Night caressed the landscape of the castle grounds. King Calathea could not think of a better sight than the grandeur of his walls. He had picked this specific color of marble as it complimented his dark, regal green coat and light, mint flowing mane. Even his crown felt more a continuation of his mane and horn than it did an accessory. He was born to rule and would always through eternity. No one had a better destiny than he and it brought him great comfort and pride. His night was perfect, his gardens perfect, not a hair out of place, not a servant out of line—WHOOOSH.
He rushed to the window at the sound of fire and echoing laughter. Ugh the laughter. His laughter was far better than this. How dare it interrupt his royal admiration of self. This laughter could only one mare. “Opaline, What’s going on out there? Who are you talking to?” He called down, raising his voice enough to be heard but not to a level that could risk damaging such a polished and perfect symphonic masterpiece.
“We have visitors your majesty,” she called up to him.
“Visitors how quant. How…” He stopped mid thought. “What do you mean we have visitors?” He called back. What a preposterous claim.
“Two returned alicorns and one new.” Opaline’s distaste was palpable.
Calathea gasped. “Returned! That can only mean—“ He ran full gallop through the halls. “Everyone, awaken!” He shouted, rising his citizens from their slumber and hobbies. He skidded to a halt in front of a blue alicorn with a mustache and coifed pink mane. “Blueregard, my dear butler, please send the knights to gather those in town. Our sun and moon are back!”
Blueregard’s expression had been one of bored duty, but lit up at this statement. “Oh at once, sire. It will be my honor.” He galloped out of the room as Calathea continued his way down. He half expected this to be a joke or a mirage, but no one would joke about something so serious. In the history of their grand civilization, there had been only three falls, all tragic. One was a traitorous cur they refuse to speak the name so as to not sully their tongues. The other two were their dearest foals, felled in a tragic incident and whose whereabouts had been unknown.
He stopped at the threshold of the exit, his eyes meeting theirs for the first time. Tears welled in his royal lavender eyes. “Oh, Celestia, Luna, it is you.”
Luna gasped. “King Calathea! It is like seeing a long forgotten memory.” She and her sister trotted past Opaline, Celestia flicking her tail which caused it to brush Opaline’s face. She growled after them.
“How many moons it has been, oh we feared the worst.” He hugged them each in turn. “Come, we must celebrate at once. I have raised the town. Everyone will be dying to hear of your surely terrifying adventures below the clouds on that pitiful land.”
Opaline cleared her throat. King Calathea did not appreciate the interruption. “My dear sire, there is a matter of,” she motioned with an exaggerated tremor of disgusts, “this one.”
The king paused, looking down at the purple mare before him. Her flank was adorned with a star cluster and her midnight blue hair flowed in the still air. “Why she’s one of those ascended! I had heard that mockery was possible but to see it in person.” He laughed as one would at a filly wearing his father’s too big saddle. “She feels familiar to us. I did not expect that. This one, she is a follower of yours, I presume?” He turned to Celestia and Luna.
“More than follower. Twilight Sparkle is a dear friend and equal and we have gifted her some of our own magic so she could lead the ponies down below.” Celestia explained. She and Luna had shared many a glance during his words. Many things about their culture had been forgotten in the millennia since they last cantered these grounds.
“Gifted!” King Calathea looked offended. “Well I suppose the trials must have been greater than we could imagine. I suppose none of that matters right now.” He clapped his hooves together. “Come purple one, you may join us.”
“It’s Twilight Sparkle,” she corrected with a scowl.
“Yes, yes, whatever. To the banquet halls my dears!”
…
“A unicorn? Here? How, what?” Hitch seemed dazed as he held his head in disbelief.
“Deep breaths, big guy.” Sunny patted his back.
He took her advice and caught his breath, “Okay. Okay. First, Sunny, we should take this inside your house. Don’t want anymore freak outs today. You know how Posey can get.”
“Good idea.” The three trotted into her house. She pulled out some apple juice. She hesitated before pulling out the cookies she had made and putting them out as well. The day was too far off track to fix with some apology cookies.
“Oh thanks,” Hitch drained the apple juice. “I needed that. So, Izzy you said your name was?”
“Uh huh,” Izzy nodded.
