Every EMT immediately stepped in between Mag and John. It occurred to Mag that making her entrance with a physical threat to the wellbeing of their patient might not be the best way to introduce Celestia to emergency services.
"Just kidding," said Mag. It didn't seem to help. It certainly didn't inspire conversation.
Celestia clopped up behind her with a smile. "Always on the record," she whispered as she passed. Louder, she said, "Greetings, humans. My name is Princess Celestia. I come from the cursed world of Equestria, and I am searching the other worlds for a way to break that curse. If humanity is willing, I'd like to offer my help to your species in any capacity you would like, so long as it's peaceful and ethical. In return, I would appreciate any help you can give with breaking the curse."
"And now she calls it a curse," said Luna.
No one moved. At least the camera appeared to be rolling, so Celestia hadn't been completely wasting her breath. Celestia herself didn't seem bothered; she sat down next to Mag and waited.
Birds chirped.
The red light on the camera turned off. The cameraman didn't notice.
Then a tall EMT woman with square shoulders stepped forward and said, "You're not shivering."
"She doesn't get cold," said Mag.
"I meant you," said the EMT. Her name tag said “Lisa.”
"Oh, well, you know, the cold between the worlds gets a little easier to put up with when you accept that you can get as warm as you like and it'll still be there, that you're not dying, and that it'll go away on its own if you give it time."
Lisa the EMT walked briskly up to Mag, grabbed her wrist, and checked her pulse. “Pulse a little fast, breathing normal.” She shined a tiny but fiercely bright flashlight in Mag's eyes. "Look at me. No, open your eyes. Thank you." She turned around to her fellow EMTs. "Pupils dilating normally." This seemed to break up the stasis. One of the EMTs got out a notepad and started writing. A member of the news team fumbled out his phone and tried to dial, but dropped it on the ground and couldn't seem to pick it up without dropping it again. The cameraman noticed that something had happened to his camera and patted his numerous pockets for something or other. John kept on staring.
“Lay down. Reno, get her hair.” A strawberry blond man with broad shoulders darted in with a towel and dried off Mag's hair. EMT Lisa turned back to Mag. "I said lay down. Lay down! Thank you. Who's the president of the United States of America?"
"Argh – Caldwell," said Mag. EMT Reno's approach to drying people's hair was that of a rescue worker in a hurry rather than that of a hairdresser who cared about tips.
"What day is it?"
"Saturday," said Mag.
"What state is this?"
""California."
"Mentating properly," said the EMT.
"No. No, hold on," said Mag.
"Yes?"
"Are you just going to ignore the talking, flying unicorn?"
"Yes," said Lisa firmly. She held up a thermometer. "Put this in your mouth, please." Mag complied. Celestia watched everything unfold without comment, a picture of passivity and docility.
"Preexisting conditions?"
"Half a pack of cigarettes a day. Also, my friends are magical talking unicorns."
"Tobacco, okay. Anything else relevant?"
Mag gestured furiously at Celestia. "How is the painfully beautiful alien goddess not relevant?!"
"There wasn't anything about that in the hypothermia sections of my med texts. What I do remember from doing this for five and a half years is that someone who pops out of a frozen lake and isn't shivering is dying." EMT Lisa shoved the thermometer into Mag's hand. Mag put it into her mouth. Lisa pulled it out of her mouth, turned it around, and put it back in Mag's mouth the right way. “Reno, where the hell is the rest of the kit?”
EMT Reno fetched the kit without complaint, a dark blue canvas duffel bag. Lisa took the towel from him and scrubbed water off of Mag's arms. Mag snatched away the towel and began to dry herself, glaring at EMT Lisa.
“Are you refusing care?” said EMT Lisa.
“If I say yes, do I have to give the towel back?” said Mag.
“Yes,” said EMT Lisa.
“Then no. And your thermometer just beeped.”
“Then take off your shoes so I can check for frostbite,” said EMT Lisa. Mag complied with bad grace, though, to be fair, her boots were definitely sloshing.
EMT Reno took the thermometer out of her mouth. “96.9 degrees,” he said.
“Be more gentle, Reno,” said EMT Lisa, pulling Mag's left sock off by the toe.
“Oh for fuck's sake,” spat Mag. “Yo, news people! Don't you have phone calls to make? An alien showed up and there still aren't any black helicopters. If I don't see some menacing men in tuxedos and sunglasses pretty quick—”
Celestia cleared her throat.
