"I thought you said she was a unicorn?" From their hiding place behind a large stack of books the four foals watched the weird new librarian. Since the library had opened last week they had heard a few stories about her from the town ponies and had finally decided to come and see what the fuss was. It had all been Rumble's idea, he had dared Sunny Daze and Peachy Pie to come with him because they were 'scared' of her, just like everypony had been scared of Zecora. Dinky let out a sigh, if she hadn't opened her mouth they probably wouldn't have dragged her along but now the three were convinced she knew all about the new librarian.
"Sweetie Belle told me that Rarity told her that the new librarian was a unicorn. She also said her name was Sunset Shimmer. Can we just go?" since they had arrived Dinky had been getting increasingly uncomfortable. Her mother had always taught her it was rude to stare but the four of them had been doing that for the past minute. Rumble tore up a small ball of note paper and scrunched it into a ball. Hefting it with one wing he launched it in an arc through the air culminating with it hitting the librarian on the hat and bouncing onto the floor, the mare just stood there and stared off into space, just as she had been doing since they had walked in.
"Why did you do that!" hissed Sunny, "you aren't supposed to throw things in the library, especially not at adults!" All four foals ducked behind the walls of their hiding place but it seemed as though Sunset hadn't heard them.
"I think she might be asleep," Rumble mused peeking back over the top of the books. "My brother used to sleep walk, maybe she's the same." The pegasus colt turned to Dinky with a scowl on his face. "Are you sure she's a unicorn?"
"Maybe her horn is under the hat?" Peachy suggested as she joined Rumble at the walls of fort book.
"Maybe Sweetie Belle was fibbing," Rumble retorted as he began rolling up another ball of paper. Dinky was feeling more and more uncomfortable about the situation, maybe she should find the princess and tell her? Her mum had raised her to be a good little filly and not treat other ponies differently for being a little different, the new librarian was very different. If she went and fetched another adult though then the others would call her chicken for running away, or a telltale if they got into trouble. Being a kid was difficult. Rumble hefted the second piece of paper this time hitting the mare on her nose, she wrinkled it up in response but didn't seem to wake up.
"What's wrong with her face?" Sunny asked as she and Dinky joined the others at the walls. The librarian had chunks of fur missing from her face and neck and the skin was lumpy and dark where her fur was missing.
"Nothing's wrong with her face, she's just...different," Dinky said, glaring at Sunny. Mean ponies had said things like that about her mom and when they did it made Ditzy very sad. She liked Sunny but you weren't meant to say something like that about another pony, you could really hurt another pony's feelings by talking that way.
"Maybe she's hiding her horn because she can't do magic?" Peachy considered as she hopped onto the chair that stood at the center of fort book. "I heard from an adult that unicorns that don't have their cutie marks can't do magic."
"That's not right. Sweetie Belle was learning magic before she got her cutie mark. Also she's an adult, adults all have their cutie marks." Sunset was starting to make Dinky very uncomfortable, for some reason the mare made her feel very sad but she couldn't quite decide why. She was pretty sure that Rumble was wrong, sleep walking ponies were meant to walk, not just stand around doing nothing. Maybe she was just choosing to be quiet? Everypony was meant to be quiet in a library so maybe she was just setting a good example.
"Nuh uh. Not all adults have their cutie marks, it's a medical thing. Whenever I've seen her around town she's always been dressed up like that, I bet she's scared that somepony will call her a blank flank." Peachy was treading on thin ice, if the librarian was a blank flank she shouldn't be talking about it, Dinky imagined that an adult would be very sensitive about something like that. Thankfully the librarian still seemed to be 'asleep' and hadn't noticed what Peachy had said.
"Nah, Thunderlane said she has a sun for a cutie mark. He says he saw it when she tripped up in Sugar Cube Corner and her dress hiked up." To Dinky's disappointment Rumble had begun rolling up another ball of paper.
