My Little Pony: I’ll See You on the Other Side
By: The Swedish Alicorn
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Chapter I: Hidden Memories
“Maybe when you’re older,” she would tell me.
“Maybe another time.”
“When you’re older.”
“Now isn’t a good time.”
“You’ll find it boring.”
For many years, my mother, Sunset Shimmer, kept secrets from me- secrets about her past life. I never saw any pictures of her family, we never visited her relatives, and the few remnants of her past were kept away from me. My mother had only six friends, though I only met five during the span of my then fifteen-year-old life. It was not until one day in November when I began to uncover that which she hid from me so relentlessly.
I was fifteen years of age, although I had not been so for more than a month when my mother had gone out for a few hours. I was given the task of watching my younger sister, who was three at the time. It was my chance! I had long grown suspicious about what secrets she kept hidden in her closet, and a few days prior, I became closer to finding out. We were in her room together, specifically in the closet. I was doing my best to help her pick out a dress to wear to a party when I noticed her trying extra hard to hide a certain box from my view. It was one of the last places I had looked. Whenever she would leave, I would search high and low for any signs of her past. In hindsight, I should have checked her room, first.
I watched carefully to make sure her car door was moving down the street before I raced up the stairs and twisted her creaky bedroom doorknob. I burst through her bedroom door and jerked a small box from its permanent home upon a wooden shelf near the back of her closet. Dust and bits of debris took flight and swirled around the room, illuminated by the buzzing light overhead that I turned on moments before. It was a brown, generic box. There were no markings upon it of any kind, beyond dirt and scrapes.
Without waiting so much as a second, I placed the box on the carpet floor and pried the lid from its place. I tossed the lid aside, and inside the box, I found that which she hid from me for my whole life. A picture and a book were inside. Initially, I did not care about this picture. The teenage girls photographed were now women I knew and had met before. All except one, which is what drew my attention closer.
“Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow, mom, Pinkie, and Rarity,” I read aloud, muttering to myself. I then whispered, “Who is she?”
On the back of the picture, someone scribbled a date with a felt-tip pen, followed by the names of the girls in order. The girl standing beside my mother was a girl with purplish skin and midnight blue hair- labeled Twilight Sparkle. Of course, that was not the most suspicious item inside the box. That position belonged to the book, leather-bound, with a red and yellow marking on the front cover, a shimmering sun. The passages written within this book were all addressed to a Princess Celestia, and later Twilight Sparkle, by my mother as though they were diary entries.
I did not know how to bring up the fact that I went snooping through her room, and shoved the contents back into the box before replacing the box back on the shelf. I returned to the lower level of my house to check up on my sister. When my mother returned some time later, she found my tampering and brought me into her room in private. My heart sank, as I feared punishment. My curiosity got the better of me.
“How did you find out about this box?” she asked me, sternly. She pulled it out and went through each item. Even though she was cross with me, I could see tears glossing over her eyes. Her eyebrows fell low, and her lips creased downward at each end of her mouth. A long lock of her wavy hair broke free from her part, and dangled across her nose.
“I found out about it a while ago,” I replied. “I noticed when you tried to hide it the last time I was in here with you.”
She paused, looking at the picture of her and her friends, and replied back to me with a low and soft voice, “I haven’t opened this box in so long. I nearly forgot about this day.”
I did not know what to say. My heart kept beating heavily, I felt warm, and I could feel sweat collecting all over my body. Quickly, I said, “I’m sorry, mom. I shouldn’t have…”
She stopped me, “No! It’s my fault.”
“How?”
She replied, “It’s not a memory I like to think about, but I suppose it’s too late, now.”
I took a deep breath, as did she. She looked up and smiled. The light above us brought to my attention a turquoise glow in her shimmering, wide eyes. Her bright, vividly colored red and yellow hair was passed down to me, as was her light orange skin tone. In most physical aspects, I looked exactly like her, though I had not noticed it until that moment. I even inherited her wavy hair and naturally smooth skin. The one trait that I did not match her with was the yellow color of my eyes, given to me by my father. That, and his height. It was always estimated that I would surpass my mother in height, but by that point, I had not. I was a naive teenager in the middle of puberty. My voice still squeaked, my breasts were still growing, and acne made their intrusions on a daily basis. With a mother like her, I admit I often felt hideous.
I kept quiet as she perused through her book. We both sat on the soft floor as she thumbed through several pages. I watched as her eyes skimmed over the written words, shifting left and right, up and down. On some passages, she would laugh lightly, and others she would grow solemn and still. This lasted for about a minute before she smiled contently and shut the book. She placed the book in her lap, clutching it tightly with her hands.
“I’ve been keeping this hidden for so long. So few know about it. Only my closest friends and a few others. Heh, now that I think about it, we’re a lot alike.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“When I was young, I snuck into a restricted section of a library to find information I wanted, as well.”
“What did you want to find out?” I asked. I wanted to know for such a lengthy amount of time.