“—I'm going to make purely figurative threats and then be annoyed in a cooperative and nonthreatening manner. Why isn't anybody interviewing my unicorn?”
“So are you John's girlfriend?” said EMT Lisa.
“No, I just met him this morning.”
“Do you think he's seeing anybody?”
“Ha! Seriously? Fine fine fine, don't get mad. I don't know, go ask him.”
“Good luck!” said Celestia with a smile. EMT Lisa's nostril twitched and she hurried away with the thermometer.
Mag watched her go with raised eyebrows. “I was going to ask if there was some kind of spell you could do to erase their memories, but it looks like you're already invisible to half the people here. Lucky you, eh?”
“Oh, they see me very well indeed,” said Celestia.
“I know. I was kidding. But what do you think the EMTs would do if I told them my new friend had hypothermia?”
“Oh! Do it,” said Luna.
“Nothing, because I would teleport you and me to the top of the hill before Ms. Lisa has the chance to think seriously about what to do in that situation,” said Celestia.
“Or maybe you could let me do it, because I really want to see one human pass out before the end of the day,” said Mag.
“Then you'll be needing a mirror, because you're looking worse and worse. Luna, how is she?”
“Lightheaded, jittery, and weak,” said Luna.
“She's exaggerating,” said Mag. “Luna, stop exaggerating.”
“I shall exaggerate as much or as little as I please. Neither of you need worry, however; the solution to Mag's illness is to sleep again, this time without my forcing your dreaming mind to behave as your waking mind does. She must dream.”
Celestia nodded, but her eyes were elsewhere. Mag followed her gaze to one of the reporters, who was approaching with a notepad. He was a potbellied man with a red-orange mustache and an old gray beanie, in his thirties or forties. He had a notepad and wore the face of a man about to wager his soul.
“You're Ms. Margaret Wilson?” said the man.
”Yeah, and this is Princess Celestia,” said Mag.
He stood up straight. “Does, uh, do... so it looked like her majesty speaks English?”
“I do,” said Princess Celestia. “May I help you, sir?”
He clutched his tie. “Your, er, your majesty, and you as well, Ms. Wilson, would you two care to answer a few questions?”
“Ah,” said Celestia, pleased.
“How about Luna?” said Mag.
“What?” said the reporter.
“You're talking to one human and two aliens,” said Mag. “The third has no physical form and she lives in my head.”
The reporter stared at her helplessly.
Mag nodded. “Too weird for you. Got it.”
“Do write that down though, please,” said Celestia. “That part is going to be difficult to explain to humanity, and it might be best if we mention it as early as possible.”
“I was rather hoping to be the secret princess,” said Luna.
“Don't worry; a lot of people aren't going to believe you exist,” said Mag.
“Good, then there is fun still to be had,” said Luna.
The reporter had a stub of a pencil set against the top line of his notepad, but hadn't written a word yet, or even looked down at it. He'd lost his nerve.
“Maybe you should just tell him what to write,” said Luna.
“Well then why not begin with what I said a moment ago? 'Greetings, humans. My name is Princess Celestia...'”
Celestia went through it all again for him, verbatim, matching the speed of his writing.
“There. I think that's a good start, don't you? Now write what Mag said, if you please.”
“Mag?” said the reporter.
“Me,” said Mag. “I said something about how Luna lives in my head because she doesn't have a body.”
He hesitated.
“If you give me the notepad then I could write it down for you,” said Mag, but the offer just seemed to make him uncomfortable.
Luna spoke up. “You asked them if they cared to answer a few questions, did you not?”
He scurried off to have a lively sotto voce discussion with the cameraman, came back, and said, “I just wanted to ask a few questions. How long have you been on Earth, your majesty? Wait, no, first, Ms. Wilson, could I have your contact information?”
“No, because I don't have a phone and I don't give out my street address,” said Mag.
“Since yesterday afternoon,” said Celestia.
“But do you mind if I contact you later?” said the man without looking up from his notepad, which was now rapidly filling up.
“Sure. Who are you again?”
“Bob, Bob Carpeter,” said Bob. He shifted his notepad to his other hand, pulled a bent business card out of his pants pocket, and passed it to Mag. “Please, please, please feel free to contact me within the next one or two days so we can set up a longer interview.”
“You said your name was Carpeter?” said Mag.
“Yeah, the business cards are wrong,” said Bob sheepishly.
Mag took Bob's pencil from between his fingers, crossed out the superfluous “n” the printers had put in “Carpeter” on the card he'd given her, and handed the pencil back to him. “Got it. More questions?”
