//------------------------------//
// Chapter 8: Dream Made Flesh 
// Story: Through the Well of Pirene 
// by Ether Echoes 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 8: Dream Made Flesh





“Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.” Lao Tzu



Leit Motif


The ticking of my clock became increasingly profound. There was a reason for it, why an innocuous noise could become so apparent while waiting, but psychology had never been of particular interest to me. The hour changed, and my clock signaled it with a resounding tock.

“Inattentional blindness, that was it,” I said aloud, only to be reminded that—for once—I wasn’t alone.

“S-sorry?” Daphne said with a sniffle, wiping her face with a kerchief I had supplied. She was laying across my sofa, still recovering from her episode outside. There were many things she desperately needed at the moment—a bath, a trim, a full meal, a doctor, a hug—but all I could offer was a ticking clock as I wrapped my mind around the impossibility of… her.

“N… nothing,” I said, crossing my forelimbs in front of me upon my seat. The urge to get up and give her that hug was powerful, but I suppressed it for the time being. There were so many things to consider, so many questions to ask, that I wasn’t sure where to begin, let alone what I should do.

Daphne, I thought. What am I supposed to do with you now, after all this time?

Logic and rationality would have me punt her out the front door, calling her a fraud, a witch, or any number of other unflattering things. There was no evidence, of course, that the pony seated upon my sofa was her. All she had was her word, and her voice. That had been enough. What had seemed a heinous prank at first now appeared to be the genuine article. It was Daphne—of that I was convinced, for whatever good or ill that posed.

Which left the question of how—how she could have come to be a pony, that is—and, more importantly, the why. Why had she come back into my life?

A cold knot formed in my stomach. My brow furrowed. She wants something from me, naturally, I thought, scraping my forehooves against one another and chewing at my lower lip. It would be typical for one of the best memories of my life to be soured by something so simple as an ulterior motive.

It was entirely rational, of course. Eight years was a terribly long time for somepony to buck up and visit somepony on her own terms. Perhaps something had transformed her, and all she wanted was somepony to help, having nopony to turn to besides me. She didn’t care about me in the slightest.

That last thought had come unbidden, and my eyes shot open as I regarded my house guest. My hooves stilled. Oh, Celestia, I couldn’t bear to contemplate it, but it had been years, nearly a decade, and she had never once tried to make contact. I turned my head, looking away as my hooves began to tap out a simple rhythm once more, in strict opposition to my ticking clock. That couldn’t be. The Daphne I knew would never falter. In my memory of her, she loved passionately, instantly, and lastingly.

Except, in spite of my knowing that it was Daphne, it was impossible to know whether or not she remained the same Daphne. It was more difficult still to know where to begin asking questions, in large part because those questions could very well have affirmed the very thing I had hoped to avoid.

A few deep breaths stilled my heart. Fretting over what was or what could be wasn’t going to answer any of those questions. I rose from my seat and made a slow circuit of the room, trying not to pace.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked awkwardly. Splendid way to start things off. Surely that was what she had crossed the Everfree for after eight years—a glass of water—but there was no way to prepare or rehearse. It was all I could do just to barter for time. Not that any hemming on my part made it easier to talk to her. It was Daphne, living and breathing and sitting on my couch. A tax audit, an ex-coltfriend, or a visit from the Princess herself couldn’t have been more compromising.

“W-water?” she asked. “Yeah. I’m pretty parched.” She had trouble looking in my direction, her eyes half-lidded and puffy, and her lips a thin, tight line. After a public breakdown of that magnitude, she likely felt more than a little ashamed.

It was a touch alarming. I made my way toward the kitchen, collecting a glass and setting it to fill in the sink. The Daphne I had known had been just short of fearless. A sunkissed, irrepressible little Everfree monster who ruled the river valley like she was its tiny queen. The creature laying on my couch, with her face held low against her forelegs, looked exhausted and dejected. Everything seemed to shrink, and she grew to occupy my attention; I felt my gaze drawn to her haunches.

The sight caused me to shudder involuntarily. Bare as a newborn foal. It was terrifying to even consider a pony growing to adulthood without ever discovering her talent. Was it a condition of her transformation, or symbolic of something deeper? Having never discovered her destiny, her true self, it was as though she were incomplete.

Not that having a cutie mark couldn’t be a mixed blessing. Perhaps it was better not to have a talent than to have a talent you no longer loved.

The glass had overrun during my considerations. I poured a bit out and dried the outside with a towel before levitating it out to her. She lifted both forelegs to take it, pawing awkwardly at it between her hooves until it was secure by virtue of friction and pressure alone, and tilted it back into her mouth. Apparently, it didn’t even occur to her to use her horn to lay the glass on my end table, either, for she nearly toppled it. The glass was enveloped in my green aura as I steadied it, and she gave me a sheepish look.

Silence built between us, accompanied once again by the clicking of my clock. When I could stand it no more, I asked, “What happened?” Now that the metaphorical dam had cracked, the questions began to pour out of me. “How did you get here? Why are you a pony?” My tone grew more insistent and the pace of my questions more rapid. “Why didn’t you come sooner, Daphne? How come you weren’t there? Don’t you know what it did to me? What you did to me?”

I slammed my mouth shut, stemming my babbling before it could accuse her further. If my tongue had been that loose in my parents’ house, I would have been lucky to see dinner for the next week, but her eyes—those pained, haunted green eyes—cut straight through my inhibitions.

She withdrew once again, turning away from me. The shame and loss in those eyes told me my words had cut deeper than I had perhaps intended. It hurt for me, as well, her expression contrasting painfully with my memories of that bright and beautiful creature.

“There’s…” she hesitated, idly pawing at my sofa, “There’s so much to tell you. I… I just…”

Part of me wanted to start shouting at her—an ugly little part which resembled a hurt filly sitting in the dark and rain of the Everfree Forest at night. “Take your time,” the rest of me said, albeit with strained effort.

“No, I have t-to say this, at least. I never wanted to leave you.” Her own words were forced out with a great deal of willpower. She clenched her jaw and shut her eyes, sniffling as she pressed a hoof hard against her forehead. “M-my parents… they didn’t believe in you. They never did. It’s not—it’s n-n-not…” she stuttered and trailed off, unable to continue.

“But you said that wasn’t going to stop you,” I shot back, the words slipping free as I advanced on her. It felt like she was abandoning me all over again, the same gaping pit opening up beneath me.

“It wasn’t!” she cried, her voice almost breaking. It was difficult to tell whether she was pleading with me, or with herself. Honestly, it sounded like both. She shook her head, lowering her hoof. “I-I don’t even remember how it started, exactly, but mom was so angry. I had told them about you before, but they were always treating it like it was just something cute I had dreamed up.”

She paused to catch her breath before continuing, timidly glancing my way. “It was… on the trip to the mountains. I was upset because I missed you. Mom kept asking me if you were there, and I kept telling her that you weren’t invisible. Then I lost my cool and yelled at her when she slipped and said you weren’t real. I was so stupid; if I had just kept my mouth shut, none of this would have happened.”

That felt uncomfortably familiar, and I said as much. “At first, Mom and Dad thought I had just made you up, as well.” I pushed a hoof through my mane and forced myself to remember. “I had lied about where I was going every day. They didn’t believe me until… Well, after you didn’t show up, I kept coming back and staying out late. They caught me eventually, and I admitted I was going into the Everfree.”

“It just kept getting worse from there,” Daphne muttered, taking a shuddering breath. “I-I—” she broke off, stamping her forehoof into my sofa’s cushion. It took several false starts before she was able to continue. “Mom was… upset, and dad was pissed. It was supposed to be a vacation—our last one for a while—and I had just ruined it for them, you know?”

The clock ticked.

“I really don’t, no,” I answered. She flinched, and I looked away. Either I hadn’t been expected to answer, or that hadn’t been what she wanted to hear. This wasn’t coming together at all like it ought to have. “I’m sorry,” I said with a sigh, turning back to face her. “It’s just, I don’t understand. How does this lead to them not believing you?”

She shook her head. “It didn’t.” The way she shifted on the sofa and struggled to answer sawed at my heart. Seeing this much pain in anypony, let alone Daphne, was difficult to bear. “Th-that is... well. Th-they—” she stammered, and swallowed past a lump in her throat, trying a different tack. “Father told me you we-weren’t r-real, and I sc-screamed at him. I tr-tried to sh-show them some of your h-hairs that were on my coat, but Mother just told me to stop being childish. Oh, Leit, the way they looked at me…”

It wasn’t the least bit difficult to remember my own father’s stern face, like a statue carved in blue ice, as he flared his wings and hauled me home over the rooftops. Something about Daphne’s story struck me as odd, however. “My parents believed me, though, eventually. Why didn’t yours?” Perhaps my tone was a touch more fierce than I had intended. “Everypony—I mean, everyone—knows that there’s all sorts of strange creatures in the Everfree forest.”