"My mom says Thunderlane spends too much time looking at mares' flanks," Sunny grumbled causing Rumble to shoot her a dirty look. The four sat staring pensively at the still immobile librarian before Sunny suddenly perked up again. "If she has a sun for a cutie mark does that mean Celestia is her mom?" that was a deep question, a lot of ponies looked down on foals because they were so young but sometimes they would talk about important things. Mr Time Turner had said that was called philosophy, philosophy was a long word and hard to say which meant it must be very important.
"No, Trixie had a moon for a cutie mark but she can't be Princess Luna's daughter, she's too old," Dinky paused mid thought and considered the other possibility, "or too young. She'd have to be really old to have been born before Luna was banished. I don't think anypony in Ponyville was around back then, except maybe Granny Smith." The others nodded in confirmation. Granny Smith was very old and Luna had been banished a long time ago, Miss Cherilee said it was a thousand years ago, a thousand years was a very long time. Rumble managed to land another ball of paper on the librarian.
"Sunset, I'm here! Is Twilight around?" all four kids bolted for the door at the sound of Rarity calling from the door. Even though it was a public library they didn't want to be caught misbehaving.
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As Rarity walked into the library a group of four school children came sprinting past her. She could of reprimanded them for running in the library but they were already gone, besides it wouldn't do to discourage the children from studying at the library. Turning back to the library she could see Sunset picking up some balled up pieces of paper with a frown on her face.
"Problems with the children?" Rarity asked. Over the past week Sunset had been working at the newly opened library she had heard that a few of the town's ponies had visited to check out books but she imagined this was probably the first time that Sunset had been forced to deal with the rambunctious youths of Ponyville, they could really be a hooffull and it was probably for the best that Sunset's first dealings hadn't been with the crusaders.
"I honestly have no idea how they did it, Rarity. I'd been sorting some books in the stacks and when I came back I heard you coming in. I have no idea how they managed to make all this mess without me hearing them, still at least they were keeping to the whole 'quiet in the library' rule," Sunset chuckled gesturing to the scattered pieces of paper and an impromptu book fort that had been erected by the reading tables.
"How have you been adjusting? Has everypony been treating you well?"
"Well a few of them have been giving me some funny looks, but other than that everypony has been very nice. I guess a lot of them feel like they are walking on egg shells around me," Sunset decided to omit the fact that she was pretty sure one pegasus had intentionally tripped her up in Sugar Cube Corner, she still didn't get what his problem was but at least he had the manners to help her get back up after her tumble.
"You're sure you want to talk about this today though?" Rarity said as she disassembled the fort and arranged some sitting cushions for three ponies to have a talk. "We don't want you to feel pressured into doing anything you're uncomfortable with."
"No, no I want to talk about this, it'll be good to get some of this off of my chest. I'll finish up tidying the mess those kids made, you go fetch Twilight." Rarity nodded and trotted off to find the princess leaving Sunset alone to wonder how in Equestria the kids had managed to make the mess without her noticing.
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Okay, Twilight. Where did I leave off?
You'd been snatched up by the time portal for the second time.
Right.
This time when the portal dropped me off I was a little more prepared than I had been before. It wasn't exactly a graceful landing but I managed to twist my body so that I fell on my side instead of on my hoof. It still hurt but nowhere near as bad as when I landed on a broken leg. Not going to lie, the first hour or so of being there I wasn't in a particularly good place, I laughed a bit more and then... then I just curled up and cried, it wasn't my proudest moment.
After I'd pretty much managed to cry myself out of tears I realized how hungry I was, I hadn't had any proper food for the past two weeks and moping around wasn't going to fix that. I pulled myself up off of the ground and had a look around. I was somewhere in the badlands, presumably wherever the hive had been built in the other Equestria if past experience was anything to go by. I had a couple of theories as to the nature of what had been going on but hadn't really had any way to prove any of them till then. My surroundings seemed to confirm the theory that the portal hadn't moved me through space, just through realities. My other theory though seemed to be disproved, I'd assumed from my first experience that it would deposit me someplace at the same point of time it had picked me up at but while the portal had taken me at about midday it had left me in the dead of night.
