I stood on the roof of the castle with wings at the ready, facing towards Mt. Canterhorn as the sun peeked over the trees to my right. As picturesque as a brochure of the tropics, the mountain was framed by the backdrop of the blue sky and fluffy white clouds, accented by golden hues of the radiant sun.
A wisp of wind blew by, and I smiled. With cocked legs and an almighty flap of my wings, I was off like a bullet.
Crisp spring air rippled through my mane and tail, as fresh as the dew on the grass beneath me and the leaves on the trees. I pumped my wings as hard as I could, rising above a low-laying cloud bank and pushing off on it to gain even more momentum, speeding towards my target as if I was driving down the freeway without a care in the world.
I had only one goal in sight: The summit of Mt Canterhorn.
I spied a lake longer than it was wide through the canopy of the Everfree forest, and I angled my wings down, tucking my legs against me. The body of water came closer and closer, and I levelled off mere inches above the mirror-like surface, letting my hooves skim across the top like a pebble on the flat ocean. I glided over the lake, banking left and right to allow the tips of my wings to break the surface, kicking up sprays of refreshing water against my coat. With that pleasant chill permeating me, I turned skyward and began climbing as high and as hard as I could with every determined pump.
As the muscles in my back started to protest from the exertion, I paused to level out and slow down slightly, letting the gentle breeze carry me towards my destination. From being so high up, I could see the horizon for miles around in all its splendour. Rivers and lakes dotted the landscape intermittently, and I could see an ocean hiding the rising sun in the distance. The sight of majestic, lush green forests, rolling foothills, and and the bleached white of snow capped mountains went uncontested by any photo I’ve ever seen, or the view from a plane.
It made me feel... alive.
I was gliding among the clouds without a care in the world. It was just me and the sky. Finally, a moment where I could fully appreciate and enjoy my little holiday.
As I flew through the open sky, the bottom of the sun broke free from the curvature of the horizon. It was about half an hour since I first took flight as the mountaintop grew ever closer, further reinforced by the chill in my wings from the altitude.
With the application of the Accelero spell I picked up from a book, I felt my speed increase twofold as I narrowed my eyes against the wind resistance, my gaze never leaving the spiked peak of the mountain. What would have taken a further twenty minutes was accomplished in ten thanks to the added speed.
As my destination came into view, I dispelled the spell and pulled back, throwing my wings forward to slow down as best I could before I became a pony princess pancake against the side of the mountain. I gently floated over to the toothpick thin spire of rock that was the tallest as far as the eye could see.
It was inevitable that a stupid idea crossed my mind, one that made me grin with juvenile humour.
Concentrating magic into my horn, I carved out a concave section of rock from the snowy peak, providing me a smooth surface on which to write. After all, if I was going to swap back by this time next week, I wanted to leave some sort of reminder that I was here. Perhaps someone would climb the mountain in the future and wonder what it meant? Luna would certainly know if she found it.
I carved three words into the rock with magic; Kate wuz here, followed by the date: 17/10/205AU (AU stood for After Unification, similarly to AD on Earth).
As I stood on a plateau a bit further down from the summit, overlooking the wider world in all it’s naturistic glory, it seriously made me appreciate that kind of pure, untainted nature. Waking up to chirping birds and breathing invigorating oxygen every day the last several weeks was a huge contrast to waking up to polluted air and honking cars from living in a crowded city, one that I wouldn’t take for granted when I got back home.
I think it was that epiphany which made me consider moving house to a more rural area. Perhaps a nice house in the middle of the countryside where I could go into the garden and pick fresh tomatoes off the vine for a salad, or an apple from the tree for a snack. It’d also save me some money instead of having to go to the supermarket if I ran out of something.
The longer I stood at the top of the mountain, the more resolute about the idea I became. Eventually, I spied a stray cloud casually drifting by, so I lazily flew over to and flopped down over it, letting the eco-friendly vehicle carry me back toward the castle with a little push of my magic.
Normally looking down to the ground from a height would be absolutely terrifying for some people, especially if you were sitting on a small platform thousands upon thousands of feet above ground with no form of security, but in my case, and considering how much of a good mood I was in as well as the fact I had that security, I felt daring. After an hour of mindlessly floating on the cloud completely relaxed, I stood up, folded my wings against my side, and dove head first off the cloud, streaking through the air like a comet trailing through the atmosphere as an aquamarine contrail streaked behind me.