"It's not like that, Leit. We don’t have ponies like you where I come from, and we certainly don’t have…" Daphne trailed off as she wriggled in her seat. She swallowed with some effort, then continued. "Our Everfree has a lot of rumors, but nothing's ever come of it. Not as far as I know. I don't… well, until I saw magic—real magic—I thought I had… that I…"

"…imagined me," I finished for her. "That I'd never existed in the first place, that I didn't matter, because I wasn't real."

My words may as well have been shouted at full volume, the way Daphne recoiled, her expression tightening. I fell back on my haunches, stunned.

At myself.

At her.

I clenched my jaw, dipping my head down.

It would be typical of my life. Daphne, the last creature—not even another pony—that could have given my life some validation, had just admitted that she regarded our time together as little more than a daydream. This was exactly why no pony, no one, was permitted within my home any more. It hurt too much. It hurt to invite someone into my home, into my life again, just for things to turn awkward and quiet as some old grievance was uncovered, just as they were between Daphne and I.

Her eyes grew wide as she regarded me, her breath coming too fast for her to speak. It was tempting to send her away, to give in to the spite and bitter feelings our reunion had evoked within me, but I would never forgive myself for being that petty. The situation remained the same. If Daphne truly had come seeking some form of help, it would be selfish to turn her away due to battered feelings. Chances were all she would require would be to be pointed in the right direction, at which point she could be on her way.

Out of my home, and out of my life.

At least it would be peaceful again.

I busied myself refilling her glass, needing a moment to properly mask my agitation. My forehoof began a rapid beat against the kitchen floor, likely sullying the attempt. It took effort to still, using it to push my still-damp mane behind my ear as I returned to the living room.

Setting the glass before her, I urged her on. “Go on.”

Instead of answering, she had looked away, unable to even meet my gaze.

“Your stories were full of strange things and magic,” I said, trying to prod her along. The contradiction had to be addressed. “You described creatures to me that I had never even heard of. Giants of your kind,  whole new categories of dragon, mummies, demons… I sincerely believed you came from an incredibly dangerous place, especially since half of your stories involved killing them.”

“That’s just i-it.” Her voice was barely a rasp. “They w-were just stories to me. N-no one be-believes in that sort of thing any more. They aren’t supposed to be real.”

“Just like me. Another entertaining story.”

She flinched, as though physically struck by the words. It was clear that shouldn’t have been spoken aloud. Her own words seemed stuck in her throat, Daphne heaving as she struggled to speak, and she reached out for the glass of water, only to awkwardly knock it over. Water spilled out over the couch and began to leak onto the floor.

An exasperated sigh escaped my lips, which I imagine only made matters worse. It had been a simple accident and, in the grand scheme of things, had done no real harm, but Daphne’s face contorted and tears welled in her eyes. It was a pleading expression, desperate, as though she feared immediate banishment from my home for such a simple mistake.

It was heart wrenching even to look at her, and not simply for sympathy’s sake. Even allowing for whatever emotional fraying she must have undergone, it had become painfully obvious that something was terrifying Daphne.

Me.

The thought seemed ridiculous, like so many other events that afternoon. Barring my earlier episode upon Daphne’s first arriving, I had kept myself calm and collected throughout our entire meeting. Professional, one might even say.

What could possibly be so frightening about me? I wondered, gazing into my own reflection upon one of my display cabinets. I’m just… a washed-up recluse. An insurance adjuster.

A stern-faced mare, wearing a mask of uncompromising rectitude, gazed back from the spotless glass, the image clear in the light of a single gas lamp. As it had been uncomfortably described to me by Lyra and Raindrops, it was my “work face”—the face I wore when I was forced to ask a claimant precisely what species of giant chicken had demolished his business.

That face was cracked by a sudden frown, and I tried to smooth my features, patting my hoof against them. A disturbing question had occurred. Surely I didn’t wear that expression anywhere other than work, but little recollections sprung to mind. Every so often, a conversation would end abruptly, the other pony suddenly looking uncomfortable and claiming a prior engagement. I never thought anything of it.

Pinkie Pie, in one of our sparse meetings, had once asked if I had lost somepony important. Evidently I had. Indeed, there was somepony very important who I had lost.

Right then, that very pony was acting as though she would be thrown out on her rear if she displeased me and had so far received no indication that such a thing would not occur. The whole conversation had started with her having to beg her way into my home. Reflecting back on the rest of it, it must have seemed to Daphne as if she were being interrogated by some cruel, inscrutable hostess, one wearing the face of somepony she cared about.

Tears streamed down her face. My heart raced.

Coming around to her side of the table, I stood there, both awkward and useless. There must have been a way to comfort her, but all past experience said that I would only make it worse. My hoof lifted, trembling, but it would have been easier to push through a solid brick wall than to touch the half-curled mare before me, brokenly spilling her heart out.

Bile rose in my throat, while my guts were wrung dry by a sick, twisting guilt. I turned, and started for the bathroom. It should have been the easiest thing in the world, turning away from her—turning away from the pain and the realization that I and the way I acted was somehow lacking. The floor seemed to pitch and roll beneath my unsteady hooves as I walked, however, dumping me against the side of the couch. My barrel heaved, and my pulse pounded in my ears, punctuated by the awkward silence between us. It hurt worse to leave Daphne in such a state, as though she’d caught me by the heartstrings with her tears.

Assuming I even had any heartstrings left to tug.

Damn it, that’s the kind of thinking that got me into this in the first place! I screamed inside my own head. I did have a heart, and I wasn’t going to abandon it.

Turning back towards her proved as difficult as having allowed her into my home in the first place, but I resisted the temptation to flee upstairs. Instead, I reached out and, and with considerable trepidation, touched her shoulder. Daphne jumped as though my hoof held a charge, and her gaze met with mine. Tears still dampened her eyes, and her lower jaw trembled. At the behest of my own tremulous smile, she reached out and encircled my neck, and I let myself be drawn in against her.

We were so awkward. I had no idea what to expect as we held one another, my own leg embracing her as she squeezed me, and, if anything, the tension in the air only grew. At first, it seemed as though it might have been a terrible idea, but closeness and contact gradually did its work. Like a breath of fresh air in a dark cave. Daphne’s breathing began to even out, and my own rampaging heart grew calm. She sniffled loudly, throwing her other foreleg about my neck to pull me in even more tightly.

Gently, I touched her cheek in a nuzzle, daring to revel in the sensation of intimacy, of closeness. The act had calmed my heart, but it still ached terribly. It had been years since another pony had held me like this, not since before I had chucked my family to the wayside, and I had willingly shouldered the burden with each passing day. Even Lyra, who was without a doubt the closest pony I knew, was kept at a leg’s length. I’d grown numb, but now Daphne had come back into my life and, with a simple and awkward hug, reminded me just how badly it hurt.

“Don’t cry,” Daphne whispered and pulled me tighter still, her wet cheeks spreading with a small smile. “It’s okay.”

“Don’t cry?” I asked, startled. Tears leaked out as I blinked furiously, and my eyes felt like sandpaper. “No, n-no, it’s fine,” I told her. “I don’t cry.”

“You don’t cry?” she asked, her tone bewildered. Her ears pricked up, and she shifted on the couch to look at me better, hooves resting on my shoulders.

With a shake of my head, I denied her accusation even as my voice started to waver. “N-never! I don’t cry. I don’t. I don’t, I don’t.” I repeated the phrase again and again, trying to stem the tide. “I am most certainly not crying because I do not cry.”

I was crying.

Daphne cocked her head to side and frowned. “Everyone cries, Leit.”

“I-it’s not fair. N-no pony c-cares. Ev-everypony ju-just goes away. I’m n-not supposed to ca-care any more. I g-gave up on that in school!” My voice had risen to fill the room, but Daphne was unfazed. “Th-then you walk back into my life, and now everything has been tu-turned upside-down… E-even you, y-you just thought I was a dream, a f-fi-figment! A—”

Biting my tongue, I managed to stop myself, yet it was too late to take back any of it back. My gaze lowered. The tears kept flowing, unabated by my evasion, but the last thing I wanted to see was her expression, her pity, at watching me crumble.

Pity was just a step away from contempt.

