“It’s a library...” Twilight stated breathlessly.
She panned the flashlight around as they inched through the darkness. The officers present with her were mostly perfuctory, yet the presence of the high school principal was inexplicably appropriate. Twilight struggled to understand how Celestia could have such a strong authority in this world, despite only being in charge of the city’s high school. Human customs were still strange to her, and this was technically high school grounds, but even in something far greater than one little high school, Celestia remained in charge. It sure wasn’t doing Twilight’s nerves any good that the humanized double of her teacher, mentor and princess was following along, silently judging her every action.
They had to be at least a hundred feet underground here. The descending set of stone steps that had... extended, were joined far below by a more permanent set of steps, spiraling downward into seemingly endless darkness. At the very bottom of this stairwell, there was a doorway, whose door had rotted clean away. And through that doorway was... a library.
There was nothing else down here, nothing alive that is. Not even a spider or a bug. Twilight had to suspect that this... this tomb of literature had been hermetically sealed, until they opened it today.
That hadn’t saved the books. Time had taken its toll on them, and their shelves, thus to crumble and rot they all descended. There were fragments of paper left, at best, fragments that crumbled to dust if you tried to pick them up. Not something Twilight was equipped to deal with in the slightest, but she wasn’t here for the piles of paper on the ground.
Twilight wished she had her magic so bad. She knew at least three dozen book preservation spells, and several molecular stabilization spells that could have proved invaluable to transporting these fragile remnants. There was no way for anyone to tell what was on these books at this point, and in fact by opening this passageway, they may have accelerated the rate of decay. It could be a mere decade before anything that could be saved from this was gone forever.
Nevertheless, Twilight had at most 3 months to wait before she got her horn back, so she wasn’t overly concerned about running out of time before she could aid in preserving or recovering these forgotten tomes. No, what she was interested in was what they found at the end of the library, through a once locked set of double doors hanging broken and ajar, their hinges rusted away, behind which were the remains of broken signs, and a bronze placard so corroded that whatever was etched in it was completely unreadable.
Beyond that was a simple reading room.
Princess—Principal Celestia stood close at hand, while Twilight and Sunset were cautiously escorted down here. They faced a darkened reading room, down which everyone panned their flashlights. The powerful beams played along the walls, illuminating walls lined in bookshelves with actual books on them, a few worn looking cushions, a central pedastal on which a book was prominently placed, and a police officer, frozen in the act of creeping forwards. His flashlight had been shining without fail for days.
“They stopped time,” Twilight said in shock. “Whoever it was, they stopped time. ”
“They slowed time,” Sunset corrected her. “No need to get dramatic about this, princess. The light from our flashlights is going in there and coming out just fine. What’s going on here is incredible, unprecedented... but the same could be said about the kind of sorcery it would take to establish a time loop.”
“Even if you did have the incredible magnitude of magic needed to loop time back on itself,” Twilight grumbled, “It would only do so once. You’d be undoing your own spell in casting it. A stable time loop is... a lot more impressive than this, I suppose. You’re right. But still, they almost stopped time!”
“What we need to know, Ms. Sparkle,” the commanding officer said in a worried baritone, “Is how to save our officer here.”
“Oh, well, end the spell obviously,” Twilight said shortly, “There should be a focus somewhere, that’s stabilizing it. Probably within the time bubble, to maximize its duration. If you can disrupt that, then... it should fix everything.”
“Does it have anything to do with the big red target in the back, with the mysterious writing next to it?” one of the officers asked, shining his flashlight down there.
Sunset and Twilight peered after the beam and their eyes widened. There was what looked like a wooden disc in the back, with red and white stripes drawn in concentric circles on it, leading to a red dot in the center. Next to it was a perfectly preserved sign on the wall, with the most astonishing contents.
“Th–that’s Presentation!” Twilight exclaimed dumbfoundedly.
“Modern Presentation!” Sunset replied in equal astonishment.
“Were ponies here before?” Twilight pondered, looking at Sunset wide-eyed.
“Is Princess Celestia setting us up?” Sunset asked anxiously, looking back.
“Wait,” Principal Celestia’s voice spoke up, making the two startle like little fillies. “I assume you mean... the other Celestia, across the portal?”
“T-t-there’s no way the princess is setting us up,” Twilight said facing the tall lady with a curiously quiescent form of her princess’s mane, and rubbing the back of her head. “Why would she do any of this? Just because she could have sabotaged the portal and perhaps been lying about being unable to manipulate this world without being trapped here doesn’t mean oh hayfeathers I’m going to shut up now.”
“I... hate to be the voice of reason here,” Sunset spoke up beside the blushing Twilight, “But while the princess could be setting us up for something, what that sign says isn’t it.”
“Oh, right, yeah,” Twilight said, still red-faced. “That sign is definitely not in any way mysterious or vague.”
“You can read the sign?” one of the officers asked incredulously.
