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When we reach Twilight’s house, the sun has just started to peek over the horizon. The pale morning sun reflects off the fresh snow, making a calming scene. Twilight opens the door, and we go inside. Her tree is lit by the soft light of dawn, making the whole inside feel warm and cozy.

"So what are we doing here?" I ask her.

She quickly levitates a scroll and quill and writes something while in the air, then ties it with a ribbon and throws it in her bags. "Just that. Now, let's go. We shouldn't waste too much time."

“What’s in the note?” I pry.

“It’s a secret,” she giggles. “Now come on. I’ve got an idea.”

“An idea to do…?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see.” She walks to the door and opens it. “After you.”

I head outside, and she follows me out and closes the door behind us. “Can you at least tell me where we’re going?” I ask her.

“The portal.” She stands next to me and looks up. “Let’s walk together.”

We walk through the desolate early morning Ponyville to the edge of town. We start walking in the open fields, and soon enough we get to some snow that’s about knee-deep for me and almost to Twilight’s neck.

“Keerthana?” she asks.

I wipe some sweat off my forehead, since the snow’s so thick that it’s incredibly winding to walk through. “Yeah?”

“Can you carry me?” she asks meekly. “The snow’s really deep here, and well…you’re just so tall.”

I crouch down so most of me is in the snow as well. “Hop on.”

With great difficulty, she climbs onto my back and throws her forelegs around my neck. With even greater difficulty, I get back up to a standing pose and start trudging through the wintery thickness.

“You’re so…tall,” she says with a bit of fear in her voice. “What happens if you trip and fall?”

“Just get right back up. Frankly, I’ve never understood how you can get around everywhere with four legs.”

“It’s easy.” She points ahead to the portal, which is giving off a faint purple glow on the pristine snow. “Just right there.”

“I know where it is. Used it plenty of times before.”

“Just making sure.” The snow actually recedes as we get closer to it, so I squat down and let her jump off. She starts studying the portal intently, and I go up to put my hand on it. Still solid as ever.

“So why are we out here?” I ask, looking back at her.

She comes up and places a hoof on it as well. “Just one last experiment.” She takes her hoof off and turns to me. “Could put your hand out?”

I put my free hand in front of her face. “Do with it what you will.”

Her horn powers up, then there’s a sharp pain in my finger. A little bit of blood comes out, and she levitates it right in front of the tip of her horn. As she steps back and into the snow a little bit, I check my hand. No cuts or openings or anything. Magic can be freaky sometimes.

“I’ll admit, it’s a little creepy that you need my blood for this,” I call to her.

“I needed some of your magical trace for this.” Her horn powers up, and the blood starts to glow lightly.

“For what?”

My blood shines bright silver, reflecting all over the shiny snow. A shot of bright light flies straight into the portal. When the light hits it, a huge flash happens; it's so bright that I step back instinctively and put my arm over my eyes.

“You can look now,” Twilight says nicely. I pull my arm away, and the portal’s changed from a rigid purple to a fluid and pale yellow.

“What did you do?” I ask her quietly, a little in awe of what she managed to accomplish.

She opens her bags and grabs the scroll with her magic, throwing it into the portal. “I think I’ve opened it,” she says smugly.

“Really?” I walk up and gently put my hand towards it. Instead of the solid wall, my hand just goes into the jiggly mass of magic. Twilight comes next to me and puts her hoof in it as well.

“Looks like it’s worked,” she smiles. She takes her hoof out of the portal and pulls my hand out as well. “We probably should leave it open for whoever comes through.”

“For what?” I ask. “Did you just say that someone’s coming through?”

“Maybe,” she smirks. “I did tell them on the scroll to send someone through.”

“Yeah, because that’s not ominous. Either way, how’d you unlock it?”

“I’ve had to do some intensive studying into the nature of portals to understand this, but I did that mostly in the past couple months. I just needed some of your magic to unlock it.”

“I guess you’ve finally figured everything out, then?”

She nods and smiles. “You telling me about the show finally cleared everything up for me. The portal gave off magical signatures similar to the Elements of Harmony. And, of course, their power is released by the magic of friendship.”

“So we’re looking at physical friendship?” I ask, pointing at the portal.

“The magic of it,” she says. “Caused by a culmination of discarded human Freonds over the past couple centuries. It must have been acquired through some subtle radiation of the magic of friendship through that show. There must certainly have been a lot that watched it; usually, that many takes at least a thousand years to be acquired and lost.”

“Are freonds normally genetic?”

“Obviously they are in humans. But as the book said, there’s not enough information to make any good hypotheses.”

“Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to test the portal by having us go through it first?”

“How come?”

“Well first off, it probably seems suspicious that-“ The portal starts wobbling in place ecstatically, and we both turn to look at it. “What exactly is happening?”

“Someone’s coming through!” she exclaims, running close to it. “This is so exciting!”

I walk next to her and push her muzzle away a little. “Try and let me do the talking.”

“But why?” she pleads.

“Let’s just say my first time here didn’t go so well.”

“What happened?” she asks curiously. “Wasn’t my brother leading the team that first found you?”

“You mean he never told you?” I guess I owe Shining Armor a favor now. That’s one thing I’d probably rather her not know.

“What did you do?” she asks with a little bit of shock.

“Nobody died,” I joke. “That’s a victory in and of itself.”

“I am writing to my brother as soon as we get back.”

The portals goes really wonky for a moment, then a guy in a suit falls out and the portal becomes more stable. The guy in the suit stands up and looks around a little bit, clearly sort of fazed by the whole incident. He just looks a little disoriented instead of in crippling pain, so portal travel seems to have gotten considerably less painful.

I walk over and crouch down to his level. “You okay?” I ask him.

He looks up at me with wide eyes. “You’re human,” he says emptily.

“Of course I am.” I stand up and put my arm out to help him up. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He grabs my arm and shakily stands up. “Something happened with the portal, and then we got a message to come through. We were unsure.”

Twilight stand next to me and excitedly puts out a hoof. “Welcome to Equis!” she beams. “I’m Twilight Sparkle.”

The other human panics a little and pulls out a pistol, pointing it at her. “What is it?” he asks, terrified. Guess everybody’s first time seeing a talking pony is frightening.

“Put it down,” I say to calm him down. “She couldn’t hurt a gnat if she tried.” Twilight looks at me a little insulted, then goes back to smiling at the newcomer.

“How can we trust her?” He slowly inches away from her.

I’d yell at him if I hadn’t done more or less the exact same thing when I came here. “Come on, just trust her. She’s fine.”

“Can’t do that,” he says, not putting his gun down. “First rule about dealing with unknowns; assume hostility.”

While he’s completely preoccupied with his little standoff with Twilight, I can quickly wrench the gun out of his hands with little to no difficulty. “Now apologize to her and shake.”

Reluctantly, both of them put out their respective forelimbs and shake a little bit. “Can I have the gun back?” he asks eagerly.

I give it to him and then pat him on the back. “Come on. Let’s get some more people through.”