The Canterlot castle, more specifically, the throne room, was abuzz with activity the next morning. Normally, it was reserved for the princesses to hold audience with their subjects but on that day, most of the royal servants ran hither and tither preparing it for a private party. To the knowledge of the senior servants, the princesses were apparently welcoming an old friend but due to the complicated nature of this friend, a fact that the princesses were not eager to share yet, the welcoming party was kept private.
The light purple walls of the throne room was being decorated with fine tapestries. A red carpet led to the throne and ran parallel to the east wall. Red ribbons spiraled down each of the three pillars that ran alongside the wall, obscuring the papyrus motifs molded at the bottom. The throne itself was spared the decorations for the large flower pots and small waterfalls that embellished the platform below the royal seat was already majestic enough.
"Everything is set, your highness," said one of the servants, a lime green earth pony with a red mane and pan cakes for a cutie mark, after the preparations were done
"Thank you, Flapjack," replied Princess Celestia. "You are dismissed."
The servant pony bowed his head and started after the other servants who were vacating the throne room.
"Oh, and Flapjack..."
The servant pony turned and once again stood at attention before his princess
"Yes, your highness?"
"When our guest arrives, please do everything within your power to awaken Princess Luna."
Flapjack inwardly blanched at the thought. The last time somepony tried to awaken the night princess during the day, the poor soul was turned to stone. Granted, it was during the first few days after her banishment and she had changed much in the past few years. Add to the fact that she changed the servant pony back to flesh and bone but still, it was a line no servant pony ever wanted to cross again.
"Err...well...." Flapjack rubbed his hoof at the back of his head.
"Don't worry, she will answer to me if she does anything to you," the princess assured him.
It didn't assure him that much. Even if it did, he was faced with another problem: these days, when Princess Luna sleeps during the day, she doesn't sleep, she hibernates; nothing in the world, not even a changeling invasion, could wake her up. How was an earth pony like him supposed to perform this task?
"I'm sure you can think of something," said the princess, as if she had been reading the servant's mind.
Flapjack inhaled to voice his thoughts but was interrupted by the royal herald who announced the arrival of the guest.
"Well, get to work," Princess Celestia implored him with a smile.
-----
Markov watched as the royal herald entered the large double doors that led to, what he was told, the throne room. He was being carried on the shoulders of two royal guards, both pegasi, one on either side. From an outsider's point of view, it would have looked like he was a convict being brought to the princesses for judgement but in truth, he was being carried that way because he wasn't used to his new body and the guards were not going to wait for him to learn to walk.
"Announcing the arrival of the royal guest to the princesses, Andrei Markov!" he heard the herald say.
Two more royal guards, unicorns, appeared and opened the double doors wide with their magic. The two pegasi carrying Markov moved inside with him as he tried desperately to walk himself on his back legs.
This entire world looks like a cartoon show. Might as well play along he thought as he was carried into the throne room. Inside, he saw many details that made the throne room stand out such as fine tapestries, a large throne and stained-glass windows with varying depictions but most importantly, he saw a larger version of the white pegasi that were carrying him but it had a particular trait that the pegasi didn't share: a unicorn horn.
The larger pony creature approached them, leaving behind a regular wingless, hornless pony that looked, to Markov, like it just heard that its children were going to face a firing squad. The latter sped out the double doors while the former approached them slowly.
"Why are you two carrying him like this?" it, or rather, she, due to her feminine voice, asked the pegasus guards
"He had trouble walking, your highness," the pegasus on the right answered
"And we all remember how long it took for Whiplash to walk again after he'd been cured from that cockatrice episode. We figured the same might have happened to him. That's why we offered to carry him here like this."
"I... see." the larger one mused. She turned her attention to Markov
"It's been a while, my old friend. I'm sure you have a lot of questions on your mind."
