My Name is Twilight Sparkle
Jan 8: Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle, and... This is so neat! A journal in an alternate universe! What fun! All I had to figure out was how to get "e-mail address" (e for Earth?) and find an Earth journal that works well with my magic. This Dream Width looks good and oh! Comments and replies! Maybe I can make some friends here! For science!
Dream Width. Is there an Earth version of Princess Luna running this? Somehow many of you speak Equuish, at least in written form.
Selecting "Post Entry", now.
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Success!
Jan 9: That worked! Hoofston*, we have a new journal, in another universe! Whee!
So how did I get here? Well, my new Ponyville castle, the Friendship Tree-Castle that sprang from the box of locks after we got all six keys (and fixed the mess made by Tirek), has a lot of bare rock walls and not many windows. I was upstairs the other day and I decided to cast my graphical display grid spell to show Pinkie that zebras are black with white stripes, not white with black stripes. It reacted with the rock wall and I got a window into another universe! ...It, your universe, looks like a letter-writing universe. Or a giant atheneum. A book universe! Now, for a bookworm, that's irresistible.
The bridge is not perfect, there is some stuff that's coming through garbled. Probably illustrations.
* Hoofston is the home of earth pony aviation, where they make dirigibles, balloons and pony-powered whirlygigs. And they're big on exploration.
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Rock Solid Safety
Jan 10: Exploring the thoughts and literary works of a new universe from the safety of a rock-solid castle in Ponyville! This is so exciting! See? *taps display* Rock wall! Words on a rock wall! Nothing gets through except ideas. What could possibly go wrong? This calls for a pot of lavender tea and a timothy/clover hay sandwich! Party time!
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Introductions Are In Order
Jan 10: Well, since this Earth-Journal seems to be holding together and not evaporating in a puff of smoke, despite it not being written on anything corporeal that I can see, I should introduce myself... in case anyone is reading this besides me.
Hi, my name is Twilight Sparkle... well, Princess Twilight Sparkle now. Princess of Friendship. I don't rule over anyplace, but I do have a castle! A brand new castle for me and my best friends... and this is getting dull. OK, let's try bullet points.
That's it.
* or if you prefer, a bright lilac
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Snowflakes
Jan 11: It was a cold day today in Ponyville. I was still up when Princess Luna set the moon and ushered the constellations away from their playground in the sky. As Princess Celestia nudged the sun into the heavens, I stepped out on a small balcony and watched the weather ponies push big grey clouds into the pink sky. They gave us a snow storm and the snow flakes were beautiful! Around mid-day they returned to clear the sky and the ground sparkled like diamonds in the sunshine. Most of the snow was made of stellar dendrites, principally fern-like stellar dendrites, and the sparkle came from the sunlight reflecting off of stellar plate snowflakes. I found some examples of scrolls on stellar plates! That made my day. No needles or hollow columns that I could find this time around. A few weeks ago there was a snowfall that was almost all needles and hollow columns. I had never seen so many hollow columns at once. That probably cleared out Cloudsdale's inventory.
The sun has gone down now but it isn't dark. The white snow sparkles in the moonlight in harmony with the twinkling of the stars above. Walking through the quiet streets, it's like Ponyville has taken leave of the ground and floated off to join the constellations of Princess Luna's night.
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Golden Oaks
Jan 12: This rock castle is a bit cold and sterile. I miss the Golden Oak Library.
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Chaotic Mail
Jan 13: I have Earth Mail! Actually, several E-Mail letters. But I think they all got the wrong address. I don't want more hair, I'm not interested in "low interest", I don't know what I'd do with a "check" for "5M dollars", and my password to my credit card can't be lost if I don't have a "credit card". I think Discord has an Earth Mail account. I should ask Fluttershy. Or maybe I should just ignore the E-Mail. Discord will get bored and go bother somepony else.
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Cold Snap
Jan 14: Cold snap! It's so cold that I've been donning my boots, scarf and that nice blanket Rarity made for me when I step out. It's a beautiful red with a gold trim and it has a hood for extra warmth. Rarity says the exact color is "folly"... not crimson or even electric crimson. Folly. Folly it may be, but I love it. It's so warm and bright!