“Back when I was a child, I did not live in this world,” she began.
“What do you mean?” I asked her, again.
“You might not believe me, but I used to be a unicorn in a land called Equestria. It was an entire world populated by ponies and other magical creatures. It was my home world and the only one I knew about. I was a personal student under Princess Celestia’s wing. From her, I learned powerful magic.”
At first, I thought she was lying to me. Who would instantly believe such a tale if someone told them this? Yet, I grew more and more invested as she continued.
“I looked much like I do now, but with the hooved body of a young pony. I stood on four hooves, I had a horn on my forehead, and had a tail. In that world, all ponies developed a ‘cutie mark’ on their flanks when they discovered what they would do in life. Each one was unique. My cutie mark was the symbol upon this book, a shimmering sunset. Their meanings are not always obvious, leading to some interpretation.” She brushed her hand over the shimmering sun on the front cover of the old book.
She continued, “I was a fool, back then. I was arrogant and greedy. The Princess saw how impatient I was and tried her best to get me to understand. In a fit of rage for not getting what I wanted, I found my way here.” She paused and held up the photograph.
“Was Twilight Sparkle involved?” I asked. She nodded in return.
“Yes, she was, but not until later. She, too, is a unicorn from Equestria. She came into this world the same way I did, after I took something of hers. After a fight, she took it back.”
“You two had a fight?”
“Yes. I soundly lost, and you could say I was reformed. That’s how I became friends with her and the other five you’ve already met. I still can’t believe it’s been so long. I wonder how they’re all doing.”
Curious about her secrecy, I asked her, “How come you’ve never mentioned this before?”
She paused for a few brief seconds, but quickly gave me this response, “Well, it’s not something you hear about every day. And, I’m not proud of my actions.”
“Where is Twilight now?” It felt like a random question to me at the time, but I did not know what else to say.
She smiled and answered me, “She’s back in Equestria. The second time she came into this world, she told me she had become a princess there.”
She stopped, looked up at me, and asked, “You want to see this Equestria, don’t you?”
Still unsure about what she had told me, I nodded my head eagerly. Even if she was lying to me, I wanted to see what she would do. She flipped near the back of her book and lifted a picture from its wedged place on a fully written page. The shiny surface of the colored picture clearly depicted six ponies side-by-side and smiling. The pony in the center, one with both a unicorn’s horn and wings, was colored just like the Twilight Sparkle in the picture of my mother’s friends. The pony five also resembled my mother’s friends. The only major difference between them was their skin colors. As humans, their skin colors were less saturated, it seemed.
As with the other picture, there were words on the back. She handed me the picture, and I read the words aloud, “To Sunset. May we meet again on the other side! –your friend, Twilight Sparkle.” Wherever the picture was taken, I could see what appeared to be a castle built onto the side of a mountain in the background. All six ponies stood in a grassy plain with snow-topped mountains behind them. It was beautiful and unlike anything I had ever seen. By this point, I was sold. I believed her story and wanted nothing more than to go to this land and learn magic for myself. After all, if my mother had not left, I could have been born a pony.
“Mom, is it possible to go to Equestria?”
“I think so,” she said with a deep and bellowing sigh, “Twilight made a way long ago.”
“Can I?” I asked.
Those words were among the hardest things I would ever have to say. At first, she resisted. She grew silent and avoided eye contact with me. Her eyes watered and tears streamed down her face. Eventually, she said, “Yes.”
We put the box away, but she kept the book out. That night, she called me into the kitchen after my sister had been put to sleep. My heart raced, and I assume hers did as well. She was armed with a pen in her weak grasp. She flipped through the yellowed pages to near the back of the book, where she had now yet written. With the pen in her hand, she pressed the metal tip against the grainy paper and dragged it along the uneven surface. The tip left a smooth line of ink on the paper as it passed over.
Dear Twilight, it began. I could not read much of the rest. She wrote a good paragraph before she yanked the pen away from the paper and shut the book.
“I’m not sure about this,” she told me. “But, who knows. Maybe your destiny is in Equestria.”
I did not ask her what she wrote. In my mind, I kept reassuring myself that I was making the right decision. I had a break from school and little else to do. I wanted to try something new. Yet, I could not help feeling selfish for wanting to leave my mother and sister behind, alone. That was when I made the decision- two weeks. I would only stay for two weeks, providing I could go at all.
It was not long before we received a reply. Black, cursive words formed underneath where mom had written her message. They were from Twilight! The words read as follows, “Sunset, it’s great to hear from you! If you’re serious, I’ll open the portal tomorrow night. I hope to see you soon, Twilight.”
Mom looked up at me and asked, “Are you sure you want to go?”
I nodded. Who could possibly give up wanting to see another world inhabited by magical ponies and other creatures?
Mom replied, “We’ll see you then.”
I wrapped my arms around my mom and told her, “Just two weeks, ok?” I had it marked. School would start after that time, anyway.
She hugged be back, tightly, and muttered, “I love you.”