Markov took a second look at his surroundings
You have no idea
-----
I am going to die. Yes, that's it. Today, I die. How? Who cares! the tornado of negative thoughts swirled in his mind as Flapjack made his way to awaken the night princess
After minutes of walking, he had finally arrived at Princess Luna's chambers.
"Your highness?" he called out after knocking on the door. Silence answered him
"P-princess Celestia.....DEMANDSyouraudience-" he facehoofed at his choice of words. All he could think was this is how I die
But once again, silence greeted him
"Your highness?"
Thinking that she might be asleep, he softly pushed the door open
"Hello-o-o." He started moving inside
The interior of the room was dark due to the closed curtains but he could still make out where the furniture were so that he wouldn't bump into them. He slowly made his way to the princess' bed.
"Um...your highness, are you awake?" he asked aloud as he approached the bed. This is a bad idea.....
"We are awake, Flapjack," Princess Luna answered.... from the shadows to his left
Oh f-
-----
Markov was left alone with the large pony (whom the guards identified as Princess Celestia). She had dismissed the guards earlier after she explained the real situation to them and offered to take him off their....hooves. She had also asked them not to divulge any of the new information to anyone outside the throne room. The guards eventually left but not before helping Markov to stand up straight and giving him a proper salute.
"That was weird," Markov said after the guards shut the double doors
"Be nice, old friend. They were just flustered to see a hero from the old days," she explained. The larger pony turned her head to look at his wings and his rear.
"And your cutie mark is a dead giveaway to your deed." She smiled as she made her way to a marble bench.
Cutie mark? he thought. Maybe I misheard
"My what?"
"Cutie mark. It's a mark on a pony that symbolizes their special talent. It's on your flank." The pony princess pointed to his rear with her hoof after she settled herself on the bench.
There's that word again. Hearing it was like listening to a steel fork grate against a chalkboard. He shuddered as he turned his head to look at the area on his body where the white pony pointed. Oh God, please do not let it be some gingerbread cookie or a dolphin swimming in rainbows. Thankfully, what he saw was hardly whimsy or childish. In fact, it suited his talents just nicely. On his flank, a silhouette of a shark with wings was emblazoned and a silver streak was superimposed diagonally over the shark.
Well, I guess it could've been worse. At least this... cutie... mark matches my talent. He looked over to the larger pony and saw that she was beaming, like a mother who was watching her child take his first steps. It bothered him greatly. Knowing what he knows to be his special talent, this pegasus-unicorn hybrid might be bad news but with his amount of options, which were few, he might have to humor whatever this creature had in mind. Besides, he still had questions to be answered and his quadrapedal skills enabled him to relate to the old Bambi movie he used to watch. He's not going anywhere
"About those questions." Markov inquired.
"Oh, yes. I'm sorry. It must have slipped my mind," she apologized with a sheepish grin. "I was hoping to wait for Luna to arrive for that but seems that she is content with sleeping the day away." She beckoned him to join her on the seat.
Guess there's more than one of these things Markov thought. He walked awkwardly with his new legs to join the larger pony on the bench and when he finally reached his destination, he sat it with his back straight and his back legs hanging from the edge; a typical human way of sitting on a bench.
"What is it that you wanted to know, my friend?"
"Well, to start, who are you and how do you know my name?"
The large pony's jaw dropped for a second but as quickly as it happened, she regained her composure and gave him her answer.
"My name is Princess Celestia..... and since it seems that you do not remember, we used to be friends." She gave him a rather quizzical look. "Before you ask your next question, please humor mine: do you remember your time here? When you were in Equestria?"
Markov was about to tell her that he remembers nothing but then he thought about the flashback he saw after he made sure that the Trinity cruise missile was on target.
"I'm... not sure. I remember.... something before I..." Markov started to say, but stopped himself.
"Well, what is it?" she questioned.... in that familiarly motherly tone
Green field... surrounded by technicolor horses.... one of them named Wonderbolt...... I guess I take after the one they call Wonderbolt....one of them is large and...
"Wait, you were there" he finally said.
Celestia smiled.