The air friction was quick to build as I dove head first toward the ground at terminal velocity, and I could barely keep my eyes open to see where I was going as narrowed as they were. I suddenly unfurled my wings almost like a parachute with an audible womph! to slow my descent, the immediate strain on the back muscles screaming at me as though I’d forsaken them. Aiming for the edge of the lake I passed over earlier, I attempted the superhero touchdown but failed miserably. I misjudged my footing and tumbled over myself like a boulder down a hill, and I kept going until I landed in the lake with a splash. I had no idea if Luna could swim, and I hadn’t the chance to practice in her body, so I suddenly burst out of the water in a panic at that realisation and floundered for even footing, half crawling to the edge of the bank to pull myself up. I successfully did so, where I rolled onto my back spread-eagled, looking up at the sky with a mile wide grin on my face, wet like I’d just gotten out of the shower.
“Yeah!” I shouted to nobody in particular, throwing my forelegs up in the air in an exuberant cheer. I got up, and walked over to the edge of the lake for a drink, levitating a glob of water from that I sucked up through puckered lips.
Even though I probably wouldn’t get the chance to fly like that again, I had absolutely no regrets in my failed landing whatsoever. In retrospect, I wondered what would’ve happened if I had ditched Celestia, the castle, the nobles, and went off on my own adventure to discover lands unknown. Nothing good probably, then I most likely would have never made my way back home and Luna would’ve been stuck on Earth with no way home.
I shook those thoughts from my head and teleported myself back to my room for a nice hot shower. Even though there were a few scrolls on my desk for me, they could wait ten minutes. Or an hour. It was my day off, after all.
When I got out of the bathroom all nice and clean, I went to take a look at the scrolls as I dried my mane. Two of them were the last two reports about the inquiry concerning the mining equipment and the dogs, which were, unfortunately, a dead end. The one consolation was that I knew who and where the equipment was coming from, so I could pay the town of Aes a visit at some point during next week. The third was a report summary and actions taken by Celestia taking care of the “by appointment” petitioners which, apparently, went quite well.
Since Lamplight still had the blueprints in his possession, Celestia and I had them confiscated along with any and all paraphernalia relating to their operation. As a result, I wondered if we could use those same plans to build another machine and start our own mining operation. ‘Course, I’d need to run it by Harvest since it was his town and land, but I assumed it wouldn’t be an issue if we could come to an agreement about profits, labour, etcetera.
About an hour later after I finished drafting up a proposal, I had turned my efforts onto the journal I was writing for Luna when a knock came from my bedroom door, so I went to see who it was.
“Oh, Atlas!” I greeted when I opened the door. “How well did your survey turn out?”
“About as well as I could’ve hoped for, Princess,” he replied courteously, reaching into his saddle bags for two scrolls. He unfurled one, showing a detailed drawing of the chasm and its surroundings. “As you can see, we’ve completed the initial survey, so all that’s needed is to get this integrated with the rest of the maps.” He offered me the other scroll with an outstretched hoof. “Harvest also said you needed this done by today, so I looked it over and made a few corrections and changes to the best of my ability. I must say, it’s an interesting concept, but I do feel obligated to say that it’s more effective at subterranean complexes than land masses.”
I looked over the parchment, noting the corrections Atlas made. “That’s the idea. I have reason to believe the region is volcanic based off of some research, so this will help to ascertain how unstable the surrounding land mass is, if at all.”
“Oh yeah?” Atlas said with an air of intrigue.
“Since it is a prototype spell, I plan on testing it out to see if it’ll actually do what I designed it to do.”
“Do let me know of the results; it would be a boon to have something like this under our belts.”
“Have the rest of the day to yourself if you like. You can start on integrating the addition to the other maps tomorrow.”
“Ah, thank you very much, Princess,” Atlas bowed, happily cantering off and down the hall as I turned my attention to the spell.
Thinking back on how Luna neglected to tell me how to find the mirror, I had the time since then to think rationally about how I’d locate it. You’d think a mirror that doubled as a portal to another universe would be hard to find, or at least very well guarded, so I reason it could’ve been in one of two places: In the deepest part of the castle that would be off limits to anyone save Celestia and Luna, or hidden in plain sight as an inconspicuous looking vanity mirror. As a test run for the scanner spell, I’d have it scan the entirety of the castle to see if it turned up and chambers on the lower levels. If that failed, then I would’ve had to go hunting for every mirror in the castle with the hopes I’d find what I was looking for, which seemed unrealistic.
