Twilight Sparkle couldn’t see the other side of the portal.
She couldn’t hear the other side of the portal.
She couldn’t even feel the other side of the portal.
…
Come to think of it, she couldn’t see or hear or feel anything. At least nothing but...cold. She was on (or in) something cold and wet. Was it water? No, it was too hard. Ice? Too malleable. It was probably snow. But wait, why was there snow on this side of the portal? It was only May, so the lack of grass made her confused.
“T….ht?”
A voice. A familiar one, but who was it? Shining Armour? No, it was too young sounding. Big Mac? No, it was too high-pitched? Discord? Again, too young sounding, and it didn’t have the accent.
“Twilight….”
There it was again. It was on the tip of her tongue. Oh, now she remembered, it was Spike.
“TWILIGHT!!!!”
Twilight’s eyes finally began to open. But she could only see white. Snow, most likely, given the texture. She could also see the green and brown of trees, the grey of rocks and the slight peak of blue of the sky.
She could finally begin to speak as her energy came back to her.
“Uh…..Spike?”
She began to look around the area for the source of the voice. Her suspicions of her location were confirmed as she saw that she was in a snow-filled forest. As she looked back and forth, she saw a flash of purple. She finally focused on a point, the purple ball.
“What...happened to you?”
It was Spike, but it wasn’t a dragon. It was a small ball of fluff, purple with green hair. He looked at himself with a mixture of concern and confusion.
“I don’t know…” He said, spinning around to get a better look. He then looked to Twilight, and his expression became more one of shock and confusion.
“But…...what happened to YOU?”
Twilight was confused. “Wha...Spike..” She then went to rub her eyes. “What you talki--!!” She stop when she saw her arms. It wasn’t the purple hooves she was accustomed to. It was Flippers...FLIPPERS!!!! She didn’t even wait to look further.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Spike flinched at the screams his friend and surrogate big sister was making, desperately wishing he could cover his ears, (had he still possessed arms that is).
Twilight finally stopped screaming, but her freak out wasn’t over. She finally got a better look at herself. She got a better look at her flippers.
She deduced that they belonged to a subspecies of the Spheniscidae of birds, more commonly know as Penguins. A quick survey of her form confirmed this. However, things didn’t 100% line up. Aside from the purple coloration, things were subtly off. The webbed feet were less toes claws, and more like bars of cheese. The flippers bended and twisted like normal pony hooves (or human arms, whatever a human was….where’d that come from).
A strand of indigo alerted her to the fact that she still had her mane. It was still Indigo with pink and purple streaks, but it was re-rooted to just her scalp, as opposed to down the middle of her head and neck.
The shifting of a heavy weight on her back indicated she still had her saddle bags, but a quick peek instead showed a lavender back-pack with her cutie mark on the flap.
Opening it up showed all the contents remained; Water Canteen, Food Rations, her sleeping bag, some Gems for Spike, and her Bits wallet (albeit the bits had a new star design on them.). She felt a cold winter wind blow around her. She crossed her arms and shivered.
“Note to self,” she said in her head. “Have Rarity make a full winter outfit when I get back…..ASAP.”
As she finally calmed down enough to actually think properly, she finally stood up, wobbling as she adjusted to the new configuration of her limbs. Being used to four points on the ground made it hard when that number was cut in half.
“Okay, so I’m a penguin in this dimension...don’t know what I was expecting, but all right.” said Twilight, grabbing the attention of a certain purple fluffball, who was leaping around in the snow like it was Hearth’s Warming Eve.
“SPIKE!!!”
The puffball finally stopped, but not before noticing that his trail made the outline of a familiar alabaster unicorns bust, which made him bluish. Seeing Twilight’s sneer, he stood at attention (well, as best as one can when one has no limbs).
“This is not the time to play foal’s games...uh, I mean kid’s games.” She said, strangely correcting herself using a term that she had never heard before.
“We need to focus on finding the crown and getting back. Time is our adversary right now. Three days doesn’t allow us having any time to dilly-dally. If we miss it by ONE minute, we’re stuck here for another THIRTY MOONS!!! That’s the equivalent of just under 2 and a half YEARS!!” This was a lecture bordering on a rant, which scared Spike some.
“And NO, we can't just make a leap at the last second, who knows what will happen if it closes on us halfway. Worst case scenario, they’re gonna have to clean up BLUBBER NUGGETS!!!”
Twilight shivered as her own lecture began to creep her out. Now she knew how the others felt when she went on a tangent. She took a deep breath and did her best to calm down.
She did a survey of the area to try and see where a good place to start was. It didn’t take long to see what looked like a town. While she couldn’t see exact buildings, she could see what looked like a theatre, a hockey rink, what she thought was a mine, and the outline of an Japoneigh dojo (Equestria’s Japanese).
“It looks like there’s a town over to the north. That should be a good place to start. Come on Spike.” Spike quickly leaped on her back and slipped into a pocket on the side. Twilight, unsure of how to move in this form, tried to do her normal quadrupedal walk.
Sadly, this was not to be. She kept swaying side to side, and it really hurt her wrists and knees. She was fearful of what would happen when----
“HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!”
She eeped and collapsed at the sound of a loud annoying laugh. This made her end up with another snow facial. Shaking it off, she saw an orange penguin, probably male, laughing his hind-end off. She could see he was wearing an orange t-shirt, with an ‘LOL’ emoji on the front.
“What were you trying to achieve with that horse-trot? Sniffing out the hay amongst the snow? HAHAHAHAA!!! You really need to “Saddle” down there! HAHAHA--!!!”
A flipper smacked the orange penguin on the back of his head. A lime green one, with glasses, a v-neck sweater and collared shirt was right behind him.
“ORANGE! It’s rude to make jokes at others expense.” The green one turned to Twilight and bowed. “I’m sorry ma’am. My friend here can get pretty….eccentric. He’s always making jokes like that. And strangely those jokes correlate to LOTS of knives.”
He would have said more, but his friend had already run off laughing. “ORANGE!!! Sorry, ma’am. Anyways, welcome to Clu...” said the green penguin quickly, before running after his orange friend. She couldn't quite get the last part.
Taking the hint, Twilight got back up on her webbed feet. Her first attempt to walk was…..well at least she tried. She wobbled left and right, forward and back, even going in a circle. She eventually had to stop and rest up next to a tree.
She began panting from a mix of embarrassment and exhaustion. All the way, she couldn’t stop hearing the laugh of that orange penguin (who for some reason smelled of citrus). If trying to walk like her normal self was enough to insight a laugh, what would happen if she did some of her OTHER tricks?
She made a decision then and there; watch the traditions of the local populace, and try and blend in as much as possible. No magic, no eating flower, and no flying.
Wait? Magic? Flying?? What happened to her wings? And her horn?! She couldn’t cast any spells! She couldn’t even hover a few feet off the ground! How could she get used to this strange world now? It then hit her like an intellectual brick. Penguins are flightless birds.
“GAH! Twilight, you baka!” said Twilight mentally (Baka - the japanese term for ‘idiot’ or ‘dummy’) .
Twilight shook her head. This was getting frustrating. She couldn’t just wander out like she doesn’t know how to talk. She needed to learn how this place operated NOW rather than later.
And that meant, she needed a library.