"You were the one that.... did that thing to me.... and made everyone of them say goodbye..."
Her smile slowly died.
"Well, it's a start," she said after a few seconds of silence.
"So it really happened then? It wasn't a dream?" Markov asked, but in truth he was stating.
"Yes and no, respectively."
Markov was quiet for a few minutes. He then asked "What happened that day? I remember bits and pieces but the whole picture escapes me."
"Since you do not remember, and all this is relatively new to you, I will tell you the short version and fill in any blanks and answer any questions you may have," she said and so, she did. She told him the story of how a much younger Markov was brought into Equestria with chaos magic by a creature known as Discord. She told him of how the younger Markov participated in a battle against said creature with the help of a pegasus named Wonderbolt (with whom his new form resembled). And last, but not least, she told about how she and the other unicorns combined their magic to send him back to the human realm but not before she cast a certain spell on him.
"The spell was to bring you back here in Equestria in a new form whenever your life is threatened to the point of death. But for some reason, maybe the difference of the laws of time and space between our realms or the fact that you were brought here with chaos magic to begin with and affected the transport spell, you were brought here more than a thousand years after the spell was cast," she explained.
Awkward silence filled the air between them as Markov tried to digest what the Princess just told him.
"This is probably too much for you to take in in a single day," she said. "Why don't we hold off the celebration until you can finally wrap your head around it?"
"What celebration?"
She pointed her hoof to the decorations in the room. "Earlier, we had the servants decorate the entire throne room so that we could celebrate your arrival but, it seems that you might require some... acclimatizing."
"Oh... I'm sorry," he apologized.
"It's alright. I know what it's like to travel to another universe and how hard it is to adapt to new surroundings," she said. While she talked, she also smiled because it seemed that he was finally getting more comfortable around her.
"Now, is there anything else do you wish to know?" she inquired.
"Yes actually, does everyone here speak Russian?"
"Russian?"
"Yes, Russian. The language you're using now"
Celestia thought about it for a while.
"Oh... right. The spell," she whispered to herself
"You see, Andrei, what you're hearing is.... Russian. But What you and I are speaking is Equestrian," she answered after a brief moment of silence.
"Equestrian?"
"Yes, That is the local language. It's the effects of the spell I cast on you. It's the reason it sounds like the Russian language. It makes any language sound like the one you're used to and turns the language you speak sound like the language the creature you're speaking to is used to. I use it all the time for political negotiations."
".... I see"
"Anything else?"
"Well...." He showed her his hooves and flexed the cylindrical stumps like they were marshmallows. "What of these?"
-----
By the time Princess Luna finally emerged from her room, it was already nighttime and her sister had already lowered the sun. In fact, the older sister was still waiting for her on the throne.
"Good evening, Tia," Luna said to her.
"Good evening," she replied.
They stared at each other in silence for a while until Luna's eyes went left and right like a schoolfilly who did not know what she did wrong.
"Luna," Celestia finally said.
"Yes?"
"Where were you this afternoon?"
"I... was asleep," she lied.
"Really? Because one of my maids reported that the servant that I sent to wake you was found tied to a chair with his mouth taped shut and a rubber udder strapped to his chest."
Luna did her best to stifle a giggle. "W-well, it must have been the other servants. You know how they love to pull pranks and how those pranks can go too far."
"You are the only one in this castle who owns that... dreaded thing." Celestia shuddered at the memory of having her picture taken with a rubber udder in her sleep.
"Which would mean that you were actually awake at the time," Celestia concluded.
Again, silence filled the air.
"Luna, I don't care if you wanted to sleep or pull pranks with the servants. But you could have at least shown an old friend some courtesy by just greeting him before you go do anything else," she said, close to shouting.
Luna, however, suddenly found the floor a more interesting thing to look at.
"Tia," she said after a few seconds. "There's something you should know... about him."
"What do you mean?" the older sister asked.
"Remember when I went to the human world?"
Then she told her, everything.