Without a word, her legs drew me against her once more. Her now silent tears joined my own open bawling. The sobs dug deep inside me, shaking my entire body with quaking gasps.

We cried, for a good while. I simpered, and I wailed, and she held me, legs around my neck as I emptied out eight years of loneliness and sorrow. She sniffled, and she hiccuped, and I held her in return as she allowed the pain of those same intervening years to trickle down and muss my coat. Eventually, we both cried ourselves out. I felt emptied, drained of so much, and it was an alarming sensation, for it left me utterly exposed.

“I-I… I should…” I meekly tried to excuse myself so that I might regain my composure, but I found my legs would no longer support me.

Daphne took my face into her hooves, however, turning my head to look into her eyes. My hooves pulled at hers feebly, trying to no avail to free myself. I whimpered, slamming my eyes shut. I couldn’t look at her, not after such a pathetic display on my part. A single glance could steal away all that was left of my dignity.

“Leit.” There was neither condemnation nor pitying platitudes within her ragged voice, however. It was quiet, barely audible even in the near silence. “I… never stopped believing in you.”

My eyes shot open. “B-but—”

Her hoof on my mouth silenced me. “I-I know what I said, Leit. Please, let me explain. I’ll tell you everything,” she said, lowering her forelegs as she took a deep breath.

“My parents, th-they…” she trailed off and glanced away, shaking slightly. Then she gathered herself and went on in a rush. “They took me away after that and brought me to someone who had worked with children like me before, and the three of them tried to take you away from me entirely, to make me believe that you had just been a dream of mine.”

My breath caught. That sounded… abhorrent.

She continued. “I-I d-didn’t want to believe them. I wanted to go find you and show them that they were wrong, but they wouldn’t let me. They caught me trying to sneak out of the house and brought me back to him, the therapist, every day from then on.” Now that she had started, the rest of it was coming more smoothly, and her voice evened out. It didn’t make listening to it any easier, and it was doubtful she found it all that easy to relate to me, either. “They—” she nearly spat the word, “—said I was having trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. He said I was acting out because I was lonely and nobody understood me. He made it all seem so rational, like I was special because I was so imaginative, and I just longed for special things to do and special people to know. Coming back with my parents wasn’t any better, because they weren’t tolerating any of it. For a while, it was like any fooling around was supposed to be a prelude to my acting up.

“I took everything that reminded me of how I had been and sealed it up. I buried myself in being normal because I thought that’s what I had to do to survive.” Daphne swallowed, her lips tight, and she steeled herself. “Part of me never stopped wanting to believe, though. I kept that box of all my things, even if I did put it away.” She turned her gaze to me and held it steady, riveting my eyes to hers. “When I went back to the forest, when I opened that box again, it was like I was me again for the first time in years. It was as if I had been just a shell, and now I had my soul back. I loved you, Leit, and that never went away. You meant—mean—so much to me.”

“B-but—” I stammered. Such a declaration seemed impulsive. After all, we had only known each other for a few months. It had been eight years before we were reunited. We each had our own lives and problems now.

Except, here I was, rendered speechless by her candid words. A few bars hummed from her lips had been enough to paralyze me completely. Her touch had been able to make me cry for the first time in years. Now her selfless declaration had left me transfixed. Her forelegs had become entwined with mine, and her grin made it very clear that she wasn’t letting go.

“Leit?” Daphne asked. She looked concerned as she searched my features.

Daphne well and truly cared. She had fought her way through every obstacle placed in her path to this moment, myself included, and practically beat down my door so that she could thrust herself back into my life.

“You… still want to be my friend?” I asked her in turn, my voice quavering. It made me feel so vulnerable.

“Yes,” she said simply, her smile growing.

“Even after everything I put you through just now, and after all the time since we last met?”

“Yes, yes, yes.” She laughed. “As far as I’m concerned, we never stopped.” Considering how wet her cheeks already were, it was hard to believe that she could be crying again, yet new tears swelled in her eyes.

I didn’t know what to say and merely stammered uselessly. “I’ll just… it’ll just… we…”

“Leit… I know it’s not going to be as easy as all that.” She patted the back of my hoof with one of her own. “We’re going to have to figure each other out all over again. Both of us are older, and we’ve been through some serious problems.”

“I haven’t—” I started, but she put that same hoof to my mouth to silence me.

“Leit, you told me you didn’t cry, you’ve been freaking out ever since I got here, and,” she paused, glancing around the room, “your house kind of makes me think of a horror film. Seriously, this is the darkest and creepiest place I’ve been since I got lost in this one guy’s haunted corn maze when I was, like, nine. Those masks look like they’re about to kill me with voodoo magic.”

“What?” I spluttered, outraged. “My house looks great,” I said, glancing around with her until my eyes fell upon said masks, “and those are authentic zebra Masks of Welcome! You… you…” Her laughing was making it difficult to continue. I tossed my mane and gave a pronounced “Hrmph!” but she only laughed harder.

Okay, so I was being a little ridiculous. Sheepishly, I began to laugh with her; it was a weak, pitiful thing. It felt just a little too disturbing to be entirely comfortable. Daphne’s return had exposed more than just my insecurities around other ponies, it seemed.

“I’m willing to give it a try if you will,” she said, after her laughter had subsided. Daphne held up a hoof to me.

Brushing back my inky mane, I considered the offering for a moment. I sighed and smiled wanly. “Okay.”

With a soft tap, our hooves met, and her face lit up like the sun.

Scrubbing at my eyes with my forelegs, I made another small laugh, stronger this time. Cramps in my legs and back made themselves apparent as I stood up, and a good stretch elicited several pops. “Would you… like something to eat?” I asked, offering her a nervous smile. “We can talk.”

More than anything else, it was an offer to give us both a moment to recover, perhaps back out if one of us felt uncomfortable upon reflection.

“I’d love to,” she answered. “I just had a slice of the most ridiculously amazing apple pie of my life, but that’s about it since this morning. Care for some help?”

When we went into the kitchen together, I was smiling broadly, but for the life of me I could not tell why.


* * *


Though it was just putting sandwiches together, preparing a meal gave me a chance to work with my hooves and magic a bit. Daphne told me she was incapable of the latter, but she did have her mouth, and she could still perform less delicate tasks with her hooves. Manipulating things as a pony, particularly as a unicorn, would apparently require some instruction.

The kitchen was likely the cheeriest room in my home. A little too cheery, honestly, with sunlight streaming in through between unshuttered windows, making the white cabinetry and tile countertops gleam. It was the only room in the house that hadn’t seen remodeling since my moving in. The previous owner had had a thing for floral decals. Terrible.

We washed our faces and hooves in the sink, and it felt like I was a new pony again. Daphne seemed to relish it especially, sighing and moaning appreciatively as she massaged her pasterns beneath the hot stream. It occurred that she had probably not had a proper bath in some time. That would certainly explain the rather pungent aroma of grass, pine, and sweat. Daphne had yet to volunteer the details of her journey or her transformation, but it felt rude to pry. More than likely, she was mentally exhausted from the ordeal of our reunion.

Celestia knew I certainly was.

A couple glasses of orange juice were poured and the pitcher placed back in the fridge, Daphne marveling as she laid a hoof against its door. “You know, strangely, I always thought you ponies didn’t have anything like electricity, let alone refrigeration.”

“Why not? I was never bewildered by your flashlight. We’re not exactly primitives here.” I dusted clover leaves between sliced tomatoes and lettuce. A knife was swept up in my green aura, smearing on generous helpings of mayo and mustard before it started to slice the sandwiches into diagonal pairs.

“Fair enough,” she said, chuckling. “Forgive me for thinking you were a mystical faerie kingdom run entirely on gas lamps and magic.” At the mention of magic, she gave a pointed glance to the knife. My kitchen table proved to be another physical obstacle for her as she adjusted herself awkwardly upon a chair. “Unf, stupid butt. So, when do your folks come around? Are they out at work or something?”

There was a resounding crack, the ceramic plate I had been using now sporting a significant fracture. The knife had snapped near the tip, as well.

 Daphne jerked her head around to look at me, her ears erect. “Uh. Is everything okay?”

Throwing the broken knife and plate in the trash, I retrieved fresh ones and continued chopping. One of my forehooves tapped out an agitated little beat on the floor. “My parents don’t live here.”

“They don’t?” Her eyes widened slightly as she looked around the house, and her face fell a bit. “Oh, I’m sorry. They’re not...?”

“They’re alive. They live on the other side of town.”

“Either home prices in Ponyville are spectacularly affordable or you’re doing very well for yourself. Congratulations in either case,” she said, though she eyed me warily.

