My remaining time at Twilight’s family home was just as pleasant as the first night. After we finished the game, which Spike won, we retired to bed. Twilight had her old room prepared for us, and I slept in a sleeping bag next to Spike’s basket. I briefly pondered why he would be okay sleeping like a pet while I, not much bigger than he was, got something closer to a proper bed. But I had learned fairly quickly not to question this world’s logic too much and I happily applied that here.
The next two days were filled with more family togetherness. At times, I felt like a stranger and wanted to pull away, but they were too welcoming to allow the feeling to persist for long. Twilight’s parents were clearly enjoying having me as a grandfoal surrogate, frequently offering me candy and sweets. I declined on principle, and when I explained my aversion to sugar they pointed out that I hadn’t objected to hot cocoa. I felt tricked when this was revealed to me, but I had at least found something with sugar that I didn’t hate. I thought Celestia would no doubt be pleased with this.
On the second day, Spike showed me his comic book collection. At first I only feigned interest, but hearing him rave about fictional characters did make me curious about the nature of these stories. To his great approval, I read the first issue of The Power Ponies. All the while, he read over my shoulder and make frequent comments about obscure hidden details and what would be revealed in future issues. I seemed to understand that the six heroines served as paragons of virtue in what was essentially a parable on morality. Spike had laughed when I needed clarification on what exactly was and wasn’t fiction. Superpowered ponies weren’t real, but vigilantes running around in garish costumes were. Spike had then shown me a collection of newspaper clippings detailing Rising Sun’s continued fight against crime. My biggest surprise at this was that there was so much to fight against. Spike said that Rising Sun had first appeared around the same time as her principal nemesis, Maniacal Laughter. I found this suspicious, but he didn’t, so I just let it drop.
I was much more amenable to spending time with Shining Armor. Although he hadn’t experienced war for himself, he still had the discipline and character of a proper soldier. I listened attentively as he told me what efforts he was going through to recruit and train a new guards corps from scratch. I recognized some of the core principals as being identical to those taught to us in the Junior Royal Guard. He found my enthusiasm for this club adorable, and I had to politely remind him that I was not a foal. Still, he had some very amusing anecdotes. As he explained, despite the peace of Equestria, guardsponies can get called in for some strange incidents. My favorite was the tale of how his squadron had cornered the culprit of the “Pies Stolen from Windowsills” case, only to to discover that the perpetrator was a gang of cats.
Finally, on the third day, a couple of hours after Cadance and Shining’s departure, it was time for us to leave, and we bid Night Light and Twilight Velvet goodbye. There was a certain sadness on their faces as Twilight promised to visit again soon, as clearly they were expecting her to be too busy to keep that promise. However, there was also unmistakable pride sprinkled into their features. We had considered staying another night, but Twilight wanted to continue some research at the castle, and it was actually closer to Canterlot First for my purposes. On the way back, I voiced to Twilight a weighty question that I had meant to ask for a while.
“Twilight?” I asked, stopping my trot and feeling the cool cobblestone against my hooves.
“Yes, Aron?”
“Celestia mentioned that you weren’t always an alicorn. I believe she called it ascension?”
Twilight stopped and looked back. As she turned her head, a sheepish smile formed.
“I can understand why the topic would interest you,” she began. “It’s something I have thought about a lot, but I haven’t thought of any way to make it work for your situation.”
“How did it work for you then?” I asked, impatient. “Given your parents, I assume you were a unicorn before you became an alicorn princess, so how? Wouldn’t your magical signature be a unicorn?”
“I confess I can’t tell you everything, Aron. Some of it is because I don’t understand, while other details are state secrets.”
I was about to lash out at her for keeping more secrets from me, but she picked up on this and gently waved a hoof to calm me.
“What I can tell you is that two factors converged to make my ascension possible. The first is my completion of a powerful unfinished spell by Star Swirl the Bearded. It was highly complex magic dealing with the very force of harmony itself. The second was the strength of my bond with my friends.”
“Really, friendship?” I asked sarcastically.
Twilight was unfazed, and she had a scholarly look about her that suggested an incoming lecture.
“Aron, If you’d asked me a few years ago, I would have laughed at such a claim, but now I understand that the magic of friendship is perhaps the most powerful magic in Equestria. It relates closely to harmony, but it has many unique properties that I’m learning more about every day. I can’t believe I haven’t explained to you how important the magic of friendship is!”
“Can it wait?” I asked, drumming my hooves. “At the moment, all I want to know about is ascension.”