When I activated the spell, an dimly glowing ball of light emerged from within the matrix, and from my desk, the other rolled up parchment began glowing in response. I unfurled it and set it on the desk, and slowly, a contoured, 3D rendering of my room began to emerge from the array. I watched as beams of light washed over every surface, creating a scaled-down version of its surroundings.
While it was proving to be effective, I couldn’t have a ball of conspicuous magic floating all around the castle. I glanced over the guard’s roster above my desk to see if the person I wanted was posted outside my door, and much to my surprise, he was.
I went back over the door and opened it to poke my head out. “Midnight, a moment of your time, please?”
“Of course, Princess,” he said, walking into the room and stealing a glance at my floating handiwork.
“Could you cast a charm on this spell so it will go completely unnoticed by everypony, save you and myself?”
“That I can.” Midnight then fed magic into his horn, and it dissipated a moment later. “One of my more stronger See No spells. Might I inquire as to what it is you’re doing?”
“A simple experiment for a spell I made. Can’t have everypony wondering why there’s a random ball of magic floating around the castle.”
“Is there anything else, Your Highness?”
I thought about asking Midnight to fetch a courier to take the proposal I wrote to Granite, but then realised that a courier would take a full day to fly to Mercy and back again, where I could spare a few seconds to teleport there. “Not for the moment. You may return to your post.” Midnight bowed curtly and retreated through the door, followed by the ball of magic as it began its journey through the castle.
Even though I wanted to chat with Granite about picking up where Lumen and his gang left off, I’d be getting ahead of myself without a solid plan on what to do, as well as jumping the gun with my spell without knowing how well it would perform. While the scanner matrix did its thing, I grabbed the parchment with the other spell I was working on prior to the guard training and set out to find Firefly so she could be my little guinea pig for the test.
Unsurprisingly, I found her in the dining hall scarfing down about two lunches worth of food piled onto the same plate.
“I still have no idea where you put it all,” I said, rolling my eyes as I sat down across from Firefly.
“Hmmph?” Firefly mumbled with spaghetti strands hanging out of her overstuffed mouth. She gulped and swallowed the entire mouthful like an anime character wolfing down mountains of food. “I just got done training, so I need the extra food to top up my magic and energy,” she said, then guzzled down a jug of water.
“You’re going to eat us out of house and castle,” I snarked. “Anyway, I was wondering if you had some free time to help me with something?”
Firefly wiped the back of her hoof across her mouth. “Sure, what’d you need?”
“I need your help testing a spell I wrote.”
“What is it supposed to do?”
I smirked. “Do you like surprises?” If it worked the way I’d hoped it would, then she’d certainly be in for a surprise.
Firefly returned my smirk with a sly, intrigued grin. “Alright, I’ll bite. Shall we go outside?”
“I was planning on it,” I said as the two of us got up. We walked through the various halls in search for the main entrance which, when I thought about it, I hadn’t passed through since my stay. We managed to locate it in due time, the door leading out to a grand foyer which had some kind of planetary system sitting on a pedestal. The whole thing was carved from rock, and had a large stone ball as the centerpiece as well as five smaller planets surrounding it, attached to thick pieces of wire which were secured to a centre column, and apparently rotated like planets of a solar system.
But that wasn’t the strangest thing. The closer I got, I could sense an almighty amount of magic energy emanating from each stone ball, and they all had a different sensation; a fire of devotion; the warm embrace of a mother’s hug; a giddy sugar rush; the fullness of spirit; serendipity of accomplishment, and the relief of a weight being lifted off my shoulders.
“Do you feel that?” I asked Firefly.
“Feel what?” she said with a quizzical glance.
“The pedestal thingy. I can feel magic radiating out from it.”
Firefly turned to look at it with a cursory glance. “I recall Celestia mentioning it being some kind of protective ward for the castle. What it does or how it works, I don’t know.” She shrugged it off, but I kept looking at it over my shoulder as we continued walked to the main gate.
Stepping outside into the noon sun, we walked about a hundred metres from the castle before coming to a stop in the middle of a field of grass.
“Alright, so what do you need me for?” Firefly said.
I looked over the parchment I brought with me in concentration, then rolled it up as I drew three arrays stacked on top of one another with hard light magic. I’d decided to name it Mirror Water. I enlarged them enough to cover me from head to toe, then turned my attention to Firefly.
“Hit me with your best shot.”
Firefly blinked in disbelief. “I… What? You want me to try and cook you like a smoked fish or something?”
