“We need more power!” Pinkie cried, watching the hill rising up to meet them in the distance.
“I’m giving it all it can!” Starlight replied, nonetheless trying to turn the knob further. “There’s no more power to give!”
“Try something, anything! We’ve got to have just a little more!”
Starlight tried lifting the balloon in her magic. It was harder than it looked, because even though hot air balloons were light enough to float, they were still massive. But she slowly lifted it, and by the time they reached the top of the hill, they were floating safely over it.
They were not, however, floating above the cluster of trees just on the other side.
“Evasive action!” Pinkie yelled.
“How?” Starlight asked. “I can’t move it that fast!”
“Brace for impact!”
If they had been traveling at high speeds, like those found in the upper atmosphere, the crash might have been deadly. However, since they were only going at a steady gallop they were simply tossed about within the basket as the balloon was caught in the upper branches of the first tree.
“Well, I guess this is our stop. Geronimo!” Pinkie leapt out of the basket, and Starlight hovered after her. They both turned back and looked at the balloon. “Aw man, I totally forgot I was gonna return it to them! Do you think we could just tell them where it is?”
Just then, a branch near the burner caught fire. “I don’t think they’ll want it back after this.”
Pinkie wilted a bit. “Oops.”
“So, where exactly were we heading next?”
“Oh, the finest school of bakery in Bitaly, Habit Grass. It’s not far now!” And so they took off once more, Pinkie cheerfully bouncing ahead, Starlight trotting behind.
It wasn’t long before they reached the end of the tiny forest, where they met a middle-aged earth pony stallion with a torch in his mouth, burning the grass. He looked up as they approached and shifted his torch to a forehoof. Pinkie waved a hoof, “Hello!”
“Ello!” the stallion called back, sitting down for a chat. “What are you two doing in the flaming woods?”
“We might have, accidentally, just a little bit… Lit the woods on fire. That’s not too bad, is it?” Starlight asked, putting on her best ‘please don’t be mad’ smile.
“Oh, not at all. We start a fire every year to keep the forest ealthy. Usually we make sure to clear the border first though.”
“So, we were looking for Habit Grass, is that it?” Pinkie asked, pointing to a large, square, three-story building at the base of the hill.
The stallion nodded. “That’s Abbiate Grasso, the greatest baking academy in the world.”
Pinkie nodded and started bouncing down the hill. Starlight looked between her and the stallion, who had returned to burning grass. “I’ll catch up in a bit Pinkie! Okay?”
“Have fun!” Pinkie answered.
For a moment Starlight just watched the older stallion work. He was surprisingly dexterous at his task, likely the result of years of practice. “So… What’s your name?”
He placed his torch back in his hoof and gave her a hard look. “I don’t mind talking, but I’ve got a job to do.”
“I can help!” Starlight offered. Reluctantly he offered her the torch, which she took with her magic. As she started to use it he nodded thoughtfully.
“That’s not bad at all. My name’s Cortile Sparuto. What’s yours?”
“I’m Starlight Glimmer.”
“Well Ms. Glimmer, what brings you to Abbiate Grasso?”
“Pinkie and I are collecting ingredients for a cake.”
Cortile nodded, and seemed to think for a moment. “Must be a very important cake to cross the Prench border over.”
Starlight nodded in agreement. “It’s for Princess Twilight.”
“Princess Twilight? Who’s a that?”
“She’s Princess Celestia’s protégé.”
“Ah, yes. I remember some talk about a new Equestrian Princess. That explains ow you got them to let you across the border.”
Starlight decided that the conversation was starting to drift into dangerous territory, so she handed Cortile back his torch. “Well, I’d better catch up to my friend. Have a nice day.” And with that she hurried off as fast as she could without looking rushed.
After Abbiate Grasso they had an uneventful trip East by rail. Pinkie began running through all the steps to make sure they hadn’t missed anything, and Starlight made sure they actually had tickets this time so they didn’t have to keep their heads down every time the conductor passed through. They rode all the way to the end of the line, where they hopped off at a desert.