Spike chimed in. “Yeah, Twi, I’m with him. It gets old hearing you give the magic of friendship lecture over and over.”
“All right,” Twilight replied, defeated. “From what I’ve surmised the completion of Star Swirl’s spell was a great event of harmonic magic that when coupled with the magic of friendship allowed me to become an alicorn. It was a momentous event in terms of harmonic magic. And because my friends believed in me as a leader, I was able to take more harmonic energy than usual, which formed my harmonic core. As for the change in my magical signature, I theorize that because an alicorn is an embodiment of harmony itself, my signature essentially evolved to a higher state of harmony. However, trying to recreate such an effect, even under controlled conditions, would be far too dangerous.”
I paused, thinking hard until I came up with something plausible that wouldn’t sound stupid to the expert. “Depending on the specifics, it might be a risk I’m willing to take. If your magical signature evolved through a harmonic event, couldn’t we ‘devolve’ mine. so to speak, by instigating a ‘chaotic event?’”
Twilight shook her head deliberately.
“There are two potential problems with that idea. In the case of the first, keep in mind that your magical signature has remained constant, even while you were on your homeworld. If we managed to ‘devolve’ your magical signature there’s no guarantee what it would end up corresponding to. Since we are talking of chaos, it’s highly unlikely you would end up as a sapient creature, much less a human. The second possibility… well, it’s a little farfetched…”
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s just a theory and seems almost like a comical oversimplification, but it’s possible such an event could turn you into a draconequus.”
“Really?” I asked, flummoxed.
Twilight blushed. “It’s a silly idea I know, but it does make sense. Alicorn magic is the opposite of draconequus chaos magic, so if a harmonic event makes a pony into an alicorn, it seems natural to think doing the opposite could render her a draconequus.”
“I’m sure Discord wouldn’t mind having another draconequus to hang around with,” Spike joked.
Twilight shot him a disapproving look.
Still intrigued, I put a hoof to my chin. “Any chance I could remain male this way?”
“I can’t believe you’re considering this, but intuitively I think it would be most likely your magical signature would remain female. Discord’s very existence resists harmony, so I imagine if a second draconequus were to appear she would be female to serve as a counterweight of sorts.”
Her explanation sounded contrived to me, but then an image of a well-groomed Discord appeared in my mind. He was dressed in a tuxedo, holding flowers and puckering his lips.
I cringed then sighed. “Thanks for hearing me out.”
Twilight draped a wing over me and stroked my withers, a gesture I had come to love.
“It’s going to be okay, Aron. Even if we can’t halt the changes, we are going to preserve your memories.”
“I know,” I said weakly.
In silence she led me back to my room in the castle, where I immediately went to bed. I hit the mattress, tired from my busy weekend, yet I struggled to get to sleep.
Early the next morning I heard a knock on my door. Rudely awakened, I muttered, “Come in.” Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I was surprised to see Princess Celestia.
“Good morning, Aron,” she said. “I wanted to check in on you before you head out to school. Is everything going alright?”
“Yeah, I guess it is,” I said. “Twilight told me about ascension, and I was kind of disappointed that there’s no solution there.”
She nodded. “I understand. I had expected as much, but I didn’t want to assume since Twilight is the expert. But otherwise you enjoyed your time at Twilight’s parents’?”
“More or less. Not everything was the most exciting, but I enjoyed the calm and slow pace. They really made me feel like I belonged.”
I frowned, worrying I had said too much, while Celestia beamed.
“That’s great, Aron. You seem to be doing really well lately. For instance, I heard from your teacher that you made great use of teamwork to answer a reading comprehension question.”
“Oh, that? Yeah, I just did what I could to answer, since I hadn’t read any of the book before.”
“Still, I think it’s great,” said Celestia. “By the way, what do you think of the book so far? The fact that Canterlot First is currently teaching that classic novel is one of the reasons I sent you there.”
“I can’t say too much so far, given how little I’ve read, but there is one thing I’m wondering.”
“What’s that?” Celestia asked very patiently.
“Why wasn’t sending errr—Xel Nig back to her home dimension an option. I know you had to recover to send me back, but was that the case with her as well?”
Celestia smiled. “For once there’s a simple answer to your question. For beings we brought here from other worlds, it wasn’t until much later that we figured out how to track the coordinates of their home worlds. We were able to use a spell to teleport them to our location initially because we had sight of them. However, to teleport somepony away from the caster, one needs to know exactly where the destination is. By the time we devised a workaround, we had decided the practice was too risky altogether, and we had stopped using the mirror to avoid temptation.”
