Home. Finally.
And this time I know I’m right.
I asked someone. It’s the third. Of the right month. Of the right year. That line of questioning got me a few odd glances, but it’s well worth it for the confirmation.
I actually almost manage to get home before I realize why the day doesn’t quite feel right.
“Hey! You!”
My head snaps around at the sound. There’s a particular cadence to it that makes it unmistakable. An awful lot of fury packed into two words.
It’s Raindrops and she’s on the warpath.
And look, there I am, standing in the middle of the street, watching her come at me like a chicken on a freight line.
I wince in shared pain as my younger self goes down in a single blow. It’s a shame, but it has to play out. Stopping myself from getting punched would launch a plague, and isn’t that a fun thought? This time at least I’m able to see what happens next. As expected, a few ponies step up and confront Raindrops which quickly devolves into a shouting contest. After a minute the sheriff shows up and takes her away. All well and good. Now for the interesting part.
At some point in the next couple of minutes, somepony is going to come and whisk me into the future, doing who knows what before eventually stranding me a month from now. Whoever they are, I can’t wait to hear their explanation for dragging me into this whole mess.
And so I wait.
And wait.
And wait.
About three minutes into my waiting Roseluck shows up.
“Oh Sweet Daffodils!” she cries, “She’s out cold. Somepony help me get her to the hospital!”
I frown. That’s… not right. I follow her at a distance, sidelining down side streets when I can to make sure no one notices how much I resemble the mare being carried. This doesn’t make sense. She’s not supposed to bring me to the hospital until later. What happened? What changed?
When we get to the hospital, I muss up my mane and sign in on the visitor log as Minuette. For once it seems having a twin sister who never visits is a useful thing. No one even questions my affected Canterlot accent.
The room is just like I remember waking up in. Except only the first two days of the calendar are crossed off and my bedridden body is bereft of both jacket and Time Spoon.
What went wrong? No matter how I approach the problem I can’t figure it out. No amount of time travel can make this make sense.
Suddenly, I hear a groan from the bed. She’s waking up? Now? How?! I check the calendar; still the third. I poke my head out the door to check for the nurse who woke me up on her way. Not a sign of her. There is, however, an abandoned cart with a spare set of scrubs. Pink scrubs.
No… she couldn’t have. Unless... But it must be. I can’t believe she lied to me like that! Actually, I guess I can. She was forced to. Just like I am now.
My younger self starts to stir again and I jump into action.
I strip my jacket off and dress her in it as quickly as I can without rousing her prematurely. While I don the scrubs and hair covers, I grab a marker with my magic and start crossing off days. I finish tucking away the last bits of mane and crossing off the twenty-ninth day just as younger me starts to groan and move.
"Ah, look who's up. Welcome back to the land of the living." I force cheerfulness into my voice even as I strain to remember how this conversation went. "Have a nice nap, did you?"
Finally. Home. For real this time.
No more Spoons. No more time travel. No more saving the world. From now on, I’m leaving that to the professionals.
I’m just about to sink into my comfy chair for a much deserved rest when the doorbell rings. I swear, if it’s another version of me out there I’m going to strongly re-evaluate my newly minted no-punching-as-a-first-response policy.
I open the door quickly, already hoof already half-cocked and primed for if I see even a hint of blue or white fur.
As it is, I see both. Except they’re on two different and significantly taller ponies.
“Colgate, I presume?” asks Princess Celestia, sovereign leader of Equestria.
I’m so stunned I can’t even move. I know I’m supposed to bow or kneel or something but I just can’t. Somehow, even after everything I’ve been through today, this is what finally breaks me. Not time travel. Not a plague. Not repeated blows to the head. But a surprise visit from not one, but both senior princesses.
Luna gives me a poke and my joints finally release. “You should probably go see a doctor. Head trauma is no laughing matter.”
How does she know about that? Is it obvious? Oh cavities, have I had a black eye this whole time and no one ever told me?
