"Where do you live? And how are you in my mirror?" Alexander barely gave Sunset time to collect a thought before launching into a sustained barrage. "Am I dead? Did the storm take me after all? Or did it take my mind? Have you been crying?"
"I'm in Canterlot," Sunset finally managed as he paused, "and I've never talked to a dead pony, err, man, on the mirror. But I've never talked to anyone real on it. It was my mother's. I don't know how to use it, really. I just was hoping it would show me...her, or...someone who understood, or...yes, I've been crying," she managed, before the tears came again.
Alexander, contrary to what she expected, was silent for along moment.
"Did you just lose her?" His voice was newly soft and slow.
Sunset nodded, then realized men might not understand the gesture. "I just heard today. My dad too. A-a storm on the river."
"Mine was four years ago. Not this storm," he gestured to the broken window, though Sunset thought most of what he was meaning to indicate wasn't visible. "She got sick." He paused again. "I still miss her."
Sunset was glad he hadn't said he was sorry. They were both silent a moment, then Sunset lifted a handkerchief with her magic and dried her eyes. Alexander's own widened, and he seemed to retreat a bit from the mirror.
"What's wrong?"
"That kerchief moved on its own!"
"No it didn't. Didn't you see my aura on it?"
"Just because something glows doesn't mean it should move! Are you saying you did that?"
"Of course, it's just unicorn magic."
Alexander laughed. "My dear lady, until today I had thought unicorns a myth, now you tell me that they are not only real, but truly magical?"
Sunset wasn't sure if it was the brief time between laughing and crying, or the absurdity of anyone calling her a 'dear lady', or Alexander's confusion, but she still couldn't quite grasp the issue.
"That's silly, everything's magical. We just channel it through our horns, but other creatures have it too - strength or speed or flight or whatever it is they do. Every foal knows that."
"Here every child of education knows that magic is a superstition for country rubes. Yet I suppose my mirror has now revealed a unicorn, so perhaps I am the fool. Where is Canterlot? Some island deep in the South Seas? If it is so magical a place, delights must await us as we chart the last corners of the world."
"Canterlot's not an island, it's a city, on the largest mountain in Equestria. And Equestria's not on an island either." She thought about her father's globe. "Except that all the continents are. It's certainly not in the South Seas! It takes up a good bit of the Northern Hemisphere, and we put it in the west on our maps, though of course that's not real, like north is."
"You do mean north by the compass, yes? The way the needle points?"
"Of course."
Alexander shrugged, then laughed. "Well there is nothing for it then. We have charted our whole Northern Hemisphere, and would certainly know of a large country filled with magic and peopled with unicorns. You can only be on another world, and so my lack of belief in magic and unicorns is not without merit, but merely too local. Amazing! If only the ancients could have had such an interlocutor. But then, of all the things in all creation you could contact with your magic, why me?"
"I don't know. I don't know how to use this mirror. I just wanted to see my parents again. Or someone who might understand."
Alexander's dazzling eyes fell, and he was silent for a long moment. Then his face vanished from the mirror, the roof of the dwelling seemed to grow larger, and Sunset realized he was moving the mirror. He tipped it, and she could see a surprisingly familiar-looking house. After she got over the surprise of seeing such similar construction, though, she noticed extensive water damage even on top of the shattered windows, and several trails across the floor where she guessed furniture had been dragged, either by the storm, or by Alexander repairing it, or both. There were also no benches or sofas; instead the table was surrounded by backed stools that, to Sunset's eye, did not look very comfortable. She briefly wondered what the rest of Alexander looked like, then he moved the mirror to the window, and she was distracted.
Before her lay a scene both beautiful and heartbreaking. The sun was setting over an island paradise of the kind she'd only read about, sandy beaches over endless sea, lushly vegetated yards and verges between cobbled streets and dirt tracks. On the edge of her vision, she could see some kind of farmland. But it was clear the whole place had just been devastated. Trees lay ripped up by the roots, houses were missing roofs or walls, roads were washed out. In some places pieces of cloth or paper, or splintered wood, still lay in the streets or caught up in trees or bushes. And all in the streets people worked to clean and fix.
This was the first Sunset had seen of Alexander's world's people, and she found them strange creatures, with their bare bodies covered by what looked to her to be uncomfortably thick layers of clothing. Their two-legged stance, too, threw her off, though their apparently dexterous paws did explain how Alexander was holding the mirror so steady without magic. Their faces made her think they were 'men', like Alexander.
