Someone knocks at my door, waking me up. Slowly, I roll over and manage to wrench my eyes open. It’s still dark outside, and there are flurries gently falling down.

Whoever it is knocks again, this time a bit louder. Grumpily, I get out and go open the door. Twilight’s standing right outside, wearing some saddlebags. “Nice to see you up this early,” she smirks.

“I’d still be in bed if you didn’t come knocking,” I laugh a little, leaning on the doorframe. “What’s so important that you needed to come at dark o’clock?”

She comes in and sits cross-legged on the floor, taking her bags off. “I believe I’ve found something useful. Would you sit down?”

I get down next to her and reach for her bags. “What’cha got here?”

She swats my hand away, almost like a mother scorning her child. “Across from me.”

“Come on,” I insist, pulling my hand back in. “Why’s where I sit important?”

“It just is,” she asserts. “Now come on. Other side.”

I scoot across from her and cross my legs. “Now what?”

“Close your eyes.”

“Come on,” I laugh a little. “Now you’re just making stuff up.”

“Just close them,” she giggles. Reluctantly, I close my eyes. Something unbuckles, and then a book opens. I open my eyes a tiny bit and see Twilight reading a really intricate looking red book. “No peeking,” she demands, not even looking up.

I curse a little and shut them again. How she found out, I’ll never know. I can hear her flipping some pages, and then the book being put on the ground. “Empty your mind,” she says soothingly.

“What’s this for?” I ask her.

“Hopefully this will bring some clarity to the both of us,” she says calmly. “Now empty your mind.”

“Tell me what this is for.”

“That doesn’t sound a lot like emptying.”

“I’m just saying, if you want me to do this, you should-“

“Focus,” she snaps.

I sigh and start meditating best I can. “Okay Twilight, I’m doing it.”

I feel her hooves grab my hands and hold them out. “Imagine a great, open scene with nothing in it. Like a great lake, or the night sky.”

I take a few deep breaths as I imagine the first time I looked at the Equestrian night sky; the first time I saw the stars without any light pollution. “Okay, I’m imagining it.”

“Now imagine an infinite expansion of that. Try to imagine infinity; literally endless. As far as you go, you will never reach the end, nor will you ever get closer to it.”

“Okay.”

“Open your mind. Lose yourself in the search for the end of the endless. The limit of the limitless. The boundary of the boundless.”

I stop observing everything around me. The wind outside grows quiet, the chill of the winter air warms, and I can even feel my breathing become less noticeable.

“Feel the endlessness. Embrace the edge of existence. Feel your mind slip from your body into the vast emptiness that is our life force.”

“Mmm,” I hum, completely relaxed.

“Lose yourself,” she says, growing in intensity. “Feel yourself absorbed by the limitless. An ocean of everything. As far as you go, as much as you struggle, you will never even get closer to the top.”

My head feels a little stretched right about now. I try and speak up, but something stops me. I don’t even know what it is, but whatever it is mentally stops me. The only thing I can do is just sit there with my eyes closed.

I can hear Twilight’s horn power up, and then I can feel it touch my forehead. My thoughts swim, and before I know it, my eyes are open and I’m in a swirling mass of pinkish stuff. “Where is…this?” I ask the emptiness.

“You’re in our mind,” her voice echoes throughout.

“Our mind?” I ask.

“Two bodies, one mind. We have now joined as one. Our experiences, our lives, our memories, are now conjoined as one. Only now may we begin.”

“Begin?” I ask. “You mean we haven’t already started?”

The light swirls around a bit, and then gradually fades until it’s pitch black and I can’t even see anything. My eyes open, and I’m back to sitting on my floor. The world starts to come back little by little.

“What was that?” I ask her.

“It…clarified things,” she says, somewhat confused.

“What was all that stuff you had me do? Like, the ‘embrace infinity’ stuff?”

She slides the book over to me. “It’s an ancient unicorn ritual for intimacy.”

“Oh my god,” I whisper. “Twilight, did we just…?”

She quickly blushes to a deep red that could put Big Mac to shame. “Oh, nononono!” she quickly says. “Not, well…that kind of intimacy. Emotional intimacy. Like the deep bond two great friends share.”

“So that entire thing was just, what? A friendship ritual?”

