Iron Feather wasn't sure how to feel about his rescuer. On one hoof, she was certainly the reason he hadn't died. His memory of the night before was not clear, but the injuries on his back were obvious enough about the consequences. A break that severe was enough to bleed him to death. Leaving him exposed to the elements—and capture—with such a serious wound was a death sentence.
But at the same time, he could see when a pony wasn't all there. He didn't have to guess, it was obvious that Kirin worked the same way. She reminded him of some of the other ponies during basic training. Some rose to the incredible challenge, but most just weren't cut out for what Equestria demanded.
I'm not dealing with a royal guard, or whatever the equivalent is in this strange place. She's a confused civilian way out of her depth. But unlike a confused or scared pony, this was a Kirin. Any moment now she could burst into flames and destroy everything around her.
Even worse—if she was telling the truth, then Lotus wasn't even supposed to be a Kirin. She might not even know what a Nirik was.
So Iron Feather ignored his groaning stomach, ignored the hunger bearing down on him, and focused on the things he could control. He took a deep breath in and out. "No, I'm not looking for a stable. Equestria is a country. Home of free ponies of all three tribes, ruled by Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. You must know who they are, at least."
She didn't react, just kept eating her salad out of an impossibly thin plastic rectangle, without so much as a fork. She just shook her head.
"Raise the sun every morning?" he prompted. "Raise the moon at night? Make the night sky beautiful for ponies everywhere to appreciate?"
She giggled again. Just more evidence for Iron that this was a civilian. No mare of the guard would sound so cute when they laughed. "Gravity 'raises' the sun every morning. Or maybe just our orbit, I'm the wrong one to get into science. I package potatoes for a living."
She looked down, ears folding flat. Then she pushed the strange bowl towards him. "I see you eyeing this. It's supposed to be for two anyway. Take the rest."
He looked down, longing. Getting something to eat would be wonderful. "You can't tell me you don't know where Equestria is. Maybe you just don't know enough geography. We might be... very far away. I have no idea how far I teleported. Past the Bone Dry Desert, maybe. Past that awful city of disgusting fish creatures..."
"Oh, I know plenty of geography." She got up, wandering over to a bookshelf. She removed a globe from it, and set it down on the table beside his food. "Ugh. Disgusting. I'm finding out how a lot of things taste today that I didn't want to. How could anything evolve without fingers..."
Fingers. The word had no meaning, like so many other things she said. "I assume most Kirin just use their horns..." he began. But he trailed off, staring down at the globe. He spun it slowly around, scanning the landmass with a pegasus's eye for terrain. He knew where to look on a globe for Equestria.
He completed one full rotation, then a second one. Finally, he stopped at the closest match. "This is... similar. It could be Equestria, but the ocean here is much too large. There's no land bridge into Griffonstone. How distant are we from..." he squinted. "United States?"
Lotus giggled again, more energetic than before. If nothing else, at least his constant mistakes were relaxing her. "We're in the United States, Iron Feather. We're right about... there, upper middle. This state is called Montana. There are forty-nine more that I won't name, but you get the idea."
Not Equestria. Iron sunk to the ground. The gravity of his situation pressed him low, making his shoulders sag. He pulled over the salad, and took a few bites. It wasn't the strangest meal he'd ever had, but he was hungry enough not to care. "I don't understand. If that's... where we are, then... where is this? How far from Equestria did I teleport?"
Lotus stopped giggling. She looked down, avoiding his eyes. "If I had to guess—another planet, at least. I don't know how to tell you this, but there's nothing like you that lives here. There's only one kind of species who can talk anywhere on this planet. They look like this."
She carried something else from the bookshelf, settling it down on the table beside him. A photograph, more vivid than the finest unicorn-brewed emulsions could produce. On it was a group of... creatures.
They were not anything Iron would've expected to talk, either. A group of several creatures, all with naked-looking skin covered with lots of clothing. The shapes on some suggested breasts, so at least they were probably still mammals like proper hoofed creatures. The more he looked, the more confused he became.
"Another planet," Iron Feather muttered, exhausted. "Another place, far beyond the reach of any pony traveler. Such things have been done before." As a guardian of ancient artifacts, Iron Feather knew of others. Like Clover's ancient horseshoe mirror, with an end that opened in another world. If one magical object could do that, then another surely could.
"The phylactery... its master wished to send it far away, so far away that the seal holding her would be broken. If I'm here... that means she's already free. Loose in Equestria. The princess has to know."
He rose from the table, scanning the house around him. "Please, miss. When you rescued me, was there anything else with me? I should've been carrying a few scrolls, bound with wax. I need to warn the princess."
She glanced instantly to the too-high table, with its pieces of armor that Iron hadn't bothered wearing. "You still haven't said anything about changing me back. You want me to help like this? How about making me human again. I'll be way more willing to help you then."
Iron Feather groaned. "Miss, I—I don't know how else to say this. I'm not a unicorn. I can't cast spells. Whatever happened to you wasn't me. If you want to get mad about the rain, at least that could've been me. It wasn't, you see my wing. But you get the idea."