As the train began puffing away, Starlight held a hoof over her eyes and looked as far as she could, but there wasn’t a sign of civilization ahead. “Um, Pinkie? Are we planning on walking through the desert?”
“Nope! My pen pal told me where they left their niece’s boat, and said I could borrow it anytime I needed.” She pulled out a stick with a circle on it and started waving above the sand. “Somewhere right about… here!” she smirked triumphantly as her circle made a beeping noise and she tossed it aside. She stomped her hoof down and the sand in front of them began to fall into a swiftly growing hole. Slowly, a boat rose up out of the hole. It had no mast, nor propellers at its sides like an airship. Instead, it had a wide metal tube that went straight down into the sand from the rear of the boat. Circling around, Starlight saw another tube towards the front.
Pinkie climbed aboard, and Starlight followed. “How does it move?”
Pinkie pointed to a crank at the rear of the boat. “You spin the crank and it turns something under the sand.”
Starlight nodded. “I’ll turn the crank, you steer us towards our destination.”
As Starlight spun the crank, the ship began to move forward, faster than even a talented runner, though not quite at locomotive speeds. The trip was also quite rough, like a storm tossed sea, even though the wind was merely at good kite weather levels. After about a minute she noticed that Pinkie was looking around for something. “Did you drop something?” she yelled over the wind.
“I can’t find a way to steer the boat!” Pinkie answered.
Starlight blinked, though looking upwind made that happen with or without a shock. “Nothing?” Pinkie shook her head and shrugged. “Who builds a boat you can’t steer?”
Pinkie perked up. “I have an idea!” She reached under the trapdoor in the middle of the ship and pulled out a long pole. Then she lowered the pole over the side of the ship and started fighting with it. Slowly the ship started turning generally in her direction. Starlight heaved a sigh of relief at another challenge overcome.
It wasn’t long before they got to the surprisingly large town of Ma' Zahr Alburtuqal, which Starlight was sure she’d never be able to spell or pronounce correctly. They had no trouble simply walking in and buying the Marzipan Pinkie needed. Then Starlight helped Pinkie set up a full kitchen on the deck of the sand boat. Pinkie prepared everything, with Starlight helping whenever there was a secondary task, like measuring and cutting. Then Pinkie put the cake in the oven and turned it on. “And now, we wait.”
“Okay.” Suddenly, Starlight let out a huge yawn. “Wake me when it’s ready, okay?” she said, curling up in a corner of the boat.
Starlight woke up in a dark forest with the driest throat she’d had since escaping Our Town. Her coat was damp with sweat, and she didn’t feel properly rested, but she got up anyway. Slowly, she looked around. There was a large bottle full of a light green liquid labeled ‘Drink me’ and a wagon with a glass dome covering the cake she and pinkie had been baking. It cut an imposing figure, towering over Starlight even before the wagon gave it more height.
She picked up the water bottle first, and saw that there was a note on the reverse of the label. It read ‘Try this to soothe your achy throat! :)’ Starlight shrugged and took a swig, deciding to just run with it. It had a slight tang of salt, but she didn’t feel like she was getting drunk, just a lot less thirsty. After waiting a moment, she downed the rest of it in two more huge gulps. Then she turned her attention to the cake.
“Pinkie, are you there?” she called. There was no response. She performed a locator spell that told her which way and how far to the nearest town, and it wasn’t far. Nodding to herself, she hitched up the wagon and set off, wanting to get out of the forest as soon as she could. It was starting to get on her nerves.
After about two minutes Starlight found herself looking over Ponyville from the edge of the Everfree Forest. She hadn’t recognized it, but she chalked that up to both the differences between the worlds and her relative lack of experiences with forests.
Her mind raced as she made her way towards Twilight’s castle. How was she back in Ponyville? It had taken them hours to make it to Saddle Arabia, and now that she gave it some thought they would almost certainly have been late, yet here she was. It was late afternoon, just like it had been before she took her nap. She might have been tempted to call the whole thing a dream, except for the giant cake she was even now pulling behind her.
