Pipp stood on the deck of the zeppelin, staring out at the bright, glowing city in the distance. Zipp landed behind her sister and said, “You’re thinking about it, too, huh?”
She sighed and lowered her head. “Yes,” she admitted. “I-I can’t help it. I just…” She stopped, at a loss for words. “Zephyr Heights has always been my home, and I’ve been happy there. But now that I see that there’s more out there, and now that I met everypony else, I just wonder if things will ever be the same again. I’ll never be able to look at the city the same again, and I worry what that’ll mean.”
“I don’t suppose there’ll be much choice for me,” Zipp said ruefully. “I mean, since I’m going to be queen and all that.” She sighed and followed her sister’s gaze to their hometown. “But I don’t know how I’m going to sit on that throne and rule just one city when I know that the world is so much bigger than that.”
Pipp looked behind her, where most of the other creatures were asleep. Lukas was still awake, reading Sunny’s Journal of Friendship by lantern light, holding his hair out of his face to see better, but the others were curled up and snoring.
Zipp followed her gaze and said, “They seem really nice.”
“Oh, I know that,” Pipp said hurriedly. “I just…” She paused. “I don’t know what to think.”
“There’s nothing wrong with any of them,” Zipp said indignantly, remembering earlier that day. “I can see why Sunny’s friends with all of them. They may look different or sound different or think differently than we do, but in truth, on the inside, we’re all the same.” She put her hoof on her sister’s shoulder. “There’s so much more to us than the outside.”
Pipp shrugged, not quite sure if she agreed. For all her life, she had been told that it was what you showed other ponies that counted. No matter what she did, it was always for the pleasure of somepony else. She knew there had to be more to it than that, but her mind was conflicted.
“I guess so,” she said instead. Her phone vibrated underneath her wing, and she pulled it out, the light of the screen illuminating her face. Her eyes widened, and Zipp immediately knew that it wasn’t something good. “What…”
“What is it?” Zipp demanded, peering at it over her sister’s shoulder.
Pipp’s voice shook as she said, “Th-there’s some kind of rally going on… about us.” She met Zipp’s fearful gaze. “And our friends. About how we’re dangerous traitors who don’t care about anypony other than ourselves.”
Deep inside her, Zipp remembered being under Sombra’s mind control - that hopeless feeling as everything she cared about crumbled around her. This felt scarily close to that.
“Pfft,” she said dismissively instead, “who’s going to believe that? I mean, after all we’ve done…”
“Apparently everypony.” Pipp tapped on the clip that she had been sent and showed it to her sister. “Look at this!”
Zipp fell silent as the shaky video rolled over hundreds of angry ponies, unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi alike, standing shoulder to shoulder and screaming in rage. They threw rotten food at pictures of Sunny, held signs with massive Xs through Sunny’s cutie mark, and at the head of it all was a pony that Zipp, unfortunately, recognized.
“That’s Helios!” she said with a gasp. “He - he’s Mom’s most trusted assistant. She must have left him in charge while she was gone. But… he would never do this.”
The two pegasi looked at the city in the distance, swearing they could almost hear the angry roars of the crowd even from this far away.
“What do we do?” whimpered Pipp. “Should we tell Sunny?”
“In the morning,” Zipp agreed. “She needs to know about this. They all do.” She was struck by a sudden thought and asked, “Who sent you that?”
Pipp examined the name of the sender on her screen. “Thunder.”
Zipp nodded as she thought about it. “Kailani told me that Thunder and Zoom dropped in for a few moments when they were flying back - that’s how they knew that ponykind was turning against us. They must still be in the city, keeping an eye out for us.”
“Good thing I got a hotspot before we left on this crazy quest,” Pipp agreed, then stifled a large yawn.
Zipp gave a small smile. “How about we go to bed? We can worry about all this in the morning.”
“I’m f-f-fine,” Pipp stammered around another yawn. “M-maybe just a quick nap…” She crawled over to her spot and curled up. Zipp pulled a blanket over her, and Pipp mumbled sleepily, “Thanks,” before falling asleep.
The pegasus gave a small smile and retreated over to her sleeping spot next to Kailani, but she didn’t think she could sleep. Her mind kept straying back to Zephyr Heights, wishing she could be there herself, hating the feeling of being so helpless while her world fell apart around her. She sighed and rested her head on her hooves and closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed and she drifted off into dreamland.
The zeppelin was silent as it gently drifted through the sky. A slight breeze made the flame in the lantern flicker, and Lukas looked up from his book, frowning. When he saw that it wasn’t anything to worry about, he went back to reading. Flurry felt the slight shift in temperature and woke, rubbing her eyes as she lifted her head.
“Everything okay?” she muttered, yawning.
The yak nodded. “Nothing to worry about so far.” He turned a page and kept on reading.
Flurry lay back down, but she knew that it would be futile - once she woke up, she always had trouble getting back to sleep. She sat up instead, looking out at the landscape around them. The silence was slightly uncomfortable, so she said, “You don’t sound like other yaks I’ve met.”
Lukas nodded. “I read a lot,” he explained, looking up and putting his hoof on the page he was on so that he wouldn’t lose his spot. The wind stirred the pages and flipped a couple on top of his hoof. “There’s only so many books in Yakyakistan, and I’ve read them so many times I could recite them from memory if I wanted to. None of the other yaks really care about them that much, so…” He shrugged and flipped the stray pages back.
