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***Four months later***

I breathe in a big breath of warm summer air. I open my eyes to my small, cozy room. Sliding out of bed, I go to the window and open the curtains overlooking the market of Ponyville. It’s really early in the morning, so the only ponies that are up are setting up market stalls, preparing for the rush of the day.

I open the door into my living room, which still looks more like an organizer's nightmare than where I’m supposed to live. Papers and books are piled everywhere, showing just how much I’ve got to do. Good to know I’m no more productive here than I was on Earth.

Just as I start to go to the kitchen, I hear some knocking at my door. I walk over and open it to find Twilight on the other side.

“Morning,” I moan sleepily. “This isn’t about how I’m so far behind on everything I promised, is it?”

She smiles and laughs a bit. “No no, it’s fine!” she says.

“Come on in a minute,” I say, walking aside to let her in. She comes in and looks around. “Sorry it’s so cluttered,” I apologize.

“I understand,” she giggles. “I’m no better when there’s work to be done.”

“So,” I say, walking to the couch and sitting down. “What brings you here?”

“It’s about your friends,” she says.

“My friends?” I ask. “God, I haven’t thought about them in months. I’ve just been focusing on getting used to living amongst a bunch of technicolor ponies that I haven’t thought about the normally colored apes. What about them?”

“I don’t know, but the Princess wants to talk to you about them.”

“Celestia wants to talk to me about the others? Why?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “She just told me that she wants to talk to you.”

“Wait,” I say as a thought pops into my head. “You didn’t tell her about the stupid plans I had to find them when I got here, did you?”

“Well…” she smiles guiltily.

“Dammit,” I mutter so she can’t hear. “Twilight, you shouldn’t have done that. I was being even more stupid than I normally am when I was saying that. Now she’s probably put together some professional grade search and rescue team for me.” I sigh. “I hate to say it, but I’ve given up on finding my friends or getting back home.”

“What?” she asks, startled. “How can you say such a thing?”

“It’s right in front of you! Four months and no word about any of them has come around! And for four months, the best minds both the ponies and humans have to offer have been trying to get the portal to comply, but nothing’s worked!” I stop and let my words sink in a bit, both for her and myself. “Face it, Twilight. I’m not going anywhere, and nobody’s coming here.”

Twilight looks at the ground, a bit distraught at my pessimism. “Well,” she says, “The Princess has summoned you to talk about them.” Her head perks up, and she smiles a little. “Maybe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, after all.”

I bite my lip after having my arguments shot down by Twilight for the zillionth time. “You’re right,” I say a bit apologetically. “She probably wouldn’t just call me willy-nilly to Canterlot. She probably does have something important.”

She walks over and pats me on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit. The next train to Canterlot leaves in an hour. We’ll all be waiting for you at the station there.”

“Thanks,” I weakly say. She walks out of my house and closes the door behind her.

***

Twilight, all her friends, and I are all standing on the small little platform that is the Ponyville Train Station, waiting for our ride to show up.

“Excited?” Twilight comes over and asks me.

“A bit,” I say. Truth is, I’m more than “a bit” excited. Canterlot seems like a really neat city, and it’ll be nice to get out of the boonies. No offense Ponyville, but you sort of are in the middle of nowhere.

The train pulls up after a couple minutes, and we all get on and go to our own private car that Celestia arranged for us. As much as I dislike the idea of a ruler with absolute power that wasn’t freely elected, it still is nice when you’re on good terms with them.

“So,” Applejack says after we all sit down, “What’dya think the Princess wants ya for?”

“To talk about the humans I came here with,” I reply.

“Yeah, Twilight already told us,” Rainbow says. “But what do you think she wants to talk with you about?”

“No idea, but I hope it’s good news.” I look out the window worriedly. “As they say, ‘No news is good news’.”

“Huh?” I can hear all of the ponies asking. “But how can no news be good?” Twilight asks.

“It’s from wartime. Most news back when the saying originated was bad news, coming from generals that needed more troops or supplies because they were being beaten. If someone got no news, it means they were successful.”

“Really?” Twilight asks, her eyes filled with wonder.

“No,” I laugh. “I have no idea how the saying originated. But it makes for a good story, does it not?”

“I guess,” she says. “Branching off that, can I ask you about how humans perceive war?” she asks.

“Why? I’ve written you some things about wars before, and I gave you that world history textbook, surely there’s stuff about war in there.”

“There is. Just, whenever you or the books bring it up, they always talk about it so…casually.”

“’Casually’?” I look at her strangely. “What do you mean ‘casually’?”

“It’s just that whenever the topic’s brought up, no human seems to show remorse or regret. You don’t regard it as tragedy or anything. You just talk about it as though it were as normal as anything else in the world.”

“Not that many wars were that tragic.”

“Yes, but,” her voice seems to grow sadder, “Any loss of life is terrible, is it not?”

I think about her statement for a minute. She’s got a point, one that most people don’t think about. “Well?” she asks.

“You’re…right,” I admit. “And you’re asking really deep questions, Twilight. Ones we’ve been struggling to answer for about ten thousand years, possibly even more.”

“Really?” she says a little excitedly. “Like what?”

“Well, for one, you essentially just asked why we wage war.”

“Yes,” she says. “Ponies have held wars before, but we stop whenever too many soldiers die. And they’re very rare, whereas humans seem to wage war at the drop of a hat.”

“People have been trying to answer the question of our nature for a long, long time. Are we naturally good? Are we naturally evil? Are we both, or are we born empty and filled with hatred or kindness?”

“I see,” she says contemplatively. “But that doesn’t have much to do with why you wage war.”

