“So what was it like?” Pinkie Pie bounced up and down outside Rainbow Dash’s bedroom window, the question apparently so urgent that she couldn’t knock on the door and wait for her friend to open it. “Being turned back into a baby, I mean. That must have been so weird! Could you remember who you were, or were you really just trading places with little Dashie like Twilight said?”
“This again?” Dash tried to hide under the covers, but she knew Pinkie would keep on bouncing and asking until she got a response. After a few minutes, she walked over to the door and let Pinkie inside.
“Have you got a trampoline or something down there?” it was probably the strangest line she could remember opening a conversation with this year, but Pinkie Pie didn’t leave much room for normalcy.
“Yeah, it’s awesome if you need to get to high places. Do you want one? Well, not like you need it. But do you want one? You could use it to get to take off when you’re too tired to flap your wings!”
“Yeah…” Rainbow Dash shrugged, “Hi, anyway.”
“Oh yeah, I wanted to ask you. What it felt like, being turned into a baby. I’m kinda curious, and I want to figure out if Twilight was right about how it worked. See I had another idea, what if it’s just an illusion that you turned into a baby. I mean, even Poison Joke can turn a pony tiny, and that’s not even real magic. But changing your age is supposed to be one of the big impossible things. So I was thinking, maybe it just made you smaller, and made an illusion that you were a baby, and if it’s a good enough illusion you couldn’t help playing along?”
“I can’t see any reason that wouldn’t work, but then I’m not a unicorn. The magic I understand’s all in my wings and my hooves.”
“Yeah, but I thought maybe that’s how it works. And if it was, then what you remember might be different, if it was actually you being a baby and not like a little you or alternate you or something. If you remember, then I can say this to Twilight and see what she thinks about the illusion idea. Maybe we’ll understand better how dopant magic works, maybe?”
“I guess so,” Dash thought. The fillies who’d been turned back to babies had all said they couldn’t remember a thing, though who came up with that story first wasn’t clear. Dash had just gone along with the group, too embarrassed to say anything more, wondering if it was the same for everypony. “Well, if it’s going to help us fight the monsters, I can tell you more. Yeah, I remember a bit.”
“Was it… nice?” Pinkie Pie seemed hesitant, a rare enough occasion in itself. “I mean, it must have been scary, a dopant doing something like that to you. But I imagine how a baby sees the world, how they act, and I think everything must seem like terrifying, or amazing, or soft and reassuring. They don’t know enough about the world to have more detailed thoughts about everything, maybe?”
“I guess that’s something like how I felt. It was warm and comfortable, but then I was so weak. The thing that confused me most was how I couldn’t see or hear properly. Like, you know if you dive into a lake for some reason, you can’t see anything on the surface through the ripples, even if you know what’s there, and everything you hear goes all weird and echoey. It’s like you’re cut off from the world, it’s still there but everything you see and hear is scrambled enough that you don’t know what’s going on. Other ponies are a blur, I couldn’t see who was who, so I just had to trust that they weren’t going to hurt me. That’s hard.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re looking out from inside an illusion, that kind of makes sense. Like it’s a weird shaped lens that messes everything up.”
“Yeah. And… I think I got caught up in playing, as well, as if I was a real filly just got her first flight feathers. That’s kind of embarrassing to admit, it’s so not cool. I should have been the element of loyalty, doing everything I could to help my friends understand. But everything was fuzzy, even my memories. The blurred giant ponies looked so big, I couldn’t recognise them, even their voices I couldn’t understand. And my memories too. And when I saw something moving that I could actually track, I just had to pounce to prove that I still can, that I can do something at least. It was weird, like every little urge was magnified, every interest or fear was magnified. Everything larger than life, not just the other ponies but all my feelings too. So when I got the urge to play with something, I couldn’t help myself. I should have known I was acting like a little filly, but with these waves of feelings, I couldn’t hold on to that thought. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, I can imagine that. And I think it must mean we were right about the illusion thing. I’ll tell Twilight about it, but I won’t tell her the other stuff if you don’t want me to.”
“Thanks,” Rainbow Dash couldn’t think what else to say, “I’m just glad to be me again. To be able to fly wherever I want, and my achievements are flying faster than anypony else ever did, not just flying across the room without falling.”
“Yeah,” Pinkie smiled, “We’re glad to have you back. But I kinda wish it had been me, as well. Everything so exciting, or scary, or whatever. All those urges so sudden that you can’t help it, it means that you could just do what comes naturally and nopony’s going to tell you off for playing. You know? It’d be more relaxing than a spa, just for a one off. Not having to think about things because you can’t. I’d like to have found out before we destroyed it.”
“I guess, without the monster and working out where those babies all came from. If we’d known what was happening, maybe I can imagine that being fun for some ponies. Not for me, though.”
“Right.”
“So if Twilight comes up with some spell to test the shrinking-and-illusion theory, you’re the one to test it. Deal?”
“Oh yeah,” Pinkie grinned, “I bet that would be pretty fun for a while. Maybe get a playdate with–” and there she stopped.
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, I just remembered Pound and Pumpkin, I was supposed to go round to play with them today. I hope they won’t mind if I’m a bit late.”
“You’re babysitting again?” Rainbow Dash tried not to show her surprise, but without much success, “I would have thought –”
“Oh, no. I’m just going to play with them. Evening Spirit’s looking after them this evening, he’s found his special talent in caring for little ones now. But I’m taking over tomorrow, while their parents are out all day and he’s at school. I mean, maybe last time was a bit chaotic, but nopony could say that was my fault. They said they were really proud of how mature I was, coping in a crisis, so they won’t hesitate to ask me to babysit again.”
“Wow,” Dash smiled, “I guess this time, it really did turn out well for everypony.”