//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4: Ponies 
// Story: Wild Magic 
// by Detsella Morningdew 
//------------------------------//

I stood at the edge of the trees, staring.

There was a house there. A real house.

Animals were intelligent here, or at least "timber wolves" and foxes were. Others probably were as well. And they seemed to just... live out in nature. There was that castle, but... that castle looked old.

This was an honest-to-goodness house. There might be someone who could help me here, and they probably wouldn't try to eat me afterwards, either.

I started to walk up the winding path, up the hill and to the cottage. It really was picturesque. Beautiful, and not just the wild beauty of the forest. There was even a little natural bridge that went over a little stream, which I drank a few laps of.

I resisted the urge to shudder. The fact that it felt so natural to drink like that was unnerving. Still, I brushed away those thoughts and walked up to the front door, briefly considering just how I would knock.

Eventually, I just banged on the door with the ball in my mouth. I didn't want to scratch up the wood with my claws.

A soft, "Just a minute!" floated out from inside, and the door opened a few seconds later.

It was... not what I was expecting. It was another animal. Or perhaps given the house, it was the closest I was going to get to a person. Still, it was rather strange, if vaguely equine, with large eyes, an odd, soft yellow color, and  feathered wings, even though the rest of it had fur. Still, without even seeing another example of the species, it looked recognizably female. It sounded female, too.

"Oh! Hello!"

"Hello."

"What's your name?"

Perhaps talking animals was the norm here. Or she was an animal, and she just lived in a house? Or perhaps the term "animal" literally meant nothing if they all were intelligent.

"Ryan."

She smiled. "Shining Light. What a wonderful name. My name is Fluttershy."

Wait, what?

The wolves definitely spoke oddly, but this sounded more like a translation error than an odd speech impediment. Still, I came here for a reason.

"Um, do you know of a way to change my form? I need to not be a fox."

She looked at me curiously, and her eyes flicked down to the ball that I had dropped in front of me, but her face lit up after a moment. "Oh, you must be very young. I'm sorry, but I'm not a fox. I don't have your magic, so I can't teach you. Don't worry, I'm sure it'll come in time."

She smiled encouragingly as I tried not to show my surprise.

So magic is a thing here...

Of course, the starts of those kind of thoughts had already appeared back with the wolf's glowing staff thing, but to hear the word "magic" so clearly was still a bit of a shock.

Still, I had more things to worry about.

"I don't know what is edible in the forest. Do you know anything about that sort of thing?"

Fluttershy looked at me oddly. "Um... just eat what smells good? No, no... the Everfree has plants that trick you. I could give you some food, if you want. Still, if you're new to the Everfree, I have to warn you that there are a lot of wolves, and some other predators that might make it dangerous for you."

I nodded. "Yeah, they gave me some time to get used to everything, but I was going to try and move away from their territory."

"I... um... you talked with them?"

"But I really need to know something. Is there anything I can hunt that isn't... um... intelligent?"

She blinked in surprise, then smiled warmly at me. "Feel free to fish in the river." She pointed further northwest, where I could see the sunlight reflecting off some water, and a town in the distance.

She frowned slightly. "Still, if you wish to live outside the Timberwolves' territory, the Everfree forest is not the place to live. You're always welcome to stay here if you want some shelter, but many creatures just move to Whitetail Woods."

"Oh. Where's that?"

She sighed, and seemed to look disappointed, but she hid it quickly. "Just follow the river, and you'll find it, sure enough. The river goes through the Everfree a bit before getting there, though, so if you're still worried, you can just go around the edge and find the river again."

I smiled, and hoped that expression translated okay on a fox face. "Thank you, Fluttershy."

"No problem. I do my best to help all my friends."

I turned away, and started walking northwest, but it wasn't necessarily to get to the river. I still had two days, and maybe someone in the town knew about "fox magic." Whatever that was.

"Wait!"

I looked back. Fluttershy was waving around the white orb.

"You forgot this!"

I walked back, and she placed it in my tail, which instinctively curled to hold it.

"You need to be more careful," she admonished. "Somepony could steal it and cause all sorts of trouble for you. Didn't your mother teach you better than that?"

I wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that.

She wilted. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. But you can't let anypony get that, you hear me? Not even if you trust them. If you went to Whitetail, and left it here..." She shivered. "Just keep it safe, all right? I don't want you to die."

I stumbled slightly. Die?

"Just... be careful, all right?"

I nodded.

"Thank you."

I walked away again, this time a lot less certain of myself.





After so long away from civilization, it felt strange approaching a real town. Yet the town itself only reinforced just how different everything was. The bridge that ran over the river was solidly built in a stone arch, something no construction crew would bother with today. And as I got closer, it became apparent that the world I was in was very much in the past. Thatched roofs, dirt roads, and that weird wooden frame house type that you'd see in historical places in Germany.

And all around were the strange equine creatures. Some had wings like Fluttershy, and I actually saw those from a distance, flying to and fro over the town. Some had no wings whatsoever, which threw me for a minor loop, as they seemed to be the same general type of animal. But then I noticed some of them had horns. Not like goat horns. Like, actual unicorns. But smaller, more stocky looking, and with bigger, front facing eyes.

Seeing them float things around made it quite certain that the word "magic" Fluttershy had used was not a translation error.

