//------------------------------// // I. In Which Your Humble Reporter Finds Her Story // Story: 81 Days To Celestia's Front Door // by Cynewulf //------------------------------// “I’d just like to express how honored I and the paper are that you’ve graced us with this interview,” Burrow said, and bowed again. Princess Twilight smiled at him, but caught my eye and I blushed. It was so hard to tell how much deference she even wanted. No one had really… experienced her in so long. And yet, here she was in the office of the Mayor of Seaddle, sitting for an interview for the Canterlot Record. I helped Burrow set up his recording equipment and took a few pictures, but then interviewing became a one pony job and I tried to find some quiet place to the side. Burrow wasn’t as fun to watch when you’d seen him practicing his delivery of every single question a hundred times, and participated as “Princess Twilight Sparkle” about as many, so eventually I eased into the side room of the Princess’ apartments. Maybe I was looking for something, some nice play of light and color for a lovely photo. I’m just a rank amateur with a camera, despite everything, but I fancy myself a workhorse. The small and harmless lie of photographic talent makes me happy, and that is enough to try my hoof at candid photos and slices of life. That frivolity, that harmless pit of play was how I met her. Passport was an attractive young mare in her own way. The resemblance between herself and the Princess was uncanny and at first, I admit that it was a tad alarming. But before I had convinced myself that I had stumbled upon some terrible twinned secret, she turned and raised an eyebrow at me. No, they were not the same. Princess Twilight carries herself so much more gracefully. Which isn’t to say that Passport has no grace! I don’t mean it like that. It’s just a different kind. When I think of the Princess I think of her receiving others, smiling graciously, navigating all of the proper channels. With Passport one thinks more of… reclining. Reclining around a table, she and I, just talking. She was a unicorn, with what I must say was a rather rare horn pattern. So sharp, so delicate! But yes, I suppose only a third of my audience now would care for such things. She wore a rather old fashioned skirt and vest combination, and a small medal of the sun hung at her neck. I thought such was curious, for the princesses did not usually have Celestialists as personal attendants, but each to their own. I’m sure what you’re thinking. She sounds more or less normal. Why have I given her so much time and interest? There is a certain set of dispositions that one associates with equine faces. Not to say that we are all the same, of course! But I can read the emotion on my fellow ponies’ faces. Here, I found an almost alien logic guiding a familiar visage. Something… to say that it was predatory is rude. It was an intense look, one that catalogued and recorded. It was the look of a magitech engineer who hasn’t left her labs in weeks. Her gaze was hungry, alert, eager to catalogue and categorize. Passport, the mysterious attendant of her Lady, Twilight Sparkle, was investigating a painting on the wall. Perhaps I should have led with that. I walked in, and saw here there radiating that intense air of fascination, looking at a copy of a painting by one Lockless Barrel, The Oath of the Horatii that hung from the wall. The original is back in Canterlot, but I was not about to mention that to her. I was too busy wandering at her strange attire, foreign, obviously adorned and yet also ready for battle, a combination of worn leather barding and flowing robes. I was taking in these finer points of detail when she noticed me. “H-hello,” I said. “Who are you?” She cocked her head at me, and then said in altogether unsmooth Equestrian, “Am… Sophie. I…” She sighed and held up a hoof, before casting something with her horn. “There, that’s better. I’m sorry. I’ve gotten a bit lazy since I discovered I could do this sort of spell, and am not as comfortable with Equestrian as I should be. Passport is my name,” she finished, and offered me her hoof. I bumped it, smiling. “The Lady’s attendant?” “I was, once, for a princely sum-per-week. But I would say that these days, I am a full companion.” She smiled warmly. “Should we be quiet, for their recording?” I shook my head. “No. It has a noise-cancelling spell on it that’ll catch any sounds from us.” Passport whistled. “By Avenoux, that’s a triumph. I am constantly amazed by this world of yours. It is filled with such things I had never thought would be possible. To think that a sound-cancelling spell would be so mundane as to be in the pocket of every newscap.” I smiled, but it was a sort of frozen, reflexive smile. It was, dear reader, the kind of smile one gives when one is on the verge of processing something rather Potentially Dismaying. “You, ah, said ‘this world,’” I monotoned. Passport blinked at me, and I at her. “Oh! My apologies, miss… what was your name again?” “I hadn’t given it.” A beat, and then a nervous flood. “Oh! Sorry, I must have spaced for a second there. It’s Ducky Ink! Ducky Ink, reporter on the rise, yadda that’s me! But you, ah--” “Sophie Bellamy, ex-student of the Academy of Preternatural Arts and Sciences in Valeria.” She made a clumsy bow. “Formerly of the Midlands, and formerly of another world. In this one, I am Passport. You heard correctly. My Lady Twilight in fact met me in my own city, across the blind eternities.” If I recall correctly, my response was to simply stare at her. After the not very dramatic follow up of me asking more than once for some clarification, I took a seat across from her.  “So that’s where she’s been,” I said. “But, uh…” “Indeed. I do not know how many planes she came across, and I feel it may not be prudent to ask.” “She’s been gone… ‘bout 70 years, so I would assume that the number’s high.” It is kind of shocking for someone to talk about planar travel as if it is mundane, as if it’s just kind of old hat. I tried to think of how best to phrase my question, but nothing came. Nothing that wasn’t incredibly rude. But... She nodded. “I had wondered how many years had passed here as well. Lady Twilight assured me that time runs smooth across all the planes, but…” With a shrug, she looked me over. “I must ask, for I always must: why a duck?” I tried so very hard to come up with anything off the cuff that would sound suitably noteworthy, but the shock of meeting an extraplanar visitor was catching up to me. I stumbled over a few words, and then admitted the truth. “It was when I was still a filly. I wrote an article about a small pond that ducks frequented and raised their ducklings in, which in turn… galvanized my classmates and eventually saved that pond. It’s really silly, Miss--” But she shook her head. “Not at all!” She reached up to a pocket on her vest, and then paused. Her face twisted for a moment into something resembling pain, but at a distance. Then she brightened up. “It is the highest wishing of any interlocutor to be heard. A mare who puts quill to parchment or pencil to paper is insisting that she be heard, and that certainly sounds like being heard. That sounds brilliant.” I was glad then, for a moment, that we cannot see ourselves as others might, for I was sure that my face was a bit flushed. “Thank you, Miss Passport.” Some of my worry faded. Perhaps the translator had just slipped. She certainly seemed normal enough. She couldn’t be from some alien world. “If you don’t mind, I’m curious…” “Ask away.” “You said something about an, ah, other world. Did you mean a continent?” She smiled. We settled then in the side room, and she asked me about the city. I had only just moved to Canterlot myself, so I wasn’t as much help as I might’ve been. Her avoidance of my question seemed odd at first, but when I pressed again she tsk’d and replied that questions were an exchange. One for one. She would ask, and then she would answer. I gave what little information I had, and Passport insisted that the perspective of a fellow newcomer was at least affirming.  I managed to ask a few questions myself. She repeated that she was from Valeria, which is certainly a city and maybe an autonomous realm. She tried explaining the politics of it all to me but it was rather convoluted. Her city was rather large, even by Equestrian standards. Their world’s grasp of technology was more uneven than our own, and mostly behind Equestrian know-how. Their magic was also far behind our own, though it seemed more tuned to violence, which I found a bit alarming. And, of course, that she was not really, originally, a pony at all. Passport, or Sophie Bellamy as she named herself, was in fact something absolutely foreign to our native plane. She was a human. I was, to say the least, floored. Reality had set in. We were taught only some tidbits about the extraplanar phenomenon our princesses and archmages had witnessed, but humans were always the most popular. Princess Twilight herself had been to a world with humans many times, they say, though what exactly she did there is a bit muddy. In the years since she’d been gone, Empress Cadance of the United North had sponsored several expeditions which made brief contact with humans in the same world that Princess Twilight had visited so long ago, and their discoveries had been all the rage for a decade. So to be talking to one, even in the guise of a pony, is certainly the sort of thing that leaves one speechless. I tried to recover, I promise I did! But I fumbled over my words badly. “What was it like, traveling between words?” I asked, breathless. She smiled. “You know, it occurs to me that your master and my will be busy for a time. Perhaps we should do as they.” “I-interview you? I mean, I can’t--I mean--” But I wanted to, very badly. I could almost… taste the word Exclusive. “Consider it a favor. I’m a bit restless, to be truthful.” I was already fumbling through my bag for a much smaller, and less complicated, recording device. My excitement made pushing the record button difficult, but I managed and slapped it down on the table. And then, of course, I winced because one shouldn’t slap recorders anywhere and also Celestia, how could I get giddy now? I had to be focused! A reporter knows when to ask and when to listen! A reporter is cool in the face of opportunity! Aargh! “Please,” I said, with a sheepish smile. “I’d love to.” “That was fast.” “And this is, maybe, exclusive! Or at least I’m first.” I gingerly pushed the recorder closer as it hummed. “Please, tell me everything. But first, tell me about the crossing. Let the reading public know what it’s like beyond our world.” She laughed and leaned in. “Well, it began on a beach, eighty-one days ago.”