//------------------------------// // 2024-01-23 Reunion // Story: Lyra and the White Mares // by publiq //------------------------------// To whoever finds this letter, I’ve left Equestria in search of my long-time lover, Lyra. Do not try to find me. If anypony tracks me down to return me to Equestria, I will tell them whatever knowledge it was that got Lyra stuck on Earth in the first place. My plan is to search for Lyra until my body gives out. By Celestia’s light, I will find her alive, and then we can live out our lives together. Earth or Equestria, we promised each other. Bon Bon paused while reviewing her letter. Considering who she called in a favor from to set up the appropriate spells, it was likely superfluous—especially since that mare almost certainly enlisted her daughter to have the magical strength to ensure the spells worked. She glanced down to the important knowledge that anypony searching her house in a well-being check would need to know. Do whatever you’d like with my remaining stuff. I’ve taken what I can carry and have converted my bits to a basket of human monies. I no longer need anything I leave behind. As said above, I do not plan to return while still inside this body. You all will know what to do with it all better than I do. Hesitation paused Bon Bon before sealing the letter. The thought was one she considered many times. It’s one of those obnoxiously obvious questions any dullard pony asks as a follow-up. She snorted as she unfolded the page to add. P.S. In the tragic event that I find that Lyra is dead upon my arrival on Earth, I’ll either die of a broken heart or live among Earth’s equines. Both options would be acceptable at that point. Perhaps that is the condition under which I accept an offer from a return team. With her addendum complete, Bon Bon folded the envelope with her usual exactitude. Her calm under long duress earned her the job she finally retired from. Now was not the time for mistakes, not with the fate of her relationship on the line. She checked the tight clasps on her saddlebags, grabbed the rucksack with its obscenely bright flashlight in the stick, and then trotted out the door. Instinctively, she gave a kick to the lock. Objectively, it would have been better to leave the door unlocked, if she had the spare brain cells to care. However, her focus was on reunion with Lyra. Her benefactors would know how to break and enter without wanton property destruction. Bon Bon continued to trot gingerly into the moonlit dark of the Everfree, thankful for her flashlight illuminating any dangers that would snap her leg before she ever left the greater Ponyville area. She gave thanks to Luna for all those nights her beautiful moon illuminated while far from Ponyville; tonight’s waxing crescent, a universal beacon to all beings. Her determined hoofbeats were further powered by gratitude to her former employer. Preparations made long ago at the start of her career freed her to write her goodbye documents without distracting anguish. Such documents were never meant to be used. Tonight, documents for critical mission failure would be used on a mission whose only outcome is success. Standing at the rim of the pond, she anxiously gazed in. Reminding herself to be patient for the proper lunar alignment did not calm her nerves from the fear that she would be just some mare who jumped into an overly deep pond and drowned. “Puis j’aller aux toilettes?” A human filly exclaimed to her dam. In a flash, the lunar lock turned the mirror pond into a prism, then a silver screen. Bon Bon now found herself bumped by the strange bipedal creatures found in Lyra’s brochures. 23 Janvier 2024 A day late and somewhere the local nuance differed from her expected language. A sign provided what she hoped were translations of all the different human modes of writing. Welcome to Reunion Island Bon Bon snorted as she pulled out a big bag of mixed human currencies. It would be expensive to get off this island, even if only to visit its neighboring lemurs. She reviewed her notes. No matter how hard she looked to exfiltrate knowledge, Lyra’s trail always went cold near the end of the first moon of the human year 2024. Only half a moon remained to reunite with her lover before she was lost to history—or perhaps only half the moon remained until she would need to track her down using only Earth knowledge, her Equestrian notes becoming stale. She looked at the world map on the wall. Reunion Island was none too far from zebras. The historical scraps she managed to collect ran out shortly after Lyra turned North from the zebras toward the sandy donkey lands. “One equine transit ticket to Tanzania. I have the bits,” she told the gate agent, flashing her bag and bits. Ponies, donkeys, mules, zebras, and horses of every breed stood shoulder-to-shoulder in their containment boxes. The padded shoulder harness should not have provided such security and comfort, yet she was unalarmed at being so close to her fellow ungulates. She reached back to rustle through her saddlebags to pull out the entry paperwork. As a recent arrival from Equestria—recent even without resorting to forged documents—, her fellow travelers grumbled at how comparatively light her forms were. Bon Bon contemplated her plan. Zebras are easiest to communicate with, but buffalo and antelope are vastly more numerous. Years had passed since her foreign language training. She imagined herself resorting to common artiodactyl phrases instead of a targeted and concise message for buffalo and an unnaturally rapid speech cadence to fake communicating with antelope. She reread the final instructions from Lyra and felt deep shame at the defamation lawsuits Rarity, in retrospect, rightly launched in defense of the Carousel Boutique. Why must she have taken it out like that? If Derpy or her colleagues had delivered it, she would not disparage the postal service for delivering bad news. Why go to such lengths to accuse Rarity of designing for the foreigner’s camera? Shame would not help her on her quest. She had already failed one mission due to calling it off for being too low a reward; she would not waste this opportunity for success. The instructions for the failed quest permitted previously unthinkable actions as an end goal. Bon Bon resolved that they would be fine as tools for obtaining the greater goal. If possible, she could use her bits to call in those favors and save on bribery bits in her quest to find the location and bearing of a green unicorn, the leftover bribes saved in the hope they would be a gift for her target.