What should Charlie expect a child's bedroom to look like in another universe? The question was something so absurd she never should've cared about the answer, except... now it was her life. Stepping into hers, it was clear Dust Storm hadn't involved an interior designer. Rather, it raised some doubts in her mind over whether or not he'd ever seen a child before.
The room had very little floor space, but instead had three separate beds. One rested near the high ceiling, suspended on cinder blocks that placed it above the door leading in. An old metal four-poster had lost two of its legs, but Dust Storm had apparently repurposed it into a desk of sorts, using a few chairs and cushions to hold it up.
Then there was a third bed, turned completely on its side, with the drawers underneath that might've held clothing or other personal possessions poking up vertically.
The room might've been a nice place to live, otherwise. It had two large windows, one beside where she could probably fit a bed. It had its own restroom attached, so she wouldn't have to wander through the furniture graveyard outside to use the facilities in the middle of the night. It didn't have electric lights, but there were metal chandeliers hanging from the towering ceiling. Gas lights?
"I got as many objects as I thought a foal would need," he said, lingering in the doorway. "You seem... unsatisfied. Is it not enough?"
"Not enough?" She finally turned, wings hanging limply out beside her. "Dust Storm, it's... more than enough. There's so much I don't even know..." Interior design wasn't exactly a discipline Charlie had ever considered herself particularly skilled in. But compared to this, she could probably start consulting for TLC.
"The room has everything it needs, but..." She sighed. "Do you live like this?"
"My room is too dirty right now," he snapped, before she'd even taken a breath. "It's fine. Don't worry about me. I just want you to feel comfortable here."
Too dirty? Charlie's eyebrows went up. Yes, this place was full of stuff, but there was no trash here. She saw no rats, no insects infesting the dark corners. It didn't smell like a hoarder lived here. It smelled like a furniture store, all wood and polish and leather.
"Okay. If I make suggestions for how to move things..." She looked down at her hooves. "I should just do it. But I don't know how to pick up this stuff. It must weigh a ton."
"Don't worry about it," Dust Storm said. "Orange, I do want you to be comfortable here, and having a space to call your own is how that starts. Tell me what should change."
"Okay, uh..." She walked through the room in a slow circle, taking everything in. What kind of room would her little niece want to live in? The pink bed with the drawers was the nicest. She'd want the mirrors and the portraits of ponies. She'd want somewhere to sit to do her makeup, even if she didn't really need or understand makeup yet.
"It's just for me?" she asked. "There aren't any other little kids living here?"
"Just you," the pegasus confirmed. "I didn't know if I would be adopting a little filly or a colt, so I tried to have enough for either one."
"Yeah, I can see that..." Interesting that some of the traditional masculine and feminine tropes carried between worlds. There were no cars or vehicles, though blue and pink were both themes.
"Alright. How about... just that bed there. I would move it up against the wall, so I can look out the window if I want. Then that desk laying on its side... stand it up on those legs, and put it by that big mirror, with one chair. The bookshelf can stay too, and that empty wardrobe that's holding... are those pots and pans?"
"For cooking," Dust Storm explained. "Foals love pony food. All kinds of food."
She twitched once, ears folding backward behind her. "Yeah, but... in the kitchen. You don't keep pots in your room."
"You don't want your own pots, got it." He nodded with each explanation. Strange that he was so patient—if a child started making demands to Charlie, she wouldn't have bothered listening through most of them.
"Everything else in here, you don't need. More space to walk around is better than... extra things."
"Are you sure?" he asked, obviously concerned. "Ponies collect things, it's how you show you're happy. It's why we earn bits."
Am I talking to a space alien? She was in another universe, it was probably a mistake to continue with any of her assumptions about how a creature ought to behave. But Dust Storm was really expanding her horizons of just how strangely a person could act.
"I only need a few things to be happy," she said. "Like maybe some more clothes. Books to read, and..." What she really wanted was to get her name back. But that wasn't a thing, nor was it something Dust Storm could help her with. Asking would only draw attention to how little she belonged here. "I'm sure."
"Okay." He walked past her to one of the beds. "Why don't you go back to the balcony, Orange. You'll find some stairs past our door that go all the way to the roof. Wait up there while I move all this stuff, so nothing gets dropped on you while I work."
He nudged her towards the door, barely even waiting for her to protest.
She opened her mouth to argue anyway. "Are you sure? I can probably—" but even as she said it, she realized the absurdity of the argument. She weighed so little that the best she could probably do was move those pots around. Based on the way the wind pushed her, she probably had hollow bones. Which would track with the whole wings thing, she was a bird.
"I'm sure," Dust Storm said. "You wait up on the roof until I'm finished. I'll come get you. I'd say you could fly around town if you wanted, but you can't fly yet. The roof probably isn't the place to practice with your wings."
He would get no arguments from her on that point. Flying did sound incredibly fun, despite the conditions all around her. But getting herself killed in this otherworld before she even got the chance to learn how to do it properly was probably not the best idea.