In the distance I could just about make out the lights of civilization and so, beneath the light of the full Moon, I set off in the direction of the lights hoping that whatever strange quirks this world had the ponies would be kind to a lost and weary traveller (after my last two experiences I doubted it would be like the Equestria I remembered). The funny thing about this world was that I probably would have worked out what was wrong if I hadn't spent the past few years in the human world, for me the shadowy image of a mare that seemed to adorn the side of the moon was a simple sign that the world bore some similarity to the world I had known long ago, I had never seen Equestria's Moon since Luna had been freed.
By the time I reached the source of the light I was immensely thankful that the portal had seen fit to leave me in the middle of the night, the journey had taken me some time and I couldn't imagine how I would have made it beneath the sweltering heat of the Sun. To my disappointment it wasn't a town or village that I approached, merely a small campsite consisting of about a dozen tents and wagons, as I crept through the dark I began to hear the sound of ponies speaking about a central campfire.
"I'm telling you I saw what I saw!" the raspy voice of a stallion exclaimed.
"Crispy, nopony has any problem with you having a bit of cider while on watch but please stop getting yerself so drunk," a second stallion this one with a deep husky tone replied clearly unimpressed with whatever his companion had been talking about.
"Oh leave him be, Shady, it's bad enough being on punishment detail without the two of you being at each others throats all the time," there was a mare with them, her voice had a distinctive Canterlot accent to it and she sounded a little irritable. Even so after hearing her voice I was a lot more comfortable about making myself known to them, if it had only been stallions at the camp... well I'm sure you've heard unpleasant stories about vulnerable mares in the rougher parts of Equestria.
"You believe me though right, Tavia? I'm telling you it was a great big ball of magic, bright as the moon itself!" Stepping into the light I counted five ponies who were awake. The current speaker who I gathered to be Crispy was a lanky orange earth pony with a chocolate brown mane. Sitting with him were a gray mare and a stocky batpony, while the remaining two ponies (a teal unicorn stallion and a green pegasus mare) sat off to one side playing cards. All of them were dressed up in dark blue armor that looked vaguely reminiscent of the nightguard. Strange vaguely draconic helmets sat discarded around them and each had a spear close to hoof. As I stumbled into their midst the three who had been speaking grabbed their weapons and turned to face me but quickly lowered them when I collapsed exhausted on the ground.
"Who in Tartarus are you, and what are you doin in the badlands?" the batpony asked, from the sound of things he was probably the one called Shady. I raised my head to look at him and proceeded to open and close my mouth without managing to form a single word, my throat was well and truly parched on top of being horribly sore from my earlier laughter. I raised one hoof to my mouth and mimed drinking, the message seemed to be understood as the mare (Tavia if I had heard correctly) quickly procured a flask from the ground and passed it over to me. I nodded in thanks and quickly began guzzling the water down, I coughed up the first few mouthfuls but after that the rest went down easily enough.
"Sunset Shimmer. Lost. Magical mishap. Need to get to Canterlot." The words were difficult to get out at first but with each mouthful of water my speech seemed to return to me a little more. By this time the other two ponies had stopped their game and come over to see the cause of the commotion while Crispy had moved behind me and was staring at my flank with a strange look of regret on his face.
"Boss, her... her cutie mark," Crispy whispered as he continued to stare. The remaining members of the group suddenly seemed to take notice of it and joined him in their looks of sadness. Tavia walked up to me and placed one leg across my withers.
"You've clearly been through a lot, try getting some rest as we'll be moving out in the morning," she said gently and gestured towards a comfortable looking sleeping bag by the fire. Too exhausted to argue and too upset to worry about what was bothering the others I just nodded and then settled down to get some sleep.
"She has a poor lot in life this one doesn't she?" I heard Tavia whispering to her fellow guards as I began to drift of into sleep, "Treat her as you would any other guest, no need for us to make this any worse than it needs to be." She sighed. "You know sometimes I really hate this job."