“How do you explain me, then?” I asked pointedly.
Celestia sighed. “It was a moment of weakness. I was exhausted after a long day and thought that looking through the mirror would be refreshing. When I saw your plight, I couldn’t resist saving you. It’s one of many reasons why I can’t apologize enough.”
“There’s no need,” I repeated, partially regretting I had asked. Seeing her genuinely remorseful was more than enough. It made her feel more “human” and approachable. At the same time I felt a need to comfort her, but instead I changed the subject.
“Is there more you can tell me about the minotaur? I know I could just read the book, but is there anything especially pertinent to me? How did she adapt? I understand it was a struggle.”
Celestia chuckled.
“Actually, despite what the book says there really wasn’t much conflict at all. At first Priscilla, then Xel Ning, went through some of the adjustment you had to. But once transformed, she almost immediately fell head-over-hooves in love with King Gildeus. After that, she never asked about going back again. I don’t usually tell anypony this because it ruins a great book for them, but that’s the reality of it.” She paused and made a conscious effort to smile down at me. “You’re doing fine, Aron. You’ve been adjusting just as well as she did, if not better.”
I still had my concerns about being brainwashed, but rather than risk repeating myself I kept my immediate worries about the brown stallion to myself. I had come this far by trusting the princesses and figured I would give them the chance to tell me if they had discovered anything new.
Then came an unexpected knock at the door. Celestia turned to me.
“Yes?” I said.
Trusty Stead pushed open the door and went to the princess’s side. He whispered something in her ear.
Celestia nodded rhythmically before suddenly gasping. She reared and flared her wings outward dramatically.
“Rainbow Dash did WHAT!?”
Trusty whispered something else in her ear and she nodded.
“I understand. Aron, we can continue this conversation later. I have something… stupid to attend to.”
The next day at school was fairly typical as such things go. My novelty was starting to wear off, and thankfully the other foals seemed content to leave me to myself. Reading and math were still somewhat uphill, but it was starting to click. It would doubtlessly take time, but I was now sure I could do it and that helped a lot. I continued to enjoy history and civics, which were constantly providing fresh perspectives on the world. Music still sucked, and I dreaded the day I would be called on to sing the lead part. Even the chorus was too much for me at the moment. It still baffled me how the other children could know what the refrain was before it had even been sung once.
Recess that day was dominated by Annuity bragging about her camping trip with her dad. Still I got to hear from other foals as well: Zephyr’s herd had gone vacationing to Cloudsdale; Thaumaturgical’s parents had hosted all of his Dad’s gift children at a family reunion dinner; while Pestle Mix, to the dismay of her dad, had sequestered herself in the potion shop to perfect her craft.
“What did you do, River?” Zap had asked me.
“Oh, I’m too far away from home to go back and visit my dad,” I said, “but Princess Twilight invited me to stay with her family.” The moment it rolled off my tongue I started to regret it. Was I bragging too much? Would it be normal for a princess to invite an exchange student into her home?
“What!?” Annuity said, disgusted.
The whole playground seemed to then converge on me as they inquired about my experience from every angle. I answered the best I could, but I felt silly for getting so much attention for it. I tried to assure them that it was a mostly mundane experience, but every detail seemed to entice them all the more. The clamoring doubled when they learned Princess Cadance had shown up as well. Annuity scowled at me through the crowd, clearly upset over being upstaged.
The next, day she seemed to take special notice of me. During gym class we were to run laps around the playground. When I learned of this, I was revved up and ready to go and I gladly took off towards the front of the pack. Granite and Daybreak seemed to be faster than me, but not by much. I took in each breath, invigorated. I was clearly in my element.
Yet, after only two laps, I started panting and falling behind. As ponies passed me, I noticed a pattern: the earth ponies were the first to pass me, then the pegasi, followed by the unicorns. To my shame, and despite my best efforts at pacing myself, I was only able to stay in front of Squirt, Iron Jill and Beakington III.
As I exhaled, my visible breath trailed behind me like a wispy scarf curled around my neck. As it was I struggled to stay ahead of even it. Occasionally, I looked back, and saw the others were similarly exhausted. Jill was awkwardly clasping her dress as she ran, which made me wonder why she had dressed like that knowing there was gym. Annuity lapped us twice throughout the exercise and shot us a smirk each time. When I finally crossed the finish line, it took all of my willpower not to collapse in relief. As each of us arrived, Ms. Fizzle made a note on a chart she was holding. We were then told to move around in circles to slowly ramp down our heart rates. During this time Annuity accosted us.