The snow squeaks underhoof and throwing a bucket of water into the air causes it to evaporate and condense into a miniature cloud in the blink of an eye. It's fascinating! Spike* is running in and out of the castle and giggling. He's been clearing the snow and ice from the walk with dragon fire, raising big clouds of steam. He finds that very funny. The steam has been condensing as frost on every surface it touches. The trees, the bushes, the castle walls... it's all fuzzy white now and ponies have been stopping by to stare in admiration. It's very pretty and stark under the midday sun.
*Spike is a baby dragon whom I hatched from an egg as part of my entrance exam into Princess Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns. He's now my Number One Assistant.
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Dragon Pride
Jan 15: I received another shipment of books today from the Crystal Empire Library. Big McIntosh was kind enough to cart them up from the train station. Spike and I spent the morning sorting and shelving them. It was hard work on the poor fellow, he's taking a nap. But he wouldn't stop until every last book was shelved. Dragon pride.
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Carerfilly Castle
Jan 16: Rarity, Spike, Pinkie and I went on a day trip to the Carerfilly Castle ruins, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna's old home deep in what is now the Everfree Forest. I wanted to borrow a few books on transdimensional compatibility theory, Rarity is fascinated by the tapestries, and Pinkie... well Pinkie wanted to gallop through the halls and try all the traps and slides, over and over again. I think she's going to build an amusement complex in Ponyville, as part of the fairgrounds. I'd better ask Applejack to help with the engineering... if she's planning another rock slide, it would be better that this time it's the ponies that slide on the rocks, and not the other way around.
By evening I'd found two promising books, Pinkie had donned a mustache and a cape (she's plotting for sure) and Rarity had Spike lugging four rolled-up tapestries that she plans on mending. Pinkie dashed back to Ponyville ahead of us as we strolled through the gloom of the Everfree Forest, Rarity practically dancing with excitement at how she was going to spruce up our Friendship Castle in Ponyville, Spike hanging on to her every word.
It feels wonderful to be back on my cushion by the fire. A perfect day -- an excursion with some of my best friends to a place we all love, great plans for the future, and two new books to study. Life is good.
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Twilight Time
Jan 17: It was "Twilight Time" again for the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Scootaloo found and rebuilt the crank-action scarf loom I'd conveniently broken after getting my tail caught in it one time too many. A gift from my brother. I'll have to find a darker corner in the basement to "store" it. Apple Bloom's latest growth potion carpeted the halls with grass... that promptly died. And then caught fire. Sweetie Belle then caused a water bucket brigade to spring to life and douse the flames. By the time I found a counter-spell for this potion-based magic fire the hallways were filled with black sludge and we were all coughing and hacking. If only the fire had spread to the scarf loom. The three foals were mostly sad that they didn't get fire-fighting cutie marks.
Now to crack open that tome again to the chapter on Euclydean fixed distance lithography of static illusions. I was just at the part on adjusting for the quantum wobble in pony photographic prints. This could be very useful!
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Stretchy Changy Scroll
Jan 18: This Dream Width scroll has a weird quirk. While the text reads from left to right, top to bottom, each journal entry is like on its own patch and stacked on top of all the previous patches with the last, latest one on top. So, it's like a stack of patches all in one scroll. A patchwork scroll that stretches every time you add a patch. Or it's like reading a staircase where the bottom step is the beginning and the top stair is the most recent past. At least it's organized. I put a "tag" on the beginning entry at the bottom so I won't have to dig to find that first step in this staircase.
The journal gets "news" delivered to it on another page called "reading". News was delivered today and it's about changes to how this system works, mostly things I don't use or haven't used yet. The little arrows that appeared next to that "beginning" tag are new. So very odd that these things can change, but I am writing on someone* else's paper, or paper shared by many "people". It's like living in a TreeCastle, you make do with what you're given. I almost left a query as to whether Equestria could be included in the list of countries. Then I thought better of it. There's no point being on a list of countries if you're the only pony from there who is on Dream Width. I did put Ponyville, Equestria in my profile sheet, but in "region" and "city", not "country". As such, it didn't light up, but it's there, if you look!
