One year

I felt a mix of emotions swelling through my mind, the most prominent ones being joy, anger, and fear. They came back to talk about Dashie, but why wasn’t she here? I tried to comprehend the question, maybe find the reason for Dashie’s absence hidden within the statement. If she wasn’t here, maybe they wanted me to convince her to stay in Equestria. It was her home, after all, and I remembered what I told her to try and make her feel better.

"It's your actual home, Dashie. You don't belong here. You need to go back to where you belong."

They were just words. How could I expect them to instantly make her feel better? However, I wondered how much time it has been for her since she left for her home. Surely, it couldn’t have been the same difference as the first time they came. Yes, she would have been devastated, but would they have returned after a day of her resisting the change? Or did something happen in Equestria? Wanting to know the truth, I escaped my thoughts to look at the ponies and asked them, “How long has it been?”

Twilight spoke up. “It’s been a year. As for here?”

I looked at her curiously. “A year? That’s how long it’s been here.”

I suppose you could say I was confused. According to her, one day in Equestria was a year on Earth. If that were still true, then I would have been dead for decades. That may actually explain why they didn’t bring Dashie with them. They must have been worried that they would return here to find out that I had been long since deceased. I couldn’t imagine how much that would have devastated her, but I remembered something I had been worrying about earlier. Why is Dashie still dwelling on this? The last I remembered, they had used a spell to restore her memories of Equestria. I saw Twilight perform the spell, so wouldn’t she be ready to be back home?

Wait a minute. They allowed her to keep her memories of this place, or at least, I assumed. Could that be the reason behind her pain? Was she torn between the two lives that she had lived, being forced out of what she thought was real and being filled with all the experiences of herself in Equestria? Trying to move back into the life she was told she lived, being told that what happened here shouldn’t have been. I could imagine her pain, and I felt the urge to yell at them for doing such a thing to her. However, something was wrong with them. Surely, their friend’s identity crisis would take a toll on them, but they seemed guiltier than they should be. Something bad had happened to Dashie, and I needed to find out what it was and why they’re actually here again to talk about her. Clearing my throat, I tried to think of how to word what was on my mind. As if Celestia was reading my mind (and she very well could be), she spoke softly, “I’m sure you want to know why we’re here now. Twilight, I suppose you should explain the situation.”

Twilight looked up at the princess and then back to me before starting. “Well, as you saw we tried to perform the memory spell on Rainbow Dash. At first, we thought it had worked. She seemed to know that we were in my library when we returned, and we asked her if she wanted to go back to her house. It wasn’t until we asked her that we realized that the spell had failed. She knew very little about Ponyville, only recognizing a handful of places and people. Even then, she was getting people’s names wrong, calling Time Turner ‘Doctor Hooves’ and Sweetie Drops ‘Bon Bon’. At first, I thought the spell just got cut off by us returning home, but I must have tried a dozen times, each time getting the same result.”

Applejack was the next one to speak. “After Twi’ tried, I took Rainbow around town to try an’ jog her memory. Brought Scootaloo to ‘er and asked if she remembered little Scoots. Poor filly, musta been mighty painful to see your friend not even recognize ya.” She stopped for a while, as if trying to gain the courage to continue. “Ah kept doing this for ‘er for about a month, jus’ hopin’ she would remember somethin’, anythin’. She saw that, but no matter how hard she tried nothin’ changed. Ah tried mah hardest, but it jus’ didn’t work…”

One by one, the ponies shared with me their attempts to restore Dashie’s memories, each attempt bringing them no closer to recovering their Rainbow Dash. All feelings of anger were gone; I begun pitying them for their loss of a friend. As their stories went on, it seemed like they ended up driving a wedge between them and Dashie. I had no idea what to say to them. What could I say? By the time Fluttershy had given up, they had all but lost hope in getting their Rainbow back. They went a whole month without any attempts to try and restore her memories. Twilight explained that she and Celestia had been discussing the matter to great lengths, looking for any possible ways to get the memories back to Dashie. As I listened to their ideas, I saw the desperation growing, the two even looking into forbidden magic to find a way to get her back to her old self. Eventually, they found it, a spell that allowed the caster to enter the mind of a pony and unlock parts of the brain. The spell had traditionally been used for interrogating ponies, being banned as it was deemed immoral, but Celestia saw it was a necessary action.

“So after we agreed that it was the only way out, I gathered every pony to get Rainbow Dash. She had spent the time away from every pony in her house, not leaving it once since we stopped trying to help her,” Twilight said, tears welling up in her eyes. “She put up a fight, saying that we were torturing her enough as it was…” I wanted to stop her from talking, not willing to bear another second of this painful story she was telling. However, part of me wanted to know what had happened after that, so I waited for her to continue. After a couple minutes, she started talking again. “We went through her head, trying to find any sign of who she once was. I don’t even know how long we spent looking, but there was nothing in the end. She had no memories of her original life, every thought and memory was of your upbringing of her. I just couldn’t stand to put her through any more pain, so I released her and asked her what she wanted. She didn’t want to stay in Equestria; she had no memories of her life there beyond the last year of us torturing her. After letting her go, we decided that we would have to return her here; it was the only right thing to do. Equestria wasn’t her home. She had kept saying it, but only then had it really sunk in. All of our actions up to that point felt justified, as we were hoping that we would be able to somehow return things to the way they should be. What we learned was that she wasn’t our Rainbow Dash that we once knew and loved; she was your daughter. She had almost no ties to the original Rainbow Dash, and we were trying to merge two different things. It took us this long to realize, we weren’t bringing her home. We were taking her from it.”

I sat there for what felt like an eternity, processing the events that were just told to me. I felt void of any emotion. I was unsure whether to hate them or pity them; both options would be completely justified. They took away my daughter, tortured her for a year, tried to force these memories into her mind, and now they want to return her to me. I felt like I was asleep, but whether it was a dream or nightmare was undetermined. The actions they had taken seemed unlike themselves, going to such desperate attempts to get their friend back. Just listening to their helplessness was painful; even the goddess was becoming desperate as time dragged on. I couldn’t bear to see them like this; it was just too horrible. These were not the same ponies that I saw on the TV show or the ones that came to my doorstep. The ones in front of me were mentally worn down, giving up their hopes of their Rainbow Dash ever returning. I had hoped Dashie was in a better place, living her life the way it was supposed to be.

I could not have been more wrong.