“It’s written in an alphabet from our world,” Sunset said emphatically. “One used for signs and large public displays.
“Well, what does it say?” the principal asked, sounding a little miffed.
“Shoot this target to disable the time bubble,” Twilight said simply.
Dinky couldn’t hide up on the roof forever. He had to eat at some point. So every day, he would have to make his way through the cafeteria line, trying to ignore stares from kids like Octave who were so furious that he’d deflowered an innocent maiden who they didn’t even know, that they didn’t even want to let him get lunch anymore. Dinky wished he could just bring his lunch, but to bring his lunch he’d have to have a family, so all he got to do was get fed from a cafeteria every day.
Nevertheless, he was relatively safe under the scrutiny of the adults manning the cafeteria. No kid would risk throwing trash at him or trying to knock him over and take his stuff, or try to hit him, or try to approach him at all for that matter. Even the kids next to him in line were keeping him at arm’s length, pushing him away if he accidentally got close enough to touch them. Nobody in the school knew how to deal with a boy like him, and he didn’t know how to deal with that. But at least he could get his food in peace.
Dinky was astonished, therefore, to see a girl coming into the cafeteria make a beeline straight for him. It was a grey girl with straw blonde hair, a shade darker than his own. She had a frown on her face, and two yellow eyes, neither of which pointed in the same direction. It was the... dramatist? Dinky hadn’t even asked his roommate about her yet, but those unaligned eyes were pretty unmistakable.
She stood in front of him, staring at him with those eerily familiar eyes. This was supposed to be the pony in the other world who was his mother? But it was just a girl! Dinky didn’t know what to say, or what he was even feeling right now. It was as if he should know her, but Dinky had never even noticed her before. Did his roommate tell her about Dinky on his own? Why was she here?
Before Dinky could think of anything to say, the girl drew back, and slapped him so hard it knocked him into the kids in front of him. His cheek exploded in pain, and he held a hand to it as silence fell in the cafeteria, then loud murmurs, and whispers and stares . He didn’t know you could slap someone this hard! Why did it hurt so much? Why did she do it?
She just stormed away without even a word, away from him and out of the entire cafeteria. What was going on? Why was she leaving him? Why did it hurt so much? Everyone was laughing at him, or hating him, or pitying him. Dinky felt stupid, salty tears running down his cheeks as he just... fled. He dropped his tray and stumbled, then ran out of the cafeteria. Not after the girl who had slapped him, but just away.
Huddled outside by the fountain and crying to himself, Dinky felt like his whole world was ending. Why did she hate him? She didn’t even know him! Yet it felt like... it felt like the other world was real, and his mother wasn’t gone, and she hated him, and that’s why she left him at the orphanage. It was completely illogical. Even if the girl was a senior that would only make her 3 years older than him. That somehow made it worse though, because Dinky couldn’t understand why he was feeling what he was feeling.
He didn’t want to feel this way anymore. He just wanted to be loved, but all he did was hurt people. Dinky couldn’t help anyone; he was just worthless.
Ditzy Do was in a good mood this morning. She got another letter from her secret admirer! She couldn’t believe that an odd looking girl like her would ever have a secret admirer, but she did! She was amazed when she first got a letter in the mail addressed to her, not her parents. Nobody ever wrote to her! It had no return address, and all it said was that she was adorable, and that he loved seeing her “just as you are.”
Then she got another one! She couldn’t believe it! Someone was mailing her letters, who liked her. Someone who really, really liked her! He never said who he is, but he said the most endearing things. He said she was his favorite little pony, which didn’t make sense until some students started changing into little ponies, and then it did make sense! He told her he couldn’t wait to see her again. Ditzy didn’t know who it was. He only ever wrote a sentence or two, and a letter only arrived on Tuesdays. But just the thought that someone at school thought she was special enough to send her these letters always brightened her day.
Her day got less bright when she found out who it was.
The grey girl with the golden hair sat in her airy upstairs bedroom before school, looking with confusion and then anger at the letter in her lap that said, “Dinky needs you.” Nothing more, nothing less. That boy, that... boy! That boy had been writing these?!
It made so much sense the more that Ditzy thought about it. That must have been how Dinky got Diamond Tiara, by writing her such nice, loving letters, until he had her completely fooled that she was in love with him. And now he was announcing his needs to Ditzy like some kind of beast as if she would actually... even consider...
“Ditzy!” her mom called, “Time to get going!”
Ditzy left the letter with the others and went to school, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Now that he’d used Diamond Tiara, suddenly Dinky decided to confess his identity to Ditzy? Soon as he had his baby inside that other girl, he tossed her aside and looked for a new victim, and Ditzy Do was next! It made perfect sense. Diamond looked like she was popular, but she was too mean for any boy to really like. And Ditzy was too... clumsy and derp eyed for any boy to really like. He was just picking out lonely girls and—and using them for sex!
