//------------------------------//
// Water under the Bridge 
// Story: Rebirth of Magic: In the Mists 
// by JimmyHook19 
//------------------------------//

So, Bridlewood. That was unexpected.

I knew from the movie that it was covered in signs telling other ponies to keep out, and that only unicorns were permitted inside the forest, but that restriction technically didn't apply to unicorns.

Like me.

I looked up at the signs, each of which conveyed so clearly how society felt about the other tribes. The usual, such as keep out smallbrains! and cannibals have no place here!

I sighed, and noticed Sprout looking sadly at the signs. "Sorry in advance," I said, looking down with shame.

He reached over and rubbed my shoulder. "There's no need to be sorry," he said. "It's not your fault their are racists in the world. We've got a lot of work to do if we're going to overcome this prejudice, though."

"Every journey begins with a single step," Sunny said. "I mean, we've walked a long way up to this point and probably are tired, but if we continue with our trip we could find a way to fix this and-"

"Sunny, you've overexplained it," Hitch said. "We knew what you meant when you started. We need to get moving- no point in standing out here."

I took a deep breath, and started to move forward.

"Come on, guys!" Izzy said. "My house is this way!"

I stepped into the forest, and looked around me, seeing the landscape shifting from rolling fields near mountains to forest canopies, with trees stretching high into the sky and seemingly scraping the top of the world.

As I walked through, I felt a very odd feeling. Somewhere in my heart about this place.

Back in the old world, there was a singer called John Denver. He largely wrote songs about the western portion of my old nation, focusing particularly on the interactions between people and nature. One of his songs became a state anthem, by the way.

Anyway, in one of them he speaks of a man who comes home to a place he'd never been before. Obviously this wasn't meant in a literal sense, as you cannot come home to a place you've never lived, but what Denver meant was that this person felt such a strong connection to this new land it was effectively his new home.

I was having the exact same feeling as I walked through Bridlewood. I had never been here before for obvious reasons, and yet this place somehow felt like home. Despite the fact I'd never been here before, I felt I had been.

But that made no sense! But then again, so many things around here didn't seem to make sense when looked at on an objective level. Perhaps it came from being a former brony who knew this stuff, compared to Misty herself who presumably wouldn't have any real knowledge of the area.

I tried to relax, and walked onwards, watching things going on as the sunlight cascaded down my features. It was a lovely day, I must admit. I just wanted to soak it up and smile. I had to squint sometimes at the light, but it was lovely nonetheless. It seemed almost poetic.

Here I was, a pony who had never really had any true sense of home when a person, trotting through a place where I felt a sense of home. What was going on?

"Hey, Misty?" said Sprout, shaking me out of my thoughts.

"Oh, hey," I said. "Sorry for spacing out. I kinda just wanted to soak it up, you know?"

"I get it," Sprout smiled. "This place is beautiful- just like you."

My brain stopped for a second. I knew I was having challenges with this myself, but had Sprout just said what I thought he said?

He just called me beautiful?

This couldn't be the Sprout from the movie. The Sprout of the movie would never express romantic attraction towards a member of another species! Or race. Are the pony groups separate species or different ethnic groups? It's not entirely clear.

But he wouldn't have said that. And I seemed to have attraction back!

I was so confused.

Sprout noticed my lack of speech. "Sorry. I have no clue what came over me."

"It's OK," I replied. "Truth be told you're quite sweet yourself, and got us out of that jam with the ghosts."

Sprout went bright red- which was quite remarkable given he's red anyway. "Err, thanks."

This conversation was getting too awkward for words, so I dropped it when we got to Izzy's house.

After producing her keys somehow from nowhere, Izzy opened the doors and went into her house. The door was a nice door, and Izzy had greeted her house for some reason. I have no real idea why, but then again her house, her rules.

I smiled as I trotted in, listening to all the ponies chatting to each other and generally just enjoying the company of one another, I then came to another realisation.

As we were still in the events of the movie, most of the ponies I had encountered had their movie voices. If this sounds weird, remember this is a media franchise where I'm from originally. During the show's run, they switched voice actors to a new team of actors based out of Canada who gave the cast new voices.

Misty was introduced in that era, and as a result didn't change voice actors- it's the voice her voice actor, Bahia Watson, gave me that's coming out of my vocal chords. My Canadian accent sounded really out of place amongst lots of American ones. Which, in a sense, only amplifies how much of an outsider I was at the time, making for a rather poignant point of comparison.

Did this mean that at some point everypony would wake up with different voices? That would fill me with existential dread if that fate potentially awaited me. But I suspected I didn't have that to worry about.

Pipp was busy snapping photos of everything whilst Sunny asked Izzy about her basement, which I can only assume is some sort of reference to something.

So, the group of us then sat down for tea. Two unicorns, three earth ponies, one pegasus. An interesting dynamic, given the shows normally go for two of each tribe. As my presence here constituted a distortion in the timeline, I felt out of place still- even if the giant floating text boxes that seemed to follow me around told me this was my destiny. Well, it wasn't as if I couldn't have some fun whilst I was here. That I could do, and I would do.

Unfortunately, things hit a bit of a wall. Izzy hadn't been planning for this many ponies to disguise as unicorns. In the film, she only needs to disguise four ponies, and as one of the extra ponies was a unicorn (me, namely) that meant she wouldn't need to disguise me. But she needed to disguise three earth ponies and a pegasus, two of them being male, making in all four.

Apparently she needed more material for male ponies as the heads are constructed differently, and, err, how to put this a bit delicately for the benefit of my friends, but, um, Pipp is, shall we say, a bit bigger than other ponies. As Izzy needed to disguise the wings in order to make the disguise convincing, she'd need a bit more material to fit round her barrel.

Once that was decided on, we all needed to have a wash. Hitch and Sprout went through the shower first as they have manes about half an inch long that takes two seconds to dry. Sunny and myself would need to take longer as my mane is especially fussy, and Pipp wanted a bath so she agreed to go last and let us wash first.

Izzy was certainly well stocked for mane conditioner, I'll say that. After several days of no washing it was nice to finally wash all the dirt and grime out of my fur before applying some necessary chemicals and fluffing my mane. Good thing my fur didn't puff out, as happens sometimes in fanfiction.

Once I was done I dried myself with a towel, and then went to help get the beds set up. Izzy lived on her own as it's implied her parents are either deceased or living elsewhere- either way they're not a part of her daily life anymore.

As a result, her home only had one bed. As we didn't all fancy sharing a single bed, Izzy produced large numbers of beds from nowhere and set them on the floor and upstairs. So we helped her set them up and laid them down.

"Izzy, these are different colours," I said.

"Of course they are!" Izzy smiled. "I got some for each of us in different colours. I didn't anticipate Sprout being here so he can use the one meant for Zipp."

Well, that was wild. Once I'd brushed my teeth and we got ready for bed, I drifted off to sleep.