sit? Obey? Behave?"

"Who?" Sandbar asked, but another tug at his hand made him look down at Smolder glaring up at him. "Oh! Right! Yeah, Smolder's great! She's smarter'n me most of the time!"

That at last got a tiny smile tugging at Zecora's weird human face, and she stepped back, pushed the door open even wider. "Then enter, please. We'll talk and see if you've been speaking honestly." She turned to her dogs and gave a quieter set of trilling whistles. They stood simultaneously, their ears still folded and their teeth still showing, and shuffled backwards down the hallway that Sandbar could now see on the other side of the door. "My Razer knows, and Gostir, too. My will they'd never misconstrue."

His hand holding the leash felt wet all of a sudden—did humans sweat there? Still, Sandbar nodded and said, "Smolder? Mind your manners, and we'll go on in."

Smolder didn't make a sound, but she stood and stepped across the threshold. Sandbar did his best not to make a sound either and followed.

The place smelled like he recalled from the few times he'd visited Zecora's hut back home: spicy, sweet, and a little ticklish even inside his human nostrils. It actually did a lot to smooth the hairs on the back of his neck and loosen the clench of his shoulders, two signs of stress he hadn't even noticed till they started fading with his first breaths inside the house.

The two dogs didn't relax a bit as far as he could tell, but they had backed all the way to the end of the entrance hall. Maybe so they could get a running start when they attacked, but Sandbar refused to let that thought go any further. Besides, Zecora, after closing the door and stepping ahead of Smolder, was gesturing to the first doorway on the left, the one that should lead into the room where Silverstream was. "Exotic birds are not my forte," she was saying. "She seems a most peculiar sort. She spends her days without a sound and always slumps like hope has drowned."

Sandbar entered a slightly cluttered parlor, then, Smolder and Zecora just ahead of him. Bookshelves lined every wall that wasn't a door or a window, and the four or five chairs were big and cushioned so much, he imagined he'd sink right into one if he sat in it. But his attention skipped right past all of the bric-a-brac scattered here and there on the shelves among the books—more masks, colorful stones, ceramic animals, spiky shells—to focus on Silverstream in the cage in the front window.

Slumped was exactly the word to describe her, clinging with pinkish-gray talons to a perch jutting out from the black iron bars. If her feathers hadn't been exactly the pinks and blues of Silverstream's colors, he might've thought he'd made a mistake, she looked so overwhelmingly dejected. She didn't look up or even open her eyes as they came into the room, and Sandbar knew that, whatever had happened to send her here, it had hit her really deep and really hard.

Before he knew it, he had crossed the room, not sure where Smolder or Zecora had gone, and was standing right next to the cage. "Silverstream?" he asked, and it took some effort to keep his voice from cracking. "It's Sandbar. I'm here with Smolder and Yona and Gallus and Ocellus."

She'd flinched as soon as he'd spoken, her crest feathers springing up and her eyes snapping open, and by the time he'd finished saying all their names, she was flapping her wings and spinning to face him, her beak opening at the same time as it somehow curled into a smile.

The light that had sprung over her face, though, faded almost at once, and she slumped back onto the perch again. Sandbar blinked, then blinked some more at the buzzing that sprang up in his right ear. "Sandbar," Ocellus more panted than said, her voice tight like she was speaking through clenched teeth. Which was weird since, even when she wasn't a swarm of bees, Sandbar didn't think she really had teeth.

"I...I don't," she was going on. "I don't know what's happening. I...I'm getting a lot of, I don't know, interference maybe? From the parts of me back at the house, I mean. I think there was a message from the princess saying that Silverstream's parents had finally decided to break up, so Silverstream was going to have to go back to Mt. Aris and become the head of their clan or something, but...but..."

The words vanished into the buzzing, and Sandbar focused back on Silverstream. "Look," he said, throwing out every idea he'd had about how to talk to her without seeming weird to the human Zecora, "whatever's happening with your parents, Silverstream, we can work something out: all of us, together, back home, not here where we're not even, y'know, our right species or whatever!"

"Damn it, Sandbar!" Smolder barked off to his left. "Uhh, I mean, woof?"

"No!" Silverstream shouted, her wings flapping this time to carry her onto the bars of the cage, her talons grabbing them till the whole thing was rattling. "We can't work it out. 'Cause we're not gonna be together anymore! My parents are giving up as heads of the family, so I hafta leave Ponyville and leave the school! I've gotta go back to Mt. Aris, become a duchess, join the Queen's Council, find some guy to get married to, and prob'bly never see any of you again!"

"What?" Sandbar yelled it at nearly the same time as Zecora, and he threw a frantic glance in her direction.

She was staring back and forth between Smolder and Silverstream. "Her squawk...is talk?" she asked.

"Uhhh," was all Sandbar managed to say before Silverstream drowned him out.