I rolled my eyes. “Firstly, you smoke fish with smoke, not fire. And yes, I want you to shoot a fireball at me.”
Shrugging, and figuring that she couldn’t get in trouble with someone that asked to have a fireball shot at them, Firefly gathered a ball of radiant red magic at the tip of her horn which then rocketed towards me like a cannonball.
If my spell had failed, I would’ve walked away with a couple minor burns at worst. Thankfully that wasn’t the case, and when the fireball contacted the array, it rebounded back instantly. Seeing that, Firefly’s eyes widened in abject disbelief, but she couldn’t react in time to deflect her own spell because of the speed, and it knocked her back several metres where she landed on her ass.
Groaning from the pain of the fall, Firefly picked herself up and fixed me a glare. “Hey! Why’d you do that?!”
“I told you you were in for a surprise, and you decided to play along,” I shrugged.
“Yeah, well…” she grumbled after the fact.
“If you eat fire, why didn’t you just eat your own magic?”
“What, eat my own magic? Are you crazy? That’s like eating breakfast and deciding you want to regurgitate it to have for lunch.”
“Dude, that’s gross,” I grimaced.
“Exactly my point. I might be completely immune to fire, but that’s not counting explosive force.”
“Anyway, thanks for your help. Glad to know that the spell worked the way I intended.”
“Hold on a sec,” Firefly interrupted. “Before you go, I wanna try something else.”
“What, getting knocked on your ass with your own magic again?” I joked.
“No!” she sheepishly interjected. “Try pointing the array away from you at an angle.”
Confused as to what she was on about, I obliged the request. Another fireball was sent my way, but instead of bouncing right back to Firefly, it rebounded off the array an angle and went soaring over the tops of the trees on the other side of ravine.
From craning my head looking at the fireball, I turned to look at Firefly with a dead even expression. “As handy as the angle of the array is to know, if your fireball causes a forest fire, you’re cleaning every toilet in the castle after you put out the fire.”
“Including yours?”
“Especially mine.”
“Dude, that’s gross.”
“Well? What are you waiting for? The eventual column of smoke to let you know where to go?”
“I hate you so much…” Firefly playfully spat.
“No you don’t,” I replied cheekily. “Besides, it was your own idea. Now git.”
As Firefly trudged off in the same direction her spell went to make sure it didn’t spark a blaze, I made my way back to the dining hall for some lunch of my own. Minus the fruit I snacked on before my flight, I hadn’t had much else to eat and was getting rather hungry.
Save for a couple of occasions, I didn’t see the scanner matrix at all much during the rest of the day, and I restrained myself from going into my room to watch the map of the castle slowly come to life. As fun as that would’ve been, I spent the rest of my time leading up to dinner simply poking around the library and enjoying the day, both outside and inside. Celestia really seemed to enjoy her free time too, if her great big grin and more playful attitude was anything to go by.
Come the conclusion of dinner, I briskly made my way to up my room in hopes of finding at least a partially completed map of the castle. What I found, however, blew me away. The 3D rendering of the castle was completed to a T, even though the ‘quality’ of the overall image was a bit grainy; Instead of the individual stone bricks making up the castle, there were just smooth walls. In the halls themselves, there were strange looking blobs that I assumed were pieces of furniture or other ponies that the matrix picked up. With that in mind, I made a note to exclude biological lifeforms from the spell’s formula, then there’d be less chance of skewed results, and maybe a higher quality scan.
I laid the parchment with the holographic map of the castle on the floor, and sat down on my haunches to study it.
The two most notable features were the east and west towers containing the bedrooms of Celestia and Luna. From there, staircases lead down and into hallways that ran parallel on opposite sides of the castle. The numerous straight and curved halls and passageways lead to various rooms and antechambers in the castle; the kitchen, throne room, dining hall, and even the castle’s powder magazine to name a few. However, the lower the matrix got, the rooms and halls began to dwindle as shown on the map. There was no apparent rhyme or reason as to why those passages jutted off at different angles, and at the end of one of those passages was a narrow tube that went straight down into nothing, presumably a spiral staircase of some description. My only question was; why would there be a staircase that lead to nowhere? Either it was exactly what I was looking for, or it was simply abandoned during construction.
The more I studied the map, there was one detail that took me longer to pick out than the rest. Where the rest of the passages were scanned and had noticeable features and definable surfaces, entrances and exits, there was one corridor on the lowest part of the castle, thirty metres at least under the dungeons that had no end to it, meaning the spell hadn’t finished scanning the corridor. Either it had run out of juice and simply died, or something was in its way. Whatever the case was, I intended to find out why.