“It’s a bit of a mixture. I started work fairly early, and the pay is good, so I can afford a nice place all to myself with enough room to display my collection. Living here is much easier than Canterlot, too.”

“Where the Princess lives?” Daphne asked as I plated her sandwich for her. “And there’s a magic school there, too, right?” She frowned and turned a touch to regard the space beside the table for a moment, seeming to study the empty air itself. “Is that unusual for unicorns to go to?”

Biting into my sandwich, I gave her a wry look. Once I had swallowed, I said, “Yes, Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. I don’t recall ever telling you about the magic school, though. Unless... you said you’d met Lyra?”

“I’d heard about the school on my way here. I have to hear all about that; a magic school for unicorns sounds fantastic.”

“Yes, well,” I hedged, taking another bite of my sandwich to give myself time to think of a suitable response. My hoof started tapping against the table leg again, and I stilled it. A quick change of subject was in order. The last thing I wanted was for her to get into the topic of school—or worse, my parents. “It’s a long story.”

Great diversion, I thought sarcastically. She’ll never know that you’re trying to hide something.

Before she could press that line of thought, however, I asked, “I’m unclear on something, though. Why didn’t you just tell your parents and this therapist to come out and meet me? That would have settled everything.”

Even better, I could go back to accusing her. Brilliant. I waved my hooves quickly to ward off any quick response. “I-I mean, I’d like to know the rest of your story. That all sounded unfairly harsh… I would like to know what you went through.”

Daphne’s face fell a touch, and she stared at her sandwich a moment before resolutely taking a bite, chewing thoughtfully. “I did. They ignored me. I tried to sneak out a couple times, but my folks caught me and made it very clear they were upset with me. I’m not sure you know what that’s like, Leit…” She shook her head, and I bit my lip to keep from responding. “To see the looks on their faces, to know that you were hurting them and wondering why they just won’t understand.”

My lip ached as my teeth bit harder still. To know what it was like to stand in your living room and to beg and plead with authorities that refused to bend. There was a torment I had hoped never to relive. I spoke up at last, my voice low. “You probably worried that they didn’t love you anymore. They didn’t know if they could trust you again. Maybe they never did trust you again.”

Daphne’s head jerked up, and she looked at me.

“Did you ever go back to the forest?” I asked her, steering the topic back around again.

“Around two weeks after I came back,” she answered, and tilted her head. “It wasn’t until the therapist brought up the idea himself that my parents paid attention, and we all went out together. No, a little less than a week and a half. I think that’s closer.” She frowned more.

“Oh, Celestia.” My own gaze fell this time. “We couldn’t have missed each other by more than two days. I was out there from morning till night, but then school started, and my parents went looking.”

Daphne dropped her eyes and exhaled heavily. “After no one answered my calls, it was just so much… easier for me to go along with what they told me. I felt so scared and lonely, like I had been cut off.”

A terrible thought churned in my mind: the sick possibility that I had been the one to fail her by not evading my parents, by not—no, I couldn’t allow myself to think like that. Not now.

“I buried myself, Leit,” Daphne continued, sighing as her ears drooped. “I pretended, at first, that I was just putting all of my stuff away. For a long time, I was just trying to fit in so that my parents wouldn’t be worried about me and wouldn’t have to send me away. It didn’t take long for me to start getting angry at myself, though. It made it a lot easier just to try and forget, to talk myself into thinking that I had just been a stupid kid. Everything that was associated with that—my toys, my games, my writings, everything—pissed me off so much that I couldn’t even look at them any more. It wasn’t until I took my sister, Amelia, back to the forest a few days ago that I felt it again. I tried to bury it there, but I couldn’t. Part of me still ached to see you again.”

“You were just… telling them that you would do as they said.” My voice sounded dull, even to me. “So your parents wouldn’t worry, and they would trust you again. Did they, eventually?”

Daphne nodded. “Can’t remember when, honestly. It’s not like I polled them every day to see how they felt. I just know that at some point they were talking about normal things and treating me like a normal girl. The whole episode was just kid stuff to them after I had grown up.” She blew her cheeks out. “I wasn’t even relieved; it just felt like the way things should be by then.”

A righteous fire rose in me. “So, that was it? Your parents browbeat you mercilessly until you no longer knew who you were, and things were ‘the way they should be?’” Daphne leaned away, taken aback, as I got up and began to pace, one hoof beating out a staccato rhythm. A number of thoughts spun around in my mind—my mother’s disapproving eyes, my father’s stony gaze, the confused looks of other fillies my age. Even at their worst, however, my parents had never tried to convince me that Daphne didn’t exist. “They threatened to institutionalize you.” I spoke as though she didn’t understand what such a thing meant. “That… that’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Sort of.” She rubbed at the back of her neck, grimacing a bit. “They never talked about hospitals or anything like that, though. I mean... there were times when I was little that I wondered if maybe I was crazy. I saw that therapist a lot over the years, too. It was easy to think that I really did need help, especially since I was kind of a hyperactive kid.”

My hoof wouldn’t stop tapping. Frustrated, I growled and slammed it against the floor, rattling the table. “That’s just it! Your parents took you, a child, and made you think that something real was just a part of your imagination! They took you to a stallion who, however well-meaning he was—”

“Man,” Daphne corrected.

“Whichever. He made you out to be someone who wasn’t right in the head! They all frightened you to the point that you were willing to doubt your own ability to make rational distinctions between fact and fiction!”

Daphne’s shoulders slumped, and she turned away from me. “When the whole world tells you you’re wrong, it’s hard to hold on to the feeling that you’re right,” she muttered.

“So why are you forgiving them?” I demanded. I violently swept my leg in front of me. “They broke you, hurt you, damaged you. How can you not be angry at them?”

Her eyes shot back toward me, suddenly wide and focused. “Of course I’m angry!” Daphne snapped, finding her voice again. “Obviously, I never wanted to be called crazy,” she continued, her tone ameliorating. “If they hadn’t of insisted on the therapist, I probably would have seen you in time, and then we could have proven everything to them.”

“So it’s their fault!” I exclaimed, desperate for someone, anyone, to blame.

Daphne shook her head, and I wanted to wring her neck. “It’s not that simple. It’s like I was saying earlier. Where I come from, things like magic and unicorns just don’t happen. Knowing what I know now, I’m pretty sure that there must have been magical creatures, including ponies like you, on Earth, but, if there are even any left, they’re completely unheard of.”

“Just because it’s reasonable for them to think that I was fake is not sufficient reason to leap to the assumption that you were nuts. I knew you, Daphne,” I said, stalking out toward the living room again. “You could be so imaginative and make it all seem so real.” It seemed hard to believe that she could be so willing to just let everything stand. The thought set my blood boiling in my veins, and my hoof tapping frantically again. “I loved that about you! It was as though I was right there with you, seeing everything as you saw it. You made my dreams come to life and took me into yours.”

“That was part of the problem, really,” she muttered. “It’s really easy for me to get lost in my own imagination, sometimes. I mean, I guess I never really did have trouble distinguishing what I was imagining from what was real—not since I discovered magic was real and inferred that I hadn’t been crazy after all. When you hear people telling you about how you might have a problem, though…”

“Then someone needs to go and revoke this man’s degree,” I said, beginning to pace back toward the kitchen, “or his license, or whatever they give out to therapists where you come from. You were never that disconnected, even in our craziest games.” It was almost surprising how quickly the memories were coming back.

I honestly believed I had forgotten everything that had happened that summer, but now that Daphne had opened the vault, the memories were just sitting there. It was similar to perusing my collection, only inside my own mind. Every little day had its own unique quality to it, and just thinking about our melody brought them each to my hooftips. Gently, I hummed a little dirge, and found myself smiling. “I seem to recall you correcting me once. Something about Vikings and how they didn’t have paper.”

Daphne blinked. Then she laughed. “You know, it’s crazy, but I was just thinking about that one a few days ago. Wow, we were ridiculous.”

“Weren’t we, though?” I laughed as well, and I couldn’t believe how good it felt to do so. It was soured, though, as I remembered what our conversation had been. “But, Daphne,” I said, getting her attention as she stopped giggling, “I mean it, I really do. How can you just forgive them like that?”

Instead of answering immediately, Daphne looked at the table for a long while. Lowering her face, she ate up the last of her sandwich, and then washed it down with a big glass of orange juice held in both hooves. The delay sapped only a tiny bit of the tension out of the air, but it had given her a chance to collect herself.

“I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “It’s all so confusing, Leit. Just a few days ago, I hadn’t even realized how much it still mattered to me.”