She couldn’t believe that someone so... awful could even exist, but there was the letter in plain words. Dinky wasn’t even trying to hide it. He needed her for his nefarious schemes, and he was just gonna take her! It was like he had lost control, like an out-of-control animal, who just said what he wanted, and didn’t care what you thought, only about his own primal satisfaction. Dinky needs you. That made Ditzy feel... funny inside, but still. It must have been because he got caught, and now he was desperate to move onto his next conquest. He thought he could keep doing this, even though everyone knew how dangerous he was.
She approached him in the cafeteria at lunch to confront him about these letters he wrote, all these kind loving words that were just lies to trick her, until Ditzy’s tummy was as big as Diamond’s! She went right up to him to tell him that she wanted... that she secretly wanted... that she wasn’t that kind of girl!
He wasn’t even an upperclassman! He had to be at least a year younger than her! He was just some stupid... kid who was just toying with Ditzy’s heart and didn’t even care about her. She wanted to tell him that, wanted to tell him just what she thought of his letters and his plans, but one look from those innocent, golden eyes, so similar to her own, and she just didn’t know what to say. He seemed surprised, like he didn’t even recognize her. What was she to him, just a faceless set of hips that he didn’t even feel a shred of guilt or remorse or even recognition in—
She hadn’t realized she was going to hit him, until she did. He deserved it, for doing that to Diamond Tiara, and then dumping her and trying to do it to Ditzy. How many other girls had he done this to?! With those eyes that made her feel so... so longing for something, he could have fooled whoever he wanted. She kind of... accidentally hit him so hard it sort of knocked him into the other students in line, and then shame and guilt added onto her already tumultuous emotions.
She—she gave him what he deserved, and Ditzy didn’t want everyone looking at her like that, and she was afraid he would try to talk to her, to make her think she could trust him again, so she just stormed out of the cafeteria. Ditzy Do would have to miss lunch that day, but it was worth it. As she sat there out by the stairs crying her stupid broken eyes out because all those beautiful letters were lies and fake, and nobody loved her at all, it was...
...
worth it...
With a full film crew present, casting generous light into the dangerously slowed room deep within the catacomb of books, Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer, a history teacher transformed into a pony and drafted to be an archaeologist, and the high school principal were... actually all the way on the surface, watching from a monitor displaying the video footage of deep within, just in case it did turn out to be some sort of trap. With the camera rolling, a very intrepid officer by the name of Shady Daze decided to take the risk, entering the view of the camera as everyone else watched avidly from the surface.
“Okay, I’m going to shoot the target now,” he said, lifting a rifle. Canterlot cops didn’t usually carry firearms, but they sure had some in storage, as well as training in how to use them. Releasing the safety, and bringing his finger to the trigger, the speakers hissed out as the loudness of the rifle shot overwhelmed the microphones. And Twilight and Sunset both watched with particular fascination, as camera number 3 tracked the bullet as it jetted through the air in slow motion.
With a cracking report, it struck the target dead center, and Sunset pushed a button on her stopwatch. She showed it to Twilight, who whispered to her excitedly, as a shimmering magical gneep came from the camera speakers, followed by the sounds of a second police officer speeding up saying, “Ooooooookaaay, I think I see a book or some thiIIIPE” he yelped as the other officer immediately tackled him in a hug.
“Dammit bro!” the one said to the other, “Could you please not just rush into things like that next time?”
The visiting sergeant cleared her throat into the microphone.
“Oh! Um...” Officer Shady Daze looked around nervously, breaking his hug and patting the other man on the shoulder. “We’re kind of being filmed right now. Let’s get out of here, I’ll fill you in on the way...”
“That was sho cool! ” Professor Berry exclaimed up on the surface, “It shlowed th’ bullet down! Did you shee zhat? How mush did it get shlowed down?”
“Given the muzzle velocity of the officer’s rifle, and the distance travelled, time was over one hundred times slowed!” Twilight reported, with a big smile. “110, with two significant figures.”
“If we look at shtuff in the hroom, and out of the hroom, maybe zhe relative decay coul’ give ush an eshtimate of how old zhat stuff is!” Berry suggested excitedly.
Looking discomfited, the principal said to everyone, “I believe that’s enough excitement for today. We can have the professionals—”
The eyes of two girls and a pony zipped as one from the screen, to the tall white lady.
“With all due respect prin—cipal,” Twilight said testily, “We are running out of time here. Every day means another two dozen people changed, and it will only get worse.”
“That was Presentation, an Equestrian alphabet,” Sunset said equally urgently, “We may be the only people in this world who can translate those books.”
“She’s got a poin’,” professor Berry said, tilting her head and peering back at the screen showing the sign next to the remains of the target. “The closhest I can find to that alphabet is hcuneiform, and thish ishn’t any shymbols I’ve ever seen.”
“There isn’t even a 1:1 correspondence with symbol to letter,” Twilight agreed emphatically, “Our world has a—a different situation as far as languages are concerned. There are only three major—”
“Fine, you can go take a look,” the principal said running her hand over her face wearily.
