Through the Looking-glass and What Pinkie Found There

by Ponky


Fit the First

||Fit the First||

“Oh, Twilight,” Pinkie Pie said with a smile, “that’s a loooonng story.”

Twilight Sparkle’s shrunken pupils surveyed her surroundings once more. It was quite similar to the Everfree Forest, although much brighter and more bizarre. The prevalent plant life spiraled and twisted toward the strange, sparking sky. The landscape bulged and dipped for miles in all directions in seemingly impossible ways, sectioned into squares as variously colored as pony coats. Glancing over her shoulder, Twilight ogled the tall rectangle she and Pinkie had just passed through. Its surface, though transparent, simultaneously bore a spectral sheen like the rainbow in bubble solution. Through the angular hole suspended in space, Twilight could still see Pinkie’s bedroom exactly as they left it.

Struggling to keep her breathing steady, Twilight looked Pinkie Pie dead in the eyes. “It could be the longest story in history and I would still demand to hear it. Tell me, Pinkie: where in Equestria are we?”

Pinkie squinted in thought. “I don’t think we’re in Equestria, Twilight. I don’t even think we’re on Equus!”

Twilight’s eyelid started to twitch. “Okay then... where do you think we are?”

“I’ve always thought of it as another dimension!” Pinkie said, bouncing up and down on a spot of polka-dotted ground.

“Another dimension?” Twilight croaked. “That doesn’t make any sense! There are no other dimensions!”

“Sure there are!” Pinkie argued cheerfully as gravity lost its hold on her. Twilight gaped as her friend began to drift lazily over her head. “There are lots and lots of other dimensions!”

“H-h-how do you know that?” The blood began to drain from Twilight’s face.

Pinkie shrugged, “landing” upside down on an invisible plane directly above Twilight. “Sometimes I see super weirdo worlds through the Portal, and I don’t think they could exist anywhere in our dimension. One of them looks a lot like Equestria, but everything’s burnt and dark and the ponies are so sad! Another one doesn’t have any ponies at all, just these tall pink things that wear clothes all the time. And another one’s really creepy: there are all these ponies hooked to chains, and for some reason it always makes me think of cheese strings...”

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”

Pinkie tsked dismissively. “You’re right, the other dimensions don’t really matter. The important things are all the mirrors in our version of Equestria!”

Twilight scraped her hooves against the marble-like square beneath her to keep from screaming. “Are you telling me this hole is the other side of your mirror!?”

“Not just my mirror, Twilight!” Pinkie said, rolling her eyes. “Every mirror in Equestria!” She swam through the air until she reached the floating rectangle and swiped her hoof across it as if turning a page. Twilight yelped as the Portal buckled, collapsing on itself and reappearing as an oblong oval. She gaped in disbelief at the very familiar sight beyond the hole: the main corridor of the Canterlot Library.

“I-I-I can’t believe it!” she stuttered as Pinkie swiped again, bringing the wrong side of a public restroom’s long mirror to their view. Nopony was in the bathroom at the time, but Twilight could see droplets of water staining the bottom of the surface.

“I don’t know why that’s the part you’re struggling with, Twilight,” Pinkie Pie said, skipping in orbit around her twitching friend. “I’ve popped up behind the mirror before!”

“And you were doing so well…”

Twilight’s back teeth started to grind. “I thought it was a trick mirror or… something! I don’t know! It’s not possible to appear on the wrong side of a mirror. Mirrors are just reflections!”

Pinkie gave her a questioning look and gestured to the jungle around them. “Oh, reeeeaally?”

“Pinkie Pie…” Twilight closed her eyes. “Please, you have to tell me. H-how did you find this place?”

“Bluish Carol showed it to me,” Pinkie answered brightly.

Twilight’s ears shot straight up at the nonsense author's name. “You’ve met Bluish Carol!?”

Pinkie snorted. “No, silly! How could I have done that? He’s dead!” She used her tail as a paddle and backstroked away from Twilight, weaving in between colorful trees of various shape and size. “I read about it in the anthology you borrowed.”

“I looked through the whole thing,” Twilight argued, “and there was nothing about another dimension behind the mirror!”