“I guess not,” I admit. “But no matter what we naturally are, we always seem to resort to war and violence. The human race, on a whole, is a particularly violent species that doesn’t mind attacking its own members to get what it wants.”

“That’s awful!” she exclaims. The other ponies all have a fairly similar look of disgust on their faces. “Why?”

“In addition to being violent, we’re also pretty selfish and greedy. We often place our needs higher than those of others, but we won’t admit it. We’ll find some way to cover it up, say it’s better for everyone. We wage war primarily for our own benefits, but we say it’s for the greater good. For example, in World War One, the United States joined because they had had strong economic and political ties to one side of the fighting. They wanted them to win so they didn’t lose all that. But when they started fighting, they said it was to ‘Make the world safe for democracy’.”

“But…why would anyone kill another so mercilessly?”

“Like I said, some people will do anything to further advance themselves. People will kill for any reason; even for someone's ethnicity."

Twilight sighs and shakes her head. “I just can’t believe that humans would do that to each other.”

“Just consider yourselves lucky,” I say a bit enviously. “You can stop talking about it, and that’s it. It never has to come up again. But for me, that’s my history. It’s human history. Filled with blood and deceit. One man summed up the world quite nicely when he said, ‘You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone’.”

“You’re not violent, are you?” Twilight asks, scared.

“No,” I say comfortingly. “I promise you that I will never purposefully take the life of another intelligent species.”

“Does this mean you’re going to stop buying chickens and pigs just to kill and eat them?” Fluttershy asks hopefully.

“Sorry,” I say, smiling. “Omnivorous and loving it. We were made to be able to eat both plants and animals, so it’s how must of us have lived for our whole history. Don’t feel an overwhelming urge to become a vegetarian.”

She looks away a bit defeated, determined to one day convince me to stop eating animals. In my defense, if they shouldn’t be eaten, they shouldn’t be so tasty.

***

When the train stops in Canterlot, I feel happy. Turns out talking about human nature and whatnot for an hour or so with a bunch of ponies is more fun than one would think. I put my bag on my back and walk into the grand city.

In all honesty, for a city built by creatures with probably a maximum of early Renaissance architectural knowledge, Canterlot is amazing. It just has an air of sophistication around it that tells you only the highest tier of the social ladder lives here. Outside of the fact that everypony seems to be walking with their noses firmly in the air, it seems like a great place to be. Why would Twilight ever move away from here for Ponyville?

I can see I’m not the only one entranced by Canterlot. All of Twilight’s friends (Rarity especially) seem to be admiring everything, just like I am. Twilight’s just walking straightforward like it’s no big deal.

After a while, we get to a gigantic marble building at the edge of Canterlot, which I can only assume is the castle. It’s more grand than anything I’ve ever seen, and it seems to tower over the whole world as if it were the center of everything. My historical knowledge is telling me that the divine right is strong here.

Twilight walks past a small group of guards protecting the entrance, who smile at her. They let the rest of us through, though with smiles not as large as the ones Twilight got. I’m the last one to pass, and they scowl a bit while eyeing me suspiciously.

Twilight leads us through the courtyard and eventually to the castle, where security is tighter, more friendly to Twilight, and less so to me. I have a feeling punching a Royal Guard captain is going to stick with me for a while.

Eventually, we come to a set of giant doors, which the two guards standing beside it open with their magic. We walk in, and Celestia is writing something down in a giant throne surrounded by a few advisors and some…thing.

“Princess!” Twilight says, excited. “We’re here!”

“Twilight Sparkle!” Celestia beams. “My faithful student! Have you brought Keerthana like I asked you to?”

“Yes, she did,” I say, stepping foreword a few steps. “What is it you wanted to talk with me about?”

A little happiness fades from her face. “I’m sorry, but I will have to ask everypony except Twilight, Keerthana, and the Chancellor to leave.” Obediently, everyone else leaves the room, and the doors close behind them, leaving only me, Twilight, Celestia, and the other thing in the throne room.

“You must be the human the Princess was telling me about,” the thing says, extending some sort of talon to me.

“Pleasure,” I say awkwardly. “If you don’t mind me asking, you are a…?”

“My name is Chancellor Grimgnash, leader of the Griffon Empire,” he says triumphantly. “And you are Keerthana Griffis, the human from Earth, correct?”

“Yes,” I say. Talking Griffons? Just when I thought I had seen it all, this world throws some other wacky talking creature my way. It feels just like the time when I was in the market and ran into a cow, and it apologized for being in my way.

“The Chancellor has some…troubling news,” Celestia says somberly. Her horn lights up, and a big box is levitated into the middle of the room, right between all of us.

“What’s in it?” I ask. I have a hunch, but for once I hope I’m wrong.

Celestia sighs sadly and opens the lid. When I see what’s inside, my heart drops as I see that I was right about my hunch. Nadiya’s corpse is lying in the coffin, cold and lifeless.

“I am very sorry,” the Chancellor says. “One of the tribes discovered her a few days ago in the badlands. They tried, but,” he looks toward me sorrowfully. “She was beyond saving.”

“It’s fine,” I moan. “Was that the first time anyone saw her?”

“Yes,” he says quietly. “We don’t go into the badlands very often, so she was unknown to us.”

“She must have died recently,” Twilight says comfortingly. “Her body doesn’t look decomposed.”

“Would you like to lead a death arrangement?” Celestia asks. “Do whatever it is humans do to their dead?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what to do. Death rites usually differ from religion to religion, and I don’t know what she is.”

“Do you want us to do anything?” Celestia asks.

I sigh and put my hand on hers. “I’ll do something, I guess.”