“Yess!” Professor Berry said, pumping her hoof. She blushed then, and said, “I mean uh, yes, that sounds reasonable.”
“You’ll have an escort of course,” the principal added, “And at the first sign of danger, you let the police handle it.”
Chattering at each other eagerly, the pony and two not-really-high-school girls began to scramble about to make preparations to venture downward.
“Alright, I’m moving forward,” the officer known as Shady Daze said, once the entire party was down the stairs and at the threshold of the mysterious back room. “If I hit any timey wimey shi—stuff I’m expecting you to bail me out.”
Him and his brother, two other officers, Twilight, Sunset, Cherry, and sergeant Safari were there. Two of the inferior officers both carried impressively bright lanterns, lighting up the area beyond that which the cameras were aimed at.
“Seems clear!” Shady soon called back, once he’d set the lantern down in there. Cautiously the others moved forward.
The reading room had an old musty smell to it, like old books left alone for too long. Twilight cautiously sniffed the air, and remarked, “These books seem well preserved. The air is dry, and I don’t smell any sort of rot.”
“Not surprising, with how slowed the flow of time was in here,” Sunset replied sounding loud in the quiet chamber. “They clearly wanted this preserved, whoever they were.”
“Still, we should be careful,” Twilight said, “No telling what condition these books are in.”
“It would take thousands of years for age to begin setting in,” Sunset pointed out.
Twilight pursed her lips, and then said, “...I know.”
Twilight and Sunset approached the podium in the center, accompanied cautiously by the sergeant. There was a large, ornate book laid upon it, as if for anyone to come up and read it. The podium was about 2 and a half feet off the ground, making both girls kneel down to be at level to read it. The rest of the group spread out through the room, Cherry looking curiously at the spines of the books on the shelves, and the officers searching in the passageway beyond it, while Sunset and Twilight just... wondered.
“What could this mean?,” Twilight whispered reverently.
“This library was isolated from the time loop,” Sunset said, “Yet they were trying to preserve this. Why?”
“A better question might be who brought it here?” Twilight responded.
“Or how did this get here?” Sunset said in disbelief. “Is this from our world? Not even Princess Celestia knew how to stop the time loop. She couldn’t have! Ponies have died from it!”
“A real ancient book,” the sergeant said behind them in rapt fascination. “Can you read it?”
Twilight nodded explaining, “The title is in Symbol, a common font to use for etching book covers in my... world. It says...” She frowned uneasily, not quite seeming comfortable with continuing.
Sunset gave the silent Twilight a worried look, but turned to the sergeant and said, “It says ‘The Journal of the Princesses.’”
“Princess Celestia must have known, if this is her journal, but...” Twilight stared at it as if it was going to jump up and bite her. “But the journal the princesses kept was called the Journal of the Two Sisters. Because they’re sisters, night and day, sun and moon. Is this another journal? Why would it be here? ”
“I dunno,” Sunset said lifting a shaky hand to the binding. “I’m gonna open it.”
Everyone watched on baited breath, as the flame haired girl opened the ponderous looking tome, folding it open to the front. “The princesses want us all to write a diary together,” Sunset read. “It’s so exciting to finally—”
“Pluto’s Balls! ” came a shout from a passageway in the back of the room. “Everyone, come quick! Bring a lantern! This is huge!”
Sunset and Twilight scrambled to their feet, running after the other officer with the lantern followed by a trotting pink pony. On the surface, Principal Celestia said something like “don’t you dare” that couldn’t possibly have been heard over the speakers down underground. The dark passageway that the bright lantern illuminated bit by bit looked very recently carved into the bedrock, with curious depictions of what were unmistakably ponies in various states of disarray all along it.
Sunset wanted to stop and look, but she knew this couldn’t have been what provoked that officer’s excited yelp. She just wanted to know what role ponies really played in all this. The passageway opened quickly into a cavernous chamber, over which the light played crazily, until the officer set down the lamp and cranked it up to full brightness. Sunset stared, as she and Twilight spilled out into that room, both of them coming to a halt at the sight of it.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sunset said faintly. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” she said less than faintly. “What is this? What is this?! What is all this? Why is this here? Who carved it? What is going on? Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“Tell me this is a joke, Twilight,” Sunset said, grabbing the distracted lilac girl by the lapel. “Is this supposed to be a lesson for me? Did you and Celestia plan this? What is going on?!”
“I–I don’t know, Sunset!” Twilight said looking fearfully from the statue to her friend and back. “There’s no explanation for this. There’s no way this could possibly be here. This is hundreds of years old, at least! I haven’t even been a princess for 8 years yet! And you haven’t—I—” Twilight hugged Sunset fiercely against her, whispering, “I don’t know who did this, but I’m sorry. I would never joke about this to you, not ever, ever.”
“...what’s so bad about another horse statue?” Cherry Berry asked, ambling up behind them.