“Me neither,” I murmured, and she gave me a smile. I returned it, however wanly.

“I’m not sure I do forgive them,” she said, “now that I’ve really thought about it. It’s really more that I don’t think they understood the gravity of what went on—not about you, not about what was going on in my head, not anything. Someone can be well-meaning and do really horrible things without being aware of the consequences at all. Honestly, I don’t think I can judge them, not with what they knew at the time and still don’t know. I don’t believe they actually realized how much it had hurt me; by the time I was older, they had treated the whole thing like a minor incident, and I’m not sure they noticed how much I had really changed.”

Tapping at the empty glass thoughtfully, she finished. “After this is all over, I’m going to tell them everything. This time, I’m going to have proof with me. Maybe, well, I might even have the best kind of proof,” she said, with a meaningful glance at me.

“I’d love to help you there,” I said, though, as far as I was concerned, it would have been better if she had condemned her parents; what they had done should be unforgivable, no matter their excuses. Still, it wasn’t really my decision to make, as far as Daphne’s feelings were concerned. Satisfied, I lifted my own glass to my lips.

Daphne’s eyes watched the progress of the glass, and she folded her forelegs on the tabletop. “So now we get to the point where you tell me what has you so agitated about me asking questions about you.”

Though distorted by the bottom of the glass, her face nevertheless had an unmistakable air of concern. Lowering the glass back to the table, I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” All four of my legs were now crossed, to keep any one of them from tapping nervously.

She tilted her head at me, wearing a straight frown. “You told me you don’t cry, Leit. When the subject of school and your folks came up, you changed the subject so fast I got whiplash. What’s the matter?”

“It’s not all that important,” I lied, “some minor tensions is all, really.” Sweeping up the empty plates in my magic, I went to start washing them. “I’ll tell you all about it, sometime, after we sort out whatever your mess is.” The earlier reluctance to bring the topic up vanished in the face of her line of questioning. Sweat had broken out on my forehead. In spite of the lack of heat in her words, it felt as though the room had become a sauna. “You came to my doorstep completely ragged. I didn’t want to ask, not while we were in the middle of… all that… but I don’t think whatever turned you into a unicorn could have been all that minor.”

“No, not really,” she shook her head. Her eyes looked distant for a moment, and she didn’t immediately say anything.

Relieved, I went on to fill the silence. “It must be some spectacularly powerful magic. I’ve never even heard of a complete transformation spell that had such a level of depth and endurance. The closest thing I can think of is an age spell, and—”

A heavy knock on the door cut me off. We perked our ears, waiting a moment to see if it would come again. It did, and then another set came right on its heels. It sounded like whoever was at the other side had decided to use the door as a drum, which narrowed the possibilities considerably.

With a sigh, I dropped the rag I had been drying the plates with and trotted over to the door. Well, at least it meant the end of Daphne’s questioning for now.
 









Daphne


To say that the meeting had not gone exactly as intended would be a fantastic understatement.

Even then, it all seemed unbelievable. There was an uncertain, dream-like quality to the encounter. That was probably as much exhaustion and the smoldering craters of emotional eruptions as anything, to be fair. The door slamming in my face had at first confused me, and then panic had settled in to stay. Another few moments and I might have broken through her window to try and get her attention, which would have been a fine way to restart our relationship.

Yet here I was, drinking orange juice and eating a sandwich in her kitchen. The clover had gone down particularly well, too. It was just the right crunchy texture and sharp, springy flavor to go with the mayo and mustard spread. Eating it off the plate with my face was a little awkward, but aside from that it was just so... normal.

Wood-silled windows let in such bright sunlight that it could have been summer instead of autumn. For all that the counters and tables were too short for an average human to live comfortably, it could have belonged to any country home. After the dark cave of her living room, it was like another house entirely.

The contradictions didn’t end with Leit Motif’s house, though. Fear, stern coldness, giddy excitement, seething anger, dry exasperation—all were emotions her dark blue face had flickered between without much warning at all. It had not been much of an exaggeration when I had said that we would need to figure each other out again. If she had not responded to her name or resembled my memories so strongly, she would have been barely recognizable as the filly I remembered.

Not to mention she was a wretched liar, and it seemed very likely that the source of her off-kilter mood and the things she concealed were one and the same.

As Leit rose to answer the door, a surge of anger pulsed through me and made me press the table so hard the wood creaked. The thought of someone hurting her burned painfully, not least because I was almost certainly responsible for how her life had gone. If only I could have kept my stupid mouth shut.

Recriminations had already gotten me nowhere, though, and guilt could wait. It wasn’t lost on me that neither my transformation nor Amelia had come up directly during our conversation. Many considerations had been put off with the understanding that delays could be detrimental to finding my sister, but now I had spent what must have been well over an hour in the house of my only real contact and no progress had been made.

Getting up from the table, I started back into the living room. There may not have been any progress, but Leit Motif and I needed to sort each other out if we were going to get anywhere. This was a pony that I would have to rely on to help me, but it was so much more than that, too. She was a piece of myself that had been taken from me, and, like Amelia herself, I had to get her back.

Like me, she had been damaged, and helping her would heal my wounds, as well. Neither of us were any good to anyone if we were broken.

The sight of her living room had nearly knocked me clean over before. Leit Motif had seemed a crouching, sinister thing amid its shadows and haunting decor. Her dark coat had blended in well with the gloom, her piercing, green, agate-hard eyes leering as she slouched like a beast in the chair opposite me, or stalked along the floor with hooves that clicked like a predator’s claws.

Now, however, the curtains and shutters had been thrown back. With the shadows chased away and the liminal space made real, the shelves, cabinets, and cases all gleamed with the glow of lovingly polished wood. It was a dark wood, certainly, but in the light it had an air of stately, prideful elegance. Every available surface that wasn’t the floor or a sitting area held objects that had intrinsic value, artistic beauty, or both. In some ways, it felt wrong to be there, amid her many trinkets and memorabilia, like intruding on the inner sanctum of a temple. The space felt sacred in the original meaning of the word: a thing set aside with intent to be inviolate, devoted to and revered. It seemed incredible that one pony could have put all of this together at such a young age.

I had, it seemed, very much thrust myself upon her and invaded what was an intensely private space. It felt like breaking and entering.

Leit Motif stood at the door, leaning up against it with her forehooves to look through the small, heart-shaped window. Her navy coat was still a little tense, with the muscles of her neck outlined against the hair, but her manner towards me was so much more welcoming than it had been. She had invited me into this sacred place. Something I had done had acted as the key; perhaps it had been the leitmotif, or maybe it had been my story, but it was an invitation she had meant sincerely.

Speaking of ponies barging into sacred places without a great deal of notice, the door opened just a hair. Leit’s face set in a rather unwelcoming form of exasperation again, but it deterred not at all the mint-coated unicorn who pushed the door fully open with a hoof and waltzed right in, as if it were nothing at all.

“Lyra, do you mind?” Leit asked, glowering at the other mare. It was a wonder Lyra could still stand; Leit had developed a withering glare. “I’m in the middle of something right now, and it’s very private.”

“Nah, I don’t mind at all,” Lyra said, her steps ringing a cheerful patter on the hardwood. Her seafoam green coat and hair stood out vividly against a room cast in such dark colors. “I just got back from Carrot Top’s. She had these great cakes that I thought you might like—lemon carrot tortes, I think she called them.” She slid her saddlebags to the floor and hopped onto the sofa, leaning her back against it rather than laying along her belly, one hoof on the rest, as her horn flared. Golden light flipped her bags open and levitated out a basket. “I also had the weirdest encounter on my way over here. Gotta tell you all about it.”

Leit trotted over to the couch, slapping the basket down with a hoof when Lyra made to open it. “Thank you for your consideration, Lyra, but I assure you I am quite busy. And must I remind you never to eat in my living room? Again?”

“I promised I’d clean up any mess I made.” Lyra gazed mournfully at the basket. “These are really delicious, you know.” She turned a smile up. “Come on, Leit; whatever it is can be put off for a little bit. You need to live a little, get out more, meet more ponies. You sit around this place all day with no pony to talk to but your toys and you’ll go starkers.”

“They are not toys!” Leit said, turning up her nose. “And you never clean up! Nor will I go crazy! Are your eyes even open? I, have, company!” She primly pointed a foreleg my direction. “Very important company, thank you. I’m really not in the mood for games today!”

“Hah!” Lyra laughed, crossing her hooves over her barrel as she leaned back. “Here I thought your sense of humor had died back in school. You don’t seriously think I’m going to buy that you have somepony here?”