* This appears to be the Dream Width equivalent for 'somepony'. I'm tempted to use 'somecreature' or 'somentity', but 'someone' works.
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Illuminating the Manuscripts
Jan 19: Fixed the illustrations problem... somewhat. The illustrations coming back to me via Dream Width look kind of grainy and melted. And I think they're imported from another wing of this Earth atheneum thing. Except for some really tiny illustrations (or decorations?) that are housed in the Dream Width... paragraph ornamentation, I think. Sometimes they reflect what is written, sometimes they seem to be like a signature or personal seal. The ponies... people here look mostly like the anthropoid beings where Sunset Shimmer is studying. Only with small eyes, hardly any color variety and not quite so spindly. OK, so this journal I'm writing in is part of something like a community writer's workshop with a paper supply, a quill supply, an illustration archive... that you have to organize to work together. The illustration archive is the missing piece from my journal scroll. I can fix that! I'll need to cobble together a magi-tech image transfer spell that I can integrate into my Earth/Equestria interface matrix. Hmmm, from what I was reading, Star Swirl was working on "Euclydean"-compatible interpretation and organization of visual data as rows of colored dots... To the Canterlot Archives for more research! Huzzah!
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Starving For Knowledge
Jan 20: I got lost in the Star Swirl the Bearded Wing of the Canterlot Archives. Not literally lost, I just lost track of the time... for the entire day and late into the evening. So much knowledge! So many unfinished projects! I think I forgot to eat. I can hear the hay in the pantry calling me.
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Short Introduction to the Non-Euclydean Equestrian Universe
Jan 21: Lecturing is something I do best!
Equestria appears flat but that's an illusion. Equestria is more like a bag with the edges connected. If Ponyville was all there was of Equestria, you could walk past a building on the edge of town and end up passing a house at the opposite end of town and find yourself heading for the town center. So Fluttershy's cottage could end up next to Rarity's Boutique even if they are at the opposite ends of town. Ergo, there is no sky and the frozen north and the frozen south are one and the same. Straight lines are mostly curves with variable lengths. This introduces uncertainty into getting from here to there. It all depends on which path you take, and there are an infinite number of paths. This could make travel across Equestria a gamble, as the time it will take changes, even if you take the train. The slightest shake will change your path. But this is all second nature to us ponies. We're born with a sense as to where to go and how long it will take. It would be very strange if the distance from your house to the bakery was always the same. If that were to happen to me I'd know I was dreaming.
The appearance of the sky over Equestria is dependent on velocity. Einstallion worked out the relation between velocity, mass and energy, but understanding the math behind his theories is a bit of a hard slog. It goes like this: because ponies move quite a bit slower than the speed of light, we don't see the curve of the land, we see a gap, and that gap is the sky. Plus the moon, which is a dollop of Equestria that somehow got pinched off. Pony philosophers are still working on that. It might just be a shiny pebble that got tossed into the air at just the right time and place, thousands of years ago. So anyway, we see a gap, a gap that doesn't exist if you move at the speed of light. A gap peppered with stars and stuff.
It gets weirder.
The sun and the stars are borrowed light, extracted here and there, visible to us as stars only because we aren't traveling at the speed of light. The light can be borrowed because at the speed of light, there is no distance and it takes no time to go nowhere -- it's borrowed and paid back in the same instant. The sun is just a really big loan from the nothingness of space that Princess Celestia pushes up from the edge each morning. She's really good at easing it into a track that crosses the sky. Since the sky is an illusion and the "edge" is a single point, it looks like she is pushing the sun up from the same place each day. Anyway, it's a good thing that the entire sky doesn't belch light -- Equestria would burn to a crisp! Some philosophers speculate that that is happening to Luna's moon, which is why it glows, right through the rock! It's like a failed Equestria, floating right above our heads. *shudder*
But what magic makes the stars in the first place? Many ponies believe that after they die, their magic lives on as a star... or part of the sun. They believe that they don't really die completely. And so it goes for the stars that came together to form the constellations, constellations that are very much alive and that step down from the sky to rest and play. Astronomy is such a fascinating field of study! I must get more books on the subject.