Shaking her head and putting the thought aside for now, she carefully teleported the cake through the front doors, only to find Twilight already inside.
“Oh, hello Starlight. I was just about to go looking for you.”
“I just got back from baking this cake with Pinkie!” Starlight gave a nervous grin. “Tada!”
“Hold on a moment, is that… Is that the MMMM?”
“Um… Yeah, I think Pinkie called it that. Short for Marzipan, Masquerade, Meringue Madness, I think. No, not masquerade… Mascarpone!”
“You two managed to bake that just since I left?”
“Yep!” Starlight no longer had to struggle to keep her grin, Twilight liked it!
“Say, where is Pinkie? I would’ve thought that she’d want to be here.”
“I don’t know, actually. Last time I saw her was outside of Ma' Zahr.”
“What?” Before Starlight could answer there was a knock at the door. “I wonder who that is?”
Starlight was not having a good time this afternoon. She’d sewn a simple dress with Rarity and scrapbooked with Applejack, only to realize that she could no longer feel her other body at all. It had just slowly faded into the background, then stopped altogether. She’d gone ahead and helped Fluttershy with her animals, but now it was time to talk to Twilight. Hopefully she could figure out what had gone wrong with the spell on her own, otherwise she’d have to ask Twilight for help. Unless maybe Minuette knew anything about this sort of spellwork…
Putting that line of thought aside for now, she knocked on Twilight’s door, just to be polite, then opened it. “Sorry I’m late, I just finished helping Fluttershy, and-”
“There are two of you!” Twilight shouted. Starlight looked up and saw that there was indeed another Starlight, staring at her with almost as much surprise as Twilight. “Spike, come quick!”
Spike poked his head into the hall. “Yeah, what is it?” he asked, before doing a double take. “Changelings? Oh boy.”
“We’re not changelings!” the other Starlight cut in. “At least, I don’t think they are. Tell me something only I’d know.”
Starlight thought for a moment. “Canterlot library, tut tut, it looks like rain.”
“Technically Derpy knows that too, but I’ll accept that. She’s me.”
“Then who are you?” Twilight said, voice tinged with panic.
“She’s also me,” Starlight offered. “Look, if you’ll just calm down for a bit, we can explain everything.”
“How do we know you’re not just both changelings?” Spike asked. “You only confirmed with each other.”
“That’s actually a good point,” both Starlights said in unison. Starlight let out a little laugh while Other Starlight continued. “Let’s see… During our fight, I talked to Fluttershy and some bullies picking on her, and then you told me not to tell ponies not to pick on others.”
“Not one of her finest speeches,” Spike agreed.
“Okay, so if you’re not changelings, why are there two Starlights in my castle?” Twilight gasped. “Tell me you didn’t find yourself in the human world and bring them back with you! I thought you said you didn’t go through?”
“Nope, I’m as much a pony as you are,” Starlight cut in. “Wait, would we technically be only half a pony right now?”
“The spell was only supposed to split our bodies, but clearly our minds are also distinct,” Other Starlight mused. “Does that mean more mind was created, or that we each only have half a brain?”
“That sounds terrible!” Starlight shuddered at the thought. “I really don’t want to only be half a pony. Maybe we can perform a scan to check.”
“You split yourself into two ponies!?” Twilight screamed.
“Yes,” they answered, offering identical sheepish grins.
Twilight started hyperventilating. “Deep breaths Twilight. I’m sure it will all be fine. It’s not like creating or tearing apart a creature's very being is unheard of. It’s just called necromancy!” She disappeared in a flash of magic.
“I should probably go check on her,” Spike said. “Try not to create a whole mob of yourselves, I’m still losing sleep over last time.” He shuddered and walked off to find Twilight.
“So, we either created sentient life, one of the bigger breaches of magical ethics, or we split our spirit in half,” Other Starlight said.
“Yep, that’s about it. What should I call you?”
“Huh?”
“Well, Other Starlight doesn’t seem right, you’re as much Starlight as I am, however much that turns out to be.”
Other Starlight’s eyes went wide, and she spoke in an eerie monotone. “Carcosa.”