The chamber everyone emerged in had ornate carvings all along the edges of its smooth walls, save one wall that was covered in scratchy, rough grooves. It was a completely empty chamber, but for a stone dias erected in the center, where it looked like a solid block of stone had been carved into a pedestal, on which two horses were made to be standing, rearing up in opposite directions. This would have been uneventful in and of itself, but the carving was done in the most meticulous detail, and both Sunset and Twilight knew exactly what they were looking at.
One of the horses, one of the ponies was Twilight Sparkle herself, no mistake about it, from the familiar curve to her snout, to the blank, oval eyes, to the straight cut bangs. Even the flutes on her horn were lovingly sculpted to the length Twilight always kept it at, and her own wings spread broadly behind her.
The other pony could only have been Sunset Shimmer. In a mirror of Twilight’s pose, the stone was carved into a second pony with wavy blades of hair, and sharp, oval eyes, a slightly angular snout that Sunset had been seeing more in past years, since she was forgiven and forgave the Princess Celestia, along with a crisply curved tail that in her life so resembled the flame in her heart. This statue had a horn kept just a little longer than Twilight’s, and her own wings spread broadly behind her.
Twilight had a lot to think about. Sunset had a lot to think about, but Twilight had a lot to think about, and also a warm dog sleeping on her chest. Twilight lay there in the dark for yet another night, trying to understand what she saw, trying to understand why Sunset was... was a princess. Had this world’s Sunset gone a different path?
But this world didn’t have a Sunset Shimmer. It wasn’t supposed to have a Twilight Sparkle. That was nothing unusual. There were lots of ponies in Equestria, who didn’t have a counterpart here in Canterlot City. Any who did have counterparts, you’d be able to find them caught somewhere in this time loop. But Sunset had scoured every corner of the city, and found no duplicate of herself, nor of Twilight. There was no alternate who could have written those diary entries, those innocent lessons of life that Twilight found endearing, but ultimately frustrating.
Nobody, or nopony writes a diary anticipating that those reading it will need to know the circumstances surrounding it. The other Sunset was just there, leaving entries happy as a clam, and then vanishing along with Twilight Sparkle rather than appearing anywhere in the time loop that anyone could find. The other books in the room were completely unrelated, but very pony related. An encyclopedic history of Equestria you could have found in the Canterlot library. Books on the three tribes, on modern farming and weather techniques. books on wing care, hoof care, horn care. Instruction books for any number of things.
Books from their world.
Twilight had been too shaken to read much more from the diary. And every time she read an entry like,
Today was such a beautiful day. The sun was warm and friendly, just like the one who raises it. I’ve learned so much from the princesses, that I can not find words to express how grateful I am. They teach me and Twilight, and love us both so much. I only hope I can live up to their dreams someday. I’ve come a long way, but I still have such a long way to go. Sometimes I can be rash in my decisions, but if I just listen to my heart and care about other ponies, then I can find the right thing to do every time.
Princess Shimmer
it looked like Sunset was going into a full blown panic attack. So Twilight stopped reading, and barely inventoried all the old, worn, faded books on the shelves around them, and together the girls went home... home to their portable building on the Apple family farm. The walls of the portable building were covered in notes, maps, pins, and laying on the bed, Twilight Sparkle was covered in Spike.
Twilight’s eyes drifted to the other bed, as Sunset was asleep, but not happily so. Sounds of her grumbling, or moaning quietly in her sleep drifted through the dim room.
“Spike,” Twilight whispered in the darkness, nudging her friend awake.
Spike gave a muggy little grewl, projecting his dog biscuit breath as he spoke, saying, “What’s up, Twilight?”
“Could you... sleep with Sunset tonight?” Twilight whispered, cringing.
“You know she doesn’t like me sleeping with her,” Spike said irritably. “I don’t wanna get kicked off the bed again.”
“Don’t worry, Spike, I—” Twilight sighed. “I think that right now it’s just what she needs.”
“If you say so,” Spike said reluctantly, cautioning Twilight “I’ll tell her it was your idea though.” Jumping down from the bed, he padded off in the direction of Sunset’s bed, ever so carefully climbing up to sleep next to the belabored girl.
Twilight lay in silence, and she might have heard a whimpered protest from Spike again, but once Sunset had her living teddy bear clutched in her arms, her troubled noises calmed down, and her breathing eased and slowed. Yet another Friendship Problem taken care of, Twilight thought distantly. Sunset Shimmer had wanted to be a princess more than anything, and to see her likeness carved in that visage... Twilight was going to have strong words with the sculptor, if she ever managed to find them.
One thing was for sure, if there were any answers to find, it would be in that diary. For all the shock of its discovery, Twilight was beyond eager to return to that room and study the heck out of that diary, not to mention all the other books in there. Maybe she’d go alone this time though, because Sunset really didn’t look like she was ready to venture once more into the deep.
“Sho in refiew, Charlemagne encourashed zhe Carolingiam Rennaishanshe.”