Normally I would’ve teleported myself to the location, but it was an unspoken rule that you couldn’t teleport anywhere you either hadn’t been or didn’t have line of sight to, proximity teleportation notwithstanding.
Even though I was a princess in my own castle, ponies usually assumed I knew what I was doing and where I was going, thus wouldn’t ask questions. At least not too often. Nevertheless, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t gossip amongst themselves if they saw me going into areas less travelled all by myself. For all I knew, they’d assume that I was going into my secretly hidden kinky dungeon to flog disobedient ponies with promises of a... reward if they behaved better.
Regardless, I found that if I projected an air of confidence and kept my gaze forward, I was usually left alone. Even though I had the rendered 3D map with me while I walked through the castle using the most direct route, I could only stop to look at it and orientate myself when nobody was around, least they stop me and ask what I was doing. Even though I could’ve lied, it was more a case of other people minding their own business.
I wound up getting lost on a number of occasions, and had to wait until I was alone or find an empty room where I could use the map to get my bearings. As a result, it took me about an hour and a half after I lowered the moon to find the corridor the matrix was yet to scan. I went up a different corridor that was adjacent to the one I was after, and took a left at the top of a T junction. To my right was an antechamber at the end of a short corridor that was used as storage for equipment of some description that hadn’t seen use in decades judging by the amount of dust that covered everything.
The passage on my left was about half as long as the one on my right, and at the end of it I could see the matrix floating in mid air, as if it were a dog waiting at your front door to go outside. Curious as to why it had stopped and not come back to me when it was done like I’d programmed it to do, I used the Lumos light spell at the tip of my horn to look for any hint of what the cause was.
There weren’t any kind of keyholes, symbols, or visible signs of any kind on the wall to indicate what lay behind the blockage. I even tried pressing every brick up and down the corridor with my magic hoping that one of them would be a button to open the hidden door. Usually when there was a secret door on a hinge or on rollers, there’d usually be scratch marks, or general wear and tear from where the door has slid open, marring the floor or wall. Sadly, there was none of that, but it didn’t mean I was out of the woods. It did leave one of two options: the door slid away from me to open, or retracted into the wall.
As I knelt down to take a look at the floor, I blew some dust up and spied a very thin seam, like a crack under a door. Look once and you would’ve missed it, the kind of seam that would barely even fit a credit card. I huffed and puffed, clearing what was too coarse to have been normal dust, thus must’ve been stone dust from the door grinding open and shut.
But if there were no visible keyholes, buttons, symbols of any kind on the walls or door, how was I supposed to open the thing? Perhaps there’s something on the floor or roof? my logical self offered.
I looked the floor up and down the corridor, but no luck. The roof? I looked up, and there it was: A small hole with a wide opening that tapered off the further back it went, as if it were a perfect fit for my horn. And that’s when my eyes widened in realisation. Celestia and Luna would’ve designed the door to open strictly to their magical signatures, high enough off the ground that you’d have to fly up to stick your horn into it like a key, and we were the only ones capable of doing that.
I began hovering mid air, carefully trying to align my horn to the aptly dubbed keyhole, made no more easier by the fact that that I was constantly swaying to and fro. I managed to pop it in after about twenty awkward seconds, tapping my horn against the surrounding stone as if I was trying to unlock my apartment door after crawling home at 3am from the bar.
There was a distinctive schink when it popped in, and my horn lit up by itself, like the keyhole itself was trying to siphon magic from me. After a few seconds, the light around my horn died down and I landed on my ass on the floor, crossing my eyes and looking up to my horn as if that occurrence was the weirdest thing I’d seen.
There was a noise like a latch being clicked open, and the innocuous stone door began to slowly pull back, sliding into a cavity befitting of the stone slab, revealing a portal door more ancient looking than the one which served as my bedroom door. The wrought iron ring was rusted to hell and back, but still sturdy enough to pull on to open the door, and likewise with the braces and langettes holding the wood of the door in place. All in all, the door looked like it was the oldest thing in the castle, minus Celestia and Luna.