“Carcosa?”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know, you said it!”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. Alright, at least for now you can be Carcosa. If this lasts until tomorrow we’ll reconsider names.”
Carcosa opened her mouth, then shut it and shook her head. “Fine. You can be Glimmer then.”
Glimmer nodded. “Right. Now that that’s out of the way, how are we going to fix this?”
Carcosa tapped her chin. “Assuming we are both whole, what then? Do we both live in the castle as Twilight’s student? Both hang out with the Doctor? Do we just decide who stays and who goes?”
“Hmm… None of those are great, but I guess we can ask Twilight if we can both stay.”
Carcosa shook her head. “I have a plan that’ll bypass all that, if you’re okay with it.”
Glimmer tilted her head. “Oh? And what’s that?”
“We skip the tests, and recombine. If we were both halves of a whole, that’s what we’d do anyway. If not, well…” She shrugged. “We’ll both be in the same boat as we were before this whole mess. Whaddaya say?”
“Why specifically skip the test? Not that we’d need it but-”
“Would you want to know if it turns out we are separate ponies, fully and completely? If you squint right, it could be considered suicide. Or murder.”
Glimmer paled. “I… I hadn’t thought of it like that.” She shook her head, then sighed. “I’m still up for it. It’ll take some time to figure out how, though.”
Carcosa shook her head. “I know how.”
“What, how!? You learned how to reshape ponies’ spirits by baking a cake!?”
“It’s not about the destination, but about the journey. I couldn’t quite explain it in words, but I know how to do this.”
Glimmer tilted her head and looked Carcosa straight in the eyes. “If you’re sure…”
Carcosa simply nodded and began heading for the map room. “Bring me a blind chicken and a box of chalk.”
“Where would I even find a blind chicken? Cause I was just at Fluttershy’s and the closest she’s got is only blind in one eye. Also, why would you need a blind chicken?”
“Hmm. I suppose we could simply tie a blindfold over a chicken’s eyes.”
Glimmer shook her head and turned to go. “You know what, I don’t think I want to know why the chicken can’t watch you cast the spell.”
Carcosa closed the doors of the map room and nodded thoughtfully. “No, we wouldn’t want to remember that, would we?” She ∂ø∂©´∂ å˜∂ ®ø¬¬´∂, π¬å爘© ˙ˆß ˙å˜∂ ø˜ †˙´ Îøç†ø®
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There was a red sphere with iron bands around it and a large lock sitting in front of Carcosa and Glimmer. Well, she supposed it must just be Starlight now, since she could remember both of them. She rubbed her head as she tried to understand what had just happened. Carcosa had no memories since walking into the map room, which she was still in, but Glimmer did. After she returned with the chicken and chalk she had found Carcosa with her busily writing something down. Then, she blindfolded both the chicken and Glimmer, and said something about how it was ‘for the best’ that they not see everything. She told Glimmer that she was locking some of her memories in a mental strongbox, and handed her the key. After that, things got hazy.
As Starlight stood up she noticed the chicken was sitting in Fluttershy’s throne. Deciding to deal with that later, she picked up the strongbox. It was only about two hooves wide, but it was heavy. Under it was a paper. It read: I peeked, and I know what we were, but before I did I decided that no matter what I found, I’d put that knowledge away. I also locked up the mountain, which I guess you, I? Whoever, wouldn’t understand. It means I locked up the knowledge of how to do this, and other such things. If I, you, we ever need to do this again it’s available, but don’t just crack this box open when we’re bored. Don’t roll your eyes, I know me too well. Anyway, that’s all I put in here.
Twilight came in the room, looking only slightly less frazzled than before. “Alright, I think I know what we should do first. Where’s Starlight. Well, the other Starlight. We need both of you.”
“I am both of me. And I also have a headache from trying to accept two different memories of today.”
“You just fused?! Without testing first?!”
“Yep.”
“Uhhg.” Twilight slumped to the floor. Starlight wasn’t sure if she’d fainted, or just lost the willpower to stay upright.