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Space Travel
Jan 22: Space exploration is a thing in Earth, as in traveling in a direction perpendicular to the ground and beyond the constellations? That is not possible in Equestria, at least not in a Euclydean sense. What we can do is move orthogonal to the Equestrian _universe_ and cross over into a parallel universe. That's what the Breezies do, by way of tunneling through the fabric of our perceived reality. But just flying straight up here does not get you out of Equestria. Should you try to fly much higher than the constellations, you will find the edge of Equestria rushing up to meet you. As such, to step down to the ground, the constellations need just step up.
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Safest Way to Travel
Jan 23: Viewing Earth through a projection is the safest way to visit, really. Who knows what the subtle differences in the laws of physics would do to a pony if we were to cross universes.
I think I might have to drop the Science Daily "feed" from my Dream Width reading material, he or she posts entries so often that it drowns out any other journals that may be posting too.
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Testing Picture Transfer
Jan 24: OK, I cobbled together an illumination transfer protocol spell from Star Swirl's theory. Tricky, but so far it looks like it's working! I used it to send a vision of a picture of Spike to a "gallery" and I selected a "HTML" print spell from the gallery and I glued that into my Dream Width scroll here.
...
It worked! What fun!
Meet Spike, my most valuable assistant. We've been together since he first hatched. See, he's not a pony, he's a dragon (ponies have hooves, not claws). Spike has a mauve body with a grass green crest and eyes. He's also quite the ham, it's hard to catch him not striking a pose when he sees a camera pointed at him, but Pinkie got a good snapshot of him here. Pinkie's pretty clever with that camera of hers.
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Log Entry "Icons"
Jan 25: I should make at least one log entry image for my Dream Width journal scroll. A picture of the Golden Oak Library, how it used to look, would do nicely.
I can store 16 different "icon" images in the Dream Width... 16 kinds of journal entries, or 16 different subject matters. I should make a list. Winter, spring, summer, fall. Food, leisure, work, rest. Canterlot, Crystal Empire. Friendship.
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Picnic at Carerfilly Castle
Jan 26: The air has warmed up from the cold snap, not enough to melt the snow, but enough for a nice walk with friends. Since Rarity has finished repairing and washing the tapestries she'd borrowed and I have two books to return, we decided to all go for a picnic at the Carerfilly Castle. "We" is me, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Spike. We decided against using Applejack's cart and instead lugged the tapestries and supplies on our backs. It's best to be light on your feet in the Everfree Forest and to be set to flee in any direction at a moment's notice. Applejack brought a fresh batch of apple chips and pies to go with the lunch Spike packed for us. We planned to have the picnic in the throne room where most of the tapestries fixed by Rarity hang.
The walk through the Everfree was beautiful. It snows there too and this time the snow was particularly sticky, adhering to every twig and bough. The usually grey and dreary forest turned soft, white and fluffy, almost cheery with a carpet of pure white at our hooves and the smell of fresh snow in the air. The air was still and quiet, disturbed only by the crunching of wet snow under our hooves and the occasional creak and groan of the boughs shifting under their heavy white burdens. Pinkie had brought her camera. Rarity had asked her to take a few pictures of the tapestries once they had been returned to their proper places. While we were walking through a more open stretch of the path, Dash borrowed Pinkie's camera and flew a few paces ahead to snap a candid picture of our procession through the white woods.
On the way we met the river serpent, preening in the mist rising off the water. He was very happy to see us again, showing off his gleaming scales and his moustache. It has mostly grown back, I was surprised to see that some strands of Rarity's tail remain mixed in the serpent's whiskers. She really is skilled in these things.