“Sure there was! There’s a whole book about it!”

Twilight slowly shook her head as her breath came out in tiny puffs. “A whole book?”

Through the Looking-glass and What Surprise Found There,” Pinkie recited.

“Through the looking-glass…” Twilight repeated, her head swaying back and forth on the base of her neck.

“It was written for my Grammy Pie! Wasn’t that nice of Mister Carol? There’s nothing more exciting than having a story written just for you!”

“Nothing more… exciting….” Twilight’s lavender cheeks were adopting a shade of green.

By the time Pinkie took notice of her discomfort, Twilight’s eyes had rolled to the back of her head. Swooping down from her perch on a bright red palm tree, Pinkie latched onto Twilight’s around the middle and carried them both to the Portal.

“Pinkie!” Twilight yelped, snapping back to full alert. “What are you doing?”

“I keep forgetting you’re the kind of pony who has to see something to believe it,” Pinkie said, “so since your big cute brain is having trouble with this place, I have something for you to see that might just clear things up a little.”

She flicked her hoof to the right several times. An array of mirror-shapes appeared and disappeared before their eyes. Pinkie came to a stop at a wide, hexagonal hole with spots of dirt on its surface and salt caked along the edges.

“What is this?” Twilight breathed.

“It’s a mirror on a boat,” Pinkie answered with a smile. She swept a hoof toward it invitingly. “Go ahead! Take a look!”

With Pinkie’s comforting arm around her shoulder, Twilight gulped and leaned forward, peering through the grime at the old wooden deck of a huge sailing ship…

||PP||

“The bowsprit got mixed with rudder again!” a gruff voice called through the thickening gale.

“That frequently happens in tropical climes when a vessel is, so to speak, Snarked!” the Bellsteed cried back cheerfully. “Back to your stations, lads! No need to fear a smatter o’ curséd rain! This only means we’re close!”

He let out a boisterous, nigh-maniacal laugh, echoed by the ear-splitting cracks of tumultuous thunder as bolts of liquid lightning struck the ever-churning sea. The dark-grey clouds swirled overhead like a dancing dome of death, and as each member of the crew strained to keep the ship from veering off course or, Celestia forbid, capsizing, they wrapped their minds around the prize their employer commissioned them to capture.

There were ten souls on the ship, including the Bellsteed, all hailing from different professions and walks of life. Most of them were rather frightened by the storm but maintained complete faith in their captain. He stood above them all in front of the ever-silent stallion at the helm—with whom none of the crew were allowed to speak—holding before him the map to the island that nopony’d heard of before.

There was one among the crew, however, who was both especially frightened of the storm and especially wary of the captain. He was a middle aged stallion with a flat, wavy, brownish-grey mane and a bluish coat. That was the only word he had ever used to describe it, for though his fur was not entirely blue, it was not entirely any other sort of color, either. No one he had ever met was able to identify it. Even his parents, at the stallion’s birth, were baffled with his strange but fascinating coloration.

He was a baker and aspiring writer, though he was not hired to the Bellsteed’s crew for his prose. From the meager kitchen in the bottom of the ship, the unicorn had been slaving away for nearly two weeks at that point in the voyage. There was no telling when they would arrive at the island—this so called “Wabe”—and the poor baker was already running out of ingredients.

As if that wasn’t enough, he had accidentally left all forty-two of his luggage boxes on the beaches of Van Hoover from whence they departed. Luckily, due to the cold, he had been wearing several coats and insulation for his hooves at the time and had not yet suffered from his lack of baggage. Still, the mishap was a stark reminder of his worsening condition: if his memory continued to deteriorate with age, he’d likely be mindless at fifty years old.

“Hey, Toasted Cheese!” a gruff voice called, catching the baker’s attention. It came from a grimy old earth pony with a rope pulled taught between his hooves. ‘The Boots’ is what they called him. “Think you could save daydreaming for after the bloody storm?”

Surrounding crewponies laughed at the baker’s embarrassment, both from the disheartening nickname and the reminder of his distractibility. He immediately got back to work, securing various riggings and magicking water away from the deck.