The strangest part was that they didn't seem to react to me much. Sure, most of them would look with curiosity, but it was certainly not the reaction of a wild animal just walking into town back home.

Still, if all animals were intelligent, and could talk just fine, maybe this wasn't that much out of the norm.

I walked up to a nearby resident. "Excuse, me, does your town have a library? Or perhaps someone with a good understanding of magic?"

The pony looked at me oddly. "Sorry, I don't speak fox. You're better off looking for Fluttershy. She lives in a cottage over that way." She pointed with a hoof.

I knew that already. That's where I came from. But I nodded in confirmation.

It was weird, though. It made sense that perhaps the species that built things didn't know how to speak with the wild creatures, but Fluttershy and this pony seemed to be talking the exact same way.

Probably more "magic" nonsense.

Okay, magic wasn't actually nonsense. This was a world that worked on different rules, and for the first time, those rules were exciting, despite my abrupt realization that those rules could be dangerous.

Still, it was frustrating to be able to talk with the wolves that wanted to eat me, but not the actual civilization just around the corner. At least I could understand what they were saying.

Which was also weird, since I'm pretty sure the sounds coming out of their mouths was not English.

In fact, if thought of how my mouth was moving earlier, I was probably not speaking English, either.

I tried to speak again, this time being very conscious of what I was doing.

<<Hello.>>

Huh. Difficult, but oddly possible.

Several passerby looked at me oddly, which reminded me that I did that in the middle of the street.

The pony I had been "talking" to turned back again. "Okay, that was definitely not fox, but that wasn't Eqqish, either." She put a hoof up to her chin. "Twilight knows all sorts of weird stuff, though. She might know a bit about it. Her library's just up the street and to the left."

I blinked. "Okay."

"It's a giant tree. You can't miss it."

Right. That was easier than expected.

All of this was just very surreal. Here I was, a fox talking to a colorful alien, walking through a medieval town and looking for a giant tree.

And there it is.

The "treehouse" was quite impressive, really. For it to be that thick, it must have been alive for more than a hundred years. And then to keep it alive afterwards...

Eh, magic's probably involved somehow.

Still, it was a library. Exactly what I was looking for. Though really, now that I knew that what I was hearing was definitely not English, I was more interested in the librarian. The one that the pony thought might be able to help with languages. Medieval scholars were a lot less specialized than modern ones, so I might actually have a good chance at this.

Well, this wasn't exactly medieval, and the things I called medieval probably were more of what I remembered from fantasy stories than actually medieval, but I was hopeful.

I knocked with the orb in my tail. The door was still wooden, and the house-library looked nice, even though I couldn't read the sign.

"Library's open!"

After fiddling with the main doorknob for a few seconds, I thought better of it and opened one of the small half-doors on the bottom.

Wait, Fluttershy's here? She must have flew over here almost immediately after I left.

"Shining Light! I thought you were going to Whitetail Woods!"

"Oh, uh... Hi, Fluttershy. I thought I would look at the town first. I don't really know all that much about my magic."

I looked nervously at the other pony in the room, who looked far too excited at my presence. She (at least it looked like a she) was more of a purplish color, with a dark blue mane with some stripes in it. Interestingly, she had both a horn and wings. Which seemed slightly unfair to the others in town.

"Um, is she Twilight?" I asked Fluttershy.

Fluttershy looked at me in surprise. "Yes. How did you know?"

"I tried talking to someone in town in my old language, and they said Twilight might know about it."

"You have an old language?"

Twilight started. "Wait, really? This is great!"

<<Yes. This one.>>

Fluttershy frowned and tilted her head. "That was weird. I still think I understood that."

Twilight sighed. "Well I didn't. It didn't even sound familiar. I guess it is exciting to know that a new language exists, and such an ancient one at that, but it's going to be frustrating if only Fluttershy knows what it means."

"Twilight, Shining Light is not ancient."

"But sacred foxes haven't been seen for over a thousand years! Since before even Discord ruled!"

She rolled her eyes. "And he only has one tail."

"Then a time spell must have brought him forward!"

I blinked. "Wait, what? Sacred fox?"

Fluttershy looked at me strangely. "Yes. That is what you are. Do you call yourselves something different?"

"...I don't know. You would know better than me, I guess."

She looked sad for some reason.

"I came here through a mirror."

Fluttershy gasped.

"I wasn't a fox before, and the wolves said something like this was my real form, and they were just speeding things up or something. It feels right, but I still don't know anything about myself. But I can't go back through anymore."

"Twilight, where's the mirror you went through to get your crown back? I think he might be from there."

"Celestia gave me permission to study it. It's right here in my basement. He couldn't have gotten through it, anyway, the portal's closed, and it will be for a while."

"Still, he says he came through a mirror. Could there be more than one?"

I raised a paw. "Um, the mirror was in a castle in the forest, if that helps."

"It was in the Castle of the Two Sisters?"

Well, there were two thrones.

Twilight gasped. "This is amazing! If there's a second mirror, maybe I can get back to that world sooner and study... um... I mean visit it again."

"Twilight, he said that he couldn't get back through. That one's closed as well."

"Still, if there was a second mirror, maybe there were more. Spike!"

I heard an odd set of hoofsteps coming down the stairs.

Wait, no, they were footsteps. The feet of an odd, bipedal lizard.

Okay then.

"I need you to take a letter to Princess Celestia. If there are any other portals, she should know where they are."