“Hi,” I said, tapping a hoof against the wooden floor to make myself known.

Lyra’s spine went rigid. Slowly, she craned her neck around to look at me, golden eyes wide.

“I’m kind of surprised you didn’t notice me earlier, actually,” I said as I moved to stand beside Leit. She looked quite pleased with herself, a broad grin splitting her features as she contemplated Lyra.

“Y’know, my eyes slid right past you,” Lyra muttered. “What do they call that again?”

“Inattentional blindness,” Leit Motif supplied, a touch of venom in her tone.

“Oh, right, and… Hey, wait a minute!” Lyra snapped back my way for a second take. She pointed me out with a hoof, exclaiming, “The blank flank from earlier! Daphne!” Then she tilted her head. “Why didn’t you just ask me where to find Leit Motif? I’d have pointed you right to her.”

Sighing, I rubbed my face with a hoof.

“So, whoa.” Lyra kicked back in her seat—which was yet another strange thing to see from a pony, but after enough shocks a girl just had to roll with the weirdness of the world around her. “If you’re from Canterlot, that would make you an old friend of Leit’s.” She tapped at her chin with her hoof. “You must have an incredible tolerance for punishment.”

“Hey!” Leit Motif protested. “I’m not that bad!”

“When Leit walks into the market, ponies cower indoors,” Lyra confided to me in a stage whisper. “They’re afraid she’s going to hex them.”

Leit stamped her little hoof again, though her fury was more of an exasperated pout than anything like real anger. “T-they do not! Stop it!” Lyra started to laugh, 

“You’re way too easy, Leit. Of course, you probably know all about that, Daphne.”

“Ah.” I glanced at Leit and frowned a bit. She rubbed her hoof on the floor, not meeting my gaze, letting her inky hair fall to cover her face.

As though she were oblivious to the awkwardness hanging all about, Lyra reached into her basket with her golden magic and popped out a moist, orange cake, which she promptly shoveled into her mouth. “So,” she said, as she chewed, spilling crumbs, “come on!” Swallowing, she beamed up at me, eyes wide with interest. “What’s the story here?”

Leit didn’t seem inclined to give in, however, as she stepped to the sofa. “Look, Lyra, I’ll explain later.”

“Aww, Leit, you can’t leave me hanging like that,” Lyra protested. “All those times I go back to Canterlot and you never ask me to look anypony up. I thought I knew everypony you knew there, too.”

“You do—I mean, you knew everyone at school. There’s no pony there I want to check up on.”

“Yeah, well, you did burn your bridges pretty spectacularly,” Lyra said with a flick of her hoof. “I would have been happy to take a letter or catch her up on news, though. All you had to do was ask.”

“The postal service works just fine, and I would never ask you to butt into my affairs,” Leit answered, and her face hardened. “For that matter, I don’t seem to recall asking you to come over, either.”

That was definitely not the tone I had been expecting. Actually, if one of my friends had said something like that to me, in that icy manner, I might well have punted her out the nearest window. Lyra, for her part, seemed to brush it off like it was nothing—no flicker of irritation or hurt crossed her gaze, and she waved it off with another flick of her hoof. “Like I said, I thought you’d like these cakes, and I felt like talking to you.”

“Not everypony likes unexpected guests.” Leit’s teeth grated.

“Everypony, however, loves cake,” Lyra countered, her grin wide as she levitated one of the cakes in front of Leit’s glowering visage. The way Lyra deflected Leit’s anger with harmless, simple little twists, one might have thought of her as some kind of emotional martial artist. “You know you want to try one,” she wheedled, “with that mouth-watering creamy goodness.”

Leit continued to try and glare at her guest, but Lyra proved indomitable. Finally, with an exasperated huff, Leit caught the proffered cake in her own green aura. “Thank you,” she said, barely a murmur. “That’s… quite thoughtful of you.” Instead of nibbling, though, she put it on the table and gently pushed the basket away from the couch. “Really, though, I’d like to spend some time with my friend.” Leit’s tone still held an edge of ice, but it seemed much more tolerant now. “You can come back a little later, all right?”

Lyra met her gaze for a while, and then huffed a small sigh. “Well, can’t say I didn’t try, at least,” she said, and slid off the couch. “Nice meeting you again, Daphne.” With that, she started towards the door.

The safe option would have been to keep my nose out of their business. There was no telling what sort of landmines might be waiting in their mutual history for an unsuspecting interloper to blunder into. In her own way, it almost seemed as if Lyra was beating at Leit’s door, trying to wedge a hoof in.

Rather like me, actually.

I settled a hoof on Lyra’s pale shoulder. “Wait, ah…” I hesitated, looking between her and Leit Motif for a moment. Offering a smile, I spoke to Leit. “It’s okay. I don’t mind. Actually, I’m kind of interested in meeting your friends here.”

Boom. There went a landmine. Leit Motif suddenly became very interested in the objects arrayed on the sofa’s end table, avoiding my gaze. Lyra gave me a sympathetic look—a grateful smile.

“You… are friends, right?” I asked after a moment. There were far too many awkward silences today.

“We’re acquaintances from school,” Lyra clarified. “I was her roommate.”

“More like a freeloader,” Leit muttered.

“I’m paying you back, as I promised! Besides, I did the chores.”

Leit tossed her mane. “You also made all of the messes.”

“Valiant messes.” Lyra knit her brow, her tone grave. “I slaved over a hot stove to provide you meals, and this is the gratitude you show?”

Leit shot her an exasperated glare. “You begged me to let you stay, and half of the need for cleaning came from your ill-fated attempts at cooking.”

A rather splendid opportunity had presented itself. Leit Motif had been clamming up about her history rather suspiciously, and all of the hints dropped so far had been rather concerning. Lyra, on the other hoof, was a third party—at the very least, she might help keep Leit honest.

“Do you mind if I have that one?” I pointed a hoof at the torte on the table.

Lyra waved. “Be my guest. Just don’t get crumbs on anything or Leit Motif will have you stuffed for her collection.”

“I don’t do taxidermy, thank you,” Leit said indignantly.

Careful to keep from spilling, I nibbled at the treat while Leit gathered herself. It had a pleasantly airy texture—fresh out of the oven. “So, I’m confused,” I said, lifting my head and gesturing to the two of them. “When I met Lyra earlier, she made it sound as if she wasn’t even enrolled at the school when she graduated. How does that work, exactly?”

“She wasn’t.” Leit looked at the other unicorn, shaking her head. “Actually, I’m not sure about some of the details, come to think of it. Why didn’t you apply?”

Lyra shrugged. “I did. They didn’t even let me take the entrance exams. My grades were terrible, and when I asked for a reference, my magic teacher laughed so hard he fell off his chair and got a concussion.”

“Can’t imagine that sat well with you.” Leit chuckled. “You’ve never taken ‘no’ for an answer in your entire life.”

“Darned right it didn’t. My folks were talking about local schooling, or maybe an apprenticeship, but I already knew where I wanted to go. A bunch of moldy, creaky-limbed old unicorns weren’t going to tell me that I couldn’t attend Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns, so I took destiny into my own hooves.” Lyra grinned, making a gesture like holding something in front of her. “It only took a little extra work on my part. Most of the unicorns that go there are either upper crust types, the ones who can afford the tutors and are in it for the prestige, or crazy eggheads like Leit—”

“Hey!”

“—so the teachers tended to assume that if you were in class you belonged there. Fooling the administration was a little trickier, but nothing a little creativity didn’t solve.”

“If by creativity you mean forging records.”

Lyra sniffed, lifting a hoof in disdain. “I did not forge records. That would have been low, despicable, and, more importantly, required skills I didn’t have! It was actually pretty easy when you get right down to it; I just made hell for a clerk at the administrative office. Made a stink about her ‘losing’ my file and name-dropping important ponies. Said I was in a hurry and I’d cut her some slack and ignore the whole thing if she’d make a temporary file so we could sort it out later.”

Going to sit on one of Leit’s chairs, I asked, “So where does Leit come into this?”

“About there,” Leit said, “she needed somewhere to stay and knew me from Ponyville. I had a dorm room all to myself.”

Lyra grinned and crossed her forelegs. “Charmed my way right through the door!”

“Came on her knees and begged. I might have put her out, actually.”

Lyra coughed, rubbing the back of her head. “Yeah, well… I probably would have deserved it, honestly.”

Frowning, I looked to them, my ears lifting quizzically.