“Once this is all over,” Flurry agreed, “you should come to the Crystal Empire and go through our library. It goes back thousands of years.”
The yak’s eyes widened. “How many books would you say are in there?” he asked breathlessly.
Flurry smiled and said, “Oh, about…” She shrugged. “I would say a couple thousand or so, give or take a few.” Her smile grew as she watched the effect that these words would have on the creature in front of her.
Lukas looked out into the distance, whispering, “A thousand…” He looked as if the whole world had just been opened up in front of him. Then his expression clouded over, and he said, “If this is ever over.”
“It will be,” the alicorn said confidently, standing up and walking over to him. “As long as we have the hope to believe so.” She glanced at the passage he was reading over his shoulder. “Oo, I remember my aunts telling me about that,” she said, leaning closer to read more. “The time that Aunt Twilight traveled through time and visited all those alternate timelines, chasing down Starlight Glimmer to try and stop her from changing the past - I requested it about a dozen times,” she remembered with a laugh.
He gaped at her. “Y-you were here for this?”
“Not all of them,” she conceded, sitting down next to him, “and I was only a filly for most of them. But my aunt and her friends told me everything. Perhaps I should mention that I was frozen in time for at least a century - that might help.”
“Not really,” he told her. “Because I don’t see how anyone could be frozen in time for a hundred years - that doesn’t make any sense!”
Flurry grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “Welcome to Equestria, my friend.”
The sky began to get lighter as every creature began to stir, and by the time that Sprout had dragged himself from bed, the sun had risen in a glowing, shimmering ball of glory, casting the entire land in a golden light. The sky was streaked with clouds but looked otherwise clear and absolutely beautiful. Below them, the dark green trees passed underneath them, swaying gently in the breeze, and to the east, they could just barely see the glimmer of the sea.
Little Braveheart squinted at the horizon in front of them. “Can’t this thing go faster?” she asked anxiously. “I feel like they’re planning something evil.”
“They’re villains,” Pipp snorted. “Of course they’re planning something evil.”
“Yeah, but… more evil than usual,” the tiny buffalo said, struggling to find the words.
Kailani frowned and shifted her feet. Hugo gave an insufferable sigh and told the buffalo, “No, this ‘thing’ cannot go any faster,” he said in an annoyed voice. He untied the steering wheel and readjusted their course slightly. “She only travels as fast as the winds, and-”
“What if there was a way to make her move without wind?” Zipp said thoughtfully. “I mean, the wind could obviously help, but what if there was some kind of wing contraption on the sides that would push it forward even when there is no wind?”
Hugo stared at her open-mouthed. “I think I could make something like that.” He pulled out a worn leather notebook from under his wing along with his reading glasses and a pencil. Flipping to a blank page, he began sketching out some kind of contraption with a bunch of arrows and formulas and fancy terms. Zipp hovered behind him, her own wings spread and flapping, giving him suggestions.
Lukas and Flurry were in a very animated discussion that Midnight joined in when Lukas realized that he had been there for some of the events in the Journal of Friendship and remembered them. Sunny came over and told them about how she had found the journal, and all the things she had found in it, and it looked like one big nerd convention for Ancient Equestria.
Izzy was telling Imara all about her inventions and crafts and unicycling. The changeling was very intrigued that she had disguised all her friends as unicorns and brought them into Bridlewood without anyone noticing, though Izzy did admit that their cover was eventually blown.
Pipp stood by the railing, alone, scrolling through her phone, bored. When she looked up and saw that all her friends were hanging out with the other creatures - even Sprout and Hitch were engaged in a conversation with Little Braveheart - she rolled her eyes, though inside, she felt like she was losing the thing she cared about most - her friends. It was as if they were trading her for someone better, and she hated it.
All her life she had tried her hardest to be perfect, and here were these new creatures, with all their flaws and weirdness, and her friends seemed to like them over her.
It was not a comforting feeling.
She felt a presence by her right shoulder and turned to see Ash standing there, smiling at her pleasantly. “What’re you doing?” the dragon asked curiously, Brooks the kirin behind her, looking like he regretted being over here.
Pipp shrugged and stood up, sliding her phone under her wing. “Not much,” she said truthfully.
Ash nodded like this was perfectly fine. She didn’t press her, and Pipp wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She turned to look at the receding horizon behind her and saw, out of the corner of her eye, the dragon doing the same thing.
Ash sighed. “It’s quite a view, isn’t it?”
“You should see Zephyr Heights,” Pipp surprised herself by saying. “Especially at night - and especially from way up high. It looks like it captured all the sunlight in the world.”
“Meh.” Brooks stood next to Ash, though he still kept his distance. “I prefer solitary confinement. No one to hurt then.”
Ash nudged him, saying, “You’re not going to hurt any creature.”
“But I might,” he fretted, the stress making flames roll off his pronged horn. “You don’t know how awful it is to be so dangerous and not able to do anything about it. I could explode into a fiery ball of anger at any moment, and then-” He broke off, curling up on the side and looking away so that they wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes.
Ash put her wing around him. “But you’re not,” she said calmly. “All emotions are the same - you will always have them, but what matters is what you do with them.”
Pipp turned away and looked back at the mountain disappearing into the distance. She remembered what her sister said, and thought, Zipp was right. There’s so much more to the world - and to those inside it - than we can even imagine. But we can try to see it.