Berry needed a drink.
No, that’s not quite getting it. Those doctors weren’t kidding when they said that ponies couldn’t get drunk. Cherry Berry got completely sick of whiskey before she could even get a pleasant buzz. She wanted to get drunk, and she wanted to get drunk with her friends, because here she was trying to teach history when she didn’t even have hands to hold the pointer anymore.
She couldn’t stop thinking about that impossible underground library, that freaking magic room that had pony books in it. How much influence had ponies had on human history, and why was it that all Berry had been taught was crazy stories about stupid conquests and wars? The most she had ever heard of ponies were just myths and legends, of the unicorns, and one pegasus. So why was she teaching this crap, if the myths and legends were true?
“Anna shthal—scushe me.”
Berry spat out the pointer in disgust, abandoning it to say more clearly, “And a standardized writing syshtem. Once he conquered the Saxons, he shrove for univershal education.” And what a ridiculous history it was, too. Someone who could in one breath order the murder of dozens of innocent civilians and in another promote the value of educating them, and he just happened to be the one who was crowned emperor? She couldn’t whitewash it enough for these freshmen. Even they had dull looks of skepticism and disbelief.
“He instituted scholashtic reforms, while also purshuing his agenda of...uh...”
...
Berry looked out the window. It was a bright, sunny day outside, but there was something... wrong with it. She thought she saw a... a bird? It was just a bird fluttering off away from the school, but something about it filled her with dread.
“The agenda of Christian dominance in the Frankish Empire,” a student named Archer said, snapping Berry’s attention back to the classroom.
“Right,” Berry agreed, much to the blue girl’s delight, “And in thish, he gave sanctuary to the Antipope Paschal the Third.” Oh there was another rich story. Somehow this pope just barely escapes getting killed by the emperor in the nick of time, just at the time that the greatest conqueror France had ever seen came to power. And that string of coincidences just happened to be why modern Europe was male dominated. Sure it was more complex than that, but... why didn’t any lucky stuff like that ever happen to someone like Catharine the Great? Why would ponies remain uninvolved in everything?
“Which shemented the pope’s superiority over Charlemagne in his...” Cherry trailed off again, looking out the window again, for... something. Okay now she was getting scared. Was she seeing things? She wasn’t seeing anything though, because what was bothering her wasn’t in sight. She craned her head down, squinting to try and see higher outside the window. What was she even looking for? Everything looked fine, not terribly wrong.
“What are you looking at?” one of her students asked, following her gaze curiously.
“N-nothing!” Berry said fearfully, tearing her eyes away from the window again. “Just felt like shomething was wrong out there, but it’s too high to see from here.”
“The roof!” Apple Bloom squealed.
Berry blinked, looking at the wide eyed red and yellow pony sitting there at her desk.
“Ye—” the teacher said, just as Apple Bloom went tearing out of her classroom as fast as her hooves could carry her.
“Hey!” Berry shouted, leaping after her. She didn’t even hesitate or tell anyone to stay put, or stop to notify the hall monitor, because it was absolutely imperative that she catch up with that little filly. The halls were empty, which would have been an advantage, had Berry not been so damn terrible at running like a horse. Apple Bloom was way better at that, making the older pony look clumsy at best, but Berry had longer legs. Where the filly scrabbled at the smooth floor as she slowly turned the corner, the heavier Cherry Berry just sort of slammed into the lockers with her broad pink furry side, and charged on after her.
Apple Bloom made it to the fire access stairwell, but couldn’t open the door before Cherry caught up to her. “What are you doing?!” the history teacher demanded.
Apple Bloom backed up from the pink pony a step, looking up with scared amber eyes and saying, “Ah gotta go to the roof! Ah just realized why Dinky’s going up there all this time!!”
Cherry Berry felt all the fur on her back stand on end as she knew exactly what Apple Bloom was talking about. She yanked the stairwell door open with her mouth and braced it on a hoof shouting, “Go! Get up there! Shtall him or something!”
Apple Bloom didn’t need to be told twice, and lickety split she was clattering her way up the stairs. She didn’t even think twice about the loud alarm bells hurting her ears. She was running short on time, and she needed to do something before this horrible... thing that she didn’t even want to imagine occurred. The door to the roof was open when she got there. She pushed it open and looked around frantically—there! That shock of light yellow hair was unmistakable. There was the boy named Dinky, just sitting up on the roof like nothing was wrong, sitting on the—he was sitting on the railing!
“Dinky!” Apple Bloom shouted, startling the boy so badly she was sure she ruined everything and he was going to fall. But he gripped the railing in his hands, and turned to see her.
“Apple Bloom?” he exclaimed in wide eyed shock, “How did you know I was here?!”
“Ah don’t know!” Apple Bloom whined, “Dinky, what are you doing? ”
He adopted a guilty look for a moment, then said in low frustration, “What do you care?”
“Ah care!” Apple Bloom protested, walking a sideways circle around him, afraid to approach him. She didn’t want to make him do it! “Ah care a lot about you!”