“It’s a little stupid.” Lyra blushed. “When we were fillies, I kind of blew her off a lot. You know how it is—she wanted to hang out with the older unicorns, while we wanted nothing to do with her. Always came pestering me to help her with her magic, so I’d show her a few things to try and brush her off.”

My gaze bounced between the two of them again. If there was a difference in their ages, it wasn’t readily apparent. Admittedly, I didn’t know much about pony aging. Perhaps Lyra looked a little more mature, but she wasn’t as thin as Leit, either. For all I knew, they could be a full ten years apart.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Leit shook her head. “I was pestering you, and we were just fillies anyway. You have a good four years on me; that’s forever for foals.”

Four years, ten years. Big difference.

“Yeah, but you needed a friend,” Lyra said as she unseated herself and went over to Leit’s side. “I wasn’t blind. All of those kids bullying you and I just ignored it. You still need friends.”

“I’m fine on my own!” Leit snapped. She caught herself with a glance to me before anger really took hold. “And I do have a friend.”

“I didn’t see her around when we were at school,” Lyra pressed. “No offense,” she added to me, “don’t know your story and all.”

“It’s okay,” I said. Leit was starting to look put upon, however. Her hoof was tapping against the floor in what I had come to recognize as a gesture of agitation. Lyra was noticing it, too, and her face became drawn, as if she had been through this before. Deciding to let things cool a bit, I motioned Lyra on. “What happened, then? I understand the Princess graduated you anyway. How did that work?”

“Heh, well.” Lyra flopped onto the sofa again, laying her belly across it. “Couldn’t keep it a secret forever. Once my coursework was completed, they brought up my files. There was no hiding it then—it was plain as day that I wasn’t a student. No one on the faculty could remember giving me my nonexistent entrance exam, and then they found their copy of the rejection notice. My parents—who had been reluctantly supporting me—lodged a protest, but the dean was all for having my grades stricken from the record and turfing me out onto the street.”

“But the Princess stepped in?”

“No,” Leit said, and actually smiled a little. “I did. Lyra was, well, crying her eyes out—”

“Stoically facing my fate,” Lyra said in a strident tone. No one paid her any heed.

“The other students and I met with her teachers,” Leit went on. “Whatever her grades had been with her teacher back in Ponyville, she had more than made up for them at the magic school. The professors were a lot harsher than a primary school teacher, too, so she definitely earned them.” She glanced at Lyra with a puzzled frown. “Honestly, I don’t know how you pulled it off. There weren’t enough hours in the day for you to keep up with all the coursework and the projects, and I could swear I saw you working jobs most of the day.”

“There weren’t,” Lyra said, collapsing dramatically. “I was lucky if I got to sleep every third day. After you passed out from studying I’d borrow your books and read until my eyes bled.”

Leit tilted her chin upwards. “I never passed out studying!”

“Yeah? Tell that to the drool on the pages.” Lyra scoffed and stuffed her face with another confection.

“Ahem!” Leit pointedly ignored her. “They—that is to say, the professors—all vouched for her, but the dean still didn’t budge. She hadn’t paid the entrance fees, and the dean wasn’t inclined to let her since she thought it was disgraceful that somepony would violate the ethics code to that degree, but…”

“That’s when Princess Celestia intervened,” Lyra said. Her face practically lit up at the memory. “I’ll always remember what she told me.”

“‘No pony should ever be ashamed of hard work, determination, and a willingness to believe in herself, especially in the face of adversity and hardship. If any unicorn can be said to be gifted, it’s you, Lyra. It is with great pride and no small satisfaction that I give you your diploma,’” Leit finished. There was a shared look between them, and for a moment it seemed as if the room was aglow with warmth. “Was bursting into song really necessary?”

“Yes, yes it was,” Lyra said airily, giving her rear a shake, emphasizing the golden harp. That might have been to hide the sudden tightness in her throat though. “Besides, it got me meeting Princess Cadance, so I dare say it was a great career move.”

“Okay, I admit, I don’t get it,” I said, as their story wound down. “There’s this touching narrative of how Leit came through to help Lyra, and you two graduated together with the Princess’s blessing. Now you’re both back here in Ponyville, pursuing whatever careers, and you seem to work pretty well together. Where’s the disconnect?”

“Ah. Well.” Lyra tapped her front hooves together. Leit jerked up, and the warmth was instantly sucked out of the room. “You’re a little off. You see… Leit didn’t graduate. You didn’t know?”

Leit stiffly walked back a step. “I’d really rather not talk about this.”

Lyra blinked and then looked at Leit Motif. “She really doesn’t know? I thought you two were friends.”

“No! I mean, yes, she’s my friend, but she didn’t know!” Leit rapped her hoof against the floor in another staccato rhythm. It was a habit she had never displayed as a child, and it was a little off-putting—rather like watching someone mutter to themselves. “You don’t need to tell her, either. It’s not important.”

“Not important? Criminy, Leit!” Lyra half-stood from the couch, then waved her hooves as Leit took another step back towards the stairs. “I know, I know! I said it was okay that we didn’t have to talk about it, but are you hiding things from your friends now? That’s not cool.”

Taking another few steps back towards the stairs, Leit leaned back from the pair of us. I rose to my feet, stepped between them, and laid a hoof on Leit’s back. “Look, it’s all right. You’ve had a really hard time today, Leit. So have I, for that matter, and all this is getting pretty heavy.” Turning to Lyra, I said, “It’s fine. She doesn’t have to talk about it if she doesn’t want to.”

“Oh, well. All right.” Lyra took hold of the torte I had been eating and bounced it on her hoof, narrowing her eyes at the dessert. Then she chucked it towards me. “Here. Catch.”

With a yelp, I reached out and tried to catch it. Naturally, it only bounced off my hooves, careening towards a table. Leit snapped to attention and enveloped it in green magic, stopping it just short of splattering all over her collection.

“Speaking of hiding things from friends…” Lyra tapped a hoof against the hardwood floor. “Your new friend Daphne’s from Canterlot, but she doesn’t have an accent. Obviously knew nothing about the school. Didn’t know anything about your spectacular public breakdown—”

I gawked at Leit. “Breakdown?”

“—and she hasn’t got a cutie mark. She stuffed her face instead of picking her food up or using magic. I’ll bet she doesn’t even know how to pick things up.” Walking up to the two of us, she weighed me mentally. “Wait, I think I know what this is.”

That put me back a step. I raised a hoof defensively and looked to Leit, who gazed back with an equally slack expression.

Lyra jabbed her hoof at me. “You’re a vile shapeshifter, here on behalf of Discord to sow Chaos among innocent Ponyvilleans! Well, you may have sucked Leit’s brain out and turned her into a listless zombie, but you’ll find me to be made of sterner stuff!” Lyra’s horn lit up and intricate panels of golden light fashioned themselves into a shining suit of pony armor about her.

“Who the hell is Discord?” I stared back, giving her a flat expression. Really, I probably should have expected this to take a turn for the ridiculous at some point. I really wanted to examine that magic, too, but now didn’t really seem to be a good time.

Gaping back at me, Lyra had to take a moment. “You don’t... know who Discord is?”

“No.”

“Big dragon slash pony slash lion slash whatever thing?” Lyra tilted her head. “Engulfed Equestria in a storm of chaos? Only defeated by the Elements of Harmony? Lives out on Fernfallow Way back in Canterlot?” The armor fell away into mist as Lyra’s concentration faded.

“The Elements of what?” I asked, and moved past her and took a bite out of the hovering torte. “Yeah, I could pretend I know, but it’s kind of past the point now.” Stuffing it in, the rest was devoured in just a couple swallows to give my sandwich company. It was a reminder that breakfast had been at the crack of dawn.

“Lyra.” Leit stepped forward, putting a hoof to her other friend’s side. “I’m sorry. I was going to… well, all right, I probably wasn’t going to tell you until I knew more about what was happening. This all came as a shock to me, as well.” She paused for a minute, and then jabbed her in the ribs. “Also, what precisely led you to think I was a listless zombie?”

“Ow.” Lyra rubbed her side. Her gaze was fixed on me, though she glanced at Leit out of the corner of her eye. “What exactly is going on here? Who—or what—is Daphne?”

Leit opened her mouth a few times. “She’s my oldest friend,” she finally managed. “She came out of the blue and back into my life, a piece of me I’d forgotten about. Someone who meant more to me than anything in the world.”

A flicker of uncertainty passed over Lyra’s eyes. She glanced between me and Leit Motif. It was a little embarrassing to be referred to so, particularly in front of another person, but, when my gaze met Leit’s, it found a steadiness there that had been missing earlier.

