//------------------------------//
// Princess Twi finds a way to address Sunset’s homesickness 
// Story: Lectern’s New and Used Books: Summer Break 
// by Dave Bryant 
//------------------------------//

Lectern’s New and Used Books was busy on this fine Saturday, as it so often was. Customers and staff, including the old gentleman himself, bustled about the bookstore; rather than cope with all that noise and activity around the front sitting room, the seven friends opted to retreat out to the converted bungalow’s back yard. Rustic wood outdoor furniture stood on a raised patio, paved with terra-cotta tiles, set off a few feet from the two-story house’s back wall. Towering over it were a half-dozen shade trees that shared the rest of the fenced-in space with the tiny one-car garage at the lot’s streetside back corner. Pushing together two of the round tables wasn’t an ideal solution, but it was the only way all of them could sit together and enjoy the breeze rustling through leaves and branches.
“So, Sunset,” Rarity observed shrewdly, “you’ve had that I-have-a-surprise smirk on your face ever since we met up today.”
“No kiddin’,” Applejack broke in. “Ain’t ya kept us in suspense long enough? I think even Rainbow Dash noticed you’ve got somethin’ new in that pack o’ yours.”
“Hey!” Dash objected.
“Am I wrong?”
“Well, no, but—”
“There ya go!”
Dash muttered under her breath, the words lost in the general snickers and giggles, then spoke up with a irked sigh. “Yeah, fine, go ahead and show us whatever it is that’s got you grinning so much, Sunset.”
“Yeah! I love surprises, and I could hardly wait to see what this one is!” Pinkie Pie bounced on her chair eagerly. Indeed, she had fidgeted more than usual during the trip over. Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle nodded in agreement, neither of them seeing a need for additional words.
Sunset Shimmer rolled her eyes in a comic display of mock disappointment. “Fine, be that way! Since you twisted my arm so hard, I guess I just have to give in and reveal my deep dark secret.” It was a measure of how far she, and all of them, had come that she was able to make the quip without even a wince.
With one hand she unzipped the bookbag’s main zipper; with a flourish the other reached in and shoveled out three bundles of paper. “Ta-da! Or is that hocus-pocus? I never can keep all those magic words straight.” It was a well-worn joke, but it still raised smiles around the tables, even as the girls leaned forward to peer at the newly revealed items.
“Newspapers?” Twilight fiddled with her glasses and frowned thoughtfully. “But . . .”
“Oh, but these aren’t just any newspapers.” Sunset’s fingers were busy on the ribbons holding the bundles in their compact rolls. One by one she unfolded them and laid them out for the others to see. “These are newspapers from home. This one is Manehattan’s biggest daily, that one is Canterlot’s main daily, and the other one is the Ponyville weekly paper.”
“. . . Oh,” was Twilight’s response in the sudden boggled silence. Six pairs of eyes blinked in bemusement at the papers, then at Sunset.
Taking that as her cue, Sunset waved a hand at the stacks of newsprint and continued, “Princess Twilight’s been rearranging the library in her castle—apparently she’s constantly doing things like that—to make room for a periodicals section, including newspapers from all over the country.” A hand patted the still partly full bag and the magical journal within it. “According to her latest message, she’d been thinking off and on about my homesickness, but hadn’t come up with any useful way to help. It was while she was sending off subscription letters that she had an idea, like a lightning bolt, as she put it.”
“Why not get a few extra subscriptions and send them to you?” Sci-Twi broke in enthusiastically.
“Exactly,” Sunset affirmed, shaking a finger at Twilight. “You two really do think alike.”
The bespectacled girl blushed, but went on, “How does that work, though? I mean, there are some obvious logistical issues involved.”
“Oh, we just set up a time every week when she’d bundle up all the papers and send them through at once.”
“What if you’re late or can’t make it?” Dash asked before Twilight could open her mouth again.
Sunset shrugged. “I just let her know through the journal and set an alternate time. No problem.” She grinned again. “One of the reasons I told you about it today is so I could ask if you girls would be willing to pick them up when I can’t.”
The general agreement was cacophanous but heartfelt. When it trailed away, Rarity commented, “Besides, darling, I think all of us are just terribly curious about where you’re from. It’s one thing for you to describe it, but it’s quite another to hear about current events there, well, from the horse’s mouth, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
Sunset laughed and shook her head. “And that’s why I brought them, so I could show them to you.”