“How did you find us?” Hitch asked with genuine curiosity piquing his voice. “No one ever finds us.”
Sunny gasped. “You’ve noticed that, too?”
Hitch nodded, “Hard not to when you’re sheriff and supposed to keep track of everyone. I asked my dad about it a few times, back when he was sheriff, but he always cut me off. Told me I had a job to do and to not be ridicules. So I stopped, kept it to myself. I’m supposed to be someone this town looks up to and that means sometimes letting those questions stay a little nag at the back of my head.”
Izzy looked from Hitch to Sunny. “So you mean you’ve never had a new friend before?” Sunny shook her head with a small frown. “Do you guys have time for a little story time?”
“Of course!” Sunny said eagerly, standing up in her chair.
Hitch was more reserved. “I should be getting to work, I’m sure Ms Cloverleaf needs a hand crossing the road, but this is important.”
“Okay,” Izzy rubbed her hooves together. “You will not regret this. I’m know as something as a master of craft back home. Usually that means gluing macaroni to paper, but I like to think I can weave a good tale. Okay so it all started when I was a filly.”
Izzy pulled out a paper from her hair. Sunny instantly recognized it. “No way,” she said with quiet awe.
Izzy gasped, “It was you!” She handed over the paper that Sunny had made with her dad. It read ‘you have friends in Maritime Bay.’ “My mom passed away when I was young, so I was alone a lot. I had this huge tree house all to myself. It was kinda fun because I could fill it with more sculptures than I could make with these hooves, but mostly not because it was just me. I remember one night I wished upon a star for a friend. And the star started zig zagging across the sky so I chased after it and I caught it! Only it wasn’t a star, it was a letter. My wish had been answered!”
Sunny looked down at the note fondly. It was weathered and the creases ran deep where it had been folded and unfolded. The message was still clear even after all these years. “You know,” Sunny started, handing the letter back, “I had made this back when I felt so different and alone. I wanted to badly to reach someone new and to understand.”
“You did reach someone new! Ever since I got that letter I kept wishing on every shooting star that I could meet that friend. Years passed, ponies came and went, and then one night as I was walking home, I saw it again! A star that zigzagged across the sky! But I was determined to find where it came from. There’s not much magic left, but I managed to craft a little backwardsy spell of my own. It’s like when you’re gluing all the pieces in a big fountain but then you realize halfway through you accidentally glued a bottle of glitter right in the middle so then you have to get the hairdryer out and you know how it is?”
Sunny and Hitch both shook their heads. “Well, anyway, so I managed to send it back. I followed it for the whole night. Then I got tired, those spells take a lot out of you, so I tied it to a branch and fell asleep. I woke up ready to go and then when my hooves were so tired I felt like I was gonna drop, the world just kinda ended. There was nothing but me and the star and it was really creepy. But then it appeared before me! Fields of the greenest grass I’d ever seen and so many flowers! And then I met you and you screamed and then you repeated I’m a unicorn a lot and then—“
“I think we know the story from there,” Sunny giggled.
“What do you mean the world just ended? That seems like quite the detail to gloss over!” Hitch smacked a hoof onto the table.
“I dunno how to explain it. There was just white everywhere around me. It was like everything was drained of color except me and the star. And the hairs of my coat stood on end like the biggest jinxies you ever felt. And then when color came back it was here. And here is beautiful. I wanna explore!”
“Well we do keep a good town around here,” Hitch looked pleased with himself, “thanks for noticing.“
“A white void. Oh! I’ve seen that before from the lighthouse. But I thought I was just like a trick of the sunlight.” Sunny ran over to the door leading to the stairs, motioning for the others. Hitch paused, his duty calling, but his curiosity was stronger. He pranced after them.
“Oh wow!” Izzy exclaimed looking around at the view. “Is that a beach? I’ve never seen one before. It’s beautiful. I don’t really get to leave Bridlewood too much.”
“Is that where you live?” Sunny asked.
“Yep!” Izzy nodded. “It’s a town in the forest, but only unicorns live there. Every once in awhile an earth pony or Pegasus will come through, but usually it’s just us unicorns doing our best.”