“Quite a poor performance, wouldn’t you say, new foal?”
I nodded meekly. Considering a lot of my conditioning translated to this new body, it made no sense why my endurance had taken such a hit.
“You barely managed to stay ahead of a blank flank and the rest of the lagger gang.”
At this address, Squirt rolled his eyes. “Can’t help it. My cutie mark still hasn’t found me yet. Maybe I’ll do better when I get it; maybe I won’t. Who cares, anyway?”
“As... I’ve told you... a million times... we griffins... aren’t... built for running,” Beakington sputtered through gasps of air.
“Neither.. Is Iron… Jill…” Jill said.
“There you have it,” Annuity said. “They have their excuses, so what’s yours?”
Wow she’s really trying her best to pour salt in the wound, I thought.
Patiently, I said, “That’s none of your concern. Let my performance stand for what it was, but how I will think about it or strive to improve is for me to decide. Besides, you only finished a few places ahead of us, so what gives you the right to lecture us on how we could have done better?”
She sneered. “As everypony knows, earth ponies and pegasi have better endurance than unicorn ponies, which makes it all the more embarrassing that you finished nearly last.”
So that explains it, I thought. In reality, I was a unicorn without a cutie mark just like Squirt, but I couldn’t let her know that. Still, her posturing irked me.
“So you’re telling me to do better when you yourself finished behind most of the other unicorns in the class?”
She cocked her head as if ready to make a nasty remark, but her drooping ears and tail betrayed that she was stumped.
Smelling blood, I attacked: “I’ll ask you what you asked me: what’s your excuse?”
“I—I’m not the one who came in near last…” she stammered.
Ms. Fizzle then clapped her hooves together. “Okay, everypony. Time to go back in.
“This isn’t over,” Annuity whispered in a sour tone as she trotted ahead to join Bubble and Zap.
Beakington and Jill smiled in thanks, while Squirt just lazily nodded his approval. I waved off their silent gratitude. I hadn’t done anything.
After school, I packed up my books into the saddlebag Star had given me and trotted to the door. I was the first outside. And what I beheld was a mythic sight no Rhod had ever before beheld.
“Hooray! It’s snowing!” Zap squeed.
White powder was raining from the sky, blanketing the trees, the field and the schoolhouse’s roof. What struck me was how immaculately pure each falling drop of snow was. The descending snowflakes seemed to be frozen in time, gliding gracefully to the ground. As I admired the drifting constellations dotting the afternoon sky,I felt a peaceful wonder course through me.
“Wow the weather ponies did a great job this year,” somepony remarked.
Weather ponies?
“I think everypony knows what that means!” Thaumaturgical said expectantly.
“SNOW WAR!” half the class cheered.
“Snow War?” I asked aloud, puzzled.
“You’ve never had a snowball fight?” Beakington III asked, walking up beside me. “It’s great fun. You just build forts of snow and toss snowballs at the other team.”
“Can I participate?” I asked, surprised at my own eagerness. Admittedly, I was not looking forward to making Celestia happy by playing with foals, but on the other hand, if they were going to instigate war games, I had to see this for myself.
“Hmph,” Annuity said. “See if anyone will take y—”
“Sure!” Zap cheered, clearly happy that I was finally joining in. “Raise your hoof if you want to play.”
Almost half the class rose their hooves or equivalents, making a dozen players exactly. Jill, Beakington, Squirt, Thaumaturgical, Pestle and I were on one team. The other team consisted of Bubble, Annuity, Granite, Zap, Daybreak, and Gilded Acres.
I followed the lead of the others in constructing our snow barricades. Six inches of snow meant that most of us were chest-deep in it, but this gave us plenty of material to work with. We found a patch of flat ground and started by drawing a line in the snow. Each team then walked back fifteen paces. We carefully pushed snow with our front hooves and packed it into a foot-high wall. On our team, Pestle and Thaumaturgical smoothed out the top after each layer of snow was added. For added flair, the unicorn filly carefully lifted out a couple of cubes from the top of our wall She moved them to its highest section and set them down, creating makeshift turrets. I nodded in approval and attended to smoothing down the wall to look as orderly as possible.
“How do you play?” I asked Thaumaturgical while I worked.
“Truly? You don’t know?” the gray colt replied in response.
Squirt chimed in. “There’s no much to it. Just throw snowballs at the other team.”
“Snowballs?”
“Like this,” Thaumaturgical said, demonstrating rolling snow into a ball and throwing it. “I take it it doesn’t snow much where you’re from?”