“It was a banloca,” she says, pointing at the page the book is open to. “It’s the ancient unicorn word for ‘join’, which says what it is very well. Our very life forces join together, and we can even observe each others’. The reason I had you imagine all that stuff was because you needed to open up your mind. They can be very taxing on one's being if they are not prepared.” She smiles a little bit and looks at me. “Out of curiosity, what color was mine?”

“Color?” I ask. “There was like, some swirly stuff when you touched your horn to my forehead. Are you asking the color of that?”

“Yes,” she nods. “The color of that ‘swirly stuff’ is a good indicator of the pony’s personality. Or maybe, in your case, it will say the person’s personality.”

“You were dark pink.” I point at her body. “Sorta like the color of your coat, maybe a little darker. What’s that mean?”

She blushes a little bit. “That’s close to the color of scholars. Some of the smartest and most famous scholars were purple.”

“So this color stuff’s like, our aura?”

“’Aura’?” she repeats. “What’s that?”

“It’s like, well, a human idea. Our aura is sort of like what you’re describing. Nobody is certain about it; some believe in that, some don’t.”

“Well, this is all real. Some ponies pay lots of bits to ‘get their color read’ as they call it.”

“What color was mine?” I ask excitedly.

“Yours was silver,” she says, looking quite confused.

“Silver?” I ask. They way she said it, something’s wrong with that. “What’s that mean?”

“Nopony’s ever really figured out what silver means. Silvers achieve all sorts of things, and they’re almost always experts, or they perform very influential acts.”

“So…silver’s pretty much the wild card of the color wheel.”

“I guess,” she shrugs.

“Either way, you didn’t just come here to ‘read my color’ or whatever you said. What’s the real reason behind this visit and the subsequent mind probing?”

“Clarification,” she says again.

“I got that much. But clarification of what?”

“Your magic.”

“What about it?” I’ll admit, Twilight isn’t the best at always explaining things thoroughly.

“I just wanted to find out more about the magic. It’s just confusing me so much, and I want to find out more.”

“Anything specific?”

“Mostly to find out where the magic came from.” She starts flipping through the book a little more. “I think I may almost have it! Many of the readings point toward a few different hypotheses, which-“

“It’s genetic,” I cut her off.

“Oh,” she says blankly, looking up. She looks back down and starts flipping another way. “That saves me a lot of time.”

“That give you any leads?”

“Let’s find out,” she smiles. After a little more searching through her book, she ends on a page and levitates it in the air. “Here it is! ‘The Freod is an uncommon form of a friendship bond’.”

“So I’ve got one of those ‘freod’ things?” I try to clarify.

“Yes,” she confirms. “It says some more. ‘A Freod is a very rare occurrence; only individuals exposed to very powerful friendship or camaraderie can receive one. Freods can lost if the pony who has it acts in a way that is contradictory to the values of it’.” She rereads the sentence a little more carefully, then looks at me. “It says ‘pony’ in here. Do you think it applies to humans as well?”

“Keep reading,” I demand.

“Right,” she says, looking back into the book. “There’s not a lot left. ‘Little is actually known about Freods; since they are very difficult to acquire and can be lost easily, they are hard to study. They do not have any clear or distinct magical properties, making them one of the greatest magical mysteries’.”

I look at my arm and rub my fingers across it for no apparent reason. “So I’ve come all this way to pretty much be told that nobody has a real answer to this stuff?”

“I guess,” she shrugs. “Maybe it’s better that way. The mystery of it and the fun of imagining what it might be isn’t good enough?”

“Not really,” I say. “Better to just be told a solid answer so you don’t have to sit around and wonder.”

“I don’t know what to say,” she says apologetically. “This is the most advanced book on the subject, and there’s hardly anything in it.” She brightens up and beams at me. “Maybe we could run some experiments and find out more about this!”

And there goes the overenthusiastic Twilight I admittedly didn’t miss. “As long as it doesn’t involve putting a magic bubble around my house this time.”

“I’ll try to refrain,” she giggles. Her eyes suddenly open wide and her ears perk up. “Oh, wait!” she exclaims. “One more question!”

I guess I shouldn’t have expected to get away that easily. “Fine; one more,” I agree.

“Do you and the other humans share a common ancestor?” she asks. “You said it’s genetic, correct?”

“No and yes. It’s genetic, but I don’t think we share a common ancestor. I mean, it goes back 400 years, so it’s possible, but I doubt it.”

“Anything in common? Did they live together, work together, anything like that?”