I grabbed the ring and rotated it to disengage the latch with a metallic thunk that echoed through the hall, and I couldn’t help but turn to see if there was anyone behind me that heard that. Shaking it off, I opened the door like I was opening a treasure chest, eyes widened in amazement and eager anticipation. As if the room had a mind of its own, several sconces lining the room lit themselves automatically, bathing the room in an eerie red glow as I looked upon the room with wonderment. The circular room was lined with shelves that fit the contours of the room, stacked with relics, books, pieces of armour, swords and other weapons, and scrolls that looked as though they were thousands of years old. I didn’t want to touch them for fear they’d crumple under my touch. In the middle of the room was a simple, nondescript desk and chair.
I set the door ajar so I could hopefully hear anyone walk up on me, and went further into the room, toward the object at the far end.
It looked like any other full-length mirror. Similar to the one I had in my room, it was mounted on a frame that was fixed into the wall directly opposite the door behind me, tilted down slightly that allowed you a proper look at yourself. The ovate mirror was set in a frame carved from an unknown type of wood with swirling patterns, painted with gold leaf and various inlaid gems in the centre of each swirl. To the right of that were three glass orbs in a box that looked exactly like the one that Luna gave me initially, further confirmed by the fact that the fourth space in the box holding them was empty.
Looking upon the orbs, I saw that one of them was less dusty than the rest, likely the one Luna originally used. I picked it up with my hooves, and was taken aback with shock that the mirror sprung to life and began swirling with a kaleidoscope of colours. Shortly thereafter, static began clearing away to give me a view of my living room.
And there was Luna, rubbing an eye with the back of her hand (or my hand, depending on your perspective) and looking like she’d just gone through the wringer. Her hair was stuck up at odd angles as if a wave of humid weather wafted through the apartment, and geezus, the clothes! She was still wearing the same tank top and pants I had on the same day we’d swapped, and she’d clearly tried putting on a bra and failed miserably. How did I know? Luna had put it on over the tank top. I put a hoof to my mouth and began giggle-snorting behind it, much to Luna’s bemusement.
“By all accounts, you are one week early,” Luna flatly stated, none too happy that I was laughing at her.
I cleared my throat and evened out my expression. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, missy.”
Luna grinned like she knew exactly what I meant. “Pray tell, how did you locate the mirror?”
I was right after all! “So you did try to strand me here!”
“On the contrary, I rigged a teleport under the mattress of our bed that would take you to this room on the midnight of the final night.”
“...Oh,” I said sheepishly.
“In any case, how did you locate the room so quickly? I never left you any notes about it.”
“Since you were a dick and didn’t tell me where or how to find the mirror, I’m going to leave that surprise for when you come back,” I smirked.
“And what have you been doing, parading around in my body?” she slyly asked.
“Nothing like like what you’re implying, but I can’t help but notice your little predicament there,” I said, pointing at the bra on the outside of her shirt.
“You humans have the most unbearable mammary glands!” Luna promptly exclaimed. “I do not understand how you can parade yourselves around with these things on display,” she said, making a show of squeezing her/my boobs together.
“Breasts are literally lumps of external fat designed to contained milk for feeding infants. There’s nothing inherently sexual about them, thank you very much. Discussion of reproductive organs aside, I’ve come to ask for an extension.”
“Oh? Have you reduced the castle’s stallions to drooling messes going after you, and you want to relish in it a bit longer?”
Geez, how vain was Luna to assume something like that? “No, a few circumstances have arrived that I wish to see through. Not to worry, I’ve been keeping a detailed journal so that when you return, you can read up on what’s been going on so it’s like you never left.”
“Hmm, a smart move. Very well then; you can stay for as long as it takes you to finish your business.” At that moment, my cellphone decided to ring in the background. “Confound that infernal device, why won’t it stop?!”
“What, my phone? How many times has it been ringing?”
“I have no idea what a phone is,” Luna spat, “but whatever it is has been making noises several times!”
That made me remember something I wanted to try to see if it was possible. “Since you gave me the viewing orb through the mirror, are you able to pass the device through as well?”
Luna grumbled as the phone continued to ring. “That seems logical.” She reached forward to the coffee table, the last place I left my phone, picked it up and placed it to the mirror.
After a moment, it began to phase through, the ringing reverberating throughout the confined space I was in. Grimacing at the noise, I quickly used magic to answer the phone and placed it to my ear.
“Catherine! What the hell did you do to the files?! I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all day!” Jared’s voice boomed.
I was legitimately surprised that I could receive signal on my phone in Equestria. Was the signal somehow travelling through the mirror? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. After I finished them, you put them on your son’s desk.”
“Who the hell is this?” Jared demanded.