"It'll be the worst thing that'll happen in the history of ever!" she screeched. "And I was sort of crying about it to myself out behind Sweetfeather Sanctuary last week, just kind of saying that I wanted to run away to somewhere where nocreature would ever know who I was or would make me do things I didn't want to do! And then Discord was standing there, and he said he wouldn't recommend it, but if I wanted to get completely lost, there was a whole other universe through this mirror in Princess Twilight's castle where I wouldn't even be me anymore!"

Without a clue what to do, Sandbar looked at Smolder, staring up at Silverstream with her ears folded, at Zecora, staring across at Silverstream with her eyes wide, at the door that led back to the hallway where the two big dogs were peering around the corner apparently every bit as confused as everyone else. The buzzing in his ears was getting louder and more distracting with each passing instant, not a trace of Ocellus's voice in it, and now his heart was pounding loud enough to shake him where he stood.

Desperate, he threw himself another step closer to the cage. "We can fix it! I mean, yeah, maybe we can't, but it's guaranteed we can't if we stay here! Back home, we'll have a chance, but first we hafta—"

The whole house shook then, the walls practically swaying around Sandbar, and something crashed onto the porch outside the window, a dark shape looming up to cover the lower part of the window.

Not just any dark shape, though: Yona's dark shape, Gallus peering up from the back of her head, bees swirling around them both. "Ocellus attracting whole hurricane of bugs!" she shouted, her voice barely muffled by the glass. "We go through portal now, Silverstream marry Gallus since everycreature know both in love with each other, get herself named hippogriff ambassador to Equestria! We not go through portal now, we end up withers-deep in every bug ever born in human world!"

For another long second, only the increased buzzing filled the air. Then Zecora was rushing forward, undoing the clasp on the cage door, and throwing it open. "To run from problems never ends! Confront them now with help from friends!"

"Yeah!" Smolder wrenched the leash from Sandbar's hand. "With an emphasis on the 'now' part!" She waved a paw at the window. "Those dark clouds out there aren't weather related! So Silverstream? Let Sandbar carry you! Sandbar? Grab Silv, then get out the door and onto Yona's back! Zecora?" Smolder sat back and spread her front legs. "It was nice to meet you! If there's any damage to your house, let Fluttershy know, and she can get in touch with our princess." She leaped for the door. "Now let's move!"

Sandbar opened his arms, and a pink-and-blue feathery bundle smacked into his chest. Spinning, he followed Smolder to the front door, reached for the knob, pulled and ran and jumped and felt Yona slide up underneath him in ways that would've been very distracting if so many other distracting things hadn't been going on around him.

As it was, he dug the fingers of one hand into the thick, shaggy fur of her back just in time for her to surge against him, Zecora's front yard flashing past as Yona pounded down the sidewalk. Smolder was stretching out and running just ahead of Yona, he could see, Silverstream warm and quivering at his chest, Gallus clinging to Yona's shoulder beside him, and— "Ocellus!" he shouted, managing to look up and around at the swarm of bees. "You still here?"

"Mostly, I think." Her voice barely rose above the buzzing. "I was repeating everything you were saying at Zecora's house so Yona and Gallus would know, but more and more bugs kept showing up. Finally, Yona snapped up the pen, scrawled 'we come through portal now' in the book, and swallowed the pen! She grabbed Gallus in her teeth, threw him onto her back, and yelled that she knew how to start solving Silverstream's problem, but if we didn't get out of here now, we'd have too many problems to deal with! I sent the bugs I first attracted to distract the new bugs, and now, well, the sooner we're home, the better I'll like it..."

"Me, too." Gallus looked over with a grin on his way-too-feline face. "But whaddaya say, Silv? I mean, princesses marry guard captains in Equestria all the time, so who could get upset about a duchess or whatever getting in on the action?"

A squirming against his chest made Sandbar risk another glance away from the street streaming by, the school building now a block or so away. "You mean it?" Silverstream asked, peering out from under Sandbar's arm.

He nodded. "I love you, you love me. We'll just need a couple ground rules."

Silverstream's head came out a little farther, and she looked so much like her old self—other than her being a bird and everything—that Sandbar let his last lingering worry go. "Rules?" she asked.

Gallus undid a paw from Yona's scruff and held up two claws. "First, we talk everything over between ourselves and our friends before we charge into anymore palaces and shatter anymore universes. And second?" He leaned closer. "We never listen to Discord."

Silverstream giggled. "I agree. And even though this maybe isn't the way I always dreamed you'd propose to me..." She turned her pink-beaked face upward and met Sandbar's gaze. "Thanks, guys."

"Okay!" Smolder shouted ahead. "Eyes front, folks!"

Sandbar snapped his head back up, saw the stone block they'd come through approaching at a rapid rate.

Yona lowered her head. "Hope princess got message! Otherwise, could be some serious smashing here!"

But then Smolder passed right through the stone face, and Sandbar let out the breath he'd just sucked in, he and all his friends plunging through on the way home.