“No.” A little thought pops into my head. “Well, there is one thing.” I figure that Twilight finally deserves to know.

Her face practically lights up. “What is it?”

I reach out and put my hand on her shoulder. “One condition,” I tell her, looking deep into her violet eyes.

“Yes?” she asks, a little scared of what I might say.

“You can’t tell anyone. I really don’t want to have to say this, but I think you should know.”

“Yes?” She leans her head in a little closer.

“All of us share ancestors with common traits; they were all interested in a television show about cartoon ponies.”

“Why’s that bad?” she giggles.

“It’s a really long and complicated story,” I tell her, making sure to avoid actually telling her the answer.

“Tell me!” she laughs, leaning on my chest. “Why is that so bad?”

“You just have to trust me on this one,” I say sternly, pushing her back. “I’m probably beating a dead horse with this, but I’ve had to go on a limb and trust you before.”

“You’re…what?” She stares at me like I’m speaking gibberish. “Is that some human expression?”

“I’m just saying, you’ve had to pull me out of a lot of fires, and I’ve never always understood why. I’m trying to prevent you from something for my first time.”

“Second time,” she corrects me. “You actually surprised me a little bit in the changeling lands.”

“You and me both.” I actually do feel a little awesome that I managed to beat the living crap out of a bug pony.

“So you’re entirely certain that you can’t tell?” she asks me. “Even after all we’ve been through?”

“I’m sorry,” I apologize. “You of all people, or ponies, or whatever should understand that sometimes we can’t always say everything to those we’re close to.”

“I don’t really understand. If we really were close, you could tell me the real reason.”

I think for a minute to try and figure out how to phrase this. “It’s like when you were a filly. Your parents probably held things from you until you were older.”

“Did not!” she asserts.

“Come on; there’s at least one thing they fudged for you. Think for a minute.”

She just sits there for a minute with a thinking face. “Okay, but this is different.”

“And do you hold any resentment towards your parents for lying to you to protect you?”

“They weren’t protecting me, and neither are you!” she yells stubbornly.

I sigh in submission. “Fine. I’m probably not protecting you, but you wouldn’t like what I have to say.”

“You’ve got a secret!” she almost shrieks in excitement. “What if I told you a secret of mine?”

“I just can’t bring myself to tell you.”

“Is there anypony you would tell?” she asks in a motherly fashion.

“I don’t want to go and run to Celestia,” I say firmly. “You’re the only non-human on this planet I’d tell even that much.”

“You said you’ve trust me plenty of times before,” she points out. “Can you do that one more time?”

Well, she’s got me in a corner now. Unicorns are surprisingly sly when they want to be. “You sure you can handle it?”

She nods confidently. “Certainly nothing can be that bad.”

I moan and look her straight in the eye. “Twilight, the show they watched was…about you and your friends.”

“Now you’re just being silly,” she giggles. “And aren’t cartoons drawn? They’re not real.”

“That’s exactly why I didn’t want to tell you,” I admit. “I’m being serious.”

All vitality and hope seems to drain from her face. “I’m…fake?” she asks, tears forming in her eyes.

I pull her over into a loving hug. “I’ve lived in both my world and this one, and it doesn’t feel any less here than it did there.”

“I’m not quite sure how to react,” she says hollowly. “What was the show about?”

“I don’t really know any details. I’ve never watched it.”

“So you say that this show they watched was about us?”

“Yeah, why?”

She just sits in my arms looking mopey for a few more seconds. All of a sudden, a huge smile breaks out on her face as though eons of confusion are finally cleared up. She plants her hooves on my chest and starts spouting excited nonsense.

“Slow down.” I can barely hold back a smile. Her immense interest in whatever this is is contagious. “Take a deep breath and start over.”

She takes a calm breath and smiles again. “I think I’ve figured it out!”

“Really?” I can’t believe that something like that could actually clear that up. When I first learned that, it didn’t give me any ideas.

She gets out of the hug and puts her saddlebags back on. “Follow me for a moment.”

“For?”

“It’s a surprise,” she says mysteriously.

I get up and we head out the door, and I lock it behind us. “Lead the way.” She starts walking along the frozen ground back into Ponyville.

Author's Note

Expect this story to be finished soon. I have just one more chapter planned, but some novel idea may pop into my head. Keep your eyes peeled (not literally, that'd just be gross).