“This is Catherine. Is your memory that bad?”
“Why do you sound like you’ve been waltzing around with fancy schmucks?”
I shrugged out of habit. “Spent too much time around you, I suppose.”
“Why you little–! What the hell did you do with those files anyway?”
“Last I saw of them, I gave them to you.”
“I’ve got you on camera walking into Matthew’s office, so don’t lie about it.”
“Unless the camera shows those files, you don’t have much to go on.”
“So help me I will sue your ass if you don’t cough up those files!”
“I haven’t eaten them, that’s for sure. Maybe your new lapdog did?”
“This isn’t over, Catherine!” Click.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and laughed.
“What was that about?” Luna queried, “and what is that device?”
I pondered over the best way to explain the concept of a cellphone. “This device has the capability of accessing the vast majority of information known to my kind. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers on the internet.”
Luna cocked her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Laughing to myself, I slid the phone back through the portal. Luna gingerly held it between two fingers like it was a rotten piece of food, and put it back down on the coffee table. “By the way, I found a picture frame laying down in your bedroom.” She reached behind her and brought forth a photo. My mom, dad, and me in my early twenties, holding my baby brother.
I froze, and narrowed by gaze at Luna. “Put it back exactly how you found it,” I growled.
She was rather taken aback by my reaction. “But you all look so happy and adorable! Is that what a human baby looks like? I could pinch his cheeks all day long!” Luna practically squeed.
“Put it back!” I kept glowering at Luna for a few seconds longer before I sighed apologetically. “Look, I’m sorry. Do me a favour and slide it through the portal.”
Without saying another word, Luna very wisely did as she was told. Once I had it, I popped the back off and carefully slid out the photo, looking at it longingly as I stroked a hoof down it.
“Do you… Want to talk about it?”
I just shook my head. “The reason why I had it face down… It’s one of those things that you don’t want to remember, but you don’t want to forget. At least, that’s how I look at it.”
“I can understand that. I do apologize if I touched a sore spot with you.”
“It’s fine, I s’pose. Look, I gotta get going. Nobody knows I’m down here and I don’t want to appear missing if someone comes looking for me. I’ll see you later, yeah?”
“I bid thee farewell for the moment. I look forward to reading the journal,” Luna weakly smiled, trying to cast a ray of light on the situation.
“Have fun,” I waved back with equal enthusiasm. When I put the orb back into its box, the mirror shimmered and was back to looking like an ordinary mirror. I looked at the photo one more time, remembering back to that day fondly.
Mom had just gotten out of the hospital after having little Marcus. He was so small and cute, I couldn’t help but nickname him Marky-Mouse. A few days later, dad decided it would be a good idea to get a few professional photos taken, so we dressed up in our sunday best and went off to the photographers. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. An adorable brother, and loving parents that kept doting on the little guy.
Shaking my head to regain my princess-y composure, I tucked the photo under a wing and out of sight. However, when I turned around, my blood instantly turned to ice.
The door was wide open.
If someone had seen me, I sprinted out the door to try and catch whoever it was, but they seemed to be long gone by the time I darted around the corner. Using my magic, I hurriedly shut and locked the big door before I had to stick my horn back into the keyhole to shut the stone slab behind it.
I took a few heavy breaths to calm my beating heart as I thought about what to do next. Someone saw me, but how? They would’ve had to been following me at some point. Did they run off to go and tell Celestia? Or did the door just blow open somehow? I mentally scoffed at that. Silly Kate, there’s no wind all the way down here. I swore and spat under my breath for being careless. Had I properly shut the door like I should have, I would’ve heard someone trying to open it, but nope, I had to be the idiot and leave it open for the world to see what I was doing.
As relaxed as I could be, which was still quite tense from knowing that someone had seen me talking to myself, I teleported up to the kitchen for some food, then made an effort to casually walk back to my room without looking conspicuous. At least then If someone gave me a sideways look, and not the good kind, I might have been able to guess who saw me.
In any case, I got up to my room without a hitch.
“Evening, Princess,” Veloce greeted. “Somepony arrived a moment ago wanting to talk with you, so I sent them in to wait.”
I casually turned to look at Velo. Whoever saw me was in my room. Would they try and blackmail me? Rat me out to Celestia? Broadcast my secret to the wider kingdom? “Thank you,” I said curtly, walking into my room and closing the door behind me.
I felt the cool night air waft over me from the open doors that lead out to the dais, the curtains idly billowing about in the breeze. I carefully walked forward, deciding on how I was going to handle the mare in front of me.