“Why?” he shot back, “Why do you even care if I... do this?”
“Ah don’t want anyone to do this!” Apple Bloom said, “Ah’d be just crushed if anyone went and did something like this!”
He stared at her a second with those scared looking eyes, before turning forward and saying, “Well maybe you should go talk to anyone then, and leave me alone.”
“Ah’m not gonna—” Apple Bloom was at a loss. “What?!”
“You know it’s... it’s really freeing,” Dinky said with a giddy tremble in his voice. “I’ve always been so afraid to act, but now I don’t care about what happens, because I don’t care about myself.”
“Well then, why don’t you just come over here and get off that ledge,” Apple Bloom said tearily, “If’n it don’t matter what you do!”
“Oh, and what then?” he countered. “I should impregnate some more girls? Then change into a pony? Maybe I’ll get pregnant then, and drop some baby off at the orphanage to live her whole life without a family!”
“Y-you don’t have to do that,” Apple Bloom tried to be brave, though her legs felt like jelly, “You cain though. A-an’ what happens after she lives at the orphanage?”
“I don’t—” Dinky looked at Apple Bloom again, and said, “Have another baby? I don’t know! This could all be avoided if I just stopped being... here.”
He started to turn back, and Apple Bloom said, “No, it... n-no it wouldn’t!” She stomped and said, “There would still be people growing up in orphanages, and Diamond Tiara would still be pregnant, and she needs you!”
“No she doesn’t!” he shot back, “She can keep it, or she can get rid of it, or she can leave it at the orphanage, but all I can do is just sit there watching it, watching what I did ruin her life!”
“It ain’t—” Apple Bloom caught herself, instead asking, “How is it ruining her life? She’s gonna have the baby and then she’ll be living on easy street, right?”
“Are you crazy?” he demanded, “She’ll have to raise it, and feed it, and—and breast feed it, as a pony! She’ll have to spend her whole life doing nothing but taking care of it, and all because of me!”
“Oh, so it wasn’t her fault at all?” Apple Bloom shot back. “She wasn’t trying to get you to do it at all?”
“N-no, she wasn’t,” Dinky said mutedly, turning away.
“Bullshit!” Apple Bloom squealed, “You think ah don’t know her? She was probably... probably jumping on you when she started to get into it. She don’t do things half way!”
“Well good for her!” he shouted back, “Fine, it’s all her fault, and I didn’t want to do it, then she just forced me to get an erection, and forced me to put it in, and try as hard as I could to—to make her pregnant!
“What does it even matter?” he added tiredly, looking forward again. “I can’t even own up to my mistake. I can’t even be a man. I already—I already abandoned my child, because I’m just going to be some kind of a useless toddler. It’d be better if I just wasn’t even here anymore. Nobody would miss me.”
Apple Bloom stopped fishmouthing at his very male candidness, and said, “Ah would miss you,” but he shot right back,
“You would miss anybody! You don’t care that it’s me. There’s no one in the whole world who cares only about me, because I don’t even get to have a mother!” There were tears running down his face as he looked at her again, saying, “She hates me! She doesn’t even—she left me all alone. I wanted to see her for so long and nobody cared about me after that, only Diamond only cared about what I could give her. Well she has it now, so let me die already!”
“Look, it cain get better...” Apple Bloom said desperately, “You feel bad now, but it’ll get better if you just—”
“I don’t want it to get better!” he protested, “I can’t stand it Apple Bloom. Everyone hates me because of what I did, and I deserve it! I just want it to end! ”
Apple Bloom didn’t know what to say, and he was pushing himself off! She just ran forward and—and just wanted so bad to just pull him away, she couldn’t hold back. She just wanted everything to be okay again and that this terrible thing that did this to him never happened. He pushed off the ledge and fell so fast that she didn’t even have time to blink before he was gone.
“Dinky!” she shrieked. Clambering up on the ledge, Apple Bloom frantically tried to find something she could stretch to grab in her teeth, the collar of a coat, or a sleeve, or for some fingers hanging on the edge, but there was nothing she could do but watch Dinky falling away from her. Staring down at him, it seemed like Dinky was descending in slow motion, frozen in the act of reaching up at her for help, after it was far too late for her to help him.
“Oh,” Apple Bloom said in a bemused tone of voice, looking down from where she perched way up atop the school roof, “Huh.”
As soon as the little pony student darted up the stairs, Cherry Berry ran in the opposite direction from the stairwell, right over to the nearest fire alarm. She yanked it and her ears went flat as blindingly loud alarms started blaring into them. Feeling like the siren was digging into her brain, Berry went gallumping down the hallway, yanking open doorways with her mouth and looking in to see if she could find anyone at all who was... yes! Fuck yes!