“Yes.” Bob's demeanor changed. “Your majesty, how did you get here?”
“Through the reflection in the lake. Reflections are the edges of universes, and one can pass into and out of the spaces between universes if one has the magic for it.”
“What do you mean by magic?”
“Magic is the manipulation of the aether, which is a kind of energy field—that's magic energy, not heat or kinetic energy or anything like that—that permeates most universes. Humans can do it, or at least one can, but I've yet to meet a human that can actually perceive the aether. Then again, I haven't met very many humans, so who knows? Maybe it's just rare. Here, if I do this—” Celestia levitated a rock “—do you sense anything?”
“Did that rock just levitate?” said Bob, pointing with is pencil.
“Yes,” said Mag.
“Well, I see a rock floating in the air with a kind of faint glow around it, and another one around your horn. That's magic?”
“Yes,” said Celestia. “My sister, incidentally, has taught Mag a bit of magic as well.”
Bob looked at Mag. Mag cast her light spell, and it was much dimmer under daylight. Bob leaned in and squinted at it. “Huh.”
“It's my first day,” said Mag defensively. Technically true, so long as no one brought up the subject of subjective time.
“But you can teach this, ah, 'magic' to humans?” said Bob.
“As a matter of fact, I hope to teach it to humanity,” said Celestia.
“We need to talk about that,” said Mag through the side of her mouth. If Celestia put magic in the hands of humans, they'd weaponize it within the year. Now Celestia had promised, but maybe there was still something they could do, like keeping the more dangerous things to herself. Of course, that might not work either, as Mag had already come up with a couple of ways to hurt people using just the spells she knew so far. Could humans turn a light spell into a weapon, given enough time? Obviously. Somehow.
The cameraman had moved in to film over Bob's shoulder. Mag tried to keep Bob's head in between her and the camera lens, but Bob and the cameraman both kept shifting.
“Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your majesty?” said Bob.
“Certainly,” said Luna. “I am, or perhaps it would be better to say was, the princess of the night. I have other titles and so does my sister Celestia, but that was my first and greatest responsibility. And it has just occurred to me that you were addressing my sister.”
“I could tell you a great deal about both my sister and me,” said Celestia. “What kind of answer are you looking for?”
“Are you real?” said a hoarse voice from ten feet to the left. It came from a tall, tall EMT who had approached without Mag noticing. He was one of those permanently flush-faced people, with clusters of vivid freckles across his cheeks, and the cold had given him a dark red nose with matching earlobes. Something in his eyes suggested that, somewhere inside him, the sight of Celestia had knocked off a scab and left some wound open to the world.
Celestia faced him, read his nametag, looked up at him. “Yes, David, I'm real.”
He looked back down at her. “I don't know what to do about you,” he said nakedly.
“You don't have to do anything about me, David,” said Celestia, full of kind laughter.
Mag covered her eyes with a hand. She'd been prepared for stomping boots and fatigues and rifles, followed by labcoats and scalpels. She'd expected Celestia to bring out the selfish, callous, consuming, uncaring black heart of mankind. But so far everyone insisted on being a dork.
The cameraman had hunkered down. He now wore an “I'm five years old and it's Christmas morning” grin. Most of the humans had drifted forward like puppies faced with a stranger that smelled like food, except for Lisa and John, who had gotten to talking. Mag couldn't hear most of their conversation, but she caught the word “dinner.”
It turned out that not one of them had a cigarette.
***
After another 20 minutes of progressively more painful dorkery (the camera guy was named Benedek, loved 90's sitcoms, and had an “I want to believe” poster rolled up behind a door at home), a HAZMAT team arrived. One HAZMAT suit ordered all humans to clear the area, except for Mag, who needed to be quarantined as well. The news team was ushered off and the EMTs were made to leave.
“And I?” said Celestia.
“We have a vehicle and a safe location prepared, your majesty,” said the HAZMAT suit.
“I'm sticking with her,” said Mag.
“We have a separate vehicle for you, but we'll be taking you to the same building,” said the suit.
“And if I say I want to go with her anyway?” said Mag. Celestia nudged her from behind with her nose.
“You are a civilian and we don't have a legal right to detain you at this point in time, but we think it's in everyone's best interest if you come with us so we can check for possible contamination. Radiation, for example.”
In other words, they had already applied for an arrest warrant of some kind in case Mag decided she'd rather go home. Celestia gave Mag another warning nudge.