Sunny stopped, “Wait, what did you mean there’s not much magic left? Like are unicorns not able to do spells?”
“Well,” Izzy considered with a hoof to her chin, “I’m sure you guys have noticed it too. Earth ponies have their nature thing and their strength. I think that’s what you guys have. I don’t talk to too many earth ponies. Unicorns have our magic. We can levitate things and make little spells and light our horns up when it’s dark. In the past there were these great sorcerer ponies,”
“Like Twilight Sparkle!” Sunny Interupted.
Izzy nodded excitedly, “Yep! And they would do all kinds of cool things like teleport and shoot lasers, pew pew. But that doesn’t happen anymore. It kinda feels like something is just out of reach but like deep inside you. Just making that star go backwards took all my energy and I was sweating more than after I bring out the blow torch!”
Hitch raised an eyebrow. “A blow torch? Do you have a permit for that?”
“Uh, hehe, no comment.” Izzy sheepishly tapped her hooves together.
Sunny was shocked. “I had no idea. I’ve never felt anything like that before.” She turned and pointed out the window. “Look out there!” Sure enough, there was a noticeable whiteness right on the border of where she could see. “Whenever we go through those fields, there’s always a feeling I get, like I forgot something at home. And I just turn around and don’t think about it.” She turned to look at the drawings on the tables from her dad. Beyond his published works, she could never bring herself to look at any of this. And she never had reason to before.
“You know, that’s kind of the feeling I started getting when I was following the star. Only I knew I couldn’t have forgot anything because I had my note behind my ear so I ignored it. I’m good at ignoring my inner thoughts. ‘Take a bath.’ ‘Fold your laundry’.”
“You know I come up here so much now to turn the light on that I just don’t think about what I’m seeing anymore because it’s always the same. Always. There has to be a reason for this.“ Sunny was digging through papers and artifacts.
She came across a crudely drawn picture of what looked like a giant lantern. Under it was written ‘lantern tests successful. Hot air balloon test successful. Testing discontinued by vote.’ “Oh!” Izzy exclaimed, “That looks like the star!”
“It’s not a star,” Sunny laughed, “it’s a lantern. You make it out of paper and then light a candle under it and that makes it to fly through the air. My dad says this is a hot air balloon. I’d heard about them before, but never really knew what they were. Twilight Sparkle used to use one to travel around Equestria.”
Hitch had been quiet, taking everything in. “If your lantern made it through that whatever it is out there, then maybe that hot air balloon could, too.”
Sunny’s face lit up and her eyes grew wide. “You’re right! This is how we could leave Maritime Bay!”
“Aww, but I just got here,” Izzy groaned.
“Leave Maritime Bay?” Hitch looked down at his badge. “I have a duty to protect every pony here. I can’t just leave.” He sighed, scowling and heading to the stairs. “In fact I should be out there right now. They depend on me to make sure nothing bad happens.”
Sunny stamped her hoof. “Nothing bad ever happens here.” He stopped. He knew she was right. “Day in and day out it’s the same thing. There’s something going on here. There’s a whole world out there and for some reason we’re being kept inside. We can’t go back to being blind to this.”
Hitch’s shoulders drooped. “The citizens do deserve better than this, but I don’t know. I need time.”
“That’s a good idea. We don’t even have a hot air balloon. We should take time to think on this. I need time to process and go over all these papers. See what else my dad knew. It’s all a big decision.” Sunny nodded.
“It’s a big everything. I don’t even know what this could mean!” Hitch looked tired as they made their way back down the stairs together.
“Sooooo can we go to the beach?” Izzy grinned looking from one to the other.
“Absolutely not. The people in town would have a heart attack if we marched out there with a unicorn.” Hitch put his foot down.
“What if I do this?” Izzy snagged a sun hat and some sunshades from Sunny’s room. She put them on, but the unmistakable point of a horn poked through. Hitch leaned back and shook his head.
“Oh wait!” Sunny ran into her room and grabbed a white scarf. She tied it over the hat. That did the trick.
“Tadaa!” Izzy held her front hoof out, the bracelets jangling, showing off her look.
“Ugh, fine. It’s your funeral if they find out.” Hitch trotted out of the house. The two girls jumped in excitement, making their way to the shore.