Princess Celestia coughs and that snaps me from my trance. “Princesses! Yes! Hi, uh, Greetings! Won't you come in?”
Celestia shakes her head. “I’m afraid we don’t have time. We only had a moment to stop by.”
“We wanted to thank you,” Luna continues, “Your selfless efforts across the timescape and through unfamiliar circumstances have saved more lives than you realize and spared countless others from an unimaginable fate of nonsapience. For that, you deserve to be honored and rewarded. Though I hope you understand why we can't publicly. Undue panic, you see.”
I blink and my throat goes dry. “You- you know about all that? All the time travel?”
Both princesses smirk in eerie synchronicity, but it’s Princess Celestia who speaks. “You’ll find there’s very little that goes on in Equestria that I’m not aware of. One of the benefits of being a princess. Makes it a lot easier to keep my little ponies safe.”
I nod dumbly, still somewhat in shock as my brain runs on autopilot to keep the conversation going and latches on to the closest relevant topic. “You said something about a reward?”
“Indeed,” Luna says. “And a most fitting one as well.”
“This has been in our possession for many years,” Celestia says as she reaches into her peytral, “and it’s high time it was returned to you.”
“Returned? I-” before my malformed thought can complete, Princess Celestia extracts an all-too familiar object.
The silver is more than a little tarnished, but the etchings are as crisp as the day they were carved. The crack in the ruby is gone, healed like it was never there.
“My Time Spoon!”
“Correct,” says Celestia, “Though possession is nine tenth of the law so…” she passes it from her aura to mine. It feels exactly the same, like a day hasn’t passed for it.
“Where did you get this?” I ask breathlessly.
Celestia giggles, a very un-princess-like noise. “I suppose you could say I’ve been holding on to it for a very long time.”
It’s at this point that she begins to change. In an instant, her fur darkens. White fades to charcoal grey and the rainbow of her mane bleeds together into solid golden yellow. The iconic sun on her flank, the one every schoolfilly knows, pops and splits apart into seven smaller circles. Magenta eyes slide together till they meet in the middle and part ways, one heading up, the other down.
It’s still the shape of Celestia, long legged and mane waving in ethereal wind, but her colors, her stance, her eyes are one-hundred percent-
“Derpy?!”
“Oh hi Colgate!” she laughs, the regal tones dropping from her voice and restoring it to the one I’m more familiar with telling me I have mail.
“What- how?”
She giggles again and I can hear the familiar notes hidden under courtly training. “I made a friend in space. Signed a contract. Took the long way round.” A quick flash of magic and her normal colors are restored. “Better to not leave the disguise off too long though. Wouldn’t want to confuse ponies.”
Impossible. Simply impossible. Then again my notion of what qualifies as such has been challenged repeatedly these past few hours. Though it still leaves a question unanswered.
“But I thought you were an only child?”
Now it’s Luna’s turn to chuckle. “When you’re the only two immortals around, you tend to end up rather close. We were destined to end up either sisters or a couple, and there’s no way I could stand getting up early enough to maintain that kind of relationship.”
She shifts her weight on her hooves, and something about the position of her wings draws my eyes back. Past her barrel and towards her flank, where her famously unusual cutie mark covers most of her hindquarters. Only right now it’s a little more unusual than normal. Most cutie marks don’t peel up at the edges like a flyer held with cheap glue. And they especially don’t have a second cutie mark beneath them that looks like an intimately familiar hourglass.
“No.” I gasp.
“Spoilers,” she teases as she presses the black sticker of a cutie mark back into place. “Just saying, you’re going to want to hang on to that Time Spoon. You’re not nearly done with it.”
Whatever cheeky well-prepared line she was about to follow up with is dashed to the wind as her face makes a most unexpected rendezvous with my right hoof.
I said if another version of me showed up at the door, she was getting it in the jaw.
And I’m a mare who stands by her principles.