"I've never seen anything like that," Sunset said, quietly. "I suppose you have it even worse than I do."
"No," Alexander said, "this is not worse, just different. But I think your mirror found another sad soul. I never thought I'd be hurt again after my mother, this has made its mark as well. But please, let's not aim to outdo each other with sorrows, but take solace. We are both of us less alone than we thought."
Sunset couldn't help but smile a bit at that. "You're right. Are those men working out in the streets?"
"Men and women, yes."
"Oh, you have tribes, like earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns, then? Which are the women?"
"Tribes? Pegasi? Nevermind, later. No, the women are the females. They wear dresses."
"Oh! So men are your stallions, and women your mares! What do you call your species, then?"
"Most call us men as well, though 'humans' is also accurate."
"That seems strange. Isn't it unfair to the women? I would be upset if someone decided to call us all stallions instead of unicorns or ponies."
There was a long pause.
"Perhaps you're right. Though I fear as we talk more you will find that man's unfairness to human is not so limited as that. I do not think we have 'tribes' as you do, but only fear of rebellion keeps the African slaves off the street today, and woman's bondage is not so severe as theirs."
"Slaves? That's uncivilized!"
"Would that other men had the wisdom of an orange unicorn," Alexander's voice was sad.
"You talk like an old book," Sunset said, sensing the difficult subject. "Are you in school?"
"Alas no, but old books were my tutors. So perhaps it's no accident I speak like this. Or I do when I'm being careful about it."
"Why are you careful? I'm not anypony special."
Alexander laughed again, for a long time.
"If you were no 'pony' special before, well, you certainly are now. You are the first unicorn I have ever heard to speak to a man, or rather a human, and indeed the first case even reported for many centuries. Even if your magic makes it commonplace to speak with other worlds, here it is unheard-of." He paused, then turned serious. "And I for one am glad to speak to you. Sunset, to be honest, I was near despair before you called to me. I have been alone in the world so many years, and slowly I've made my way to some prosperity on this island. Not greatness, that opportunity is not mine, but a life. And now I worry it all has gone. But talking to you has brightened my day. And now, who knows? If magic is in some world, perhaps it still waits for me. Perhaps I have a destiny outside this place, after all."
"Where would you rather be?"
"Philadelphia! Or New York, perhaps. Oh, of course you don't know them. On the mainland there is a great country, and those their greatest cities. I could go to university, study law. And there too great men now debate the issues of our day. I think there will be war, war for freedom. I could make a mark on the world. I was hoping, within a year or two, to get a ticket, but now my savings are gone with the storm."
"That's awful! At least I have my school. Isn't there anything you can do?"
Alexander turned the mirror back to his face, and frowned.
"I plan to write a letter to the paper about the storm. It is half-done now. Perhaps my words will be my immortality."
"You do speak well. I hope they will."
"But Sunset, perhaps this can be our immortality, the both of us! What more can you do? Can you--" a thumping noise cut him off. He moved his face close to the mirror, until his lips were almost all she could see, then whispered.
"That is the man I work for knocking. I must go. Can you contact me again?"
"I can try," Sunset whispered back. "I'm not sure I can control the magic, but I can try."
"Please do. I cannot tell you how much our talk has lifted my spirits and ignited my mind. I should love for us to be friends. I shall be here again at sunset tomorrow. I will watch my mirror."
Sunset felt warm at the idea. As alone in the world as she felt, the idea of having a secret friend from another world made her ache a little less.
"I hope I can. You can read me your letter."
"Until then," Alexander said. His lips became his face, then tilted up, replaced again with the timbered ceiling as he placed the mirror down and exited. Not long later, the mirror dimmed.
All right, Sunset thought, time to figure out how to do that again. And, unsure if she were truly interested in contacting Alexander again, or just in escaping her pain, she focused on her magic and the mirror, to the exclusion of all else, until the guard came, and found she had not yet packed.
At least he understood that she desperately wanted to bring the mirror.
"All right," Sunset said, halfway through the bus ride home.
Rarity wasn't sure what she meant; she'd been silent and seemingly lost in herself since they'd left the theater.
"All right," she repeated with a sigh, before anyone could ask. "It's time I told you girls the whole story. Sleep-over Friday?"
"Whee!" Pinkie said.