At the castle ruins, Spike and I went to the library to return the books, Rarity had Dash and Fluttershy's help to lift and hook the tapestries, and Applejack and Pinkie prepared lunch. The books shelved and the tapestries hung, the highlight of our day was the picnic. Sprawled out on a big bright blanket in the snowy hall, open to the sky, we were surrounded by good food and gorgeous tapestries so bright and colorful they practically glowed. Our laughter filled the grand hall with cheer and echoed down the corridors. I could almost see the Princesses, young and proud, gazing down at us from their twin thrones. One day the castle will be rebuilt and ponies will return to the Everfree.
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Requiem For an Old Friend
Jan 27: Walking back from the train station today I stopped by the Golden Oak Library, or what's left of it. I could smell hints of home hiding in the strong musk of charred wood. The falling snow has settled like a shroud, transforming the shattered and fallen timbers into gentle mounds. My warm, beautiful library now has white flowing drifts covering the stairs and piling up in the empty gaping shelves. We've already scavenged what we could from the wreck and now a demolition crew will finish Tirek's work. The library was a living thing. Failsafe spells can't bring back the dead.
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Multiverse Possibility
Jan 28: If there's an infinite multiverse, which there may well be, I've visited two, it is possible that there are alternate universe Twilight Sparkles writing in journals in this labyrinthian tangle of webs.
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Casting Spells
Jan 29: Like in the mirror-verse created by Star Swirl, the one Sunset Shimmer is studying, it looks like there isn't much use of magic in Earth. At least not in a casual, pony way. Maybe the physics aren't right in Earth? If there was magic in Earth, it wouldn't just lie dormant, some body would practice it, just like we do. Casting a spell is like learning to put on a winter scarf. Grab, throw, grab, throw, pull through and there you go! Nice and snug, just like your mother taught you. Like putting on the scarf, spell casting when we were little was tough and you had to take it slow the first few times, but once you got the hang of it, the combo becomes automatic. With a spell, since the combo is in your head, you can cast that spell faster and faster as you get better and better at it. Like Cadence's sneeze guard spell. She's faster than a sneeze!
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Ponies in the Machine
Jan 30: Unlike what appears to be the case in the Earth realm, we can't do without magic or let magic lapse, forgotten and unused. Almost everything in Equestria depends on pony magic to function properly. Right at the top of the list is keeping the day and night cycle on time. Then there's the seasons, the weather, managing the fauna and getting the plants to grow. All of it requires magical intervention from ponies. Mostly from specialists, but all ponies are magical and all ponies help in some way. Sure the animals are bright enough to share ideas and feelings with ponies (or at least with Fluttershy, I don't speak 'squirrel') but they require a helping hoof to plan far enough ahead to build their own nests, migrate or find food in the spring. It has always been thus, it's how things work in Equestria. Except in the Everfree Forest, where it is always gloomy and nothing is run by ponies.
It's odd that the ancient Tree of Harmony exists in the middle of the Everfree. Such a strange and powerful tree, made of rock and gems, leafless, existing in a grotto and somehow responsive to our needs. Perhaps it is shaping the Everfree and its inhabitants. It is so powerful, it may even shape or have shaped all of Equestria. Which came first, ponies or the Tree? Perhaps the tree is the manifestation of the combined will and magic of the ponies of Equestria? No that wouldn't fit, Tirek had consumed the entire sum of the magic of all the ponies and we easily defeated him with magic afforded us by the Tree.
We find it spooky when things happen on their own, like there are ghosts in the machine. It's very reassuring to know that clouds stay where you put them and that if they move, it's because a pony pushed them. There would be so much chaos if everything just did as it pleased! There would be floods and droughts! Bunnies would eat everything! Like when Discord broke free that first time and took over Equestria. I think Discord would feel right at home on Earth. How do Earth denizens remain sane? I think I'm beginning to see why this E-Athenaeum is such a jumble. It's Discorded!
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Hay Loft Accounting
Jan 31: I'm still mystified by the Tree of Harmony.
The Hay Board meeting is tomorrow at Town Hall. We don't want to ship out too much of our stores; what we have has to last us at least to first cut or ponies will be grazing through our first harvest before it's reaped. That could easily snowball into an all-out famine. Everything has to be planned out just so.
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