“Boreas? Is everything OK?”
She kept her gaze locked skyward and shuffled about uneasily when she heard me.
“Catherine, was it?” she evenly asked.
“So you saw?” I said, walking up beside the mare and sitting down. She must’ve been around long enough to hear me talking to Jared.
“Mmhmm,” she nodded. “I spotted you walking into the lower levels with a map, so I followed you to see what you were doing. Imagine my surprise when I saw you talking to that… thing in the mirror.”
In a moment of silence, I looked to the sky alongside Boreas as I reflected on what to say. Do I lie and make up a story about how I was still Princess Luna? Since it was only me and Boreas in the room, do I threaten her into keeping silent? Do I make her… Disappear? If I carried through on that last option, no doubt even more questions would be raised that I couldn’t answer, and if someone else were listening in like Boreas was in the lower level, they’d tattle on me without a doubt. But then, I thought back to earlier in the day when Firefly and I were walking through the main foyer: The relief of a weight being lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t know what that sensation was supposed to mean at the time, but in that moment of silence, I decided it would be best for all if I was honest.
“I… I’m sorry that I betrayed your trust in me. Really, I am. It’s like having your world view of someone ripped out from under you, and you begin to question everything that you know. If it’s any consolation, I do have a very good explanation of what you saw.”
“Friends give each other a chance to explain themselves. That’s why I decided to get your side of the story instead of going straight to Celestia. We are friends, right?”
“Of course,” I smiled, trying to make Boreas feel like she was still in good company.
“Good,” she smiled back, pleased with my answer. “I’ll be honest about myself if you do the same. Deal?”
“Guess the cat’s out of the bag,” I dryly chuckled. “Here, I’ve got something to show you.” I was planning on putting the photo in the journal for safe keeping and so I could look at it from time to time, but now was just as good of an opportunity to show Boreas what I looked like.
I lifted my wing, using magic to bring out the photo. Boreas took it in her hoof, eyebrows raised. “So that’s what you look like?”
I pointed to the me in the photo. “I was twenty-two when this photo was taken, thirteen years ago. That’s my mom, dad, and baby brother.”
Boreas weakly smiled at the sight of my brother. “He looks so cute, like a newborn foal. What is your species called?”
“We’re called ‘humans’, or homo sapiens, and have been inhabiting our planet for about two-hundred thousand years.” I sighed and shook my head. “Look, I’m going to be honest. I expected you to be a lot more angrier than you are right now.”
“Oh, I’m beyond livid at this stage,” Boreas heaved, the anger evident in her shaky voice. “But you’re my friend. As betrayed as this revelation made me feel, I give all my friends the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to jump to conclusions and make up misinformed ideas about your intentions. You’ve done good by me so far. It’s that which made me decide I’d give you a chance to explain yourself.”
I sighed again, ears flattening against my head in shame. “I’m… I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I didn’t think I’d hurt anyone.” From there, I told Boreas the whole story. From me getting fired from my job, to when Luna showed up in my TV, the suggested bodily trade, I even showed her the journal I was keeping of my day-to-day activities. She deserved that much.
“That’s… That’s a lot of information to swallow,” Boreas admitted when I finally stopped talking.
“As far fetched as it may seem, it’s the truth. I promise you.”
“And you know what?” she said, looking up to me. “I believe you. I don’t know what it is about you that makes me want to trust you, but I believe you.”
“So… What happens now?” I tentatively ventured.
Boreas sighed heavily, her gaze downcast and ears flat against her head. “Despite everything I said, this is still a bit too much for me to handle right now. I…” She swallowed thickly, and I swore I heard the very distinct plip of a water droplet on stone. Without so much as another word, wiping the back of a hoof over eyes, she unceremoniously got up, cocked her legs and fanned her wings, and took off.
“Wait!” I hurriedly called out after her. “Where are you going?”
Hovering mid air, Boreas barely turned to look at me as she spoke. “I need to cool off before I say or do something I’ll regret. Like tell Celestia. I’ll be back in two days.” And just like that, she was gone.
Anger welled up in my core, and I started swearing under my breath about how my stupidity and carelessness potentially cost not only me a friend, but whoever else Boreas made friends with too. Not to mention a workmate.
The day started off about as awesome as I could have ever expected, and then, like a car running into a brick wall at a hundred kilometres an hour, crashed and burned, leaving me in the driver’s seat.