Charlie was a little surprised to hear Dust Storm shut the door to the bedroom behind him. Didn't he plan on pushing all that old furniture into the rest of the house?
But that would only make the apartment seem even more like a furniture store, and less like somewhere people actually lived.
He wants me out of the whole house while he works, not just out of the room. But he's trusting me on my own.
If ever there was a chance to run for it, this was it. She ducked and weaved her way across the house, considering whether to make a break for it. She'd seen the direction Derek went, she could reach her there pretty easily.
But for what purpose? Her friend didn't have the way back. She barely knew any more about this than she did. Derek didn't have her spellbook anymore, which had apparently held real magic all along. Without that, how could they ever get home?
There was nowhere for her to run. If she fled Dust Storm now, she would only be inviting him to give her far less freedom, or maybe even to get her reassigned to someone much worse.
So Charlie made her slow way out of the house, out onto the balcony. At least the breeze felt nice against her bare coat. It caught her wings, lifting them from below. The railings were low here, low enough that she could easily have clambered over even with her reduced dexterity.
They probably want creatures who fly to be able to come and go whenever they want. Maybe that would be her one day.
There was indeed another stairwell, though it wasn't enclosed like before. The steps were narrow and steep, high enough that she had to focus and concentrate on her climbing to keep from tripping over herself. She held out her wings as she climbed, entirely by instinct. It helped.
And when she reached the roof, the sunset was waiting for her. Her home was higher than most of the town, giving her a perfect view of its old-England style dwellings, stained deep red and orange with the sunset.
Strange that she could travel out to another universe and still find something so familiar waiting for her. She settled onto her haunches, the only sitting position that was comfortable, and watched in lonely silence.
She instantly started feeling self-conscious. Charlie wasn't exactly an introvert, she couldn't spend whole days by herself like Derek, and feel content. She needed to be out there!
How was Silvia doing, back on Earth? Did she think that Charlie was dead yet? Had she filed a missing persons report? Would they even bother getting divers into the water to see if there were bodies, or would they just assume her corpse was washed away somewhere?
Darkness descended around her, so slow and subtle that she hardly realized it at first. The chill wind hardly touched her, even with only her own feathers and fur to keep her warm. But if she was a bird, she was probably built tough enough for that.
The gloom was a little less enjoyable. As the sun faded, the moon began to rise, a poor substitute for light. There were only a few street lights down below, so far away that they were distant flickers of orange firelight. So like her room, the town used actual gas lamps. There were some lights in the other homes of course, but most of those kept their shutters tightly closed. Like they were afraid of letting too much of their precious light leak away into the darkness.
More than once, she rose to her hooves, and nearly went back down the steps. But Dust Storm had told her to wait. Would he be upset if she went back inside without permission?
Then she saw her first light—a bright green starburst just beside her, glowing unsteadily. But compared to the night all around her, it might as well be a flashlight. "What are..."
She held out one leg, and something settled against her hoof. A little insect, with its abdomen pulsing steadily with green. A second light soon joined it, then a third, circling around her. She giggled, trailing behind them across the roof.
"We never had fireflies where I grew up," she whispered to them, conspiratorially. "Other side of the country. I wasn't even sure you were real."
They seemed to be performing for her now, a little cloud of bugs that danced and circled around her.
Really, they were probably more interested in the nearby trees, with their canopies clustered just below the level of the roof. She spread her wings, spinning with them, and grinning to herself. "If I am stuck here, I hope I can learn to fly like you. At least being trapped has one good thing."
Of course the bugs didn't reply. She couldn't keep any one of them straight, they blurred into a dozen streaks of green light. Not ten million, but still too many for her to track.
"Orange," said a voice from behind her. Dust Storm, though a heavy load of exhaustion now crushed down on him. "Are you ready to come inside? I finished..." He trailed off. "Oh, you found the fireflies. I guess they like you."
"Like me?" They didn't seem scared off by her, and they hadn't stung. But fireflies didn't bite, so that was nothing new.
"I think it might be your wings." He reached her in a few strides, scattering the bugs all around him. Yet some of them seemed to linger closeby, as though eager to fly back around her as soon as he left. He turned over one of her wings with a foreleg, exposing the yellow-green feathers there. "You match."
"Oh." She grinned stupidly, the first genuine smile she'd felt all day. "Guess I do."
They walked back down to the apartment. Dust Storm helped her with the steps, giving her someone to lean against so she wouldn't faceplant on her way down. A few little green bugs trailed behind them all the way to the door.
"I know you were having trouble with your name," Dust Storm said. "What do you think about Firefly? It has a nice ring to it, I think. Traditional."
In what culture? She nodded back at him, still smiling. "I like it better than just calling me 'Orange'."
"Firefly it is," he said. "There's some food in the kitchen, Firefly. Then it's off to bed. I think you've had enough excitement. Tomorrow I can show you around town, maybe try some flying practice. How does that sound?"
Better than a bedroom full of crap. "Great," she said. "Sounds great."