Cherry Berry was a pretty noteworthy presence at the school as she was, with bright yellow hair and a pink furry ass that the bomber jacket she wore didn’t cover nearly enough, certainly not the tattoo of cherries that had appeared there. Three teachers had changed into ponies so far, if you counted that librarian, but Cherry was the only pony teacher who’d come back to school, making her the only pony teacher in the whole school. So people noticed Berry, and what she was. What she wasn’t, was the only pony.
The pony didn’t have any clothing sized for her yet, which made it easy to see her cream colored fur, the bright flowers on either side of her butt, her hair oddly remniscent of a watermelon, and other important anatomical features. She was a student. She had to be a student, or Berry would have got a memo—yet looked like she was just as old as Cherry Berry was. That was disturbing to experience when the student was in one of your classes, but not nearly as disturbing when you were breaking into someone else’s classroom after having faked a fire alarm.
So it was with confidence and authority that Cherry Berry shouted, “You!” to her fellow pony, and demanded of her, “Can you fly yet?!”
“M...me?” the other pony asked dumbly.
“No, the other winged pony in the room,” Cherry snapped, “Yes, you!”
“I can fly a little?” the pegasus replied too uncertainly.
“Wait for me at the west courtyard,” Cherry said seriously, “There’sh a boy. On the roof.”
As the pony student’s eyes widened, Cherry said clearly, “Don’t just fly up there. Shtay low. You have to be able to catch him if he falls.”
“I–I–I couldn’—” she stammered, and Berry’s reply was,
“Yesh, I know. Humans, big. Us, shmall. I’ll find more ponies, but I need you to go there now before he falls!”
That particular figure wasn’t totally accurate. Cherry Berry had lost 20 pounds when she went pony. The bigger ponies were around the same weight as a small human. Cherry herself was on the small side for an earth... uh, mare, and far as she could tell, pegasus ponies were all on the small side. Cherry shoved her way through the crowds forming to assemble outside, getting in the face of another student, a stallion this time, with dark grey fur, and a bright blue mane and tail. “You! Can you fly?” Cherry demanded of this tall but sleek stallion who she probably shouldn’t be thinking of in that way because he was probably like sixteen and a pony and what was she even doing thinking about that at a time like this?
“I–I’m not very good—” he said in a plain baritone, but Cherry said,
“Good enough! Boy on the roof over the west courtyard. Go wait below with the others, and stop him if he jumps!”
Next, Berry was running down a teeny little filly with orange fur and light blue hair, asking, “You, fly?”
The filly nodded silently, rising up on silent wings, and Cherry nodded back saying, “West courtyard. Meet the others. Don’t let the boy jump!”
Cherry hoped that would be enough. She didn’t know how many students were ponies, and pegasus ponies. She thought maybe unicorn ponies could do some sort of magic thing, but that was a real long shot. There was one more she got, a pink haired mare with pretty golden fur, and then Cherry ran herself out of the halls, and around to that courtyard.
When she got there, there were more like five pegasi, all in the process of milling around uncertainly beneath the dangling shoes of a lavender boy up on the roof. “Okay, you go up there and push him back onto the roof,” she told the little filly. “You two wait right below and catch him if he falls,” she told the stallion and that one mare. “And you two—” her heart leapt in her throat, “Never mind!” she shouted in panic, “Just get up there! Save him now, hurry!”
The filly darted up into the air first, right when the boy shoved off the roof and started to plummet. Her eyes bugged out as the falling boy landed on her back on the way up, and they both began to fall. That slowed their fall enough that two of the slower fliers could grab him, while one flew up underneath him, and the fourth caught the filly as, free of the boy, she somersaulted in confusion through the sky.
After that, it was a nice and easy controlled descent for all involved. Cherry watched with a grim expression though. The hard part would be keeping her alive after your friend has tried to kill herself. Wait... no. No it was the student who’d fallen. Cherry never had to talk her friend out of killing herself ...had she?
Nov 3, 1393
My fellow princesses are more ardent about this shared journal than I, I’m afraid. A testament of our daily lives to future generations seems like a good idea, but I never know what to write into it. We have been entertaining tedious petitioners, and caring for the night sky. What else is there to say?
Pony dreams are as troubled as ever. Apparently some ponies have gone missing on the outskirts of Fillydelphia, and their families are on watch for where they might be being held. My night guard has been dispatched, and will make swift work of any ne’erdowells. Many ponies were injured in the recent dragon migration, and they need consolation in their dreams, while they recuperate from getting on the wrong side of a rutting dragon (hint: every side is the wrong side.) There have been a series of robberies in Manehattan, and ponies are still afraid of being threatened, until we bring this new gang to justice. I give them a week, at most.
Overall, ponies are worried about the cold months ahead, and the long slow trek back into spring. I am frankly inclined to agree with them at this point. The chill even reaches these old bones of mine, and I will greatly appreciate not having to bear the majority of the burden of the night and day. My sister’s turn can’t come up soon enough. Two more months until the longest night of the year...
Princess Luna
Twilight Sparkle did not know what the buck she was reading.