“N—no,” I responded through hesitation as I realized that I could be later contradicted. “It doesn’t snow in Neighbraska.”
Please be true. Please be true!
Fortunately, the collector of miscellaneous trivia didn’t find my comment strange and the game soon started.
We crouched behind the fortress as Daybreak counted down from three. As he shouted “go!” all twelve of us sprung up, ready to face the other team. Realizing I was unarmed, I quickly ducked as a snowball hurtled above my head. Scooping up two hooffuls of snow, I combined them, and lovingly shaped the two parts into a sphere. Pleased with my feat of pony dexterity, I stood up ready to throw, only to have it knocked out of my hoof by a snowball to the face. Scowling as snow dropped off my muzzle, I caught a glimpse of Bubble Bauble laughing before she quickly had to take cover again.
Having lost face, I looked across our lines and noticed that Thaumaturgical and Pestle were creating theirs by magic. As I couldn’t imitate them, I looked to others for clues. Although Beakington’s front claws were quite unlike a hoof, he still formed snowballs in largely the same way as I had, albeit at three times the speed. As a lobbed snowball hit the back of my neck and sent a shiver through me, I resolved to be more active. I shook off the snow and started pacing along the rear of our fortress, occasionally peering through one of the openings Pestle had made. Seeing no weaknesses in their lines, I tried to discern a pattern in their attacks. However, the five of them gave no indication of their next move.
Wait... five?
I heard a whizzing sound as a snowball hit me in the eye from above. Peering through the other eye, I saw a yellow and black pegasus grinning down at me.
“What’s wrong, River?” Zap said as she dodged a pair of snowballs. “Aren’t you gonna chuck some at us?”
“She’s right,” Iron Jill said. “Don’t just stand there! Fight!” Jill was then hit in the chest by a barrage of snowballs. Her size made the wall nearly useless to her. In response, she growled, grabbed most of the wall in front of her and chucked it at the enemy fortification. Some snow merely piled onto the opposite wall, but a sizable gap also appeared, revealing an undefended Gilded Acres. The gold-maned, lime filly scurried to get out of the way as all our fire temporarily converged on her.
I looked to Squirt who also took a snowball to the face. He smiled, shook off the snow and threw a couple of snowballs back.
Am I taking this too seriously? I wondered.
As if hearing me, Thaumaturgical explained, “Fun is the name of the game. We don’t keep score here.”
Sidestepping a snowball thrown by Annuity, I scooped up some more snow. I took careful aim at the pegasus flying alluringly above us and threw it. I hit her left wing, causing her to plummet downward at an angle towards that wing before recovering.
“Now you’re getting it!” Zap cheered.
Suddenly all six of our opponents behind the wall all rose their heads above the wall, nodding their heads rhythmically. Puzzled, I looked to my comrades to press the attack before noticing they were doing the same. Suddenly, I began to hear the approaching of bells.
Don’t tell me…
Zephyr Zap sang, hovering, “Snow Day, fun day, everypony play day. Falling snowflakes—chilly win—hey!”
I smiled in triumph. I had dug deep to sculpt and toss that perfect snowball. Having taken the initiative, I hastily formed and lobbed three more at her before the song sequence would have a chance to recover. Everyone’s eyes were on me and I used the further moment of disbelief to throw a snowball at the exposed Annuity, who dropped to the ground to avoid it. I briefly wondered if I had broken a taboo, but the children on our side laughed as if realizing the opportunity for the first time, and soon they followed my lead.
The battle was raging full-force once more. I weaved along our lines, avoiding snowballs as I tried to divine the enemies’ position based on where the snowballs were coming from. As four more snowballs hit Jill, I locked onto a spot behind one of the opponent’s turrets where the last of the four had come from. The second Daybreak popped his head out I was ready with a straight-on snowball. I beamed at my successful strategy as he shook the snow from his mane before firing back.
Beakington III then tried to imitate Zap and took to the air with a pair of snowballs in his clutches, but enemy snowballs soon knocked them out of his front talons, and, embarrassed, he soon had to dive behind the wall again. I briefly debated the relative merits of having a flier on the team. Although Zap and Beakington exposed themselves, surely it must be an asset. I thought if I had wings, I could try to fly over and drop snowballs like bombs.
“If I had wings?” I thought disdainfully as I realized it would be reality fairly soon. I’m in no hurry for that. On the other hand…
A snowball striking my back brought me back to the moment. I happily lobbed a few more snowballs at the enemy lines, paying close attention to dodge when necessary. I made it a point not to get hit for the remainder of the game, but this dream was soon crushed by Granite’s hoof. I then adjusted my expectations to only get hit three more times, but this new goal lasted a mere five minutes.
