(minutes after previous entry)
AGENT: 🅱️ (owner of journal, automagically filed)
MISSION: complicated, at least 4 are relevantâ€
STATUS: homeward-bound
†Details of known missions will be separately listed under their own headers
TO-DO: attach and annotate full log with maps
†Apologies for the unclear timeline. Dates on documents directly from Equestria have had their dates muddled during travel.
I was informed of a possible update to the case of missing mare Starlight Glimmer. Two strong blasts of magic had been detected passing through Equestria, traveling rapidly from future to past.
What happened next is complicated—TO-DO: ask Lyra to make some diagrams of all the jumps forward and back, as this grew out of Lyra’s prior mission. Earth ponies are not meant for these calculations. Highlights of the aftermath:
Preparations for our journey have been completed. Celestia and Luna gave Lyra and me a hero’s farewell dinner before sending us. Whatever they did, the spell was complex enough that it still required engravings to channel the magic, even with the two most-experienced alicorns casting it. Once the time box was summoned, we stepped inside and exited into the deep past.
Future entries will be in local human time. Humans increment their year count a week after their equivalent to Hearthswarming.
About a week after we arrived, the humans had some kind of fireworks holiday. We then learned that the local ungulates do not understand fireworks. Mass panic all around. No signs of Twilight, Starlight, or Luna.
Despite this world being generally devoid of magic, I could track down a signature. We encountered an unexpected Equestrian unicorn. Lyra recognized her as a traveling showmare. I recognized her name as one of my co-workers’ cases to apprehend. The fact that she was not included on my recovery docket implies that she either had nopony to care she was missing or that she will not disappear from Equestria until sometime in the future—future being relative to when Lyra and I left.
Trixie had been on Earth since March (human time) and has been living as the roommare of the human whose property she was grazing upon since around May. Prior to that, she was captive of a hostile group of humans who quarreled among themselves over her fate before she escaped and was rescued. Only about three or four humans know of her existence outside her old captors and her host.
Most surprisingly, Starlight Glimmer was alive and inside the same house when Trixie showed us inside after introductions.
We headed south into warmer pastures, carefully avoiding humans. The local equines have many predators, both real and imagined. One consistency from herd to herd are the rumors of free-living equines throughout the West. Once the weather started to warm, we made our way to investigate.
Meeting the herds and the events described in today’s entry.
Trixie recovered and willing to consider a return to Equestria. Recommend Crown drop charges. Office betting pool can cover her tax penalties, as nopony suspected the wagon wreckage next to the mirror pool to belong to her. A most unexpected find, trace magic may still bind us Equestrian ponies to find one another. Recommend setting her gift of tongues to good use as an ambassador to the Crown. Her personality is far improved when she is forced to utilize wilderness survival skills and interact with other species.
Major obstacle to recovery: she is with foal. Two unique challenges.
Ethics training never covered this.
Assuming her honesty, she made it to Earth by purchasing some “Alicorn Amulet,” then visiting the Mirror Pool with a command to “take Trixie somewhere where she shall be great and powerfully respected.” The amulet is in a secure human facility we plan to invade to make our escape. At least she was easier to apprehend than if she had wished to end up somewhere where she would have been “powerful and greatly respected.”
My dedication to solving this case is what got Lyra and me in this mess in the first place. Had we filed her as “missing / presumed dead” instead of following the tendrils of magic, she would have turned up alive in about three years’ time if we had kept pulse of the rumors swirling around the desert villages outside Equestria. Speaking of dead, she is firmly convinced that she has died and is in the afterlife with us. See attached transcript of interview for details.
If nothing else, the timeline she tells is at least plausible, as she is about twenty years older than the teenage filly her father reported missing last year.
For Princess eyes only (and my former director, should she choose to leave retirement to assist in final report compilation)
Even editing this ought to be done in a temporally-secure facility once in Equestria.
It is unclear from Starlight’s story whether Twilight turned out like the rest of Celestia’s failed students or if she was a successful protégé later overcome with the same affliction that took Luna from us long ago. The attached transcript should provide clarity once recorded.
Most alarmingly, a select few humans seem to have access to some miscut documentary of her first year in Ponyville. If true, this level of causality violation requires Luna’s immediate attention. Ponies may not be the only species with time travel capabilities.
This is Lyra’s nominal reason for accompanying me. It turns out the Forerunners call their own species “human” and are mostly-naked monkeys with slightly blubbery skin and are not tailless dragons. The magical link establishing that we are several million years in Equestria’s past is undeniable, even without ambient magic.