“It’s all right, Candle Ends,” a small voice suddenly said from beside him, making the nervous baker twitch. “Don’t pay the Boots any mind. You’re doing fine up here. Thanks for the help, really.”

The baker turned to see one of the two friends he had among the crew, a soft-spoken pegasus named Feather. She offered him a smile, squinting against the rain, and flew off to another part of the large sailing vessel. The baker sighed. He much preferred that nickname, derived from his habit of burning candles to their bases as he wrote throughout the night.

If only he could remember his name, none of these ridiculous monikers would be necessary. Alas, his memory was a fickle friend at best—perhaps even an enemy at times—and he was forced to answer to the most bizarre of titles.

“Thing-um-a-jig!” the Bellsteed cried, beaming from his perch. The baker finished tying a knot with his magic and galloped to the call.

“Yes, Captain?” he reported above the gale.

The old steed smiled down at the unicorn. “Get down to the galley and make the boys a breakfast!” he ordered through the rain with inappropriate glee. “We’re almost there.”

The baker tried to stop himself, but the words were already out. “How can you be sure, Sir?”

“It says so right here,” the Bellsteed guffawed, spinning his ‘map’ around for the baker to see, “on the Perfect and Absolute Blank!”

There was really no purpose in turning the square around. Both sides of the panel were exactly the same: a brittle, cloudy glass of sorts, like a slice of an unwashed sapphire. The entire crew regarded it with utmost awe and reverence, aside from the baker, of course, who considered it nothing more than a useless pane of quartz. Nevertheless, he made a quick bow and hurried below deck to begin preparing the meal… but not before stealing a glance at the ship’s large mirror built into the side of the Bellsteed’s balcony for nothing more than decoration.

He could have sworn that, for just a moment, two pastel faces peered at him from beyond the salt-stained glass. One bewildered blink later, both splashes of color were gone. Growling at himself, the baker hurried off, hoping that hallucinations were not about to plague his already faltering mind.

||PP||

“Pinkie, what is this?”

“That’s the Lutwidge, a big ol’ ship that sailed beneath the Celestial Crest in search of the Wabe!” Pinkie declared in her best announcer voice.

“The Wabe?” Twilight asked, rubbing her temples. “But... Pinkie, please! None of this is helping me! Just explain what’s going on.” She grabbed the grinning frizball by the shoulders and held her still. “Please? Just try?” Her wide eyes shone with sincere imploration.

Pinkie’s brow creased and a lump appeared in her throat. “Oh, Twilight! I’m no good at explaining things…” she mumbled, rubbing her forehooves together. “Remember that one time, with the parasprites? None of you understood what I was trying to do, but I thought I was perfectly clear! And that ended up okay, right? You said I was a good friend.” She sighed and slouched into Twilight’s outstretched legs. “Just… trust me one more time, okay? I promise it’s really easy once you wrap your brain around it. And you’re such a super smart smarty smartpants—I’m sure you’ll understand in no time!”

Twilight groaned. “I would understand in no time, Pinkie, if you would just talk it out with me!” She whipped a hoof toward the portal. “What exactly are we looking at? Where is this? Who are those ponies?”

“Nnnggerrhh….” Pinkie shut her eyes tightly and ground her teeth as if trying to dig up the answer to an exam she barely studied for. “They’re… they’re the crew of the Lutwidge…”

A purple hoof smacked against an equally purple face. “I gathered that much, Pinkie Pie.”

But Pinkie wasn’t done. Suddenly, akin to a balloon popping, she exploded at Twilight with bulging eyes and a flapping mouth.

“Clover the Clever commissioned a captain and crew to uncover a crazy incredible country of secrets and colorful creatures across the Pahoofic ocean!” she rambled, then sucked in a deep breath. “He was obsessed with saving his instructor Star Swirl the Bearded who disappeared during the defeat of Discord while trying to turn back time to stop the tear that emptied the terribly terrifying creatures of Tartarus into Equestria!”

She slumped into a heap on her haunches, breathing heavily while her bright blue eyes rolled around in her head.

Twilight gaped. “Wh… what?”

Pinkie got a hold of herself and sighed, resting her chin in one hoof. “See? I should have just showed you.”