Her eyes drifted down to the book. "When I opened it the first time, I swear I saw something. Like a flash, or... I don't know. It was bright, but it didn't make the room any easier to see."
"Magic," he said, without hesitation. "Which follows. There are creatures that can change themselves. But if you were one of them, looking different wouldn't bother you."
He pushed the empty salad container aside, then settled the book down between them. Some small part of him was still suspicious of this Lotus creature. She was the first Kirin he'd ever met, around the very phylactery of the Kirin sorceress who almost conquered the world. It was too big a risk to ignore.
But she didn't lunge for it, just watched him with desperation. She couldn't sit still, her tail constantly flicking back and forth, smacking up against the oversized couch. It must hurt her, but she never reacted.
"So the book did it. All we have to do is make the book change me back. Should be simple!"
He flipped through its pages. After Celestia's warning, the others were all almost identical to his eyes. Inscrutable spell-diagrams, written by a genius of the craft. Ponies had few unicorns who had ever rivaled Searing for her power or skill. "It's possible there's a way. When Searing was finally defeated by the united armies of Pony and Griffonkind, they trapped her spirit in two books she had written. This half was her spellbook, the work that revolutionized magic across the world and made Kirins more powerful than their rivals. If there's a way to reverse what happened to you, it's probably written in this book."
Lotus showed very little comprehension of his explanation—at least until the end. Then she lit up, beaming at him. She reached across the narrow table, taking his foreleg. "That's great! Just turn to the right page, and use it on me! We'll get this fixed. Maybe I can get back to work before closing bell, tell them I had a stroke, or... female hysteria or whatever."
Iron's mouth fell open. The Kirin was plenty brave enough to save his life, but her comprehension skills weren't great. She didn't understand anything about how ponies worked, even after already explaining it. "Miss, I'm a pegasus. I can't cast spells. You can, though."
He turned the book around, pushing it towards her. "Why don't you look for a way to reverse your transformation in there. Then you can cast it yourself."
"Right, of course. Cast... a spell. I'll go Criss Angel all over this thing. I love fictional things. Talking animals, magic, transformations. It's all so wonderful." She slumped forward. "I saw some stuff in your armor when I took it off. Scrolls, maybe. Was more worried about saving your life."
She started flipping through the pages, squinting down at each one in turn. But the air didn't feel hot around her, so Iron took his chances. He backed away, then over to the table. He clambered up onto a chair, then turned his breastplate over.
Sure enough, the pouch on its reverse-side still had a single bound scroll—the sole contact for him in case of dire emergency. "May I trouble you for a quill, miss?" he asked. "Or ink and a blade. I could use one of my own feathers if I had to."
"Pens are in the cup." She pointed to the bookshelf. "Are you from back in time, too?"
Iron didn't understand the question, so ignored it. He took the scroll and one of the offered pens over to the low table, and spread it to write. There was limited space—this was really only meant to send a critical emergency message. He would need to be judicious.
"Princess,
Your plan failed. I awakened in another world with the Kirin phylactery. Equestria is in terrible danger. My life was saved by a local, who is friendly but ignorant. This world is very strange, and I do not know how to get back to Equestria. This is my only scroll.
Glory to Equestria
Iron Feather"
"Wait!" He felt a sudden grip on his foreleg, and Lotus stopped his writing. "I want to add something before you send that. Whoever you're writing to, she's responsible for what happened to me. I'm only a freak because I found you. Fixing this is on her."
Iron stopped, staring back at her with a mixture of sympathy and frustration. Her nervous panic was certainly real—being changed into something different obviously scared her. He would probably want to be fixed too, if he was suddenly not a pegasus.
"I don't know how much she will ever be able to do," he said, setting the pen down. "This is my only scroll, Lotus. There is no dragon here to receive messages for me. My only hope is to... warn Equestria of the danger."
Lotus wilted. "I... I don't care. Give me that pen, I'll put my part on the back."
Iron passed over the pen, and turned the scroll over. "Be careful not to rip it, or the message might not make it."
He got out of the way, watching over her shoulder as Lotus wrote. Despite her horn, she used her mouth, and not very expertly either. She wrote like a foal who had not practiced enough, letters sloppy and uneven.
"Hey,
I'm the one who saved your guy. I read a book and it changed me into a monster he calls a Kirin. Please help, I'm not supposed to be this thing."
She signed it, but Iron couldn’t make sense of the way she wrote that. A meaningless jumble of letters. Finally she stood up. "I'm not sure what the point of this is, anyway. I don't think the postal service is gonna get that through to another world."
He rolled it up carefully, then replaced the seal. "I'll show you. Do you have anything that burns?"
She walked him into the kitchen, then turned a dial on her stove. It lit instantly, with a steady curtain of blue flame. What a strangely valuable range for a home that otherwise looked so modest. Maybe “humans” really liked cooking.
He held the scroll into the flame. It caught on the edge, then the bundle burst into a flash of light, gone from his hoof in a second. "See?" he said, grinning. "My last message to Equestria travels safely. Unless I can find my own way back."
Then the front door banged open, and someone screamed.