Right. She was a representative of Celestia and a future citizen of—what was it called? Equestria. She clammed up and looked to Celestia for help.
Celestia took center stage. “Hello. We'll be happy to come with you, but I do think Ms. Mag Wilson should stay with me, firstly, because she has spent over a day in my presence and presumably can't get any more contaminated; secondly, because my sister is in her mind in any case, from which she cannot be removed; and thirdly, because while I'm happy to accompany you to your safe place regardless, I find Ms. Wilson's presence comforting, and, while I wouldn't presume to know the minds of your superiors, if I were in their position, I'd prefer that the strange new being was comfortable.”
Celestia could probably have shortened all that to “pretty please.” In Mag's opinion, saying no to Celestia within five seconds of first meeting her was like saying no to gravity.
“That sounds reasonable,” said the suit. “If you don't mind, please stay still for a few minutes while we check for radiation and a few different harmful chemicals and gases.”
"Do you think the book counts?" said Mag.
"I doubt they could sense it, but yes, in spirit," said Celestia.
"The book? You mean that book?" said the suit, pointing with a gloved finger.
"Yes, this one," said Celestia. It sat on her back. It seemed to sit precariously in its place, but it hadn't moved much since Celestia had set it there, so maybe not. "This book is... how should I word it? Mag, any suggestions?"
"Bad juju," said Mag.
"How do you mean?" said the suit.
"It's spent centuries basking in some rather nasty magical effluvia, and now it's not something mortals should touch without magical preparation and care," said Celestia.
"Basically, don't touch the book and don't touch anything that touches the book," said Mag.
"And I would be wary of anything that touches anything that touched the book, as well," said Celestia.
The suit nodded calmly. "Is there any safe way for us to handle it in case of an emergency?"
"None whatsoever, at least nothing you have access to. You must trust me to keep it and protect it. Someday this may change, but for now, there is no likely scenario that would justify interacting with this book even indirectly."
"What Celestia hasn't mentioned is that the two of us might teach you how, Mag, but it would take time and would not be without risk. If you are interested then she shall probably need persuading."
Mag shifted a couple of inches away from the Paravasi Mageia. She really could feel it now, and she wasn't liking any more now than she had back in Underlake. It wasn't profane, not exactly, but it definitely wasn't wholesome, either.
"We might have more questions later, but all right."
Then they got to work. It took a thousand years and they found nothing interesting. About ten minutes in, Mag noticed her ashtray buried face-down in mud a few feet away and asked if she could get it. They respectfully asked her not to move, but were kind enough to pry her ashtray out of the dirt with some kind of long plastic thing, put it in a thick plastic bag with a drawstring, and set it aside for her, to be returned once they'd looked it over carefully.
“Fine so far,” said the suit who was in charge.
Mag folded her arms. “So are we going? Also, can I get a cigarette?”
“What do you plan to do with it?” said the suit.
“The obvious,” said Mag.
“We'll have to make a phone call about that one,” said the suit. “All right, pack it up. Your majesty, Ms. Wilson, please follow us up to the road. We have transportation ready.”
“I'm sure it's lovely,” said Celestia.
“This 'transportation' wouldn't happen to lock from the outside, would it?” said Mag.
“It doesn't, although we would appreciate it if you both stayed inside until we gave you the all-clear to get out again. We'll take you up the path after the other squad checks it and the road is blocked.”
“Just as you please,” said Celestia.
“Hey, how many people know about the princess right now?”
“I really couldn't say, Ms. Wilson,” said the suit.
“Ballpark it,” said Mag.
“I'm curious as well,” said Celestia.
The suit stood there for a few seconds. Mag wondered what his face looked like. “This is just a guess, you understand, but if I did have to guess... somewhere between five hundred and several million, depending on how convincing the public finds the recording.”
Mag nearly collapsed with laughter. Several HAZMAT suits flinched at the sudden movement. “It hit the actual news?! They aired it? I need to see the tape. No, I need an internet connection. No, I need omelets and cigarettes and cigarette omelets, and then maybe a shower, and then an internet connection.”
She tucked some stray hairs behind her ear. This had all been fun, for a given value for fun, but she was feeling less sentient as the sun climbed. Her body was beginning to realize it wouldn't be allowed to go back to bed anytime soon.
“Well, you're public knowledge now,” Mag stage-whispered to Celestia.
“And now we'll see what humanity and I can do for one another,” said Celestia happily.