These ponies have good aim, I thought to myself.
Annuity’s head then appeared over the opposing wall and I was ready with a straight-on shot that connected with a satisfying slushing of snow.
Then again, I’m not so bad myself.
A further trio of snowballs hit Jill courtesy of Annuity, Bubble Bauble and Granite. I lobbed a large snowball to try and scatter the group, but without letting me know if I had connected or not, they reappeared at another angle and tossed another three at Jill. There was no doubt about it now: they were aiming for Jill, the largest target. It was a good strategy for allowing the most throws to connect, but something about it bothered me. This was a game mostly devoid of rules, but it just struck me as unfair. Thinking back on Jill’s earlier feat, she couldn’t be a mere liability. After further thought, an idea struck me.
“Hey, Jill,” I said, “can you grab the wall again and make a big snowball?”
“Iron Jill is sorry about that,” the she-minotaur said, “Iron Jill lost Iron Jill’s temper. Iron Jill won’t destroy the wall again. No need to rub it in.”
“No. Actually, I want you to do it. I have an idea.”
“Like this?” Iron Jill asked, packing the foot-high wall into a misshapen snowball.
“Perfect,” I said.
I then crept around through the newly made opening. I got hit as I did so, but I didn’t care. Instead I lay down, using the snow blob as cover, and started to crawl as I gradually pushed the mound forward. Excess snow fell from the side at first, but as I rolled it forward with my muzzle, it slowly expanded in girth. When I was close to the enemy wall, I could comfortably stand behind my monster snowball. The colts and fillies behind me had puzzled looks at first, but they realized the possibilities fairly quickly. Squirt ran across the open field to my side and helped me push. Jill, as she was getting hit regardless of what she did, scooped up another handful of wall and dropped it on top of the snow boulder. Beakington flew above and pointed six times. Thaumaturgical and Pestle nodded, wrapped their magical auras around the snow boulder and heaved it over the opposite wall.
The opposing team’s eyes went wide as the monolithic snowball fell straight down on all six of them, burying them under eighteen inches of snow. They practically had to swim up to the surface, faces coated with snow. Annuity, Bubble and Granite had looks of dismay, torn between outrage and humiliation. Zap, meanwhile, giggled.
“Nice one!” She said, gathering a snowball to throw back.
Daybreak followed her lead and pretty soon the dozen of us were hurtling snowballs out in the open, paying little mind to taking cover. A few snowballs were even exchanged within the teams, and pretty soon, the team snow battle became a snowball free-for-all. After getting hit as much as I did, I tried to dig a bunker for myself, but none of the eleven others gave me respite to do so. Finally, I embraced the chaos and started tossing snowballs in every direction, but I made special note not to toss any at Iron Jill.
At several points the game looked like it was winding down, but each time a snowball directed at an unsuspecting victim ignited the frenzy once more. This cycle proceeded for about an hour until everyone was shivering, drenched from melted snow. A silent consensus emerged that the game was over and aside from Zap calling out, “Wasn’t that fun, everypony!” we silently quivered our way home.
When I finally reached Star, I was ready with an apology for keeping her waiting. However, to my surprise, she was wearing the widest smile I had seen on her as she asked, “So, Aron, how was school?”
“Fine,” I squeaked out in a voice that was a bit higher than I would have liked.
“Come on,” she coaxed. “I saw you having a good time out there, despite your prior insistences that you would have nothing to do with playing with the other colts and fillies.”
“I got the idea it would mimic a combat situation, so I thought I’d try it.”
Star looked at me, eyes wide.
“Is something the matter?” I asked.
She slowly rose a hoof and gestured towards me. “Your voice… it sounds a bit off,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Upon saying those words, I heard it for myself. Although I knew perception of one’s voice was by nature unusual, my voice sounded higher than normal.
“Ahem. This is our planet, and we will never surrender it,” I recited to test. This time my voice cracked.
“Try saying something else,” Star prompted.
Complying, I said the first thing that came to mind, “Courtesy, commitment and courage are what everypony in the guard should strive for.”
“Again,” Star ordered.
I again supplied the first thing I could think of: “Snow day, fun day, everypony play day,” I said as dryly as possible.
“Hmm,” Star hummed. “You sound normal now.” Star smiled. “It was probably nothing.”
I let out a deep sigh. “I sure hope so…”