The papers passed back and forth, sparking conversation and expressions of amazement and wonder; even Rarity overcame her aversion to inky smears enough to page through them daintily. The lack of photographs was a puzzlement until Sunset reminded them all of the century-and-a-half gap in technology. “They haven’t figured out yet how to make those little dots—um, half-toning, that’s what it’s called,” she added, peering at Web-search results on her phone. “So they’re still using etchings.”
“Reminds me o’ some o’ Granny Smith’s old clippings in the family scrapbook albums,” Applejack noted.
The depictions of ponies themselves caused Fluttershy to swoon in delighted appreciation, and even Rainbow Dash admitted they were “pretty cute”; the rest fell somewhere between, causing Sunset’s face to heat in mild embarrassment. The stories proved surprisingly mundane for the most part, allowing for the magical elements and a generous helping of what Twilight called “yellow journalism”.
But what stopped everyone in their tracks was an etching on the front page of the Ponyville Express. All six of Sunset’s friends gathered, in some cases having stood and walked around the tables, to stare down at the seven figures posed on the front steps of an imposing crystalline edifice.
“That’s us—I mean, them, isn’t it?” Pinkie finally asked in an unwontedly subdued voice. “Even Spike.”
Sunset sat up to look at the image upside-down. “Looks like it. Girls, meet your alter egos.”
“Wow,” Dash breathed. “Well, that sure explains why some of us get wings when we pony up and others—uh, right.”
Other shocks came from the Canterlot paper, since rarely a day went by without mention of the royal sisters. Sunset regarded the twin etching sadly, earning a supportive side-hug from Pinkie and a respectful quiet from the rest. Eventually Fluttershy broke the melancholy mood with a quiet question. “Sunset, does this article really say something about Prin-Princess Celestia appearing at every Summer Sun Celebration for the last thousand years?”
“Oh yes. She really has, too, as far as I know.”
“But . . . but Principal Celestia is, um, not nearly as old.” The confusion communicated itself to the others as they too realized the oddity.
Sunset shrugged and held up her hands. “I don’t know, Fluttershy. We had the same question about the sirens, remember?”
Twilight’s brow furrowed in furious thought. “Maybe . . . maybe it has to do with the way the original portal worked. It was only open for short periods, I think you said, Sunset?”
“That was Princess Twilight, but yeah. Three days every thirty moons—not quite two and a half years.”
“And most of the time it didn’t get used. It just sat around, opened, closed, and that was it, right?”
“I think so,” Sunset said slowly.
“Well, what if the portal was synchronized during the time it was open, but if it didn’t get used, it became unsynchronized until the next time it opened? And if it did get used, it stayed synchronized until the next opening?” Twilight beamed with pride over her hypothesis and went on with reckless abandon, “Come to think of it, maybe that’s why the sirens didn’t show up until just recently. When the portal got used again, they fell into this world at the same time from whatever limbo they were stuck in.”
Various expressions boiling down to “Huh?” greeted her, causing her grin to sag a little, but Sunset looked at her in consternation. “I don’t know, Twilight. Maybe. It would take tricky spell-work, but everything about that portal was tricky spell-work. And . . . I’d hate to think I brought the sirens here on top of everything else.”
“Ya wanna let the rest of us in on the joke, Sunset?” Applejack asked dryly.
“Magic is a science,” Sunset replied after a preoccupied moment. “I know it may not seem like it is, but trust me. That’s why the whole ponying-up thing was so frustrating before the Friendship Games—it didn’t seem to obey the same laws I’d been learning about since I was knee-high to Princess Celestia.” She shot a quirky bittersweet grin at Twilight. “I think what Sci-Twi is saying could explain why the portal’s been around for centuries back home, but it seems like it’s been around only a few years, or maybe decades, here.” She waved a hand expansively.
“So, say the portal opens. Boom. For three days, you can take a clock back and forth between the two worlds, and it’ll keep perfect time. Then the portal closes. Bang. Now, since you’ve used the portal, it stays on track in both worlds. When the portal opens again, you can compare a clock and calendar in each world, and they’d show the same amount of time passed.
“But say nopony, or nobody, uses the portal during the time it’s open. In that case, the portal, well, loses track of time in this world. It still opens every thirty moons back home, but what if there’s no gap at all in the time it’s open here? Or it even re-opens during the same three days here? Or something like that?”
“Oooooh,” Pinkie said. “That makes perfect sense!”
“It does?” Fluttershy asked.
“Sure!”
“If you say so.”
Ignoring the byplay, Sunset concluded, “It would explain a lot—if it’s true. I’ll suggest it to Princess Twilight the next time I write her.” She grinned at the princess’s human counterpart. “She’ll be miffed she didn’t think of it first. And I’ve changed my mind: Not staying synchronized wouldn’t be tricky spell-work, it would be slipshod spell-work. But considering how much else the portal does, and does well, I guess it’s not surprising there might be a few bugs in it.”
“Like making sure one is fully clothed when one emerges here,” Rarity said rather pointedly. A long, elegant finger indicated the quite unclothed grouping on the crystal steps. “Very useful feature, that.”


The afternoon was waning and it was time to go. The newspapers had been chewed over thoroughly, even to the point of ribbing Rarity about the advertisements for her opposite number’s boutiques in all three. As they were picking up and preparing to depart, Pinkie Pie suddenly twitched and asked, “But why only three papers? Why not thirty? Or all of them?”
“Pinkie, can you imagine the pile of paper that would show up in front of the school?” Sunset asked in fond exasperation. “How would I read it all? Or even cart it off?”
“Oh,” Pinkie said.
“But Princess Twilight did say she thought about which ones to choose.” Sunset smiled expectantly.
Unsurprisingly, Sci-Twi spoke up. “Manehattan must be a pretty big city, right?”
“Biggest in the country. Major business center, seaport, and rail hub. I think they even have an airship terminal there now.”
“Canterlot’s the capital, obviously, but it looks to me like it’s only medium-size as a city.”
“Yep. It’s old, but it isn’t that big. Really, being the seat of government and a center of fad and fashion is pretty much all it does.”
“And Ponyville’s a small rural town, as well as where your friend Princess Twilight and her friends live.”
“Right again. You’re on a roll.”
“Okay, so she chose one paper from a big city, one paper from a medium town, and one from a small village. And she made sure to include the capital and her hometown while she was at it.”
Sunset laughed as she swung her now-full bookbag to a shoulder. “Bingo!” She paused and looked at the others. “What in the world does that expression mean, anyway?”