It was strange, in a way, how anticlimactic this moment felt. In a large sense, this was the point to which this entire day was building—to ask Leit Motif to help. After everything else we had been through that day, however, it felt exhausting, like we had just climbed and descended a mountain, only to be faced with a petty hill before we could really get home. I offered her a small smile. “I think I owe you an explanation then.”

Leit Motif turned to Lyra, who put up a hoof before the other could speak. “Leit, if you think I’m leaving you alone right now, you’re crazy. I’ve never seen you act like this, and I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s going on. I’m your friend, too.” Lyra looked to me, her face firm. Leit’s jaw worked without a word, her eyes soft and vulnerable.

That gave me a moment’s hesitation. It had been the plan to speak to Leit Motif alone and let her decide where to take it, since she knew her own world and who to trust in it. Still, sending Lyra away would only increase her suspicion. Coupled with her concern for Leit, that may have created exactly the sort of problem I had been hoping to avoid.

I stepped over to them, shaking my head. “No. It’s all right with me if Lyra hears it, too.”

“Great! Storytime.” Lyra flopped back into the couch and leaned back, her forelegs up on the back of the sofa. For all that it was an exaggerated pose of ease—if a peculiar one for a pony—her eyes never left me nor lost their golden intensity.

I took a deep breath, muttering, “Never thought I’d get an audience for this. From the top, then. Lyra, you’re partly right—I’m not a pony. Not normally, at any rate. It wasn’t by choice, but I am now.”

Lyra’s hoof twitched, but she didn’t interject. She ran it through her mane before returning to her original posture.

“Leit Motif and I met as children, around eight years old. I had taken to playing in the forest near my house and, one day, I found her by an old tree. We spent the whole summer together, with her journeying out from her home in Ponyville into what you know as the Everfree Forest to visit me every day. Eventually, though, my parents stopped me from coming and, well… it’s a long story, but the short of it is that I no longer believed that Leit Motif nor Equestria were real.” The image of Leit on that first day, looking tired and dirty, resurfaced, and I turned to regard her. “You never did tell me why you were so far out there.”

Rather than answer me directly, Leit scuffed her hoof along the floor.

“You went off into the Everfree on your own?” Lyra asked. “Both of you? As kids?”

“Well, on my side, it isn’t really all that dangerous.” Putting a hoof up, I flicked my tail towards her when she shifted her weight in the couch and opened her mouth to speak. “I’ll explain the sides thing in a minute. Anyway, back there I wasn’t a pony. I’m what’s called a human.” I paused for effect there.

There wasn’t even a flicker of comprehension. “Sort of a bipedal, mostly hairless creature?” I offered.

“What, like a minotaur?” Lyra glanced towards the swords hanging on Leit’s wall.

“Not really.” Leit Motif shook her head. “Sort of a strange mishmash of different creatures. They’ve got long manes, no tails, hands, skinny limbs, and long feet.”

Lyra grimaced. “Sounds like a demented rabbit. Are you sure you’re not some sort of horrible monster come to devour us?”

“Pretty sure, thanks.” I rolled my eyes.

Lyra leaned forward, interest lighting up in her eyes. “How did you get this way, though? Jump ahead to that part.”

Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself. “Yesterday, my little sister and I were out in the woods. We had a, a f-fight and got separated. I followed after her, and found that some monsters had ki-kidnapped her.” It was harder to say than it should have been. It was hard to look at Leit Motif’s face, to see her growing shock and dismay as her face fell. “I fought with them, but they shot me with a wand thing and turned me into… well, this.” My hoof gestured over myself vaguely.

Heaving a sigh, I looked up to the two of them. “That’s why I’m here. Her kidnapping proved to me that you all existed, and I need help. I’m sorry, Leit, I…” I cast her a plaintive look. “I really do care about you, and I want to reconnect with you so things can be like before, but I have to save my sister before I can get my life back on track. I got turned into a pony, and I came from another world to save my sister.”

Head bowed, legs set, my ears low, I waited. Leit Motif looked—well, not hurt exactly, but there was a definite uncertainty in her. She was shuffling her hooves and rubbing her leg, trying not to look at me directly. Small surprise, really, considering that I pretty much admitted that she wasn’t my first priority.

Lyra came up to me and caught my gaze with her own. “That’s some heady stuff. It’s kind of crazy in a way—weird creatures from another world? A magic wand that turns them into ponies? You sound plenty sincere, though.”

“I believe her,” Leit murmured. She joined us and leaned into me, slightly. “I’m… I’m really sorry to hear about your sister. I understand. You must be out of your mind with grief, and I put you through all that…”

I pressed back at her side and smiled. “It’s okay. I would have been pretty freaked out if you showed up at my doorstep, too.”

Lyra rubbed at her neck. “Well, I certainly wasn’t going to turn my back on her either, particularly not without hearing her out first. All right, say I believe you, too—I guess I should start by asking you for a few more details.” She examined me a little more closely and prodded my side experimentally, making me wince as she touched a bruise. “Actually, we should probably find out if you’re all right. Heck, you were pretty much trying to shovel that cake in; are you hungry? You sure look beat all to Tartarus and back. Maybe we should get her to a doctor?”

“Uh, well, I did have time to collect some supplies. I didn’t know how far away Ponyville was, let alone if we could have found it at all. I don’t think I’m sick, and nothing is broken.” I waved Lyra’s hoof away as she started to poke at me again. My stomach gave a little growl of rebellion. “Though I haven’t eaten since breakfast this morning and it’s only—whoa, past five already? Nice clock by the way.”

“Oh! Do you like it?” Leit beamed, “I picked it up when I visited Hollow Shades. It performs a clever little play with clockwork at noon, but I can trigger it if you’d like to see—”

“Later!” Lyra stepped up, pushing Leit towards the door. “We’re going out now.”

“Ou-out?” Leit gasped, so surprised she let Lyra shove her right to the entryway.

Lyra twitched her tail, gesturing me after her as she pushed the door open. “Yeah, Daphne is hungry, isn’t she?”

“There’s plenty of food here!” Leit protested, pulling back.

Lyra gave Leit a steady look. “I’ve seen the sorts of food you stock here. I know what kind of food you prepare.”

“What?” Leit’s eyebrows shot up. “My food is perfectly serviceable.”

“Therein lies the problem.” Lyra shook her head. “You’ve mistaken serviceable for good. If all I wanted was bargain bread, watery tomatoes, and cheap clover, I’d put myself in the hospital. Speaking of, do you still prepare the exact same sandwich for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?”

Leit Motif tried not to look directly at either of us, staring into the middle distance. “I happen to like routine.”

“Well, guess what? Your friend from a million years ago popped in and wrecked any hope of you having a safe, predictable day.” Lyra put her head to Leit’s side and pushed her outdoors.

Trotting after them, I watched their little scene with an amused shake of my head. “I’m perfectly okay with eating in. Actually, I’d kind of prefer it. It’s going to be hard enough explaining things without worrying about other people listening in. I’m kind of in a hurry, too.”

“See? Even she wants to go back in!” Leit darted for the door, only for a golden flash of magic to slam it shut in front of her.

“I wasn’t exactly thinking about going to a restaurant.” Lyra bounced Leit’s glare off with her usual oblivion. “More along the lines of picking something up and going to talk to somepony who might be able to shed some light on what’s going on. I’ve certainly never heard of magic that could totally alter someone in a deep and permanent fashion like this before. Kidnapping is also something that would call for intervention.”

“It’s definitely beyond my expertise.” Leit rubbed her face and glanced once more at the treacherous door before nodding. “I’m sorry, Daphne, but Lyra is right. We want to help, but we’d need to research your condition. Likely your assailants, too—if they weren’t ponies or something common like diamond dogs, then I probably don’t know them.”

I shook my head. “Uh, they definitely didn’t look like dogs. Three of them looked like lumpy humans, and one of them was this sort of strange panther-thing with glowing blue eyes.” My hoof rubbed the spot where the wand had scored its fateful hit. It didn’t really feel like anything, but just the memory of being shot was enough to bring back some unpleasant associations. “They called it a Morgwyn.”

The two other mares exchanged glances and then shook their head in unison. “No,” Leit said. “I definitely would have noticed creatures that looked especially human during my studies, and I’ve never heard of anything like that before. There’s one pony who might. We need to take you to see her as soon as possible.”

“‘Her’ who?” My ears pricked forward.

“Our local Princess,” Leit said. “We went to school with her, and she makes both of us look like amateurs when it comes to magic.”

“Not that she really cares to be called Princess.” Lyra grinned. “We just call her Twilight Sparkle.”


* * * * * * *