//------------------------------//
// Where the Heart is 
// Story: Strange and Stranger 
// by False Door 
//------------------------------//

Anon stalked slowly down the hall, being as quiet as he could. He could just barely hear the sound of muffled sobbing. With his ear hovering over the wall, he stopped where the cries reached their zenith.
“Flurry?” he called.
The wall fell silent with surprise. “Anon?” she sniffed. “Aren't you going to go home?”
He placed his hands on the wall. “I want my home to be wherever you are. Please let me in.”
Flurry teleported him inside of the dead space she'd shown him on the tour. There were no windows or doors. It was just a strange virtual space in the walls about the size of a walk-in closet. She'd dressed it up a little, covering the studs with long curtains and furnishing it with a cot and a beanbag chair. There were snacks and old magazines like it was a foal’s tree fort.
“You weren't followed, were you?”
He shook his head. “No. I wouldn't want to give up such an old hiding spot.”
Flurry put her forelegs around him and began to bawl. “Anon, I feel so terrible! This whole thing is my fault!”
He stroked the mane on the back of her neck. “I don't blame you; you didn't even know. It's true, I hate that I was basically abducted and ripped away from everything I know but it also pisses me off that the whole reason I was brought here was to meet you and it took me five years to actually do it. We could have been married years ago.”
Flurry snorted with indecisive sob laughter as she let go of him.
“It's been a struggle adjusting to life here and healing and rehealing from the loss but even so, I wouldn't undo what happened. If the heart says we’re soulmates and it feels like we’re soulmates then how could I possibly just throw that away?”
They kissed awkwardly. Flurry wiped her eyes with her fetlock and swallowed the painful lump in her throat.
“Well… now what are you going to do?”
“I have unfinished business,” he answered urgently. “Will you come back with me to the heart?”
“Okay,” she nodded.
Flurry teleported them from the dead space and back to the Crystal Heart chamber where Twilight and her parents were still waiting for a resolution to the tumultuous situation.
“I'm staying here and marrying Flurry,” declared Anon.
The dimensional tear rippled in response and began to shrink.
“Wait,” he cried, dropping to his knees. “Wait! Come on! Let me at least send a message back! You owe me that much!”
The rip paused its collapse but was now a smaller, more ovoid shape, hovering in the air, still big enough to crawl through, he supposed.
Anon exhaled. “Twilight, do you have a pen and a blank piece of paper I can use?”
“Are you going to write your family a letter?”
“Yeah.”
She began to magically shuffle through the aftermath of her research. “There's no guarantee any of them will ever see it,” she mused grimly. “Like you said, the apartment probably has a brand new tenant now.”
“I know but I have to at least try,” he resolved, staring at the hole in spacetime.
She floated a pen and paper to him. “I've got a better idea. Go ahead and work out what you're going to say on this and I'll make you a telewriter.”
He blinked. “What's that?”
“Something I use that might theoretically let you keep in touch with your family.”
Anon put it out of his mind for now to focus on writing the message. He wanted to address each person with an individual but short letter. His words were sloppy and his thoughts were disorganized but it was only meant to be a draft. He felt panic spurring him along, his eyes intermittently flicking up to check on the portal, fearing that one of these times it might not be there.
He didn't know what kind of force he was dealing with here. Benevolent but imperfect? Cold and indifferent? Did it understand and empathize with his plight or did it simply respond to emotions while executing some detached framework of rules like a referee?
Twilight floated a newly enchanted blank journal into the air and blasted it with a sustained spell beam from her horn. The book glowed, appearing to grow in thickness until it split into two identical journals like a cell in mitosis. Her magic dissipated and she flipped both cloned journals open to the first page. Then she set them down before Anon.
“Here. These two journals should be magically synced so that anything written in one will show up symmetrically in the other. However, there's no way to know if it will work across the multiverse,” she cautioned. “You just have to send it through and wait and see. Go ahead and try writing something.”
Anon slid the book on the right in front of himself and began to transcribe his thoughts from the other paper. He glanced up at the duplicate journal and was astounded to find his words appearing on the page in real time with every stroke of his pen.
“This is amazing,” he gasped. He stood up and impulsively wrapped his arms around Twilight’s neck in an emotional embrace. “Thank you, Twilight.”
“Oh, heh, yes.” She patted him on the back woodenly. “You'd better hurry though. I don't know how stable that rip is.”
Anon quickly finished his letter. It wasn't perfect but it was the best he'd get. Twilight dictated the instructions for the enchanted article to him to write down. Anon also added a note on the outside of the book for the presumptive stranger who would find it. He put his parents names and last known address as well as his brother’s name hoping it would be enough of a lead for a motivated person to get the message into their hands.
Anon clasped the pages shut with the little built-in strap. “Well, that's it,” he breathed, rising to his feet. He carefully lifted the book and everyone gathered solemnly around the strange portal. He swallowed and tossed the book through the way he would toss a laptop on a bed. The moment the journal was through, the rip snapped shut in a blink, vanishing completely.
Anon and Flurry hugged. He shed a tear at the irrevocable finality of his decision but also the hope of comforting his long bereft family.
“It’s going to be okay,” whispered Flurry.